DDoS – Distributed Denial of Seagull Attack!

This is a Texas grackle – a noble bird, for more civilized times. They inhabit the parking lots of Corpus Christi, working hard to scrounge for their food and keep the parking lots clean:

And these are fat, lazy supermarket seagulls – not the proud, respectable seagulls that fly along the beaches and hunt for fish, but rather fat seagulls that sit on the roofs of supermarkets in Texas – on their fat bird-asses – waiting until they see something to eat:

Well, I just didn’t think it was FAIR that the noble grackles work so hard for their food, only to have it violently seized by their fat-assed feathered breathren just before they can eat it. 

So . . . I started a DDoS – a Distributed Denial of Seagull Attack – in which I sprinkled some potato chips underneath the shopping carts, where the grackles could easily get to them – but the seagulls were just too big!

As we’d probably say in Texas: that’ll learn them fat-assed gulls, don’t mess with grackles!

Corpus Christi Sunset

Here’s a nice snap I took of a sunset on a warm winter’s evening in Corpus Christi. You can see two effects that are not always visible: a round “22-degree” halo around the sun, where ice crystals in the atmosphere has scattered the light; and a horizontal line, called “crepuscular rays” or “horizon glow,” caused by refraction off the horizon:

Eagle Ford Shale

Continuing the series, what is 50 miles wide, 400 miles long, and delivers 1.1 BILLION barrels of oil per day?

The Eagle Ford Shale in Texas!

Here “shale” is the operative word. Thanks to fracking, the production has increased from around 300’000 barrels per day ten years ago, to over a million today!

“Frack, baby, Frack!”

New pumpjacks – did they frack?

Here is a snap I took in southeast Texas, somewhere between Corpus Christi and San Antonio:

These are modern pumpjacks – and the owners are clearly labelled on the sign:

This snap was taken here, 

just a few miles north of the village of Cambellton (pop. 350):

There are two things that are really interesting to me. 

First, since Texas is a very mature oil area, how could there be NEW pumpjacks? Does this mean they carried out fracking somewhere nearby? My guess after doing a bit of research – YES!

And second – I looked up the company: Murphy Exploration and Production. Interestingly, the senior leadership teams has financial leaders, HR leaders, legal leaders – but nary an operations leader! 

So . . . who at Murphy is responsible for actually getting the oil out of the ground?

No Such Agency

Most people think the NSA is located in Ft. Meade, Maryland – and indeed, part of it is there. But according to rumors — and mind you, these are just rumors! — another NSA complex is located in San Antonio.

Of course, San Antonio is HOT – it actually broke global heat records in 2023 for the most continous days above 40C/100F. So as you can imagine, IF the rumors are true — and if the NSA were located in San Antonio — and I have no way of knowing if those rumors are true — and IF the NSA operated a huge datacenter — then it would be quite reasonable to expect a LOT of air conditioning.

Well, rumors aside, right next to a Walmart I spotted a HUGE field of massive air conditioning units – with no buildings in sight! To give a sense of scale, these air conditioning units easily cover a size of 10 footballs fields! So it does make one think: what exactly is being cooled, where, and for what reason?

Run on water

Texans can be crazy. After the world’s hottest and longest summer with 100+ continuous days of temperatures higher than 40C / 100F, San Antonio had a cold spell where the temperatures dropped below zero.

Because this never happens, the Texans of San Antonio panicked. The television stations broadcasted instructors about the 3P’s: Pets, Plants, Pipes. And there was a “run” on bottled water, since the Texans thought the world might actually end:

The German heritage of Texas

Huge numbers of Germans migrated to Texas in the mid 1800s – so much so, that even today you’ll find German villages in Texas, and a number of Americans who have been born here but speak German — not English — as their first language!

You can still see this German heritage everywhere around San Antonio, such as shown in this snap here:

Parking place for police in San Antonio

As far as I can tell, countries like Switzerland treat their police just like everyone else. Not so in the US, where companies do their best to encourage police to shop at their stores and eat at their restaurants.

This snap from San Antonio, Texas, shows a parking place reserved for police officers at the local grocery store – just to make it a bit easier for them to come in and do some shopping.