Saturday Morning Ramblings

1. First of all, there are some great Bakken links that were posted earlier this morning. The link provided by CRC is particularly interesting. When a San Antonio-based company announces they are sending 70 percent of their huge, new walking rigs to the Bakken (and only one of ten of these walking rigs) to the Eagle Ford in their backyard it provides some insight how far along the Bakken is compared to the Eagle Ford. The walking rigs will be used for pad drilling. Regular readers noticed in a post yesterday that operators are now up to 9 wells in one spacing unit in the Bakken. A year ago, local folks were looking at one well per spacing unit. It quickly went to four, then six, and occasionally seven or eight. Now it's nine.

2. I was not a fan of Facebook. I opened an "account" a couple years ago and have almost no "friends," by choice. I didn't visit Facebook for months at a time. Then with the recent IPO debacle I became interested in Facebook again. Now I am back on it, at least three times daily and posting regularly. The photograph feature is what caught my attention. After being back on Facebook for two weeks now, I am convinced that Facebook is a "keeper." The reason I post this today is because I see that it is rumored that Apple and Facebook will "partner." There have been a number of dots that make this plausible. Maybe more to follow in my ramblings. I think iTunes is to Apple, as iPhoto is to Apple/Facebook, as "apps" are to iPad. There are some very interesting niches being carved out in all this digital technology.

3. Outbox. After someone alerted me to this "application," I tried to figure out who the target audience was.  I think I have it. It's the same business model for DISH and others with commercial-skipping television technology. Years ago I helped sort mail for the military postal service. I saw it and you still see it every day, folks throwing about 75 percent of their mail away -- junk mail -- not opened, directly into the waste paper for recycling. (Okay, the recycling part is made up.) This is a huge waste of effort and expenses for an agency that is going bankrupt -- delivering all this mail (at cut-rate prices) only to have it thrown out. Outbox comes along and tells the post office, "hey, send that mail to us first; and we will get rid of the mail that people don't want. We will return the mail that people do want for the USPS carriers to deliver." It's a huge win-win for the postal service. The post office still gets all the revenue for the junk mail postage, but then it doesn't deliver the junk mail.  It's counter-intuitive, but I know I'm right on this. It will be interesting to see if Outbox is still around five years from now. [Something tells me third class advertisers could sue; paying the postal service to deliver a product to an address, but the USPS diverts that mail to a company to shred it.]

4. Books I am currently reading: Richard Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale; David Abulafia's The Great Sea; an anthology of H. L. Mencken articles; and, Alison Light's book on Virginia Woolf's servants.  It's a rainy, cool day in Boston so plenty of time to catch up on a few things.

5. Oh, speaking of Facebook, above, BranchOut went viral with its relationship with Facebook. I read somewhere that BranchOut has more folks registered than the much-longer-lived Linked In. For some reason I never cared for Linked In; seemed geeky; for higher-level managers, whereas BranchOut with Facebook will be much broader-based. I can't articulate it well because I don't visit Linked In, though I am registered there; I don't know what Linked In is up to these days. On the other hand, with a click at Facebook, I am branched out to BranchOut.

6. Warning: political comment. I see the wanna-be emperor has no clothes. Harvard's first woman of color was in the business of flipping homes before it was cool. Sort of reminds me of cattle futures in Arkansas.

From Twitchy:

This happened. This actually happened.

See, Sacaja-whiner doesn’t just understand minority issues. She lives them. Every. Single. Day. And what better way for Elizabeth Warren to prove her Native American authenticity than by addressing the minority caucus at the Massachusetts Democratic Party convention this morning?

I Was Country (When Country Wasn't Cool), Barbara Mandrell
7. Warning: political comment. The graph the administration doesn't want you to see.

8. Warning: political content. Remember this back on May 24, 2012?

Drudge links a story stating "The Amateur" is will debut #1 on the NY Times book list.  Wow. 

It is.

9. Warning: political comment. NYTimes: don't blame Obama. His hands are tied.

Without mentioning Republicans, Mr. Obama said Congress had not passed measures he had proposed to get jobless construction workers rebuilding roads, bridges and runways; to give small businesses a tax break for new hires; and to help states pay teachers, firefighters and police officers. The steady elimination of public sector jobs has offset increased hiring in the private sector for more than two years.

If you listened to his Minnesota speech, Mr Obama added tax breaks for renewable energy; never once mentioned domestic oil and gas industry. I'm not sure how "helping states to pay teachers, firefighters and police officers" will help add NEW jobs. I'm not sure what "Without mentioning Republicans" added anything to the article. I assume the reporter originally had written "Without mentioning that he had killed Keystone XL," which was replaced by the editor.

10. Warning: political content. From Twitchy:

The Smartest Man Alive was floundering during a campaign stop when he had to talk about jobs. Jobs are hard! So is common sense and reality, evidently. President Obama said that Americans need to buy more “thingamajigs” and stuff and things and such. To make jobs. Or something.