Q&A turned arm-wrestling competition

Rhett Dotson:
She took a mini dinner. That whatever, anywhere. If you’re wondering what that’s all about, you’ve got to watch this episode of Pipeline Things, where we answer all your questions about favorite karaoke music. Chris doesn’t know. Don’t stop believing. What’s your favorite steak? And, you know, other important things like EMAT-related questions and what your favorite tool would be. Really, it’s a fun episode. Thank you so much for the questions that you gave us and for making 2022 a great year for Pipeline Things. And if you’ve ever wondered, a lot of you have asked if I play the piano—that’s about the extent of it. We’ll see you next year. Thank you so much. Oh.
All right. Hello and welcome to today’s edition of Pipeline Things. I am your host, Rhett Dotson, and I’m here with my co-host, compadre, Mr. Christopher de Leon. And we are here representing D2 Integrity. I think that’s the first time that we’ve made that official. So, yeah, a lot of you guys probably know, opening up if you watched our last bit on LinkedIn, you heard that we had some big news coming. Well, that is the news. Christopher and I are officially on our own and representing D2I or D2 Integrity and are excited to be with you.
 
Christopher de Leon:
Yeah.
 
Rhett Dotson:
Things have been really good in September and October. So good that we find ourselves in my garage. That’s right.
 
Christopher de Leon:
It’s a great time of year.
 
Rhett Dotson:
It is. It’s winter. It’s 46 degrees outside, and we’re working in my garage. Did you take care of the office space?
 
Christopher de Leon:
We have to have sales to pay for stuff like that. And actually, if you think about it, a lot of really great things started in garages.
 
Rhett Dotson:
Yeah, there’s a few people that are going to get that reference to starting in garages.
 
Christopher de Leon:
But think about it, right? Because then, like, this is a great start. We could, like, add this to our marketing and be like, who started in our garage? And, like, we could, like, link that to other things that started in garages and make it, like, the start of all of our PowerPoints.
 
Rhett Dotson:
I was thinking a lot of ways, you know, that could go.
 
Christopher de Leon:
And all of you are going to be part of that.
 
Rhett Dotson:
Yeah. So if you’re watching on YouTube, you’re getting a view inside my garage. Please, I don’t need comments about the fact that I need to clean up.
Christopher de Leon:
Is this a safe work environment?
 
Rhett Dotson:
I don’t know; I was wondering. We might be above exposure limit—is it benzene or whatever? It’s a little bit of a smell from the gas. I’m one of the few people getting their grass cut out there. Yeah. So, hopefully, it doesn’t affect our report or anything like that, you know?
 
Christopher de Leon:
But this is fun. It’s normally not this cold here. And y’all know that, right?
 
Rhett Dotson:
No. For real, it is normally not this cold in Texas, but it’s been exciting. So, you know what? We’re going to be going, just so you guys know, looking forward to it. And we also took a little bit of a break from the podcast, and I really want to say how much I appreciate the number of people who reached out to us asking about it. I mean, probably the number one thing that people ask me is they found out that we were starting our own company.
 
Christopher de Leon:
I don’t know if they care that we started our own company. They’re just interested in the podcast.
 
Rhett Dotson:
Yeah, for real though.
 
Christopher de Leon:
It’s like, “Hey, so, what are you doing? Okay, wait. Never mind. So when’s your next episode?”
 
Rhett Dotson:
Yeah. So, a couple of things to let you guys know on that. We are still proudly working with ADV Marketing. And Ms. Producer, she is still with us. I don’t know if she’s reluctantly with us.
 
Christopher de Leon:
You know, I bet she had to be convinced.
 
Rhett Dotson:
“You, Ms. Producer, will shoot our show because we’re paying for it.” So, no, but we are so excited to continue working with them. And, you know, the timing of taking the break was really good for us. For us, the podcast has been really, really well-received. Thank you guys out there. Yeah. So much so that Chris and I really felt like we needed to take a little bit of time and put some effort into where we wanted to take it with 2023. So, 2022, look at full transparency, you guys. We shoot from the hip on most of the episodes. We have a topic and we run with it.
 
Christopher de Leon:
But it’s relevant. We kind of started the podcast with that right when we did our first episode; it was after IDT Expo, and it was like, “Hey, let’s talk about relevant things, kind of sensitive things.” So that’s kind of what we’ve done.
 
Rhett Dotson:
And we’re going to continue that trend—that’s not going to change.
 
Christopher de Leon:
Or, if you were brave enough to come visit us in our office, we’ll just, like, surprise you and say, “Hey, sit down.”
 
Rhett Dotson:
Thank you to the Dirt Merchant. We don’t know where you’re going to be. But what we want to do in 2023 is continue that moving forward. But we’re going to be very intentional with designing some arcs. We chose that word “arc,” against Ms. Producer’s wishes, because it kind of goes along with Marvel and story arcs.
 
