cc: file, Grandma Hafen via Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, Claude and Katherine Warner, and Lloyd and Luana Warner.
"I missed church again this week. Oh well!
It has been a very busy week. Sara and Rob came over for lunch with Larry, Paige, and I on Sunday morning, just after I wrote my Thoughtlet about the SEG Convention (.../1998/9838.html). Sister Moreless picked up Larry and Paige to take them to the Regional Conference at The Astrodome. Sara and Rob and I went down in the Saturn. It was a wonderful meeting for me. It was one of those little things in life which are so precious. I had two of my kids with me, and the choice is theirs whether they listened to and heard the message or not. It is sad to me that neither of them are interested in this Thoughtlet effort of mine, at least right now, and yet I do believe and hope it will be of some interest and value to them (and to each of you kids who still tune in) at some time in the future. I won't type out the seven pages of notes I took at the Sunday session. I will type out a couple quotes I wrote down which I found particularly touching.
Elder Abrea of the Seventy said:
Sister Brea said:
Elder Richard G. Scott of the Quorum of the 12 said:
Elder Scotts talk was graphic in regards to decisions about honesty, integrety, and control of the private parts of our bodies. In thinking about his words this week, it was a very loving way to teach the young children in the audience truth and to prepare them for the release of the video tapes describing how President Clinton and others have not learned these simple and basic lessons associated with being blessed with a body.
Sister Hinkley's talk was the most touching to me. Her story about her Grandma describing hearing angels singing at the dedication of the Manti Temple, and how now that over 70 years have passed and she has not yet heard angels sing and how she still knows the Gospel is true, struck me to the core. I found tears in my eyes as she bore her testimony. She said:
She is only 87. President Hinkley is a year older. He said:
Sara and Rob went right to the car. I waited at the foot of the west entrance to the Astrodome for my friend Blaine Taylor. There were about 30,000 people in attendance, and it was touching to have friends who have served me and others over the last 18 years come out, stop and shake hands with me, or give me a hug. Blaine finally made it, I took him to the car, and Sara drove us to Intercontinental Airport. I changed in the back seat. Rob said, `Dad, I can't believe you are doing that in front of your children.' I responded, `I'm not. I'm in back of you.'
The flight to London was uneventful. All flights to Stavanger were full, and we had to wait from 9:00 AM until 6:30 PM. So we went into London. Blaine and his family lived in London for several years. He was in charge of Conco's information management at the Marble Arch office at the northwest corner of Hyde Park (.../1998/9819.html and 9827.html) when I first met him in 1983 or 1984. He had recommended Conoco buy Landmark, and many years later was quite upset when someone told him, `I wonder why no one ever recommended we buy Landmark.' As we ate lunch at his favorite Italian Restrauant, just a block from the Marble Arch Tube Stop, I told him the rest of the story. Conoco has always been an early adopter. Within a year of funding, Conoco flew the Founders of Landmark Graphics up to Ponca City in their corporate plane to make a presentation about our plans. We thought we did a good job of explaining our plans. Bob Limbaugh, the first President and CEO of Landmark (and employee #1, even though I hired him), was so positive about the meeting that he reported to the Landmark Board of Directors that we received a verbal Purchase Order from Conoco. When the written Purchase Order didn't come though, he threated to sue Conoco for breach of a verbal contract. It was over 10 years later, and after I was no longer at Landmark, before they purchased their first Landmark Graphics workstation. Blaine understood the politics of what had happened.
We went from Marble Arch to Leister Square and stood in the discount theater ticket line Melanie and I had stood in a few weeks before (.../1998/9829.html). They changed the counter to be straight across instead of down the left side. In case any of you don't want to waste an hour standing in a line someday, there are no matinee theater performances in London on Family Home Evening day. We went back to Gatwick airport and read and typed on the computer. When we got to Stavanger at about 9:00 PM it was pitch black. There was a NATO Conference, and we had the opportunity to share a room about 20 miles south of Stavanger until the last night we were there.
PGS had hired us to go into the Norwegian PetroBank to build an IDEF-0 As-Is model of their business processes. It took us about 6 months to get the contract signed, and it was finally signed on the floor of the SEG Convention. The week was great. The modeling exercise was a great success. Roice and Ben, I expect both of you will find this work very interesting, and so when we get together you might remember to ask me about it. I'll be glad to show you how the model works on my portable computer. It was hard work (not physically, since I don't do anything physical except exercise a little bit these days). There is truly a significant potential impact tied to this work. It will be really interesting for me to watch over the next few months and years and to see if this work proves to be as important as I believe it will. Blaine got so tired that he was really `sawing logs' in his sleep by Wednesday and Thursday night. I used ear plugs on Thursday, and was glad when the hotel had another room open up on Friday. We had some very nice meals, including raindeer, lobster bisque, salmon, a rack of lamb, and shrimp fetticheni. I ate too much this week, and will need to work extra hard next week because of it.
As we left early Friday morning I bought a nice stocking stuffer for each of your Christmas stockings. No they are too big for stockings. Well, maybe it will be the only Christmas present you'll get from me. I am trying to decide if I need to send Paul's right away, so it arrives before he returns. Maybe, if I send it to President Galbraith, he can keep it, so Paul won't open it early. As we flew out of Stavanger we went though a couple of layers of clouds and I had one of those thought experiences which took me to a future time. I figured out how to implement Buckminster Fuller's Patent for a mile diameter geodesic sphere, which will be heated up by sunlight, and become a floating city. I wrote out the steps before we landed in Amsterdam. I was so excited about it I forgot your Christmas presents and left them on the plane. I was almost to the other plane to check-in before I remembered. It took over an hour to retrieve them, and I made it to the other gate just before they loaded to fly to Atlanta. The flight to Atlanta went quick. I worked on the computer, watched Dr. Dolittle and two Mr. Bean shorts (funny stuff!), ate, and thought about my latest invention. I shouldn't say my invention, because it felt like the ideas were planted in my mind, and I do know the source from which my insights eminate.
In Atlanta there was a luggage store in the airport. My big bag broke apart on the way to Norway, and so I bought two new smaller bags to replace it. I made it to the gate just as they started boarding the plane. The flight to New Orleans was uneventful, except I found out there was a big Hurricane in the Gulf heading in the general vacinity of New Orleans. I did map out, in my mind, and outline of a talk Roger Anderson has requested me to give at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University at the end of October. As we drove in the shuttle bus downtown, I thought I was in the movie `Independence Day.' The road leaving New Orleans was a parking lot. The road going into town was wide open. I checked into the 17th story of the Sheraton, and walked down to the convention center to register and see how the booth was coming along. The booth was up, and there was no one there. So I walked back, met a guy who invited me to join him for dinner, we found John Amason and Jim from MechDyne, and all three went out for a very nice pork dinner. There was talk about Hurricane Georges, and we all assumed it would blow over and just delay the start of the SPE Convention.
At 7:00 this morning I learned otherwise. John called and said the SPE Convention was cancelled, and asked what I wanted to do. A few minutes later we met downstairs and decided to make a run for it. We went to the booth and packed up the computers and key expensive equipment. I went and found a cab, and a U-Haul shop. They would not rent me a truck, because they were all for just New Orleans. We finally worked out where I could rent a van, if I promised to drive it back to New Orleans after the storm. I think the only reason he let me take it was because he did not want his new van to get damaged in the storm. Anyway, by noon we were packed, checked out of the hotel, had placed a computer chair between the two bucket seats, and John, Jim, and I headed out for Houston. I dropped of John at Park-`N-Fly and Jim at Budget Car Rental by Intercontinental Airport at 7:15 PM. By the time I drove to the house, checked Walden e-mail (27 messages), checked Continuum e-mail (47 messages) which I couldn't check from Norway because of the phone connections in the Hotel, looked though the mail, unpacked a few things, called my Mom and Grandma, and wrote this much of this it is 10:45 PM. I'm tired (maybe I should have let John or Jim drive some), and I miss not having had a chance to take the sacrament today. Oh well! At least it was another good week. Melanie just called and she has just got a job at an optometrist's office and is very much enjoying her gymnastics and swimming and other activities. I hope each of you had as good of a week as Melanie and I had, and that next week is better."