cc: file, Grandma Hafen via Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, Claude and Katherine Warner, Lloyd and Luana Warner. and Diane Cluff.
"Last week's Thoughtlet may have been short, and this week's is more than going to make up for the shortness, both in the number of things written about, and the length of the Thoughtlet. This was a very busy week, and as I think about writing about the week, and your reactions to what I am going to write about, my mind goes to the Book of Mormon:
The important news is that Grandma Hafen has had a series of strokes between Tuesday and Thursday evening. She is paralyzed on the right side, so she can not write. She can not form words to talk because the stroke has affected her tongue. She hurts a lot, and does not like anyone to touch her right side. I am going to do my best to get out to St. George to visit her within the next couple of weeks. I know how frustrated her wonderful mind must feel, not even being able to express how much she hurts and how she feels. The reason I know is because I had a kidney stone a few years ago, and it hurt more than anything I have ever experienced. Anyone as full of piss and vinegar as Grandma Hafen, who can not let a little bit of the pain out with a few well chosen words, has got to be feeling this same kind of pressure. At least we know what words are going through her mind. Hopefully thinking these phrases helps her a little with the pain. Please remember her in your prayers. She can not talk to you on the phone, and if you want to send flowers or a card send it to: Helen Hafen, Room 110 B, Red Cliffs Regional, 1745 East 280 North, St. George, Utah 84770.
The 1999 International SEG Convention was the second largest ever to occur. As happens every 3 or 4 years, the convention coincided with my birthday. Between the two events there were meetings and parties every minute of every day all week long. As I think back over all that happened this past week I get a headache. In fact, it was so bad, I went and took an hour nap after writing that last sentance, and then said a prayer to break my my fast and took a few minutes to eat some dinner before starting to write again. Even after taking an Advil and doing all of this, as I think of all that happened last week, I still have a headache. Oh well! At least I know it will go away sometime.
At the Continuum Resources Board of Director's meeting last Sunday,
Mr. Finstad learned I was receiving the SEG's Enterprise Award, and
that my 50th birthday was on Wednesday, 03 November 1999. So he
turned to his accounting partner and they immediately gave me an
unexpected present. It was a solid gold tie clip with the Norex
Raindeer and a famous Norwegin mountain on an emblem. It is very nice,
and since I always wore a tie clip in my youth, it is easy for me as
an old man to wear the Norex tie-clip. It definitely highlights the
bend in my front, which leads to where my stomach sticks out. A
digital photo of the tie-tack shows how nice it is:
.
I mentioned missing church to go to the Interpretation Committee Meeting and the SEG Counsel Meeting last week. What there was not time to write about was all of the friends I have at the SEG, and how good it was to spend time talking to them between, after, and before the various meetings of the week. For instance, at the SEG Counsel Meeting Jack Krupenbach, who used to work for a company Landmark purchased. He is now retired in Philadelphia with a nice bank account (he is much smarter than I). We spent some time catching me up on his activities. Jack has this big handlebar moustache, and big bushy sideburns. He is the new Secretary for the SEG. He spends most of his time now trying to unravel the finances of the Methodist Church. He is very frustrated with the value of all of the old churches in the downtowns of all of the major towns across the world, and the fact no one knows what the assets of the church are. In fact, he has hired a lawyer, and is busy challenging the church about how resources are being used. As with many of my friends at the SEG, part of the conversation was about the LDS church, and in this case about the positive way finances are handled by the church. I explained to Jack that not everyone is happy with the way the LDS church handles donations and assets. He told me I was his hero, and that he daily thanks me because of the financial circumstance he is in. It might have gone to my head, had I not overheard him say the same words to Andy Hildebrand the next day after the SEG Awards Ceremony, where 4 of the 5 Landmark Founder's received the SEG Enterprise Award.
As reported last week, when I came home from the SEG Counsel Meeting,
I quickly wrote out a brief Thoughtlet, and then we got ready to go
downtown to the George Brown Convention Center to the SEG Icebreaker.
Andrea expressed concern about wearing the gold ribbon, which was for
those receiving the Enterprise Award and their spouses. `After all,'
she said, `I wasn't with you during all of those years when you earned
the award.' Divorce is hard, and there is seldom a day when there are
not regrets, and other deeply seated feelings regarding what was,
what could have been, and what is. However, Andrea's humble honesty
is one of the many reasons I have come to love her, and recognize what
a wonderful blessing she is in my life. I took a digital photo of
my badge 
. There were a lot of
friends I introduced to Andrea.
