Huge Disaster Averted At Gas Plant In Washington State

This could have been bad.
Very, Very, Bad.

4 hurt, 200 evacuated after Washington plant fire

Posted: Mar 31, 2014 9:50 AM PST Updated: Mar 31, 2014 11:31 AM PST
By The Associated Press
PLYMOUTH, WA (AP) -

Authorities say four workers were injured and about 200 residents were evacuated after a large explosion and fire Monday morning at a natural gas processing plant in the eastern Washington town of Plymouth.

Benton County Sheriff Steven Keane says the fire from the 8:20 a.m. blast has been put out.

He says the explosion sent a mushroom-shaped cloud towering into the air, and shrapnel punctured a liquefied natural gas tank. Some gas leaked but did not ignite.

Deputies went door to door throughout Plymouth, along the Columbia River, and evacuated people in a 2-mile radius.

Buses were provided for those without cars, and a shelter was set up across the river in Oregon at the Umatilla County Fairgrounds. As part of the evacuation, Highway 14 and railroad tracks were shut down.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

I rode nearby past this thing a couple of weeks ago.
It's out in the middle of nowhere, which is by design I'm sure.

They have one tank there that has ONE BILLION cubic feet of gas in it.

Can you imagine if that had blown?
There would be a crater a hundred feet deep and a quarter mile wide.

PLYMOUTH, WA. - The Benton County Sheriff's Office says the cause of the incident at the Williams Northwest Pipeline Facility was a bursting pipeline, sending a chunk of the pipe into a tank that contains liquid natural gas.

Deputies say they're waiting for the tank to drain in order to start repairs. They say the tank contains a billion cubic feet of natural gas which is still flowing and leaking through the pipe.

Crews have also changed the location of evacuation from the Hermiston Convention Center to the fairgrounds in Hermiston.

Deputies say they have expanded the evacuation area to within two miles of the facility.

Investigators are trying to figure out what caused the pipeline to burst.

I think I would be extending that evacuation area if it were me......

Must Be That Employee Discount

The way this economy has been bouncing off the floor for the last six years, this does not surprise me.

Wal-Mart has a lower acceptance rate than Harvard

By Christopher Ingraham
March 28 at 3:31 pm

This year's Ivy League admissions totals are in. The 8.9 percent acceptance rate is impressively exclusive, but compared to landing a job at Wal-Mart, getting into the Ivy Leagues is a cakewalk.

Last year when Wal-Mart came to D.C. there were over 23,000 applications for 600 jobs. That's an acceptance rate of 2.6%, twice as selective as Harvard's and over five times as choosy as Cornell.

I think Harvard and WalMart do have something in common though.

They will let just about any idiot with enough money in.

Coming Attraction

I just bought two tickets to go see this guy on May 9th over in a little club in Portland.

I went to see him in San Francisco back in the early 80's and he was two hours late.
Been feeling gypped ever since and now I want my monies worth this time.


He should need no introduction and if you don't know who he is then I suggest you crawl out from under your rock and take a listen.
Arguably one of the most underrated guitarists around, he has been kicking ass and taking names since the seventies.
Boom Boom, Out Go the Lights ring a bell? How about Crash And Burn?

The One and Only,

Pat Travers.

Leg Day

WTF?! A Tornado In California?

Batten down the hatches if you are around the Chico area.

Don't Be Lost! Critical Map And Other Navigation Info From American Mercenary

American Mercenary spent all day posting different aspects of How To's about navigation, how to pace off distances, use a map, use a compass, GPS and a protractor to accurately plot your position and where you are trying to get to.

This is something that everyone should know,that should be taught in schools all over but isn't.

Not many people can actually use a compass correctly, let alone plot a route with one on a decent map.

Hell, most people can't even read a map correctly or even know what kind of map they are looking at.

American Mercenary broke all these lessons up into six parts ,here is the link to his page,work your way through them from there.

My thanks to him for taking the time to do this as like I said, I feel everyone should know this stuff.
It damn well may save your life someday.



Do yourself a favor and learn this stuff, then practice it.
Some of this can be done right in your neighborhood.


Update; Idaho Bob was kind enough to point out all the links I had put up didn't work. I tried to fix them but it kept referring them back here so I just linked to his site and you can work it from there. I might straighten it all back out later but I have to leave for a few hours.

The Truth Hurts

Some examples of the current political commentary making the rounds.

A tip of the hat to Tom for sending these along.

IRS Achieves Holy Grail Of Taxation, Finds Way To Tax Virtual Currency That Doesn't Physically Exist

We all knew it was a matter of time until the IRS found a way to get in the game. It must have been driving them crazy, watching all those zeroes flying around on the internet and people getting rich on paper with no way for them to skim some off.

