Just because you can never have too many geologists in one thread (beatle, I’ll let you be part of our group, just 'cause I like ya)…if all goes well for the next six weeks, I will at that time be the proud possessor of a BA in Geology. Keep your fingers crossed for me, folks!
Oooh, baby, talk rocks to me! I do so love an IgPet man. (Just because it wouldn’t be MPSIMS without a flirt hijack)
Well, I’m in my junior year as a computer science major, and, while I hardly consider myself to be a REAL scientist, I fully intend to tell anyone who asks me what I do for a living in the future that I’m a scientist, and then act like I can’t tell them any more than that.
Homestretch. Go, Geobabe!
Hey, GeoBabe, I’ve got an off-print with your name on it! Wait 'till you check out my graphs. Good luck, and if you’re looking for a T.A. and wanna do some petrology, we’ve got some spots open out here in the Fall!
On more cynical (and/or drunken) nights, that’s what I tell people I do: “make graphs, then write about 'em”.
beatle, that reminds me of a field trip I went on. It was a paleontologist, a petrologist (me), and a geophysicist standing in front of an ammonite. I say: “I got into petrology 'cause I can’t stand fossils.” The geophyzzer replies: “I got into geophysics 'cause I can’t stand rocks.” Are you plugging that well into my original hometown? The stinkiest city in Matagorda Co.?
Maybe all these petrogeologists could try to find some oil for Geobabe’s car. Actually, the oil in her car is probably old enough to merit drilling for.
PhD computer scientist here. But I left academia a while back, so I’m not sure “science” is what I’m spending my days doing. Engineering, maybe. Still, there’s a paper or two out there with my name on it…
Actually, Pantellerite, although I’ve drilled a few in Palacios (perhaps in your backyard - Clardy, Harriman, Rockenbaugh - any of those last names ring a bell?), this one’s closer to Wadsworth, but it was close enough to merit a hometown mention.
And BTW, pal, “plugging” is not the way I’d hope to describe our endeavors out there (saw a faxed log tonight - I’ve got enough hope to sleep on).
I appreciate it, beatle! Not often does poor, beleaguered Palacios get the recognition it deserves for oil, shrimp, and La Salle! Actually, in true Palacios style, I’m the son of a roughneck (former), and the son of a son of a shrimper.
(Un)fortunately, I left at much too young an age to remember many details about the area. Perhaps I should mention it to one of my buddies out here from Galveston or Port O’Connor. Yep, we’ve got a few Gulf Coast refugees–all lamenting our lack of seafood.
But back to the science bit… and maybe a little GQish, are you exploring for natural gas or petroleum? And is all your exploration on the coast in the Cretaceous?
The sections we’re playing up and down the coast are Oligocene & Eocene (pretty much from top to bottom) as well as some Paleocene. The grand company plan is to pursue the burgeoning demand for natural gas, which is what we get from the Eocene. In the Oligocene (Frio) we are making gas discoveries and oil discoveries; nobody gets very disappointed when we find oil.
We’ve kicked Cretaceous ideas around, and if we ever move into East Texas we’ll pursue it. For most of the Gulf Coast, if you don’t want to fool with the Chalk and/or Buda (and we definitely do not), your Cretaceous choices are Edwards and Sligo. If I can get my company to drill the kind of wells it takes to chase those I’d rather drill for deeper distal reservoirs in the Frio, Yegua and Wilcox - the devils I know.
Not that I have anything against carbonates. Reef hunting can be geophysically challenging, to say the least. I did in years past work Cretaceous, and Jurassic, in the southeast states and Africa. A very different world, but that experience with salt tectonics has allowed the successful pursuit of any interesting play here, that being basal Frio trapping associated with shale diapirs (just like little baby salt domes…uh, sort of).
Ack! It’s Friday, I’m off work and you’ve got me talkin’ shop! Yikes! Time to pursue the second most favored activity of geodoggies everywhere - I’m going out for a drink!
Damn beatle! All that hot and heavy layered gushing innuendo! Fergit what they say about a man in uniform; a man who can rattle off the heart of the eons really twirls my bonnet.