Dr. Yorham Shoram is now a Vice-President of External Affairs for Shell. He is at the same level as Paul Sullivan, who is now responsible for the research labs in both the U.S. and Riswick. We were on the SEG Research Committee together for about 10 years. I always felt like ideas were planted in my mind by Heavenly Father, as part of the promise for keeping the Word of Wisdom, and that it gave me to provide more than my fair share of ideas at the Research Committee meetings. Yorham is originally from Israel. He sounds interested in the things Continuum is doing, and I hope there is some business that comes from the discussions. I expect some of you will have an opportunity to meet Yorham in coming years.
Dr. Elmer Eisner was one of the senior researchers at Texaco. He is also Jewish, and is a brilliant mathematician. He is retired now and is doing some work at Rice. He has some ideas for representing the seismic wavelet in a different way, and I look forward to working with Elmer. Back in 1982 Elmer was one of Texaco's representatives to the Seismic Acoustics Laboratory (SAL). At one of our annual meetings we were having lunch together, and I mentioned we were expecting our sixth child (yes, Rob this was you). He looked at me and with great indignity said, `What gives you the right to have six children? With the population explosion, who do you think you are that you can have so many children?' I don't remember the exact words, I just remember it was a very uncomfortable moment. One of the other Texaco researchers, a man named Higgenbothem, turned to Elmer and said, `Elmer, calm down. His kids are smarter than yours.' And the attack stopped. As I looked at Elmer at the SEG, I saw a brilliant scientist who has no research budget, and who is frustrated beyond measure. I just wanted to find a way to help him explore his ideas. He has a good heart and is such a fine scientist.
Dr. John McDonald was here from Perth, Australia. He was at Gulf Research when I first came to SAL. Gerry (Dr. G.H.F.) Gardner was interviewing with Fred Hilterman and Keith Wong at the same time I was. Gerry joined SAL shortly after I did, only he was in the Electrical Engineering Department, and when Keith left, Gerry took his place as one of the SAL Principal Investigators (PI's). A year later when Fred left to form Geophysical Development Corporation (GDC or G-- D--- Company according to his wife Kathy), John came in as the PI from the Department of Natural Sciences. John and I got along OK at first. As he became more comfortable with his position, he took more and more power and became somewhat of the kind of manager I do not work well with. This was one of the main reasons I was talking to Kevin Kinsella about forming what became Landmark Graphics. Several years after I left SAL and AGL (Allied Geophysical Laboratories), John got cross-wise with the Departments and ended up leaving and going to Perth to work with an affiliate of SAL, CURTIN University. I saw a couple of the other professors who work with John, and they are extremely pleased with all of the good work he is doing there. Still likes the pubs too much, and that is an accepted part of the Australian culture. I encouraged John to get involved with Continuum in Perth.
I could go on and on about friends from the SEG. Maybe the most important fact is how wonderful it was to have Andrea there with me. I've gone to these conventions alone for years. Andrea is excited about what I do for a living, she was engaged with my friends, finding out about them, asking questions, learning, listening, telling me what she thought, etc. The 1999 SEG Icebreaker was a wonderful experience. I really didn't want to see the evening end, it was so much fun. And it wasn't because I was receiving the Enterprise Award and had people congratulating me. Rather, it was because I had a partner on the other end of my hand, who was engaged and participating with me and my friends. We got back to the house about 11:00 Sunday Evening, and I was already really tired. Partly because I had a cold.
Monday morning there was an e-mail from BP notifying us of an $11,400
wire transfer to Walden Visualization Systems (WVS). I prepared an
e-mail for Jim Vetter to tell him AIOC was paying their platform
placement optimization software license fee and the WVS back account
can finally be shut-down. I also printed out copies of the Thoughtlet
for Grandma Nelson, Grandma Shirts, and Matt, wrote them each notes,
and put the two to Utah in the mail. I picked up Rob at 6:50 and
asked him to sneak a 3 foot arrow into the convention center for me.
