In Oman

So... I've been in Oman for 3 days now but I was too lazy to update my blog, not to mention that I was suffering (and still suffering) from jet lag and stuff like that.

The heat in Oman is not too bad... but I think it's a little bit worse than last year. All is good though, as long as I'm home between my family :) ..

I'm really hoping to revive this blog at least during my stay here in Oman and make it as active as possible. We will see how things go...

Review: Zazzle.com

For a long time now I wanted to get one of those t-shirts that said "Drill Baby Drill" or "Drill Here Now" and stuff like that. The Society of Petroleum Engineers chapter in my university had a couple of these t-shirts, but whenever I went to get one I didn't find my size. So last week it occurred to me to customize my own "Drill Baby Drill" t-shirt!

I searched on the web for similar t-shirts and said maybe I will find them online. Google landed me on Zazzle.com which I never heard of before. I then got to know that Zazzle.com is a website where you can customize t-shirts, mugs, posters, and many other things. They already had customized t-shirts saying "Drill Baby Drill" on the front as you see above, but then I decided to modify the t-shirt and put a picture of an oil field on the back of the t-shirt. I provided them with a large resolution picture of the infamous Lost Hills Oil Field in California as you see below, and also I decided to review my whole experience with Zazzle.com.

At first I was hesitant to order the t-shirt because I thought I didn't have enough time to receive it. I ordered the t-shirt last weekend and on the day I ordered it, I had exactly one week until I leave the country for my summer vacation, so I was a bit worried that I wouldn't receive it before I leave, or else it would just get lost in the mail and I would never get it. The website said that it takes only 24 hours to manufacture the product. And usually it takes 2 - 3 days maximum for me to receive stuff when I order them online, so I decided to take the risk and order the t-shirt even though I had only 5 business days in total. I ordered the t-shirt on Saturday night, and I thought they wouldn't process it until Monday since I ordered it in the weekend, but to my surprise, as soon as I placed my order, it was processed and sent to production. I could track the whole thing through their website, which was really cool, and then when they shipped it, they gave me the tracking number for the shipment to track it with UPS.

It didn't take exactly 24 hours for them to manufacture the product. Well, if we don't count Saturday & Sunday, it did indeed take 24 hours, or maybe less. So I was quite satisfied with how fast they processes my order, and then the time it took to get delivered to my door is out of their hand anyways.

After knowing about Zazzle.com, there were two things I wanted to know about them that I couldn't find in the reviews I read about them online. So, I want to cover these two things here in my review. The first thing is the time it takes to manufacture the product, which I already talked about above and I'm quite satisfied with. The second thing is the quality of the product, which I'm going to cover below.

To my surprise, the quality of the t-shirt is beyond my expectation. I thought the t-shirt would be one of those cheap crappy t-shirts you get from companies and businesses as commercials, but I was wrong. The t-shirt alone cost me about $18.00, and I had to add $3.00 over that for the picture I wanted to be on the back of the t-shirt. So I was thinking this t-shirt better be of good quality and worth the $18.00. It is indeed worth the $18.00. Also, some of you might think why didn't I just take a picture to the nearest photo shop and let them print it on a white t-shirt. The answer to that is that these people do it differently. If I had a local photo shop do this thing for me, the picture would have worn out the very first time I wash & iron the t-shirt. But with the way Zazzle.com did this, I can wash and iron the t-shirt normally and nothing would happen to the quality of the picture.

Anyways, I feel that this post is getting too long so I need to stop here. In general, I just want to say that I was very satisfied with my experience with Zazzle.com. When I come back from my vacation, I might order some other cool stuff from them.

P.S.: Too bad the t-shirt cannot be worn from both sides, hehe...

Egypt vs. USA ad

You know you're an Engineer when...

1. You have no life and can prove it mathematically.

2. You can remember 7 passwords, but not your anniversary.

3. To you "couples" and "moments" have nothing to do with love.

4. You use Greek letters just as often as English.

5. You spend Friday nights doing homework.

6. You know vector calculus but you can't remember how to do long division.

7. The further you advance into engineering, the low-er your spel...ling abil(e?)lty gets.

8. You assume that a "horse" is a "sphere" in order to make the math easier.

9. Your professor asks you where your homework is, you claim to have accidentally determined its momentum so precisely, that according to Heisenberg it could be anywhere in the universe.

