cc: file, Sara and Des, Diane Cluff, Tony Hafen, Darrell and Nancy Krueger, Eric and Annette Krueger, Eric and Renee Miner, Claude and Katherine Warner, Forest and Amy Warner, and Ivan and Chell Warner.
"There is so much to write about from last week I didn't come close to sitting down and writing everything out on Sunday. I wrote quite a bit on Monday, and when I finished it today found out it was Vetrens Day and Paul's letter will be three days late getting off. This will be a long Thoughtlet. The reasons are (1) there were a lot of different things happen last week, and (2) these Thoughtlets are the closest thing I have to a diary these days. Please note this Thoughlet will also be the last Thoughtlet I forward to you (except Paul) until or unless you send me a message specifically requesting to stay on this e-mail list. I was told Saturday that some of you are offended by the way I use words to `make myself look good' and to paint a picture `all problems in our family are someone else's issue.' I can not argue with perception. I hope someday you will all realize this has never been my intention and possibly be able to accept having made a misinterpretation of the raw data.
I sent last week's Thoughtlet of at 12:05:59, just after High Priest Group Leadership meeting. Then I finished packing, went to sacrament meeting, bore my testimony for the first time in several years in Fast & Testimony Meeting, picked up John Amason and drove to Dallas for the `Annual International SEG Convention.' We checked into the Central LaQuinta Inn Motel off of I-75 and Fitzhugh and drove downtown to the Dallas Convention Center. We arrived at 6:15 PM. The lines were so long we did not get registered until 7:30 PM and the ice breaker ended at 8:00 PM. The first person I saw as we walked into the convention was Bob Peacock.
Bob was the senior manager at Mobil's Exploration Services Center when I went to work for Mobil in Dallas on July 15th, 1974. One of the first things Bill Ayres of the Employee Relations' Department asked me to do was to sign some employment papers. Included with these papers was a patent release form, saying that any ideas I came up with belonged to Mobil Oil. I had drawn out the components of what I called an `Interactive 3-D Seismic Interpretation Workstation' based on my two summers of work at Amoco and my Senior Thesis at the University of Utah. It did not seem right for Mobil to take ownership of this idea and design. Bill did not know what to do with me and so he sent me to the motel, where I told Marti, who was 4 months pregnant with Roice, I might not have a job the next day. Looking back it was the beginning stages of where I find myself now. Over the next few days Bill set up a meeting with Bob Peacock and Bill Ruheli (sp?). Ruheli told me I needed to go and read all of the back issues of Geophysics and come back and talk to him after I had mastered the material in them. Turns out this was the same advise he gave Fred Hilterman. As the meeting closed, Bob put his arm around my shoulder and said, `Roice, just sign the paper, try to get your ideas adopted at Mobil, and if they are not adopted in about 5 years go someplace else and implement them.' The advise struck true, and I lasted 5 years and six months to the day at Mobil (January 15th 1980 was my last day). Bob was excited to come into the Tobin Theater and see the work we have been doing at the Virtual Environment Technology Laboratory. He has retired and does no geophysics anymore. He said he was out of town when I spoke to one of the Dallas geophysical society in 1996, and he was very disappointed he was not there. It was fun to see him and reminisce about early days. I caught him up on the divorce and how well each of you are doing. It set a conversation precedence which was repeated a lot of times with many friends from China to Saudi Arabia to Argentina to London to New Orleans to Dallas to Houston to Turkey, etc. I wish you kids and your Mom could have been with me to see how many friends I have, and how many people care about you because they care about me.
Sunday evening I took 7 folks out to dinner. I usually just go back to the motel/hotel and read on Sunday night. However, this convention it seemed important to set the proper groundwork for a merger of two companies I have been helping set up for several months. The dinner was with all of the key principals from both companies. The dinner went well. The discussions were positive. Nothing has come of it yet, and I now wonder if it would have gone just as fast if not faster by not compromising my more normal Sabbath activities. There were some really interesting technical developments which came up during the dinner conversation. For instance, the technology is not available to extrude hydrophone cables which are solid plastic and are basically unlimited in length. This allows hydrocarbon reservoirs to be perminantly and cost effectively instrumented with seismic receivers so multiple 3-D seismic surveys can be collected across time to show fluid movement as the reservoir is produced (4-D Seismology). There are several related and very exciting developments which have the potential of significant economic returns to both property owners and vendors.
