Friday Night Meanderings -- July 31, 2015

That was easy. It appears the avian flu outbreak is over and things are returning to normal. I stopped by Albertson's on the way home to check the prices of whole fryers this evening. The refrigerator cases were overflowing with fryers and they were selling for 69 cents/pound.

For newbies, this was quite an incredible day in the Bakken. First, there were sixteen new permits, and the permits were for multiple operators. But even more remarkable: look at the IPs for the nine (9) producing wells that were completed. Nine completed producing wells is not trivial, either.

In the summer of 1972, the year between my junior and senior year in college, I spent a summer on the North Slope of Alaska doing research. I remember listening to Lynn Anderson's I Never Promised You A Rose Garden on the Armed Forces Network. But the big song that summer was Donna Fargo's I'm The Happiest Girl In The Whole USA. The sun was up 24 hours/day during the middle of the summer and I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning listening to the radio and doing my research. It was reported that Lynn Anderson died sometime in the past 24 hours.

I'm The Happiest Girl In The Whole USA, Donna Fargo
Without question, the biggest story being talked about among the techies today is the report that IBM is switching -- the entire corporation is switching -- to Apple. That is absolutely huge. Think about it. The comments at Macrumors are absolutely enlightening. I was looking for Meg Whitman's comment on the HP computer when she took over as HP CEO, but this is the best I could do (after a very short search):

While HP's new products certainly have a more consistent look and feel that is far from the "brick" of a laptop Whitman said she received on her first day at HP, it's hard to deny that HP's new look bears more than a passing resemblance to Apple's MacBook and iMac lines. Whitman even said that "Apple taught us that design really matters," and feels that HP has "made a lot of progress" with its new lineup. While the company may have an attractive line of new products that will help show off Windows 8 when it launches this fall, it's hard to look at HP's latest as anything but excessively Apple-inspired.

I can see why so many folks in the USA are overweight. I have never had a Cheesecake Factory cheesecake in my entire life until this past week. My daughter, bless her heart, bought a slice of Oreo cheesecake for me from the Cheesecake Factory. It is incredibly delicious, and the single slice is huge. I have a small portion of that one slice for five desserts so far this week, and it looks like I have one or two desserts left from that same portion. I would never be able to have a full dinner at Cheesecake Factory followed by dessert -- I assume they serve meals -- I don't know -- I've never visited a Cheesecake Factory even though there is one right next door to the Barnes and Noble in Southlake (Texas) that I visit almost every week. (I've bicycled to that Barnes and Noble for the past three consecutive days.

Folks may be interested in the status of permits so far this year, on the last day of July, 2015. Pretty impressive, considering all the headwinds.

My wife loves iced coffee, particularly Starbucks iced coffee. I see that one can buy ready-to-drink Starbucks iced coffee at grocery stores, like Albertson's. I will buy her the Starbucks iced coffee when she gets back to Texas after a long summer in southern California. As for me, I haven't been to Starbucks since I returned from California, about two weeks ago, and plan never to visit Starbucks again but when absolutely necessary when traveling and needing wi-fi. But I simply won't pay the increased prices that Starbucks recently announced.

When Minyard's bought the Tom Thumb store next door, they replaced the Starbucks coffee shop with Peet's. I haven't bought coffee at Peet's but I assume it's about as expensive as Starbucks when Peets advertised "$2.00 Tuesdays." If coffee is $2.00 when sold at a discount, I can only imagine the regular price. I now have coffee at home, and I buy Peets at Minyard's, $7.99 for a package of ground beans vs $9.99 for same size package of Starbucks ground coffee.

I bought a chocolate Babka at Southlake's Central Market to go with my morning coffee. I had never heard of Babka until watching a rerun of Seinfeld. I think cinnamon Babka would be better with morning coffee.

Are we done here? Yup.