Christopher de Leon:
Nothing to do with Noah, right?
Rhett Dotson:
Anime? No, not that type of arc—arc, not ark. We’re skipping in a flood. But no. So we’re going to be doing kind of episode arcs in 2023, and we’re going to be really reaching out to some guests and being very intentional about bringing those guests on. And so really, really excited about that. But it takes a little more planning than showing up and being like, “Hey, what are we gonna shoot about today?” And so again, really looking forward to that in 2023. And you guys can look forward to it today. But that is not today’s episode.
Christopher de Leon:
I think we should give a spoiler.
Rhett Dotson:
And then you have to live up to it.
Christopher de Leon:
Yeah. Well, we said we’re going to plan it, right?
Rhett Dotson:
You know what else is fabulous? We actually intended to shoot today’s episode on a disc golf course, and it’s 18-mile-per-hour winds outside. It’s 46 degrees. So that didn’t work out.
Christopher de Leon:
No, not for us. We were both raised—well, I was born and raised in Texas.
Rhett Dotson:
The best-laid plans can change. So if you want to tell them the spoiler about what we’re thinking about in 2023, go ahead. Just recognize this is TBD, man.
Christopher de Leon:
Yeah. So, our first arc in 2023, we want to include components of us being at PPIM. So we think that’s going to be exciting. So we’ll do some of our shoots at PPIM and focus on activities that are there. So it’s the whole idea of just being relevant and being plugged into what’s going on.
Rhett Dotson:
Yeah, hoping to hit up maybe with some technology providers, some other things. It’s going to be a lot of fun. I always love PPIM every year and definitely looking forward to it.
Christopher de Leon:
We’ve got to be creative, though. We’ve got to figure out how to do it. Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff going on.
Rhett Dotson:
If you would like to film an episode in my garage, we will create that for you.
Christopher de Leon:
That’s when you need to chill with your expectations.
Rhett Dotson:
If you have a garage that we can shoot in, we would gladly shoot in that garage. Oh my goodness. But today’s episode is fun. Last time it was really fun. It ended in us arm wrestling. Today’s episode—the Q&A episode. Are you ready for this?
Christopher de Leon:
I’m actually not going to lie; I think our following base is a little bit bigger now, so I’m a little nervous.
Rhett Dotson:
Yeah, we got a bunch of questions.
Christopher de Leon:
Yeah, and Ms. Producer did it differently. We legitimately have not read these. Ms. Producer was pretty adamant about not letting us see.
Rhett Dotson:
Let me explain this. If you’re not on YouTube, I have two bags in my hands, and this isn’t the sandwich size. This is like the weirdest bag, which is kind of odd, but they are doubles, so she buys high-quality bags. We know that about her. We’re not being charged for these, are we?
Christopher de Leon:
Or those are hers. Sorry. I know you said they were the real ones. So that means she buys the weird bags.
Rhett Dotson:
One of them’s jokes. I don’t know which is which. So you got to choose a bag. Which bag do you want? You trying to read it? I’ll go first. All right. All right, well, here we go. All right. I don’t know if this is serious or not. I got the joke questions if you’re wondering. So you got the serious bag. This question: Would you rather be Batman or Robin and why?
Christopher de Leon:
Yeah. So if you’ve ever been with me to any place where they take your order, like, I always say it’s Batman, and it annoys a lot of people. Some people don’t—so much that there’s this one Starbucks internationally that I went to enough. So after months of going, I would shop and order my flat white, and they were like, “You got it, Batman?” I was like, “Yeah.”
Rhett Dotson:
So I’m wondering if the person who asked that question knew. What about you? Yeah. And so I, you know, I think—oh God, I hate—that’s such a cheap answer to say because you have to do both. But if I say you have to do both, that sounds cheap, but I think Batman was the leader. I think the reality is I like to see myself as Robin, the support player. So like a lot of times, I think in Christopher and I’s relationship that we have, there’s a lot of, I’ll be honest with you, me kind of following the direction of where you want to take things. I offer a lot of criticism, too.
Christopher de Leon:
That violent disagreement is your choice.
Rhett Dotson:
But I think—I actually a lot of times think of myself as Scottie Pippen to Michael Jordan. So I think that that’s said, I’m going to say I’m Robin and he’s Batman because he has to be.
Christopher de Leon:
Yeah. But I want to clarify I think I’m like Frank Miller back in, like, The Dark Knight, not the—no, George—
Rhett Dotson:
Christian Bale?
Christopher de Leon:
Christian Bale. I particularly would like to see you do that voice for the whole show. It would be great if DC would make a better Batman movie, though. Anyways. All right, my turn.
Rhett Dotson:
Come on.
Christopher de Leon:
Oh boy. Oh boy. All right, here we go. Dude, I’m excited. Let’s go. What are the odds of me pulling the one that I saw on LinkedIn?
Rhett Dotson:
Come on.
Christopher de Leon:
Okay. Oh, we’re not giving the name, but you know who you are, all right? If you dig in, I’ll—I call, and your ILI contractor reports no crack found.
Unknown Speaker:
[Timestamp missing.]
Christopher de Leon:
Is that a good call or bad call? What should you do? So you go out in the field, you’re expecting to find a crack. You don’t find anything. Is it a good call or a bad call? I think—I don’t like good and bad; they’re subjective. But let’s start with it. Is it good from the operator from a standpoint of you don’t have that threat on your line? Potentially, yes. Is it bad? And I don’t like necessarily bad. I say challenging now because you might have trouble verifying the ILI, right? So if you’re running into a bunch of false calls or you’re running into a bunch of locations where you’re not finding cracks, my first suggestion is do not assume that the ILI is wrong first.
Rhett Dotson:
Yeah.
Christopher de Leon:
Check and make sure—to be honest, and it’s going to sound silly—make sure you’re not at the wrong location. Make sure you have the right technology. Make sure you’re on the right position of the pipe. Double, triple check to make sure you’re in the right place.
Rhett Dotson:
Yeah.
Christopher de Leon:
Then you’ve got to go back to your ILI vendor and start trying to figure out, hey, why is it that I might not be seeing anything? I would say I have seen instances where we had 18 or 19 calls in a single joint of pipe, and it was very clear that the reflections were due to something else—coating or something else.
Rhett Dotson:
Makes sense.
Christopher de Leon:
That’s different than if you systematically dig in six different locations and you strike out every time. At that point, I do think you’ve got to collaborate with the vendor and find out if there’s something systematically going on with that ILI.
Rhett Dotson:
Yep.
Christopher de Leon:
You might—we might need to rapid-fire at least a little bit, but let’s do it.
Rhett Dotson:
All right, hold on. I’m going to—I’ll add a couple of things. So INGAA sponsored a guidance document, so a little plug for the IMU guidance document. A couple of things: Number one is it’s—what do you do? Some learnings that we’ve had from that is that ILI tools consistently prove your threat susceptibility models wrong, right? So don’t just lean on what you expected. You kind of got to integrate all that information. The other thing we would say is that he said the word crack. There is also crack-like, right? So the EMAT or the UT tool could be finding any kind of reflector that is sharp, steep-sided corrosion, maybe manufacturing flaw, any inhomogeneity in the pipe. So—and I wouldn’t say that it’s good or bad. I think you need to understand it. Shameless plug for the INGAA guidance document.
Christopher de Leon:
Okay. Well done, Chris. All right. Rapid fire. Favorite cut of steak, and how do you like it cooked? Oh, this person felt the need to give us an example of an acceptable answer: “My favorite steak cut is bone-in ribeye, and I like that cooked medium rare plus.” I’m thinking they might be asking—I think they want to take us to a steakhouse.
Rhett Dotson:
We will take you to a steakhouse. So two things on that. Well, number one, I would say mine is easy. Mine is a New York strip, and it’s medium rare. Go.
Christopher de Leon:
Mine’s the same. I’m sorry. Like, I hate to be—
Rhett Dotson:
Take it.
Christopher de Leon:
I’m not a filet person. But I will say this: if you’re cooking it, you’re not doing it on the grill—just don’t ever go back for that.
Rhett Dotson:
All right, your turn.
Christopher de Leon:
All right. Got to try and be rapid fire.
Rhett Dotson:
You have to. You have to use a grill if you’re going to—
Christopher de Leon:
You know, I think there’s a reason I got all the technical questions.
Rhett Dotson:
You can use an oven. If you’re using an oven, you need to rethink—
Christopher de Leon:
Acceptable to finish in an oven if it’s not a filet is acceptable to finish it in an oven.
Rhett Dotson:
No.
Christopher de Leon:
We’re going to have to take a break. All right. I saw a discussion on estimating pit geometry inside corrosion. Corrosion seems to still be an art. Can you discuss resolution with sensor size, signal digitization methods, sensor lift-off, tool velocity, and all other significant variable uncertainties? Can you use distributions to better find these little threats?
Rhett Dotson:
Oh boy.
Christopher de Leon:
There’s a whole lot.
Rhett Dotson:
I think that question cuts to the core of the discussion we had around our—here’s what I’m gonna say. Everything that you hit on in that question, which is the signal digitization, the speed of the tool—they just hit on factors that influence the ability of MFL to appropriately discretize the corrosion pit. Those are the questions you need to have any time you’re going to use RSTRENG on a complex geometry. That’s the simple answer to that.
