This started out as a reply to a comment in the previous post. It ended up so long I decided it should be its own article. A commenter asked how to get a career started in oil and gas law. A couple things come to mind. One is look at industry related websites such as Rigzone. Google for more, or check my Oil Links page. Another is sign up on LinkedIn and join one of the oil related groups. I get frequent newsletters from the Oil and Gas Industry group; there’s always something about jobs, though not so much for lawyers. There’s probably a similar way to make contacts on FaceBook.

Although oil and gas law is an esoteric specialty area, there’s a broad range of career choices, depending on whether one wants to work for a big company, a law firm, go solo, work in transactional practice (contracts, sales, etc.) or in litigation, work for a federal or a state regulatory agency, etc. Whatever your focus is, that’s where you’ll want to work on getting known, making contacts, etc. In my case, FWIW, it started with a single phone call from a landowner, which got me known by the company that leased his property, which got my name mentioned to another company, and so on. I got my oil and gas career by word of mouth, hard work and building a good reputation. Unfortunately, too much hard work plus cigarettes and caffeine got me a heart attack at age 44 which sort of derailed things a while, and then I got hit with another health issue eight years later. So, I didn’t progress to “rich” and my retirement plan is to keep working. But, they tell me other things are more valuable than money, like reputation, character, honor, loyal clientele, friends. I guess I’m wealthy in that context. Still, it won’t pay for a trip through Europe, or a retirement condo near a beach.

Back in law school I couldn’t imagine anything more boring than property law, especially law about substances in the ground. Turned out to be challenging, rarely boring, and rather satisfying, for the most part. Independent producers are an interesting breed. And farmers are, well, salt of the earth. Neither are much impressed by fancy offices and Brooks Brothers suits.

Obviously there’s a long time gap between posts to this blog. It’s not that I have nothing to say, I just don’t have the time to say it. Which is the same as saying this isn’t a high priority. Any more, the way time seems to fly by, it’s hard (impossible?) to take care of the higher priorities. It seems like some higher power has been throwing so many unexpected (definitely unwanted) annoyances in my path that I can’t get to the “normal” demands of making a living (taking care of my clients). Can you just do nothing when the post office loses two weeks of your mail? When your internet connection goes down? When the credit bureaus put incorrect data in your credit file? When the crown on your tooth falls off? Etc.? No, all these things rob a person’s time and, at the end of the day, there’s none left for blogging, for sure.

If anybody reads this blog, I apologize for the infrequency and for the lack of good substantive content dealing with oil and gas issues. I’m working on some strategies I hope will improve the time situation. I really want to put something worthwhile here.

My laptop was getting more obnoxious by the week; progressively getting slower, taking longer to boot up, taking longer for pretty much everything except aggravating my temper. All the symptoms of having picked up a virus, trojan or other malware from a website. But my battery of free security programs found nothing. I caved in and bought Spysweeper. It found nothing, either, and just made things even slower. :banghead:

I started noticing it felt hotter than it used to under my right wrist. Well, okay, I thought, it is over five years old, after all. More’n likely getting ready to blow the power supply or something. Before it could do that, though, it started just shutting itself off. I gather they’re made that way, to automatically shut down when the internal temperature gets too high. :bomb:

Of course, by now I was primed to use the imminent demise of the machine as an excuse to get a new one. Even started checking the BestBuy ads. But, the damn thing wouldn’t die; just kept after my goat. Last weekend the combination of aggravations got so exasperating I asked my wife if it would upset her if I got out the .38 and shot it. She said it would. So, I tabled the notion of hastening its demise. :shootem:

Today it shut itself off before I could print a letter I needed to get out. So I turned it over to have a look at the fans. A busted fan could certainly cause overheating. Couldn’t tell antyhing from looking, except they looked kind of dusty. I grabbed a can of Dust-Off and shot a blast at each fan. The first thing was a major cloud of dust flying out the vent. The second thing was one of the fans didn’t spin. It occurred to me laptops maybe consume and store dust as well as desktops, despite what seems to be a more enclosed structure and less room. And it occurred to me I might just need to replace a fan. Fans are what I’ve had to replace the most on all my computers. :propeller:

Okay, okay, I’ll get to the end. At home after supper and between Olympic events I removed as many panels as I was comfortable removing and used about half a can of Dust-Off blowing through strategic locations. In the process, I dislodged a major dust-kitty that I had to slowly work out with tweezers, from behind one of the fans. Yup, it was actually keeping the fan from running. Got it all back together and the difference is incredible. :bouncy:

Sounds way better, runs way cooler, runs way faster, hasn’t shut off. Keeping fingers crossed, of course, but it’s looking (and sounding) like I’ll have to spill a cup of coffee into the keyboard if I’m gonna get me a new one in the near future. :mischievous:

Stinkin’ dirt. :yuck: