What You Need to Know before Hauling Water in the Oilpatch

What do you need to know to get your trucks properly equipped for hauling water in the oilpatch, be that in North Dakota's current drilling boom or in any other area? A friend who owns a trucking company asked that question today. Here's what I...

Snake Stories: The Mojave Green Rattlesnake

Finding A Job In North Dakota : The Bakken Oil Drilling Boom

When Sarah Palin chants, "Drill, baby, drill!", she's thinking about energy independence...and jobs. Jobs, jobs, and more jobs. Everything but Steve Jobs. Although if you're a guy named Steve who needs a job, an oil drilling boom area is a mighty...

How To Build A Survival Cabin On A Shoestring Budget

In June of 1999, my wife and I were desperate to get a place of our own. My long established business was fading, bankruptcy was being held off by nothing but a long stick and a lot of determination, and my sisters wanted us and our several cats out...

How To Install A French Drain, Cowboy Style

There are plenty of online articles explaining how to install a French drain around your residence to keep water in the soil from infiltrating the foundation. Plenty of them, but some of the advice in them is wrong...at least for this old cowboy....

How To End Up With Pet Kangaroo Rats

Having a kangaroo rat as a pet, let alone two of them, was not a goal. Truthfully, I was only interested in how to dig a small pit in which to bury a 55 gallon drum . When properly installed with plenty of surrounding gravel, lots of quarter inch...

Product Review : The Yamaha EF2000is Portable Generator

My wife and I live off grid in southern Arizona. In September, 2009, we bought our first Yamaha EF2000is portable generator. Despite the heavy use it's had--and a bit of unfortunate abuse due to my carelessness--it's been running now for an average...

How To Hand Dig A Post Hole In Tough Ground

As a boy of twelve, I considered myself a reluctant expert on digging post holes. The memory is a bit faded these days, but it must have been so: One day at school in the sixth grade, we were assigned the task of writing an essay about a pet peeve....

How To Choose A Portable Generator

If this is your first time to purchase a portable generator for any reason, there are a number of factors that need to be considered. The following is not necessarily a comprehensive list but should at least narrow down the choices to a manageable...

Finding a Job in North Dakota : The Bakken Formation : Spillover

Spillover? Yes, indeed. I first published the original page, Finding a Job in North Dakota: The Bakken Formation, on November 14, 2010. From the beginning, the search engines liked it, and the Hub generated steady traffic and occasional reader...