:::fanning my oldself:::
Scientists Rock!
I know you’ll find this hard to believe, but I never get that kind of reaction to talking shop IRL.
A tip of the hat, elelle m’dear.
Former physicist (B.Sc. only, but hey, I did get Honours), former geophysicist, now in the computer business, sliding down toward retirement in about 5 years or so, at which time I’ll start doing what I really want: making furniture. I know a little bit about a lot of things, and not much about any one thing. I mostly just lurk here, rarely posting anything, because there are so many intelligent, erudite, articulate people on these boards that I rarely feel I have any new information to offer. Usually I feel I haven’t really understood anything since about 1985. I look back on a career that seems to be based on incredibly long chains of low probability events, and I’m still not sure what I want to be when I grow up. But at least I’ve had fun, and made enough money to let me do other things I wanted to do.
Actually I don’t expect I’ll ever grow up…
I’m a freshman biology major. I plan to eventually become a paleontologist. My second choice is an ethologist. While I do find molecular biology to be fairly intersting, I also find it to be a royal pain in the butt. No offense. I prefer the whole macro- ordeal, hence my interests in paleontology/ethology/evolution. As much as I’m tempted to sometimes, I don’t think I could ever switch to a non-science major. I think I’d go through withdrawl.
Dirx
Ornithologist here, specializing in corvids. Right now I’m tracking West Nile virus in the wild bird population in New Jersey. I also play around with Eastern Equine Encephalitis cycles in avian hosts (hi Mozman!) and the exciting field of Canada Goose population discrimination based on stable isotope analysis.
In return for doing what I love, I have to play LAN-Admin for the entomology department.
Hey… when you typed that, this geodoggie had already been drinking with my geobuddies for 50 minutes! I wasn’t talking shop, but I was dwelling on my problems with Barium. Wait a sec… I was talking shop. Had a brochure for a new hand-held XRF for metals prospecting!
Several other old geobuddies are out in your neck of the woods doing geophysical grunt-work (laying geophones) for natural gas, so I figured that might be hot out there right now. You ever turn your attention out west? You’d love Sanderson (where there’s a lot of work going on, as I gather from the need for mud loggers) in the summer. I think they’re drilling the Permian, though… speaking of carbonate reef facies. Nah, must be the K. I don’t think there’s much P that far east.
Speaking of talking shop, I’d better get back to it now…
I’ll be taking a year off before starting grad school, but I will definitely keep you in mind when I’m starting to look–I am definitely heading either south or west because although I love the school here, the New England winters are KILLING me.
Taking paleo convinced me that I’m definitely not a fossil person. I just found it really hard to get excited about echinoderms, brachiopods, etc, etc. Yeah, they’re cool and all, but…whatever. But I love love love rocks.
Finagle, are you cyber-stalking me or what? You always seem to show up wherever I am. Not that I object, mind, you, I’m just curious. 
Well, no, but I have seen your picture on the People Pages and if you feel like you really must have a stalker, it would be no hardship to oblige. (Humor aside, it sort of creeps me out to be even lightheartedly accused of stalking, so I’ll pay more attention to where I post from now on…)
Oh now, Finagle, I didn’t mean to make you feel self-conscious, sorry about that. Rest assured, I was merely joking; I don’t really think you’re cyber-stalking me, and besides, I think Bluesman has that well in hand. Tell ya what, why don’t you come on out to the Dopefest we’re cooking up, since I know you’re somewhere in the same neck of the woods I am. I would have emailed you about the last one but since you don’t have an addy listed I couldn’t, so you missed out altogether (BTW, feel free to drop me a line if you want, mine is listed).
“…some are mathematicians,
some are carpenter’s wives,
don’t know how it all got started,
don’t know what they do with their lives.”
–Dylan
Ph.D. mathematician; my research area was graph theory before I went to work for the gummint.
I don’t stalk anyone around the boards, but if I did, you’d be one of my first choices, Geobabe. 
You gotta be kiddin’ me. A buncha flirtin’ geologists and not one single mention of strip mining? I’m extremely disappointed in you people.