Monday was a busy day at the VETL Booth. I mentioned to one person it was my birthday and it seemed like it kept coming back to me until late Monday night. The VETL (Virtual Environment Technology Laboratory: http://www.vetl.uh.edu) was one of if not the best received displays and presentations at the show. We always had a line of about 25 people waiting. We could put 16 people in the one wall ROOMS at a time (this was a function of the number of stereo glasses available). Pat Hyde was the main demo lady, and she really does a good job. John Amason and I had put a brochure together the previous week describing a series of Virtual Reality products we call IT(sm) [Immersive Table], ROOMS(sm) [Reservoir Object Oriented Management System], and ROOF(sm) [ROOMS Open Office Facility]. You can look up our brochure at http://www.walden3d.com/wvs/wvsbrochure.htm. We were at the SEG Convention to do an inexpensive market test of the viabilty of a new product company. The VETL Booth provided us a forum for guaging reactions. We defined 20 minute demonstrations, with the last demonstration showing the Rudman data. Back on Thursday, 23Oct97, Jeff Hume and Bob Davis took me to Dallas to meet Duke Rudman, an 88 year old wildcatter of Jewish Russian descent. Duke has a book on his office coffee table he wrote titled `All I have ever learned about wildcatting.' It has a nice binding and is full of blank pages. I was brought along to evaluate whether it is feasible to offset a well to a well their partner shut-in. I made a map, showed them the results, and Duke said `I will buy in on that prospect.' This was a real vote of confidence, since he owned the property, the data, and would receive a 25% override whether he bought into a well or not. He also said he could have the other shares bought by later that evening if needed. As we were getting ready to leave I asked if they would be interested in having their data demonstrated to them in a Virtual Environment at the SEG Convention on 03Nov97. They said absolutely, and proceeded to send us back to Houston with 8 paper seismic sections, 4 well logs, 1 geologic cross-section, and a location map. I took these into Ridgeway's and had 2 CD's the following Tuesday morning. By Friday these data had been texture mapped into a 3-D world and 9 horizons, 1 shale out limit, and 4 fault plane maps added to the Virtual Reality display. Jim Lin, David Chen, and John Amason worked very hard to help put this example together. This texture map of paper 2-D seismic sections coming out of the screen and `hitting' people in the head became the finale of each VETL demo.
At 11:00 Duke Rudman and company arrived at the Tobin Science Theater. We had broken the line so they had a private show and tell. Duke was wearing a bright red sports jacket with a large white flower, a very large felt cowboy hat, and gold tipped cowboy boots. He was impressed with the 3-D displays. He kept asking practical questions like how much acerage in the proposed well, how much production from the Natural Energy well to the north, etc. I was somewhat disappointed with how the demo went, and yet the client seemed more than satisfied. As they left the booth we directed them to the exhibit area. It was a real hoot to be with this witty old man as he looked at the very large Dallas Convention Center completely full of seismic equipment and computers. He was particularly impressed with the facility. When we had walked about half the length of the floor we got him turned back towards the front door by going over a couple of isles. He saw a rock jewerly store and proceeded to purchase 10 necklaces. After quite a while his lawyer, Trey Shibley, who was talking with me said, in a very loud voice, `I'm hungry!' Mr. Rudman looked over and said `I'm almost through. I'm just buying these for my grandchildren.' He looked back at the clerk, then back at us and said, `At least that's my story.' As we walked out of the convention center Cindy Boulier, Marketing V.P. at Energy Innovations, said hi to someone having a shoe shine. Mr. Rudman said, `Do you know him?' She said yes and he proceeded to move the shoe shine man aside and demonstrate `cracking the whip' as he shined the guys shoes. It was a real experience to see this billionaire shining a geophysicist's shoes with gusto. As he finished he handed the cloth back to the shoe shine man, turned to me and said `It's nice to know you have a back up profession in case something goes wrong.'
During my `birthday lunch' we learned the three major business interests of the Rudman's are (1) oil and gas, (2) real estate (they own the property north of Plano where the next Plano will be built), and (3) high technology investments. There is great interest in helping in funding the commercialization of the VETL technology through Walden Visualization Systems (http://www.walden3d.com/wvs/plan/plan.htm). There was even more interest in our efforts to define the way cities can be optimally designed and built. The most significant interest was in our work in oil & gas. Jeff Hume and Bob Davis of Energy Innovations and Davis Oil were estatic about the lunch. Mr. Rudman, his chief geophysicist, and his landman/lawyer were also pleased. On the way back to the convention center to drop us off he changed his schedule so he could come back to the convention center on Tuesday.