Worry no more, the IRS has decreed that Bitcoins and other virtual currencies can be taxed as property instead of currency because according to them , virtual currency isn't Legal tender but dammit Jim, they need some of that action anyway.

How one taxes something that doesn't physically exist in the real world didn't prove to be that much of a challenge to the professional leeches after all.

Bitcoins are property, not currency, IRS says regarding taxes

(Reuters) - Wading into a murky tax question for the digital age, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service said on Tuesday that bitcoins and other virtual currencies are to be treated, for tax purposes, as property and not as currency.

"General tax principles that apply to property transactions apply to transactions using virtual currency," the IRS said in a statement, meaning that bitcoins would be taxed as ordinary income or as assets subject to capital gains taxes, depending on the circumstance.

Bitcoin, the best-known virtual currency, started circulating in 2009. Its present market value is around $8 billion, with up to 80,000 transactions occurring daily, according to accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.

Recent incidents have brought the currency under new regulatory scrutiny, such as the failure of Mt. Gox, a Tokyo-based exchange that filed for bankruptcy after losing an estimated $650 million worth of customer bitcoins.

Unlike conventional money, bitcoin is generated by computers and is independent of control or backing by any government or central bank, which its proponents like, but which also has led to calls for more guidance on U.S. tax treatment.

The IRS supplied that in its statement, which dealt a blow to bitcoin "miners," who unlock new bitcoins online. The IRS said miners must include the fair market value of the virtual currency as gross income on the date of receipt.

I have full faith that innovative people are going to find a way around this momentary snag.

As hard as they have worked to have these virtual currencies deemed a legitimate way to transfer wealth and goods, it's still all electronic and as such , subject to stealth operation capabilities.

What the IRS can't find, they can't get their grubby little mitts on and as far as I can see, this ruling really only applies to people subject to the F.U.S.A. tax codes anyway.
It's like chasing an electronic rainbow, looking for a virtual pot of gold.

I Just Received A Wonderful Gift!

Xenolith Emailed me last week wanting my address, said he had something to send me and wanted to know if I wanted to see what it was before he sent it.

I said that I would just wait and to surprise me.

He succeeded.

I actually had a bit of a lump in my throat when I finally got it unpacked and realized just how much time and effort he put into this.

He made this with his own two hands, just for me.

I am just humbled.

I will treasure this and I am going to find a prominent place out in the Man Cave to display it.

Thank you my man.

That is very cool.

I'm Sure The Government Would Like To Cure Me, Too

The things you find on the internet.
Hell, this is four year old news I had seen and forgotten about but I would bet money it's still true.

Is nonconformity and freethinking a mental illness? According to the newest edition of the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), it certainly is. The manual identifies a new mental illness called “oppositional defiant disorder” or ODD. Defined as an “ongoing pattern of disobedient, hostile and defiant behavior,” symptoms include questioning authority, negativity, defiance, argumentativeness, and being easily annoyed.

Fuck, they pegged me.

Guilty on all counts there. Apparently I have been unwell since early childhood. Who knew?
Isn't modern medicine amazing?

New mental illnesses identified by the DSM-IV include arrogance, narcissism, above-average creativity, cynicism, and antisocial behavior. In the past, these were called “personality traits,” but now they’re diseases.

And there are treatments available.

You bet your homesick ass there are and they would love to get you into the system and try out as many as possible on ya.

By the way, you won't be needing that firearm anymore once they put your name on that piece of paper and enter it into the computer.

Somehow I doubt that they will bother mentioning that up front.

The bastards would love to see us all doing the Thorazine Shuffle, it makes you so much more docile.

No Rest For The Wicked

Fuck me, another 12 hour day.

I've had about enough of this bullshit.
I'm taking a four day weekend.
Thursday the wife and I are going out for a concert and Friday I ain't doing jack fucking shit.
In the meantime hit the Blogroll until I can find the damn time to post something.

Did you just notice something blocking the light?

Russia Sells 2 Billion Dollars Worth Of Arms In Two And A Half Months

They are second only to us here in the F.U.S.A. in world wide weapons sales.
These figures are for sales, imagine what they keep for themselves.

Russia sells arms worth $2 billion in 2.5 months of 2014

25.03.2014

Since the beginning of 2014, Russia has sold weapons and military equipment in the amount of two billion dollars, director of the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation, Alexander Fomin said.

"To date, Russia has supplied military products to foreign customers in the amount of two billion dollars," he said on the eve of the opening of FIDAE-2014 armory show in Santiago (Chile). Fomin noted that the export orders portfolio of the Russian Federation exceeded $47 billion as of March 2014.