Christopher de Leon:
Yeah.
Rhett Dotson:
I don’t think I want to go into all the reasons why on this episode you need to do that.
Christopher de Leon:
It’s interesting—they mentioned probabilistic in some way. That’s what I heard.
Rhett Dotson:
That’s the premise of the P^2 method. So the new P^2 method, which is the probable plausibility profiles.
Christopher de Leon:
Yeah.
Rhett Dotson:
The idea behind the plausibility profiles is that if you take data from an MFL that’s discretized on some level, then in theory you can draw a whole bunch of different profiles and you should get convergence based on the distribution of those profiles. So it kind of takes the aggregate of all the errors that we described and then comes up with, you know, let’s say, a most probable answer.
Christopher de Leon:
Yep.
Rhett Dotson:
So that’s my rapid-fire answer.
Christopher de Leon:
Cool. I’m going to try to speak to each of these little components real quick, because I love it when you guys submit questions. So keep it up. Can you discuss resolution with sensor size? Absolutely. So basically when you have a sensor, you want the sensor to be smaller than the thing you’re looking for, for best-case scenario. So that’s one of the first things you could look at when you’re looking at an idealized system, right? So what’s the size threat you’re looking for, and how does the sensor that you’re trying to measure compare? You also want to think of two things. Number one, is it an MFL sensor or a UT sensor, right? So UT are more direct measurement. So those you render those differently, whereas MFL, those are usually on some kind of calibration curve where the algorithm matters more. So that’s kind of the first part.
The second part is digitization—a signal digitization method. Exactly that. If it’s UT, it’s a little bit better direct measurement, and so you really consider yourself more on the sensor size and the type that you’re looking for.
Christopher de Leon:
Look at you diving in.
Rhett Dotson:
Definition of rapid fire.
Christopher de Leon:
Yeah, I’m going fast. On the MFL one, you want to understand how they’re looking for things like pinholes or pits. So if you see an MFL tool that’s saying, “Hey, we can do pinholes or we can do pits in pits,” you need to think of, okay, what’s the sensor size and how are you turning a flux leakage indication into something digitized?
Producer:
[Interjects again.]
Christopher de Leon:
The last one—sensor lift-off and velocity. Sensor lift-off is more prone for metal loss. For UT, they can measure that. And for tool velocities, MFLs are very forgiving; UT are less forgiving. Talk to your vendor. Ask them all of these questions.
Rhett Dotson:
Great job.
Christopher de Leon:
But this is why I wish we could have seen the questions beforehand.
Rhett Dotson:
Okay.
Christopher de Leon:
We could have executed this so much better.
Rhett Dotson:
Well, there’s always an opportunity.
Christopher de Leon:
Go-to karaoke song. Oh, sing the chorus.
Rhett Dotson:
I’ve never done karaoke. Not once.
Christopher de Leon:
Sure.
Rhett Dotson:
I’ve never done karaoke.
Christopher de Leon:
Oh, dude, it’s—there’s—I mean, you were in a fraternity. Y’all had parties. What song did you sing at night?
Rhett Dotson:
“Pour Some Sugar on Me.”
Christopher de Leon:
You got to do that.
Rhett Dotson:
You watch them.
Christopher de Leon:
I could totally see you dancing to that. All right, well, then I’ll go. I mean, come on, it’s got to be karaoke—Journey, “Don’t Stop Believin’.”
Rhett Dotson:
Oh my God.
Christopher de Leon:
Oh my God.
Rhett Dotson:
That is terrible.
Christopher de Leon:
Why on earth did you pick that?
Rhett Dotson:
Journey.
Christopher de Leon:
Is it a piano tune? Are you going to sit there doing this thing? And you’re getting little tips at the top of the piano.
Rhett Dotson:
You know you’re in my garage and I can throw you out. That’s totally within my right.
Christopher de Leon:
You do have a piano at your keyboard in this series you’re doing.
Rhett Dotson:
I don’t know if I could play that.
Christopher de Leon:
All right.
Rhett Dotson:
That’s a hard one. I don’t know if I would do karaoke.
Christopher de Leon:
Well, sure. It’s like “Baby Got Back.”
Rhett Dotson:
No, it would not be that. I would probably say if I had to do something—I don’t know what I would karaoke. It’s not my style.
Christopher de Leon:
Wait, answer the question.
Rhett Dotson:
Wait, what song do you sing in the truck when you’re alone?
Christopher de Leon:
A lot of stuff, I don’t know. This is just not—this is not a CDL question. I don’t do karaoke. I’m one of those guys that would just sit down and not do it.
Christopher de Leon:
Wow.
Rhett Dotson:
Sorry to the person who asked that question, I apologize. Yeah, not doing it. All right. Moving on.
Christopher de Leon:
I think he just refused the karaoke.
Rhett Dotson:
I don’t karaoke.
Christopher de Leon:
All right, what’s this one? I don’t know what I would pick. Let’s go.
Rhett Dotson:
You know what I would do? Here we go. I would probably do “Pink Limousine,” “Pink Cadillac.”