Monday my long time friend Mickey (Clancy Andrew) Edwards died of a heart attack on the steps of the convention center. He had chain smoked for years. When I first visited Evan's & Sutherland, in about 1977, I met Wayne Wade, who later introduced me to Mickey Edwards. Mickey was a mathematician who specialized in doing benchmarks for the oil & gas industry on super computers. I first met Mickey at CDC (Control Data Corporation). We became friends and he helped establish the RCL (Research Computation Laboratory) at the University of Houston in the AGL (Allied Geophysical Laboratories). When we were looking for funding for Landmark Graphics, Mickey was in the background encouraging Fred Zeitlin to send the letter of intent and to free up the funds. However, the major driving force in this effort within CDC was Tom Eliseuson. When Landmark went to the first SEG in Las Vegas, Nevada, Mickey helped us put animation sequences of Dan Kosloff's Fourier Wave Equation Forward Modeling into a format we could show in our booth. When CDC died Mickey eventually went to work for Cray research. We would spend time at each SEG convention getting caught up. Particularly on Mickey's excellent and extensive work in genealogy. Although he smoked like a chimney, he always had good things to say about the church and would usually keep me up on his latest family history discoveries. As part of his Cray assignment he was assigned to support Saudi Aramco and was eventually hired away by Fouad & Son's. Their key representative, Gabby, was also HyperMedia's representative in the Kingdom. When I spent the six or seven weeks in Saudi Arabia in about 1992, Mickey and I would get together once or twice a week for lunch. He is a good guy and brings back positive memories. I flew to Oklahoma City on Friday and rode down to Paul's Valley to attend his funeral, along with George Stephenson, Dick Bostrom, and others from Silicon Graphics / Cray. I encouraged a book be placed at the Silicon Graphics booth for friends of Mickey to write notes for his family. They did and I volunteered to help compile his genealogical efforts in my note to his daughter and son. Mickey was 58 years old.
Monday evening the VETL staff, Bowen Loftin and Pat Hyde, David Chen and Hector Gonzalez, took John Amason and I out for a steak birthday dinner. As we were walking back to the car a rose salesman gave Pat a rose for free and then said he was going to let me buy it for her if she would give me a kiss. I did, in memory of Mickey, and I even got a peck on the cheek.
Mr. Rudman was back at the VETL booth at 11:00 AM on Tuesday with two of his oil drilling partners and friends. I did the demo of his data this time and it went much better than the day before. Mr. Rudman got queasy (air sick) and his shauffeur had to leave to get him a drink and a yogert. He was in rare form as we left the VETL booth. He had Cindy on his arm and he looked at her and said `You know, I'm queer for women.' Later on the convention floor one of his friends repeated this and Cindy said `You must be related.' His friend responded, `No, but unlike Mr. Rudman I can do something about it.' All in all it was an interesting experience touching the circle of the truly rich and powerful. It will be interesting to see how this ends up relating to the projects I am working on.
Tuesday at lunch was an organizing meeting for Natural Resources Management Incorporated (NRMI). NRMI will merge technologies from Stanford, Columbia University of New York City, and `Roice Nelson,' i.e. West Coast, East Coast, South Coast. It was an interesting meeting and I am certian to have a lot to say about this over the coming weeks and months. I keep seeing glimpses of hope of finally getting some money out of all of the effort which was put into HyperMedia, in addition to the more recent work with Knowledge Backbones(sm), Virtual Environments, and Isosurfacing. Most of Tuesday afternoon was spent in a VRGeo consortium meeting with about 20 oil companies who are looking to put $50,000 per year into the VETL and a parallel lab in Germany. I came away feeling drained and discouraged. However, it didn't last long. My friend Yoram Shoram is now a senior executive in Royal Dutch Shell. He invited the VETL to visit their facility in Riswich, Holland on our way back to Houston from the Norwegian presentations in mid-January. I also saw Gabby and he invited us to bring the road show to Saudi Aramco. It looks like I will be gone to Europe and the Middle East from the middle of January through the middle of February.