For comparison, according to the results of 2013, Russia sold weapons worth the total of $15.7 billion. In 2012, Russia outstripped the target for the supply of arms and military equipment abroad by 11.8 %, having exported products in the amount of 15.16 billion dollars, Fomin reported in January 2013, emphasizing that those were only preliminary data. The backlog of orders exceeded $46 billion then.

In ten years, Russian arms exports and the volume of orders have tripled. According to the report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Russia was among the countries that became the world's largest arms suppliers from 2009 to 2013. Russia accounts for 27% of global arms exports. The USA takes the lead with 29%.

A year ago, according to SIPRI, Russia supplied 23% of arms in the world, while the U.S. accounted for 30% of world exports.


Russia sells its arms and military equipment to 52 countries of the world. In 2009-2013, three countries - India, China and Algeria - accounted for more than a half of purchases. Sixty-five percent of exports go to the Asia-Pacific region, followed by Africa (14%) and Middle East (10%). Russia was the largest exporter of vessels in the world; exports of airplanes accounted for 43%. In four years, as many as 219 combat aircraft were sold.

Rise And Shine For Another Monday

I can't wait......

Another One For The "You Couldn't Make This Shit Up" File

Jesus Christ these people have no fucking shame.

Ya gotta see the irony in the two different stories from the same news source reporting on the public face of this administration about internet freedom in one and the shit the NSA pulls in the other here to truly appreciate the dystopian Jedi mind tricks these people are trying to pull off.

Exhibit A;

Michelle Obama tells Chinese students internet freedom is a universal right

U.S. first lady Michelle Obama told an audience of college students in the Chinese capital on Saturday that open access to information – especially online – is a universal right.

But Obama stopped short of calling on China to offer its citizens greater freedoms on a visit in which she is expected to steer clear of more complicated political issues, but rather try to build goodwill through soft diplomacy.

“It is so important for information and ideas to flow freely over the internet and through the media,” Obama said told an audience of about 200 U.S. and Chinese students at Beijing’s prestigious Peking University.

“My husband and I are on the receiving end of plenty of questioning and criticism from our media and our fellow citizens, and it’s not always easy,” she added. “But I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.”

Censorship in Chinese news media and online is widespread, and internet users in the country cannot access information about many controversial topics without special software to circumvent restrictions.

Now combine that with Exhibit B;

NSA infiltrates servers of Chinese telecommunications giant

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. National Security Agency has infiltrated servers in the headquarters of Chinese telecommunications and internet giant Huawei Technologies Co, obtaining sensitive information and monitoring the communications of top executives, the New York Times reported on Saturday.

The newspaper said its report on the operation, code-named “Shotgiant,” was based on NSA documents provided by Edward Snowden, the former agency contractor who since last year has leaked data revealing sweeping U.S. surveillance activities. The German magazine Der Spiegel also reported on the documents.

One of the goals of the operation was to find any connections between Huawei and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, according to a 2010 document cited by the Times.

But the newspaper said the operation also sought to exploit Huawei’s technology. It reported that the NSA aimed to conduct surveillance through computer and telephone networks Huawei sold to other nations. If ordered by the U.S. president, the NSA also planned to unleash offensive cyber operations, it said.

The newspaper said the NSA secured access to the servers in Huawei’s sealed headquarters in the city of Shenzhen and got information about the workings of the giant routers and complex digital switches the company says connect a third of the world’s people. The NSA also tracked communications of Huawei’s top executives, the Times reported.

How do you say Hope and Change in Chinese?
I dunno but I bet it sounds like Yuck Foo Charrie.

Not So Fast

Father O'Malley answers the phone. Hello, is this Father O'Malley?
It is!
This is the IRS. Can you help us?
I can!
Do you know a Ted Houlihan?
I do!
Is he a member of your congregation?
He is!
Did he donate $10,000 to the church?

He will.

Hit The Off Button!

I just worked 23 of the last 48 hours and I hurt from the bottoms of my feet to the base of my skull.

Some of the things I have been doing involve holding 2"X3" solid copper bars 3 feet long up over my head so I could bolt them up to the bottom of something very large and very heavy, while standing on a fucking ladder.

That's just a taste of it, a small taste.

I have been on my feet so long they are literally throbbing right now.

I have shit to do this weekend too but for now it is lights out. Thanks fer stopping by, hit the Blogroll until I can come to again and actually form words in my head that are longer than two syllables.

Update;
The whole maintenance crew has been pulling twelves to get this piece of equipment back up and running. Days, swing and graveyard, 24 hours a day.

