By call3617905177 January 22, 2011
We just need more folks that want to be part of the best group in the Coastal Bend Area. ...read more
By Jack October 20, 2010
Unfortunately there are no negative stars on the ratings. Valiant Petro owes my company over $50,000. They have REFUSED to pay for work, material and labor done for them, some of it from 2009. They have not even made one payment since January 2010. They are even opening up a new branch in Bridge City TX to see if they can stiff the companies out there! ...read more
By Williams Web Solutions August 31, 2010
thanks! ...read more
I have spent over twenty years evaluating law enforcement candidates for positions ranging from dispatchers and police officers to police supervisors and managers. The evaluation process has included administering written, physical ability and oral board exams, as well as detailed and extensive background investigations. One thing that has been the most consistent over that time is that many people who appear to be the perfect employee during a fifteen or twenty minute interview harbor attributes and behaviors that make them completely unsuitable for a position in your business. I have questioned and investigated seemingly stellar candidates who I have discovered have committed extensive thefts from employers, who have shoplifted, engaged in sexual misconduct on the job, intentionally damaged company property, abused sick leave and lied extensively about their employment history and qualifications. In law enforcement we always say that we would rather spend a little time and money upfront to avoid hiring the wrong person than spend far more trying to clean up the problems that the wrong employee will ultimately cause. Ask yourself honestly what the costs are to select the right employee compared the costs to you and your business that result from selecting the wrong employee. At best you might just get poor work performance, at worst you will get lost customers, lawsuits, and inflated employee costs. While I have the luxury of working in a position in which my only responsibility is to identify good employee candidates and ferret out the bad ones, there are several things you can do as an employer to effectively screen employees that will require very little time and very little cost. Develop Job Dimensions Examine the position you are trying to fill, even if it is an established job within your company, and identify the key skills, abilities and characteristics that are essential to performing that job. For example, a bank teller’s job dimensions would include honesty, good interpersonal skills, the ability to speak clearly, the ability to count cash and perform fast, error free calculations, and to work during regular business hours. The job dimensions for that position would not include things such as the ability to lift heavy objects, and work nights. Direct your questions and your evaluations towards the job dimensions. Avoid the Halo Effect The “Halo Effect” often occurs early in the process and simply means that one or more characteristic skill, or attribute causes you to overlook weaknesses or faults. It is often the result of a person’s likeability or appearance. Perhaps the person “looks the part” or has held an impressive position in the past. Often it occurs simply because the person seems to be like you or they are the type of person you like. Don’t be overly reliant on first impressions, appearance, or emotional appeal. Studies have shown that managers and human resources specialists usually overestimate their ability to identify good employees by their instincts or “gut feelings.” Instead try to focus on facts and qualifications relevant to the job. Ask Questions As I mentioned earlier, I have discovered over and over that seemingly excellent candidates have engaged in sexual misconduct on the job, cheated employers, sabotaged the company, committed crimes, stolen, fraudulently obtained benefits and lied about their past. How did I learn these things? Was it through sophisticated investigations and law enforcement interrogation techniques? Am I like the guy in the TV show who “reads” people and discerns the truth? The answer to those questions is a big “No.” I found out these things because I asked about them. It really can be that simple. Put together a long list of questions that are relevant to the position you are filling. Ask the candidate questions like, “Have you ever been fired, released from probation, or asked to resign?” “Have you ever stolen anything from an employer?” Have you ever been fired, disciplined or counseled for being late.” If the job involves driving, ask them questions like, “When was the last time you drove 10, 20, 30 miles an hour over the speed limit? I recently asked that exact question and had a candidate admit driving his high performance car over 100 miles an hour on a regular basis. Is that the kind of person you want driving a company car? And all I did was ask. I asked another candidate when was the last time he called in sick when he was not sick and he replied, “Today, to meet with you.” Verify People frequently inflate or invent their education and experience to meet your qualifications or to impress you. Always verify the information a person gives you before your hire him or her. Require that a candidate provide sealed transcripts from high schools and colleges. It is best to have transcripts mailed directly to you to avoid many of the Internet transcript scams that occur today. If you ask for references, contact them and ask specific questions related to your job dimensions. Contact previous employers. While some employers, particularly large companies, will not provide information, many employers will talk candidly about past employees. You might want to consider having the candidate sign a waiver that authorizes past employers to release