cc: file, Grandma Hafen via Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, Claude and Katherine Warner, and Lloyd and Luana Warner.
"Tuesday morning I was working with Terry Smith to create some images for the SEG press kit. Terry was employee #5 at Landmark Graphics, the first non-founder employee. The rest of the story is Kevin Kinsella and I had approached Terry about being a founder of Landmark and he turned us down. He was the architect of much of the software that made Landmark successful, including the initial project leader on OpenWorks, which has become the most widespread program and data interface in the exploration industry. He also did the skunk works project at The University of Southwestern Louisiana in Batton Rouge, which eventually became the software basis of HyperMedia Corporation. It is really good to be working with Terry again. We have a lot of good and some painful joint memories. It is especially good to have his help getting ready for the SEG (Society of Exploration Geophysicists) annual convention. And to think, the convention this year is in New Orleans. The first SEG I helped prepare vendor data for was an SEG in New Orleans in 1979, and the company I worked with was Evans & Sutherland out of Salt Lake City.
Back in 1979 I was working in Field Operations at Mobil's ESC (Exploration Services Center). We ran 4 company seismic crews, doing all of the geophysical design, quality control, and crew management. It cost about a million dollars a month to run a seismic crew in those days. It is interesting that Energy Innovations, the company with 50 employees that was also purchased to be part of Continuum Resources, is largely in the business of seismic acquisition quality control. Anyway, one day in August of 1979 I was having a nice conversation with my boss, and brought up a point that upset him greatly. I asked if he had given a review to one of the Senior Observors who had mentioned to me he was upset about not having been reviewed. He was probably our best Seniolr Observor, and he was different. He ate fruit for lunch. Anyway, Bob tore into me with 'You little S.O.B. I was doing this when you were in college. You don't tell me how to run my business.' I can look back now and see he was scared of something. Not dissimliar to times I have been scared and frustruated by some of you kid's choices and have overreacted.
At the time I was just angry. My boss knew it, and a little while later the secretary came down the hall telling me he wanted me to go to Pinedale, Wyoming to check on something on one of the seismic crews. So I went, did what I was asked to, and one day I drove down off of the mountain, found a phone, called Evans & Sutherland in Salt Lake and set up a meeting to fly over there and meet with them. Friday we had crew change and we all drove to Rock Springs to catch the plane. When the plane for Dallas came the crew going home asked if I wasn't coming. I said, 'No, I'm going over to Utah.' They thought I was visiting my parents. I flew to Salt Lake, took the Marketing Director of Evans & Sutherland and his assistant to lunch, and convinced them to go to the SEG in New Orleans. For the next 4 weeks I would fly to Salt Lake from Dallas after work on Friday, work all Friday night, all day Saturaday, most of Saturday night, and all day Sunday with David Nebeker, and then catch the plane back to Dallas. I also took vacation, and if my boss called, your Mom would tell him I was out and ask if I could call back. She would call me and I would call back from Salt Lake as if it were local. E&S also flew me to New Orleans, where I met with the staff, trained them what to say about the demos, and described who would be in the audience. I also had to walk around the back of booths so people who sold to my boss would not see me and report back. Then I went back to Dallas and ran the office while my boss came to New Orleans to the SEG. Mobil never sent me to an SEG in my 5 1/2 years of employment. After the show, one of my friends told me about the wonderful 3-D displays in a little obscure booth and how much I would have enjoyed seeing fault planes rotating in 3-D space, well logs along deviated well paths, flying through 3-D horizons, etc. I smiled. Frustrated.
Anyway, as I was saying, Terry and I had just created an image for the press kit. These images can be flown into in 3-D, rotated around, and evaluated from any different angles. This is just like the stuff John of Evans and Sutherland and I did at the SEG in 1979. Cindy, who is Director of Corporate Communications, came in, saw the image and said, 'Ohhhh, that is pretty. What is it? I wish we would have had that a week ago so we could use it in our advertising.' Picking up on what she said, I responded 'We are going just as fast as we can. I'm glad you like it. I guess I'm just a frustrated artist. Terry, you've worked with me for years, tell Cindy what it is like working with me.' Terry looked at me and at Cindy and said, 'Roice is a frustrated artist, a frustrated poet, and ...' When Cindy cut in and said, 'Roice, I think you are just frustrated.' I responded in the affirmative, laughed, and sat the thought aside.