Everyone is burned out.
I just woke up to find that they had texted me looking for someone to go in again to help the weekend guy fix a compressor.

I'm not available.

Fuck that.

I have other shit to do.

Finally.

Thursday?

I'm pretty sure it is, been working my ass off.

It isn't going to end anytime soon, either.
I have a twelve hour shift tonight, 5 P.M. to 5 A.M., at least.
Then turn around and be back at 3 in the afternoon for the final push to get a piece of equipment back together.I'm talking serious physical labor here too.

Ah, yeah.
I'm freakin' beat already and now my sleep schedule is going to be all fucked up even more than it is already.

As you can imagine, posting will be light until I get this over with.

In the mean time;

Yet Another Sign That I'm Getting Old

When I had to explain to my younger supervisor and coworkers what "Turn It Up To Eleven" means.

Sigh.

I'm surrounded by young punks.

In case you still don't get it;

Fed Continues Tapering

Promises it will only hurt for a second....

Fed further cuts its bond-buying program, predicts higher interest rates

Los Angeles Times | March 19, 2014 | 11:22 AM

The Federal Reserve today further reduced its monthly bond buying to $55 billion as more central bank officials predicted their target interest rate would rise by the end of next year, Bloomberg News reported.

Fed officials predicted their target interest rate would be 1% at the end of 2015 and 2.25% a year later, higher than previously forecast, as they upgraded projections for gains in the labor market.

They also removed a provision they had earlier pinned to this that was dependent on the unemployment rate falling below 6.5%.

With the unemployment rate falling faster than anticipated, Fed officials revised their so-called forward guidance on interest rates.

The committee removed a reference in previous statements to keeping the central bank's benchmark interest rate near zero as long as the unemployment rate was above 6.5%.

Fed policymakers said in their statement that they took the step because the unemployment rate was nearing that point -- it was 6.7% in February.

But the statement said the revision "does not indicate any change in the committee's policy intentions."

I think we have all seen how they can pencil fuck that unemployment rate whenever they feel the need.
Does the term "Revised Estimates" ring a bell?

This is all just another attempt to stave off the inevitable.
They had a chance to fix this mess back in 2008 and 2009 when the financial shenagigans the Big Banks had been playing with finally caught up to them.

Instead, they jumped in bed with them, bailed their asses out, refused to prosecute one single instance of criminal fraud and the rest is history.
A World Wide Economic Meltdown.


Previously known a a Depression, now euphemistically known as "The Great Recession".

Spit.


With Russia and China actively laying the groundwork for economic warfare against the dollar, it is just a matter of time until the house of cards they have built collapses and takes every one of us with it.

The Fed can dick with this tapering business until they are blue in the face.

The fact is that they failed spectacularly when they didn't have the balls to straighten this mess out long ago.

Filler Material

Another long day.
I found a list of strange facts that you might think are outright lies and find as interesting as I did though.

Some strange ones like these for a sample;

Mammoths went extinct 1,000 years after the Egyptians finished building the Great Pyramid.

There’s enough water in Lake Superior to cover all of North and South America in one foot of water.

This one should give you pause;

France was still executing people with a guillotine when the first Star Wars film came out.

If that one made you feel a bit old, Star wars has been out awhile, this will definitely make you feel better,

Betty White is actually older than sliced bread!

There are 73 more over at Buzzfeed and by some miracle they are all on one page!

I'm Feeling A Little Rusty

I wonder why.

I just saw on the news that we have had 196% of our normal rain fall amount for this month.
Normal precipitation totals for Vancouver are 3.78 inches in March.

I bet I could get a little boat pretty cheap down in California these days.
I might just need one if this keeps up.

Worked Late Again, Tired, Have Some Boobage

It was a fucking Monday all right.

Peekaboo

My St. Patrick's Day Message

Be glad I quit drinking, I used to actually get rude, crude and socially unacceptable on this day.

More so than usual....

There is an old saying that has the ring of truth to it.

"God invented whiskey to keep the Irish from ruling the world".



My advice is that if you are going out to celebrate on St. Paddy's day, avoid the rookies and for God's sake, drink real Irish whiskey.

Make no mistake, I am of Irish descent. My father's immediate side of the family is 100% Irish.
His Father and Mother's side both.


There seems to be a certain attitude that comes with that lineage,

Thanks Murph, You Dick.

I spent a good deal of the day yesterday doing some vehicle maintenance on both cars that were due for oil changes.
My wife's was only 75 miles overdue, mine?

4,000 miles.

Before I hear of bunch of people freaking out and calling me a lazy bastard, I had a pretty bad oil leak at one time and was dumping a quart of oil in the fucker on a regular basis until I got it fixed so that isn't a true picture of the condition of the oil.