Christopher de Leon:
Oh, what’s like a super cliché song right now? Something by Taylor Swift.
Rhett Dotson:
That’s what you would do. You would do Taylor Swift.
Christopher de Leon:
I would do Tay-Tay. I would say pick any Tay-Tay song, and I would do it. There you go. “Bad Blood,” baby. ‘Cause you know we got bad blood. It’s probably that one ’cause Kendrick Lamar’s in it.
Rhett Dotson:
Our viewers are going—that’s it.
Christopher de Leon:
Viewers are going to—
Rhett Dotson:
Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar, “Bad Blood.”
Christopher de Leon:
All right, next question.
Rhett Dotson:
Okay.
Christopher de Leon:
All right, these are the serious questions, right?
Rhett Dotson:
Yeah.
Christopher de Leon:
Okay. All right. If ILI is wrong on every inspection, is that considered periodic monitoring for outside forces? Do you have to supplement with P&M measures even with periodic monitoring?
Rhett Dotson:
Aren’t you reviewing the geo-hazards program right now?
Christopher de Leon:
I am, so sure.
Rhett Dotson:
You have a fresh start.
Christopher de Leon:
As with anything—yeah—as with anything, whether or not it’s periodic monitoring, I’d say in most cases, the answer is going to be that it won’t happen on enough of a frequency to really address a truly active geo-hazard. The short answer is that it depends on the severity of your geo-hazard and the propensity for it to have episodic movement or rapid change, right? So if you have the likelihood that you have an instantaneous event, monitoring every 5 or 7 years and periodically inspecting is probably not sufficient. If you have something that you’re not expecting to move or you know is moving on a non-episodic manner, so very slow, maybe less than an inch per year, then yeah, I think you can absolutely use that as your monitoring solution.
Rhett Dotson:
Yep.
Christopher de Leon:
So I think ILI’s strength is not in a monitoring solution. Its strength is in its ability to characterize and identify the impact on the pipe. And then potentially you have it in your back pocket for those slow-moving and the ones you expect to be stable.
Rhett Dotson:
Yeah. And we talked about this on the dirt one, right?
Christopher de Leon:
Yeah.
Rhett Dotson:
So here’s the adder I would say is it depends what your plan says, right? So what I would say is RINAA, which we’re going to talk about in our next episode, highlights this a little bit, right? So if you think it’s an extreme weather event, then you should respond to it a little bit more quickly. And if you know that you’ve already got a geo-hazards program and you know that you have the threat but you don’t have any active threats that you need to manage on a more frequent basis, then I would say, yeah, running your IMU along with your traditional integrity assessments works.
Christopher de Leon:
Let’s just say one thing. Regardless of what you think about its ability to be periodically run, IMU and please have it in your contract to get the data every time.
Rhett Dotson:
You got to get the data.
Christopher de Leon:
If you have a caliper report and you have an MFL report, a UT report, a crack report—once you have an IMU report based on the report, do it.
Rhett Dotson:
All right. Hey, this is a point—we’re going to take a break. We’re going to let, I think, ADV Marketing give us a little brief thing, and we’ll be right back.
Rhett Dotson:
All right. Welcome back to Pipeline Things and the Q&A episode. Really some good questions. So we’re going to keep going here. Oh, you found out what steaks we like. You found out whether or not we’re Batman and Robin. You learn a little bit about IMU again. And actually, these are really good questions, so I appreciate the opportunity.
Christopher de Leon:
We didn’t technically answer the P&M component on IMU—do you need additional P&M? And you know the answer is going to be—it depends.
Rhett Dotson:
That’s the correct answer. It depends. And again, I did a whole presentation on P&M measures and the difference, and that again goes back to that episode we talked to with Alex, where we went through each one of them from everything from the, pedometers.
Christopher de Leon:
You got it right.
Rhett Dotson:
I will never pronounce piezometers again.
Christopher de Leon:
Okay.
Rhett Dotson:
We’re going to need a full five minutes to read this question. All right, let’s go.
Christopher de Leon:
I’m guessing I’m answering first now.
Rhett Dotson:
Oh, okay.
Christopher de Leon:
Given that dent depth is an unreliable indicator of dent severity and prone to measurement error, since depth is a function of internal pressure, what do you guys see as a viable method for meaningfully validating a geometry tool’s performance? Would you compare outputs from shape-based integrity assessments? Or would you say it’s not possible to meaningfully validate geometry tool performance for anything other than dent depth at this point?
Rhett Dotson:
Do you want it, or you want me to take it? That’s a—that’s a great question.
Christopher de Leon:
Yeah.