Tuesday night we had been so busy getting everything ready for New Orleans, I forgot about RePAIRS, and got to the house about 8:00. Instead of driving over to the Post Office, I decided to run over and get my mail. For those who don't know the Post Office Box is about 2 miles away from the house. As I was running, I got thinking about being frustrated, about running as a sublimation, and I decided maybe I need to convert to be a Catholic and apply to be a member of the Catholic priesthood. Then I imagined being elected to be the Pope and choosing a new name. I decided I would choose a combination of good biblical names, like Pope Benjamin Sara Paul, so I could appease the feminists of the world. I wondered if anyone else would think these thoughts funny.
First thing Tuesday morning we had been visited by the Chief Technical Officer of British Petroleum. We had a very nice 3+ hour discussion, and yet I remembered feeling very frustrated several times. At the end of his visit, several of the principals of Continuum Resources were in the room together. Dr. Dave Monk, who is the President of Energy Innovations Technical Services, Dave Ridyard, who just joined us as Chief Operating Officer and who left a position as a corporate officer of publically held Input/Output, Jeff Hume, the President of Energy Innovations and now Continuum Resources, and Richard Uden, the Manager of 4-D Seismic Services were all in the room. I tried to get them to each tell a little bit about their background to our visitor, who, as Melanie will recall from our visit with him in Sunbury, England, is a very proper Englishman. No one was saying anything of substance and I was getting frustrated. Then I got the idea of having everyone tell the university they graduated from. As they went around the room and finished, our guest knew everyone in the room except me was born in England. And I realized I was kind of back on my mission to Southeast Britian again.
All week seemed to be the same story over and over again. Wednesday was also spent putting together material for the convention. I still didn't know if Blaine Taylor and I were going to Norway the week after the SEG, and so I was using as much spare time as possible getting the materials together for the consulting work with PGS. I also expanded a series of questions and answers John Amason had written out so we would have something for everyone in our booth at the SEG to be on the same page. Sometimes it seems like it takes forever for me to get words to come out of my fingers. Frustrating is a mild description of the feelings. Wednesday evenings I have got in the habit of watching Star Trek, my weekly two hours of TV (if one does not count when I watch Jay Leno). I was multiprocessing, working on the Norway trip, and Ken Turner came by to talk. I ended up turning off the TV. He had some really exciting news. He had heard Disney has purchased 25,000 of land over by Cat Springs and New Ulm. If so, it means there will be another DisneyWorld, basically taking advantage of the same opportunity we recognized when Walden 3-D funded the Colorado County project a few years ago. Frustrating. We also talked about Ken's latest thoughts about the series of synergistic paintings based on the Savior's names, as recorded in the New Testiment. The central picture will be of the Savior bowed to the ground in the Garden of Gethesemane, with a very tall column of black above him. I am really excited about this project, and hope you kids also become excited and follow the work.
Thursday morning I went to the VETL for a 9:00 meeting with Bowen Loftin and Jeff Hume. There had been some rain, traffic was at an absolute standstill on the Katy Freeway, and it took an hour and forty minutes to make it to the lab. Traffic is always frustrating. Then Bowen told us he has made commitments to a differet Virtual Reality software company than MuSE, and both Jeff and I became very frustrated. It was a disappointing meeting to say the least. Following the meeting I attended Jim Lin's Doctoral Dissertation defense. His topic is Virtual Reality in Geosciences. He implemented what I laid out for him a couple of years ago, and he has a Ph.D. and I got Continuum Resources a new qualified employee. However, I don't have a Ph.D., and I wonder if I will ever feel like I have respect from others. Frustration. Among other things later that afternoon, I went to PGS and met with the key people about the contract to go to Norway. There was a disagreement about intellectual property, and at one point I closed my folder, and told them in frustration they could just develop their own business process model. It was interesting to see how fast they back peddeled.