information and that protects them from liability. I also recommend that the candidate’s signature on the waiver be notarized. Many private employers and government agencies will release information if you provide a valid, notarized waiver. Don’t Hire a Liar When I begin a background investigation the first thing I do is admonish the person that any lying, deception, or intentional misrepresentations will result in automatic disqualification. And I hold them to that admonishment. Law enforcement will not tolerate dishonesty in the hiring process and neither should you. I cannot imagine any position in which honesty is not an important factor. Do not accept any level of dishonesty. If you cannot trust a person with small things, you cannot trust that person with big things. Do not ask questions that are not relevant to the job dimensions or are legally protected. Do not ask questions about race, religion, ethnicity, marital or family status (including pregnancy), political beliefs, sexual orientation, medical conditions, disabilities or age. These are legally protected areas and a mistake could result in significant civil liability. In other words, you could be sued, and win or lose, that will be expensive. There might be very specific and well-defined job dimensions where one of these issues may be factor. For example, if you are hiring a pastor, you can probably ask about his religious beliefs because certain beliefs are an essential job function. You can ask candidates if they can lift heavy loads, but you cannot ask them if they have ever had back problems. This is a risky area of the hiring process that changes from time to time. If you feel you need to ask about any of these areas, consult an employment law specialist before you do. Conclusion To be successful in business you must have good employees. They are your most important asset and usually your highest business cost. One wrong employee can cause tremendous damage to your business, your finances, and your customer base. It makes economic sense to spend some time in the hiring process to find employees who will be assets and enhance the value and efficiency or your business. You will find that it is time and money well spent. Mark Ryan- Current California District Attorney Background Investigator Retired after serving 23yrs as a Police Dept. Lieutenant ...read more
By Monterey Shale Magazine November 05, 2014
The recent announcement that Jerry Brown is studying “fracking” in California, suggests that our governor may be waking up to the long-term reality facing our state. It demonstrates that, despite the almost embarrassing praise from East Coast media about his energy and green policies, Brown likely knows full well that the state’s current course, to use the most overused term, is simply not politically and economically sustainable. Although largely a prisoner of basic green dogma, Brown also is a former Jesuit, with that order’s sense of rationality, order and, well, philosophical flexibility. Unlike many of his progressive idolaters and legislative allies, Brown may well be intelligent enough to look past the rhetoric of the environmental movement and consider its often unexpected ill-effects. Brown needs to balance “California comeback” stories – including one that gushingly describes “California beaming” – with the actual realities. Good times, and the current technology bubble, may be blessing Silicon Valley, but as Walter Russell Mead points out, this comeback is being pushed “over the heads of the poor and the jobless.” This, he adds, “is not how progressives used to think.” “The damage is greatest in the state’s more blue-collar interior. Working-class Stockton just was allowed to enter bankruptcy and other municipalities seem likely to join the queue.” The chasm between the effects of “noble” green politics and the interests of most Californians is becoming evident, if not widely recognized in the mainstream media. Editorial writers at the New York Times may believe we are losing our need for oil and gas, but this transition should be more difficult than they suggest and, if achieved through often-thoughtless Draconian measures, could have profound impacts on the overall economy. Let’s start with the supposed “up” side of the purist renewable policies hitherto embraced by Brown. The governor’s 2010 election promise about creating 500,000 “green jobs” – his economic rationale for his energy and other environmental policies – increasingly looks far-fetched. With electric car maker Fisker, backed by well-connected Democratic venture capitalists and Al Gore, now perhaps ready to follow solar-panel maker Solyndra into bankruptcy, the pitch about a green economy seems unlikely, even bizarre. The state-driven “green” policies have also created huge losses for the giant state-employee retirement fund CalPERS, one of whose managers at a recent conference confided that renewable–energy investments have negative returns approaching 10 percent. Certainly, neither green energy nor even the current Silicon Valley bubble are creating enough jobs to make up for the enormous shortfall in employment since the recession. This is particularly evident in urban areas like Los Angeles and Oakland – where Brown was mayor from 1999-2006 – as well as most of the state’s interior. Overall, the state vies for last-place honors with the likes of Rhode Island, Nevada and Mississippi for the nation’s highest unemployment rate. The damage is greatest in the state’s more blue-collar interior. Working-class Stockton just was allowed to enter bankruptcy and other municipalities seem likely to join the queue. Progressive journalists, eager to pronounce the state’s comeback to justify their ideology, seem utterly unaware of the seriousness of the overall situation in the state. One wonders what they would say if Pete Wilson or Meg Whitman