Rhett Dotson:
I’ll say it this way—rapid fire. Yeah. I would say that when you perform an ILI, if it’s your integrity assessment, you’re validating two things, not just one. And it’s important for us to think that way. The one there is, you have to validate the ILI data, but then you also have to validate the ILI assessment, which is the engineering assessment. And so I would say one way to think about it for sure is it’s—if you were able to effectively manage the pipeline’s integrity using the program that you have in place, and you have performance measures that show that, you know, I would say then you validated the ILI assessment, and I think that that’s a catch-all.
So—and another thing, if you’re going to validate the ILI data, I would say you can always leverage Level 1 in 1163, which is comparing it to large-scale data and previous assessments. So I would say that’s usually a pretty effective way to manage third-party damage.
Christopher de Leon:
So my perspective is, I think regardless of what you do, you’re not going to capture dent alone in the ditch. I think the reason that everything was driven by depth as a comparison is that that was the original regulatory requirements. So we needed to know whether we were 2%, 6%, so on and so forth. When you really want to validate the tool, you’re going to have to get all the information pertaining to shape and the pressure at which it was captured. If you do that, and the person who asked that question is aware of this, if the depths alone don’t match, then you can work backwards and find out what the depth was at the time of the pressure. You can reflect the history, and you can truly determine whether or not, through a combination of numerical analysis and your shape measurements and the condition of the dent, whether or not the tool was accurate at the time it passed for the condition of the dent, but that’s an onerous exercise to do on a permanent basis.
I really like how you divided the assessment from the tool. I think at a first pass, if you’re seeing pretty wide differences between reported depths and unrestrained depths—so top sides, not bottom sides and not restrained by rock—I think you do have a challenge that you should take up with the operator and/or the vendor, and you can do that really on the basis of depth alone to start the conversation. The assessment you absolutely need to be validating, and operators should be getting the full 3D profile.
Christopher de Leon:
Yep.
Rhett Dotson:
No matter what assessment method you’re doing, if you’re doing strain-based, compare your calculated strain before and after in the ditch. Compare your shape parameters before and after in the ditch, because ultimately that tells you how accurate you should be. So again, I think you capture all the information and compare it back to the tool, but you do have to understand that the condition of the dent at the time it was seen related to restraint and rapid fire.
Christopher de Leon:
I know, I’m sorry, I was terrible, but it was such a good question. It was so deep.
Rhett Dotson:
You go.
Christopher de Leon:
Manage your terms.
Rhett Dotson:
All right. If you have it on the switch, nobody’s slowing you down.
Christopher de Leon:
No.
Rhett Dotson:
So if you ever noticed, we switched the questions out, so I get the fun ones. Let’s see if this one’s any good. You ready?
Christopher de Leon:
Yeah.
Rhett Dotson:
Oh boy. What is your favorite disc golf manufacturer, and what are your favorite discs? Oh man. And I’ll do this one. I’ll do this one real quick. So I have—I think my favorite manufacturer—I don’t think it’s because I necessarily love them, but Innova just makes a lot of discs and they’re really well-documented. So that’s my go-to, right? But that’s like saying Spalding’s your favorite basketball manufacturer. I mean, it’s hard to get away from that. I think the disc itself is what is most important. I personally really love Sidewinders right now. So the—I have a particular Sidewinder that if I threw it into a lake, I would jump into the lake to go get it, even today, as cold as it is, because I really figured out how to make that particular disc thing. And so I love it.
For a putt and approach, my favorite is the Sensei. And so I honestly love—on those two discs.
Christopher de Leon:
Just two discs?
Rhett Dotson:
Yeah. Well, I had some other ones, you know. Again, I think I’m getting into enough now where I look at various weights of the Sidewinder because that influences how stable it flies for me in a way that I can very clearly see. But the Sidewinder is the right speed.
Christopher de Leon:
The only thing I could think of when you say Sidewinder is that snake that goes sideways.
Rhett Dotson:
Watch forward, like that’s gangster. I love the disc. So that’s all I’m saying. What about you?
Christopher de Leon:
I would say I’m not that deep into disc golf yet.
Rhett Dotson:
That’s true. I give you a different one every time we play.
Christopher de Leon:
And I would say, what I’ve noticed so far is I throw really hard. So the disc that I seem to enjoy the most right now is the Corvette, because it has a high speed rating. So I throw it hard, man. I played with Taylor against like 450 ft. Threw it like a beast.
Rhett Dotson:
Yeah, you do have that.
Christopher de Leon:
The disc is like a 14 speed.
Rhett Dotson:
Yeah, it is.
Christopher de Leon:
And so I throw it really hard. And so I like the Corvette and I like the weight of it. I’d say that. And then I don’t know how to say this one, but I like the flat putters, you know, the ones that are kind of round.
Rhett Dotson:
Yeah, they’re blunt on the end.
Christopher de Leon:
I can’t speak to those. I don’t know what brand they are, sorry, but I like you—I think I like to stick to just two or three discs. I’m not one of those guys that can walk around with 30 discs yet, because I don’t know how to use them.
Rhett Dotson:
I stick to—I don’t have 30; I have seven, but I throw the same three. And then, to be honest, I’ve got a Champion Valkyrie that I use as my backhand. So when I’m backhanding, I have a Valkyrie is the way that I go. And I can use that in certain other times. So my go-to is definitely the Sidewinder.
Christopher de Leon:
That was a good question.
Rhett Dotson:
Do you think the disc matters?
Christopher de Leon:
It does, it does.
Rhett Dotson:
Oh, it absolutely does.
Christopher de Leon:
No doubt about it.
Rhett Dotson:
The weather.
Christopher de Leon:
Oh yeah. Wind matters.
Rhett Dotson:
And there’s a bunch of people that are going to make fun of me because I lost to a left-handed thrower the other day who’s traditionally right-handed, and he rubbed it in.
Christopher de Leon:
Well.
Rhett Dotson:
All right, Chris, this is a good one for you.
Christopher de Leon:
Okay, let’s go.
Rhett Dotson:
I don’t know how I want to—I don’t know how I actually want it. Yeah, I’ll go first. Go. Oh, what are your thoughts on tri-axial MFL sensor technologies that have started to be implemented by vendors these years?
Christopher de Leon:
Good job.
Rhett Dotson:
I’m sorry.
Christopher de Leon:
Did you even hear what you said?
Rhett Dotson:
This is fantastic. I cannot wait to answer this one. Go ahead.
Christopher de Leon:
I’m sorry, I didn’t know you ignored my question.
Rhett Dotson:
I did not hear what you said. Go ahead.
Christopher de Leon:
Wait, hold on.
Rhett Dotson:
Fantasy football? What are your thoughts on tri-axial MFL sensor technologies that have started to be implemented by vendors in recent years?
Christopher de Leon:
That is a good question. I would say tri-axial sensors have been around for a long time.
Rhett Dotson:
That is true.
Christopher de Leon:
They’re not recent. That’s the first thing. The second thing is it’s—I would say that that was one of the more recent—it is one of the more recent innovations in MFL technology that should be used more. And I would say that as an ILI format and ILI company, I think that operators maybe didn’t have enough interest in the use of a tri-axial sensor to where the full advantage of it was being used. And so what I would say is I think that the tri-axial sensor, even though you’re still looking at the same magnetic orientation, has a lot of value in the secondary and third, I guess, not sensors, but the data that it provides.
I would say that it’s a great question for you to talk to your ILI vendor about, because when you see—I’ll end it with this—when you see that there are different specifications available for an ILI system, normally it’s because they’re leveraging that tri-axial technology. You know, if they have one specification and they say they use tri-axial sensors, I would say it’s worth you having a meeting with that vendor to understand how they’re using it, because a lot of times they’ll say it’s in the algorithm, but if they’re truly using it, they’ll be able to show you how each component for either a pinhole or a pit or like an axial slotting type feature or a general corrosion to find a pit within a broader pool—how those tri-axial sensors are used. Otherwise, it’s just marketing material.
Rhett Dotson:
I think you said it best to talk to your vendor. If somebody is espousing something as a separator or a differentiator technology—so, you know, I mean, there’s “show me,” “trust me,” the Moiré effect—there’s a whole bunch of different ways we can say it.
Christopher de Leon:
Yeah.
Rhett Dotson:
I think the reality is we all recognize that sometimes capabilities might get overstated a little bit.
Christopher de Leon:
Yeah.
Rhett Dotson:
But I don’t like to just be dismissive, you know, and be a Luddite, so to speak. I think you have to embrace changes in technology and evaluate it.
Christopher de Leon:
And I would say the analyst has a component there, but usually with the volume of features that ILIs are having to assess, the algorithm in which they’re applying the tri-axial sensors is fundamental. So let’s start there.
Rhett Dotson:
Hey, some of your other technical—some of your analysts less technical question. So all we got left is a fun one. Let’s go.
Christopher de Leon:
You dropped it. You started laughing at this one.