Friday morning was spent working with Blaine Taylor setting out what we would do if we go to Norway. There was so much to do with getting ready for the SEG, it was very frustrating taking time to plan for something which might not happen. And yet it was not appropriate to not spend the time, in case it does happen. I got a call from PGS about 11:00, and they agreed in principle with a suggestion Blaine made about handling the Intellectual Property issues. This required me to redo the contracts, get them proofed, and print four copies. I was an hour later than I intended leaving the office. I took the contract to PGS, stopped at Jack-in-the-Box, and drove to Austin for a meeting with the BEG, which I didn't have time for. And it rained hard most of the way. Frustrating. One positive thing was I confirmed that PGS agreed to sign the revised contract via the cell phone. So we will be going to Norway next Sunday.
My friends at the Bureau seemed glad to see me. After a brief review of the project they have done for Maraven, a Venezuela oil company, I was able to answer their questions about display and lay out a plan for how they will get the data together. It is frustrating they can not see this without having it drawn out for them. Guess I just need to learn to look on the positive side and recognize ahow big the consulting opportunities are for me because others can not see what is so obvious to me.
Ben and Sarah decided not to drive over from College Station for dinner because of the rain. I think that was a good idea. And I did enjoy just going out to dinner with Melanie. At times like Friday I do wish I knew how to talk more in a social setting. Oh well! Melanie is very frustrated I have not committed to buy her a new car. Wish I knew this was the right thing for her, and I wish I knew I could afford it. After dinner we went to the mall to buy me a pair of Kaki colored pants for the SEG convention. I had asked Rhonda if she thought I could put them on expenses since I had to buy them to meet Cindy's request. Oh well! When I dropped Melanie off, I backed the car up so I could wave to her when she got up to her room on the third floor. She had a box of left-over food from dinner with her, and she went to the second floor, and straight to Kirk Williams and Dallas' room, which is directly underneath her. Melanie, you didn't even notice me waving good-bye to you. When she opened the door and Kirk opened it without a shirt on, I thought (1) of Melanie's words as she was getting out of the car, and (2) the temple recommend interview, which asks 'Do you wear the authorized temple garments both day and night?' Melanie's comment was, 'Dad did you know Kirk loves you, because you bought him a shirt from Singapore when you were his Priest Quroum Advisor?' I wanted to go buy him another shirt, and I told myself I was just frustrated.
As I drove back to Houston in the heavy rain, I recalled buying the shirts for all of my scouts. I recalled when I was in Singapore, looking at the patterns, and remembering in High School when I had bought a similar pattern shirt for each of of The KeyNotes. I remembered how much everyone had liked the shirts, and how we wore those shirts for almost every dance we played for for about a year, probably in about 1966. Kirk would have been one of my priests in about 1990. And here it is 8 to 22 years later and I am thinking about those experiences with fond memories. Frustration is an interesting bedfellow.
The drive back to Houston went pretty quick. I got home at 10:00, and by the time I finished organizing stuff for the Norway trip it was already 3:30 AM. Saturday morning I got up at 5:30, and Larry drove me to the airport so he could use the car in the rain while I was in New Orleans. I slept on the way to the airport, and he went to the wrong terminal. I was plenty early to take the train over to the C Terminal. In New Orleans the booth was already a day behind because of the rain. The roof of the Convention Center was leaking. The booth was much harder to put together than had been expected. The loaner computer from Silicon Graphpics was down, and we finally decided it was not going to get up before the show (only to be proven wrong). It seemed like everyone was even more frustrated than I found myself. Bob Mars, Creve Maples, and I did go to Pascale Manele's and had a very nice dinner to drown our feelings and talk about all of the good things in life.
Today was one of those rare Sunday's when I didn't make it to church. I'd say it happend 5 times during my work at Landmark, and might happened once since I left Landmark. For instance, last time I spent a Sunday in New Oleans for a convention (which was when I was with Landmark), I took the morning and walked out to the local church and then took a cab back after priesthood meeting. However, today there was the SEG Interpretation Committee Meeting, and since I have several assignments, I felt I needed to be there. Then the day was spent at the booth, helping tie everything together. The demos during the Ice Breaker tonight went remarkably well. There is definitly interest in what we are doing. I have a 6:30 breakfast meeting to follow-up on some interest. And it is already 11:45. So I will go to sleep, reread this for typos and nonsense after I take a shower, and send it off in the morning. And hopefully by expressing my feelings like this, I can disolve the frustration which have seemed to plague me this week. Hopefully you can each find a way to redirect your feelings when you feel frustrated."