were governor. Compare Texas, which is 550,000 jobs ahead of its 2007 number, to California, which, despite recent gains, remains down 560,000 jobs from its peak. Perhaps unemployment is not a big issue in the progressive reserve of Palo Alto, where the jobless rate is about the same as in North Dakota, but it is a constant in much of Los Angeles, San Jose and Santa Ana, as well as the Central Valley. If this suggests a “comeback” to New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, perhaps we need a new definition for that word. These comparisons seem particularly relevant to the discussion of fracking – oil and gas extraction using a technique called hydraulic fracturing. In the environmental scheme of things, oil and even natural gas, once widely favored by progressives, now constitute an utter evil. This is true even though gas has been the primary reason for the country’s reduced carbon emissions by replacing coal as a source for generating electricity. Some of the state’s well-heeled greens would like to ban the process entirely. Brown must be aware he is not just governor of the public sector or of his admirers among the coastal rich. He has to consider the unimaginable: removing mandates that force the state to rely on expensive, often-unreliable renewables, notably, solar. These have helped push California electricity prices well above the national average, and much higher than in prime economic competitors such as Washington state, Utah, Texas, Arizona and Nevada. Economist John Husing suggests this is one reason why California not only completely missed the recent national revival in manufacturing jobs – 500,000 the past two years – but actually lost 10,000 more such jobs. We are clearly missing the party here. California’s energy policies reflect what is already happening in Europe, where anti-fracking ideology, sometimes supported by the no-doubt-disinterested Russians, have largely won the day. But the costs of green policies have already convinced hard-pressed Spain to abandon its widely praised renewable program. Far more economically healthy Germany also is rethinking its renewables mandates. One reason: German companies like Bayer and BASF consider moving to cheaper locales, such as along the U.S. Gulf Coast, where electricity is one-third the price. Texas, Utah and Arizona are to California’s hard-pressed manufacturers what the Gulf Coast is to Germany’s. And, then, there are the effects of the budget. Unlike his East Coast admirers, Brown must know that the budget situation is hardly rosy over the longer term. The state auditor recently released a report showing the state’s net worth to be negative by some $127 billion, in large part due to often out-of-control pension costs. There are already indications that the return from last year’s hike in income taxes may not be as large as expected and that what was, during the election, promised to schools will likely end up, as widely predicted, covering rising pension obligations. Companies and individuals may not leave California in droves, as some have suggested, but investors certainly can put their money someplace more fiscally responsible. A longer-term problem may be that the higher-income earners, who generate the vast majority of income-tax revenue, are also those most likely to change behavior or find effective income-hiding strategies; remember, Facebook paid no income taxes last year. Given these prospects, reviving California’s fossil-fuel industry could prove a critical boost to the budget. A deal to raise some energy taxes while allowing more exploration and development would go a long way to filling the state’s coffers. Energy taxes play a big role in financing higher education in many states, including North Dakota, Louisiana and Texas. Oil money, ironically, has allowed Texas to fund universities, particularly the main University of Texas campus in Austin, as a competitor to the perennially hard-pressed University of California system. An energy boom in California, whose energy resources may exceed those of all these states, might offend most academics, but, my hunch is, they might take the money. Perhaps more important, a pragmatic shift on energy would also help, as columnist Tim Rutten puts it, “jump start” the state’s economy, particularly in central California. In the past decade, Texas has created almost 200,000 energy-related jobs, while California has generated barely 20,000. These jobs provide good wages to many blue-collar workers, the very people losing out the most in our progressive-minded state. There are other signs of pragmatism from the governor. Brown has announced support for a peripheral canal that would provide more-reliable water supplies to the state’s huge agribusiness industry. Although some state regulators threaten farmers with ever-tougher regulations, some observers, such as three-term Salinas Mayor Dennis Donahue, now a full-time farmer, say the governor is trying to “walk the line between labor, greens and agriculture.” Many Republicans and conservatives find the notion of Brown getting on the road to reality itself fundamentally unrealistic. But the past could be prologue. Brown also started off his first term, in 1975, as something of a dreamer, proclaiming a “small is beautiful” agenda. This was, in many ways, ahead of its time, and skeptical of government spending, but Brown’s environmental views, particularly, also offended some business interests. Far worse, he signed off on legislation freeing up public-sector unions, which has turned into something of a disaster. But by the time he started running for a second term, Brown readjusted to a new reality. He could claim that, as someone opposed to the growth of institutionalized government, he could live with Proposition 13. Brown had opposed the measure, but, once it passed, in 1978, he chose, unlike