Rhett Dotson:
I did, because this is—I like this one because I know what you’re saying. If you were a tool, which one would you be?
Christopher de Leon:
Oh, come on.
Rhett Dotson:
Oh no.
Christopher de Leon:
I—he’s a given.
Rhett Dotson:
I’m a middle child. I’m the geometry tool. We did a whole episode on that.
Christopher de Leon:
But it makes me—it’s, you know, in light of this technical question we got, it’s difficult to validate why—why it’s difficult to validate me.
Rhett Dotson:
Why? So you basically you’re like a metallurgist now. You just say whatever.
Christopher de Leon:
You got me wrong. Prove me wrong. That’s it. You can’t measure my shape.
Rhett Dotson:
Oh, what about you? What are you?
Christopher de Leon:
Oh God.
Rhett Dotson:
Are you the EMAT?
Christopher de Leon:
No, no, I’m not an EMAT technology. I would—I think I would align myself more with the traditional MFL tool, just overall well-rounded, do a lot of things, maybe not super specialized in one in particular. Just it’s like your baseline. I like it; it’s robust.
Rhett Dotson:
That’s a good question.
Christopher de Leon:
That is.
Rhett Dotson:
Yeah, yeah.
Christopher de Leon:
Love that.
Rhett Dotson:
But I use tri-axial sensors. There’s three components to me. There’s three different dimensions.
Christopher de Leon:
Oh my gosh.
Rhett Dotson:
Well, give us the next one. We’re going to finish these up.
Christopher de Leon:
All right. Now, this is—I think I’ve only got one left now.
Rhett Dotson:
Oh, is that it?
Christopher de Leon:
Yeah, that’s it.
Rhett Dotson:
That long?
Christopher de Leon:
Yeah, we got one left.
Rhett Dotson:
Oh, man.
Christopher de Leon:
Oh my God.
Rhett Dotson:
How are we gonna answer this one? I don’t think he actually thought this was going to come on the show, did he?
Christopher de Leon:
Let me see. Do I have to trash?
Rhett Dotson:
Are you kidding?
Christopher de Leon:
No.
Rhett Dotson:
Are you ready?
Christopher de Leon:
Yeah.
Rhett Dotson:
Where’s Waldo?
Christopher de Leon:
Where’s Waldo?
Rhett Dotson:
Yeah.
Christopher de Leon:
What’s with silent letters?
Rhett Dotson:
And who framed Roger Rabbit?
Christopher de Leon:
I think that’s a wrap.
Rhett Dotson:
I think that’s where we should have had Ms. Producer maybe skim the questions just slightly.
Christopher de Leon:
Yeah, that’s—yeah.
Rhett Dotson:
But, well, in all fairness, I thought maybe they were going with the Easter eggs that we leave randomly in the show, but that would have been a better one.
Christopher de Leon:
You guys get a taste. Hopefully, if you do pay attention, there’s always random Easter eggs in the background.
Rhett Dotson:
And we should put that in somewhere, like, if you can name it, it’s fine.
Christopher de Leon:
Between the three Easter eggs, there’s like some kind of like, like $100 Chick-fil-A gift card.
Rhett Dotson:
Yeah, yeah.
Christopher de Leon:
So, I think picking up where’s Alex—
Rhett Dotson:
Who’s gonna bring us Starbucks.
Christopher de Leon:
There’s so many jokes there on that.
Rhett Dotson:
Yeah.
Christopher de Leon:
You know, but that’s—that’s really funny. So you get a glimpse into us, which is we’re definitely like—we’re pretty nerdy. And I don’t mind saying that, you know, even my wife is like, “What are you watching?” when she walks in and like Demon Slayer or something else is on. But hey, you know, Dragon Ball Z or—
Christopher de Leon:
I’ll go the other way. I was playing FIFA 23, and I don’t know if I’m beatable. So if you want to—
Rhett Dotson:
I don’t know.
Christopher de Leon:
Fine, beat us.
Rhett Dotson:
I’m just saying.
Christopher de Leon:
Can you play two versus two?
Rhett Dotson:
I’m just saying.
Christopher de Leon:
Do we team up? We could issue a FIFA 2023 challenge.
Rhett Dotson:
But not to everyone. We’d have to figure out how to filter that.
Christopher de Leon:
Oh yeah, we could totally do it, like, ’cause we got work to do. We can’t—we can’t just—we can’t just FIFA our way through that.
Rhett Dotson:
We probably need to do work so that we get enough money to move out of my garage because I don’t know if Ms. Producer’s coming back. But seriously, you guys stay tuned. Hopefully, you know, again, really want to say that we appreciate your support on Pipeline Things. We appreciate all the love that you guys have given us. Even got a few shout-outs when we were at IPC. That was—that was really cool. And we look forward to 2023.
Christopher de Leon:
Yeah, and I just want to say, you know, we’re coming up on the holidays—Thanksgiving next week. So it’s a chance to say how much we’re thankful for you guys, thankful for the pipeline industry.
Rhett Dotson:
Yeah.
Christopher de Leon:
And we hope all of you guys really have a great Thanksgiving and hope that you have a merry Christmas. Enjoy your holidays. And we will see you back in 2023. Again, I am your host, Rhett Dotson.
Christopher de Leon:
Thing one.
Rhett Dotson:
We’re not doing thing—
Christopher de Leon:
Oh, we’re just co-hosts.
Rhett Dotson:
Rhett Dotson.
Christopher de Leon:
Christopher de Leon.
Rhett Dotson:
And we’ll see you back in 2023.