As a matter of fact, it was still cleaner than the stuff in the wife's car.

So anyway, I like to do my own oil changes still, because I can.
It's not that much cheaper than some of those quickie oil change places and it's a hell of a lot messier, plus I'd like to get my hands on the asshole who designed the engine in my wife's car.
That one is a real bitch.

Besides all that, it gives me a chance to lay eyes on things, looking for problems that haven't manifested themselves yet.

So I get all done and pull mine out and move it over to get hers in.
No biggie.
Got all done and then had to snake a drain line for the washing machine.
After that it was kick back time.

I go out and get in my rig today to run down to the store real quick and when I get out, I see a trail of liquid behind my car.

I went in and when I came out I took a closer look. First I stuck my finger in it to make sure it wasn't just water.

Oh, hell no, it's fresh oil.

I slide under the thing enough to put my hand on the filter to make sure it's tight, which it is but there is oil just running off the fucker and there is already a puddle under it.

Shit.
I got home and see a trail leading out of the driveway into the street and a puddle in the driveway too.

I whipped in and snagged a drip pan to throw under it and a pair of channel locks.
The filter is tight.
I took it off anyway to look at the gasket. It's good too. I put the damn thing back on and opened the hood to start looking around.
Way in the back on top of the transmission bell housing is all wet.

I reached in and started the engine to be greeted by a fucking geyser spraying up underneath my distributor!

WTF?!

I know there is an oil sending unit for the gauge down on the side of the block because that was where one of the previous leaks was coming from and I replaced it.

I get a flashlight out and take a closer look and sure as shit, there is another sending unit for the oil pressure, this one must be for the idiot light.
They are called that because whatever went wrong bad enough to cause that light to come on means it's too late, idiot.

Just out of the blue it decided to take a shit when I started it up today.

Did I mention it's right directly under the distributor?

From experience, I happen to know that it takes a special socket to remove and install them too.
Yes, I have one.

This is because some clever fucking bastard engineer thought it was a good idea that some people not be able to take them out.

Just for good measure, they put it right under the distributor which means they want you to take that out, to use their special socket.

Fuck you, Mr. Asshole engineer, I have been to Grandma's house before.

Let me introduce you to my friend, Mr. Knipex Cobra Pliers.

I have two sizes of these wicked little units.Neither of which were cheap.

The big set was $75 and the little set was $40, twenty years ago when they first came out, from a Snap On Dealer.

They have saved my ass many times.

There was just barely enough room under the distributor and between it and the hump in the firewall for the bell housing, to get the little set in there and get the damn thing out.

I win.

Of course then I had to go get a new one and clean up a huge mess but I can check that one off the list.

I am just very thankful I didn't go to work today. I would have found this problem out on the freeway, when that little red Idiot Light came on.

Crimea Refrendum, Early Votes Overwhelmingly To Secede From Ukraine, Join Russia

Let this be an object lesson to every dickhead in this country who says it can't be done.

Early results show Crimean voters overwhelmingly back joining Russia

By Sergei L. Loiko

March 16, 2014, 2:08 p.m.

SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine — Partial election results released late Sunday showed Crimean voters overwhelmingly supporting a referendum measure that would see their region break away from Ukraine and join Russia.

With half the ballots counted, Mikhail Malyshev, head of the Crimea Election Commission, said in televised remarks that more than 95% of voters approved the option of annexation with Russia over a second option offered, which called for seeking more autonomy within Ukraine.

The referendum was widely denounced by the United States, much of Europe and Ukraine's acting government, which came to power last month after protests drove pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich from power, as an illegal seizure of Ukraine's territory.

“In this century, we are long past the days when the international community will stand quietly by while one country forcibly seizes the territory of another,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said in a statement earlier Sunday that called on the international community to “take concrete steps to impose costs” on Moscow.

I love that last part, Whitehouse mouthpiece throws empty threats into wind, unbridled laughter from around the world follows.

Impotent,ignorant and arrogant , that's what we have for an administration here.

There isn't a damn thing they can do about it, we know it, they know it and Russia knows it.

The whole world knows it.

The diplomatic skills this administration has borders on being non existent.

Empty threats is all they got.

They are so used to throwing their weight around at all these little piss ant countries around the world that they have forgotten that there are other Big Fish in the pond with sharp teeth.


You can also bet your ass the Ukrainian's are ruing the day they let us talk them into believing we would have their back against Russia.

Push Her Over The Top

Angel is looking to add another zero to her stats, her One Millionth Hit.

In only 16 months.

Damn, that's impressive.

Go visit her and push her over the top.

Makes Ya Wanna Play In The Dirt