many progressives, to embrace it. Brown then ran as a centrist, pro-growth governor. He particularly embraced the then-ascendant technology industry, gaining new donors and allies, although the shift toward realpolitick horrified some of his green backers. But the politics worked brilliantly. Today’s circumstances, of course, are different. For one thing, Brown faces little pressure from the right, as the Republican Party, at least for now, has deteriorated into near irrelevancy. The once-potent California business community also has lost much influence, with every lobby, basically, trying to make its own deal with the overweening state apparat. So, if Brown is to move to the center, he will have to do it largely on his own, and put up with the incessant hectoring of his allies. Yet, Brown’s occasional genius has demonstrated a Machiavellian quality, knowing when to embrace opponents in order to divide or weaken them, or to allow allies to stew. He also, at this stage of life –April 7, is his 75th birthday – must wonder if he wants to leave a legacy of fiscal weakness, a fading competitive edge and an ever-expanding class chasm. In the long run, whether on fracking or a host of other issues, Brown’s success will not derive from pleasing progressive writers, but by promoting a better future for the vast majority who live in, and love, this state. Register opinion columnist Joel Kotkin is a Distinguished Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University. He is the executive editor of www.newgeography.com. ...read more
By Monterey Shale Magazine November 05, 2014
Hydraulic fracturing or “fracing,” is a common technique used, in the well completion process, to extract hydrocarbons from formation reserves below the ground surface. The general hydraulic fracturing process consists of pumping a frac fluid, which is normally a fluid but can also consist of a foam, down the wellbore at pressures that will fracture the reservoir and increase conductivity in the reservoir, traditionally described as creating a “pathway” for the hydrocarbons to travel directly to the perforations, into and up the wellbore to the surface. The stimulation design is based on several factors including, but not limited to, rock properties, hydrocarbons in formation, well tubulars, zone of interest, and wellbore orientation. Reservoir characteristics will dictate how much fluid and what proppant concentrations will be required to maximize effectiveness of the stimulation. Proppant is used in the stimulation design as the proppant carrying medium that transports proppant from the surface, down the wellbore, into the reservoir, and deposited in the fractures created. Along with proppant used to prop open the fractures other chemicals can be included in the frac fluid to help achieve the ultimate goal of increased hydrocarbon production from the reservoir. These chemicals will provide relief of things such as scaling usually caused by the precipitation associated to producing hydrocarbons, paraffin accumulation normally associated to the cooling of the hydrocarbons as they are produced, emulsions caused by the mixing of stimulation and reservoir fluids, and bacteria growth which can lead to the generation of hydrogen sulfide within the reservoir. The most important driving force or characteristic of the reservoir dictating the design of the stimulation is the permeability. As the permeability decreases it becomes more important to design a stimulation that will maximize the amount of rock contacted in the reservoir, therefore having a design that focuses more on a higher design rate and fluid volume and less on higher proppant concentrations. As the permeability increases in a reservoir then the design begins to focus more on higher proppant concentration averages throughout the created fractures as well as the near-wellbore region and less on higher rates and increased fluid volumes. Once the most effective stimulation for the reservoir has been identified then the wellbore tubulars and orientation take precedence. The casing design of the well will dictate specifics about the stimulation such as the maximum rate and pressure physically allowable for the treatment and whether the treatment will be a conventional operation using the plug and perf technique or a more specialized procedure using sliding sleeves, packer systems, or pinpoint stimulation requiring the use of coiled tubing. The orientation of the wellbore and size of the target zone will dictate how much total fluid and proppant will be required to stimulate the entire target zone. The activity is monitored continuously throughout the process by use of various industry recognized software packages, and often broadcasted real-time via satellite transmission for quality control by the client, as well as technical support of the stimulation company. Typical variables monitored are, formation response, injection pressures, additive concentrations, and proppant concentration. While there is no traditional method in the well completion process, economics, availability of materials, and even lease agreements will play a part in determining final stimulation designs. ...read more
By Monterey Shale Magazine November 05, 2014
Collection calls in any business are to collect money that is owed to the business. In the case of business to business collection, it's one business calling another to collect debt owed to them. Some businesses make the calls themselves while others outsource that task or eventually sell the uncollec... ...read more
Flyers can help you generate business leads by getting the word out to potential customers about your products. Once you create your flyers you can distribute them through the mail, place them on cars and even walk around to hand them out to home owners. You'll want to bring together the elements of d... ...read more