That evening John and I went to dinner with the VETL staff, the StatOil representative, and two Mobil representives to the VRGeo Consortium. I sat next to Brian Sabin, a member of the church I trained on Landmark back in about 1978 when he was at at Marathon. He was recently called to the Bishopric and we have talked every four or five months about family status, challenges, standing in our own light, and other related topics. We talked about the founding of Landmark and how the industry has changed with the technology. As the conversation died down I asked Brian when the temple closed and he said he thought the last session was at 9:00 PM.
So I took off from the Pappas Seafood House we were at, at Walnut Hill and I-35 (close to where we lived before moving to Houston), and got to the Dallas Temple at 8:50. The last session is at 8:30. Because of all of the construction on I-75, I ended up exiting on Lemmon Avenue and recalled the 5 1/2 years of driving down Lemmon to church on Turtle Creek Drive. So I went over to where the old Dallas 1st Ward was. The hedges we trimmed many times have grown up out of control. The building has been razed. I pulled the car in the parking lot where we used to park by where the primary room had been. As I got out and walked along the bricks and grass and mowed weeds, going from the Relief Society room to where I taught Young Men's to where we had our Elder's Quorum Meetings and Gospel Doctrine Classroom to the gymnasium where `Swedish Roots' was first performed to where the Bishop's and Clerk's offices had been upstairs to where the Primary Room had been, I was totally overcome with emotion. It is so hard to admit change. It was so hard to see a place which was the site of so many special and such strong testimony building experiences a wasteland. It was especially so as I compared the lot where the Dallas 1st Ward was to my life status. I cried and I prayed and I went back to the LaQuinta Motel and read from the Doctrine & Covenants about the blessings and mercy which come to those who `keep the covenant' and `observe the commandment' (D&C 54:6). The older I get the more I realize what a wonderful testing place life is and how we all are given multiple opportunities to prove to ourselves and to our God where our heart is. I got up early and went through the first endowment session at 7:30 AM. You Mom's cousin, Norman Morgan, was the session officiator. I was the male witness. It was nice and something I truly enjoy doing. I can visualize the day I meet those whose temple work I have had the opportunity of doing. It is glorious and wipes away the pain and tears of daily life.
Wednesday was spent with Shell, Mobil, Total, Chevron, Elf Acquitaine, and
many others talking about the status of Virtual Reality Technology. It is
amazing how well the presentation was received. John Amason is also
convinced there is a market and the timing is right. We talked to Diane
Gold at ASI and had a description of the designs they have come up with to
house ROOMS(sm). I ended up spending all day Thursday packaging the ASI
drawings so we can move them into our Business Plan and presentation
materials. You can see the pictures from http://www.walden3d.com/wvs/asi.
After the convention John and I helped take down the booth and load up the
truck to send it back to Houston. We reworked the business plan on the
way back and I got back to the house about 11:30 PM.
The 1997 SEG Convention was the largest SEG Convention in the history of the Society, about 10,000 attendees. In terms of personal signifigance, this convention ranks up there with Los Angeles in 1981 where I co-authored four papers (see http://www.walden3d.com/w3d/resumes/resume_nelson_hr.html #121, 122, 123, and 124), Las Vegas in 1983 where we introduced Landmark Graphics Corporation to the industry, and San Francisco in 1990 where I headed up a workshop for the SEG Research Committee titled `Scientific Visualization.' There was the low associated with the death of my good friend Mickey Edwards (the funeral was very nice) and the highs of seeing convention attendee interest in the Virtual Environments we are developing. The VETL show was fairly uniformly acknowledged to be demonstrating an important tool which will become the standard display interface for interpretation associated with hydrocarbon exploration and production. I felt humbled. As I look back at the `Interactive 3-D Interpretation Workstation' ideas I wrote out in 1974, I recognize ideas outside myself planted in my mind and heart. As I look at how the small stone has gone forth to completely change an industry which is important to humanity, I feel humbled. As I look to the future impact of virtual environment control centers for optimizing reservoir production, it seems there is an even bigger change going to happen. It is nice to have feelings of being useful, especially in the midst of working through the emotions of 1997.
Again, I apologize if I have been forcing words on any of you which you are not interested in reading. I will continue to write and to post my Thoughtlets. However, I will do a reality check every six months or so to make sure folks receiving these notes want to continue to receive them. It seems reasonable to only send the words to those who are sufficiently interested to drop me an note and to tell me so. It has not turned into the interactive communication environment I thought it would. It has been good as a means of providing me a fourum for thinking about what I want to pass on to each of you kids. Thanks for your participation and support."