10. You understand at least five of these indicators.

What a beautiful day...

The weather is so nice today!

Sent from my iPhone

Swine Flu Dilemma

It looks like lots of countries in the Middle East like Jordan, Yemen, Bahrain, Qatar AND Oman have got their first confirmed cases of swine flu, and it also looks that these cases were of young students who recently came back from the US and different countries with many swine flu cases.

I've just heard that Oman got the first 3 confirmed cases of returning students from the US. Bahrain also 3 cases of returning students from the US, as well as Qatar, Jordan and Yemen. Sweet. I'm not worried one bit about catching the swine flu in my city here in the US. Up until now, there are only 4 confirmed cases in my city, which is not too bad for a city with a population of 250,000. I'm only worried about catching this thing in the airport or my flight back home. I will be traveling through Houston, one of the largest hubs in the country and also one of the top cities in the US with the most swine flu (H1N1 or whatever) confirmed cases. Travelers will be in Houston from all over the country, and they will be traveling to different places. And the bad thing is that I will have a 6-hrs transit in Houston + the 15 hrs flight to Dubai, so I need to be extra cautious when I travel next week.

Oil Production Has Peaked

Well, the title of this post is probably no surprise to you. What you're going to see in the video probably is also not a surprise to you, but I thought of sharing it because this is part of a DVD that I found very interesting.

This DVD was played to us in our freshman year when we took Introduction to Petroleum Engineering. It was kind of scary to some students as they thought that this video was telling them that they were not on the right track, but other students thought otherwise. Interestingly enough, different people have various opinions and theories about the issue of peaking out. You can see by yourself that the professionals interviewed in this video have different opinions about the issue. Also, different people in the industry that I talked to have various opinions about this which is very interesting...

My two cents:

Peaking out doesn't necessarily mean that we are running out of oil. Different peaks can take place at different periods of time. While I don't believe that we are actually running out of oil, I do definitely acknowledge that we are running out of the "easy stuff" that flows out to the surface by itself once the well is drilled. These days oil companies put a lot of money on producing heavy oil and deep deep deep oil wells, which means that we are running out of the easy stuff.

Various prices of gasoline

In Oman I'm used to the fact that all gas stations have a fixed price for gas per liter. Whether crude oil is at $150 a barrel or $20 a barrel, the price of gasoline is fixed and it's applied to all the different gas stations in the country. So, when I came here to the US I had to adjust to the fact that gasoline prices here are not fixed like Oman, and different stations charge different rates. By different stations I thought it was just different companies, like Chevron, Fina, Shell, etc... but I didn't know that the price of gas from the SAME company can also vary from location to location.

I just got back from the movies, and on my way home, I passed by four different Fina gas stations. To my surprise, none of them had the same price of gas. The very first one was priced at $2.16 a gallon, the second one $2.28 if I'm not mistaken, the third one about $2.17 and the last one, which is right next to my place, at $2.25.

That was a bit surprising to me, because I always thought that gas prices can vary from company to company, but not from location to location by the very same company! Little did I know...

[Photo Courtesy of Indahnesia.com]

Meaningless?

I remember in Physics we were taught that numbers without units are meaningless. I also remember that I always had a couple of marks deducted whenever my numbers did not have units next to them because they were meaningless without the units. So, the sign above is absolutely meaningless, according to the principles of Physics.

I don't know about other cities, but I noticed that in my city, all speed limit signs have numbers without units. It's true that the US still works with the old British system of units, meaning that speed is measured by miles per hour (mph) and almost everyone knows that. All cars in the US are designed to be on mph, but what if I had an imported car and it was on km/h (kilometers per hour) and not mph? Or I was new to the city and I didn't know that the US is still using the British system of units? Assuming that everyone knows that speed is measured by mph is technically wrong. After all, you know what do you make of u & me when you "assume" things ;)

So, does the sign above mean that the speed limit is 20 mph, 20 km/h, 20 cm/h, 20 m/s or what exactly? :)

Recession + low oil prices = price increase?

I just noticed that a 590 mL bottle of coke now costs $1.40 (after sales tax) instead of $1.35. Very minimal difference, but the thought that such an increase in times of recession + low oil prices doesn't make sense to me.