Thanks Rob, I thought the prop turned out really good. Rob, Rachel,
and Matt all stayed out of school and joined Andrea and me for the
Presidential Session and Honors and Awards Program for the SEG. We
got to the meeting room about 8:15 AM, and everyone had breakfast
while I talked to friends, including Dr. Gardner, the outgoing
President of the SEG, Brian Russell, and the incoming President,
Bill Barkhouse, who used to work with me at Mobil Oil. The program
is very nice and I will mail copies of the program to Grandmas Nelson,
Shirts, and Hafen. There are digital camera copies of relevant pages
from the program on-line. These
include the cover (../gifs/EnterpriseAwardProgram.JPG), Peter Duncan's
citation (...12PeterDuncan.JPG) and Kay Wyatt's citation (...13KayWyatt.JPG) for Life
Membership, previous Enterprise Award Receipiants (...20Receipiants.JPG), Andy
Hildebrand (...21AndyHildebrand.JPG), Bob Limbaugh (...22BobLimbaugh.JPG), John Mouton
(...23JohnMouton.JPG), my citation by Roger Anderson 
,
Gerry (G.H.F.) Gardner's citation for the SEG's highest award, the Maurice Ewing Medal (...37GerryGardner.JPG and ...38GerryGardner.JPG), and Brian Russell Presidential Address (...39BrianRussell.JPG).
Even the meeting room was quite a formal gathering, and I was not sure about using the arrow. So I asked Peter Duncan, and he encouraged me to go ahead with my plan. Rob and I transferred the arrow from his pant leg to mine underneath the table. They took away the family to sit on the front rows, and we all went and sat on the stage. It was really boring and seemed to last forever. I was very proud of you kids for sitting through all of this. I had been asked to make a brief acceptance speech for the four recognized founders. Kevin Kinsella was never a member of the SEG, and the others have written him out of the history. I accepted the assignment from one of Mouton's bosses from when he and Andy worked at Exxon because it seemed appropriate. I am the only one of the founders still active in the SEG, and the scriptures talk about the first shall be last and the last shall be first, and as the first founder it made sense to me to be the last one to speak about the founding of Landmark Graphics. So after we had each had our picture taken, and a group photo taken, I got up to talk. I started off stating I had brought a prop to highlight the definition of a pioneer. With that I pulled Matt's arrow out of my pant leg, put it under my arm, and turned sideways so it looked to the audience like I had an arrow in my back. It was nice to hear the bored audience laugh and come alive a little bit. I forgot most of what I had planned on saying. I did express that success has many fathers, many of whom were in the audience, how unexpected receiving the award was, what an honor it is to have had a major impact on our professional society and on society in general, and I closed quoting Bob Limbaugh's famous lead line: `Never before in the history of the world.'
There were several friends who came up and congratulated us. Matt and Rob were all over the stage, and so we took them and Rachel downstairs to show them Continuum's and Landmark's booths and to let you all see the SEG Convention Floor. Thanks each of you for coming. As President McKay taught us, `No success in life can compensate for failure in the home,' and since I recognize marriage and divorce are an important component of `the home,' it was actually more important to me to have you kids, the most important component of `the home,' there with me and part of what was going on than to have received the Enterprise Award. Maybe I am fooling myself, however, I believe that the successes each of you kids in life are having in your individual lives are demonstrating we did not have a failure in either the Roice Nelson nor the Andrea Shirts Nielson homes. After quickly walking through the exhibits, we walked over to The Park, the downtown mall which is in the same building my downtown office is in. Andrea and the kids ate lunch and shopped while I went upstairs to II&T for an hour teleconference call with Pierre DuPont in Boston, Steve Joseph in Utah, and Roger Anderson with me. Exciting times.
Monday afternoon I worked the booth. Again, there were way too many people come by to write about the friendships and the relationships which have been built up with each of them over the years. After lunch Andrea took the kids home and she had some things she needed to do. Because of the cold and the number of people I was talking to, I started to lose my voice. Peter had set up presentations in the main theater on the booth so I only had a formal presentation once a day. On Monday it was at 4:30. There were problems with the michrophone, and it was pretty rough, compared to how I like to give customer presentations. I guess I should describe the booth, as part of this diary entry. Continuum had a larger booth than Landmark. It was 40 feet by 40 feet. In one back corner was an 8 foot tall 12 foot curved Panoram theater. There were about 25 seats in the theater. There was also a monitor which was connected to one of the computers at the front of the booth to show collaboration. There was a 3-pipe HP computer, an SGI Deskside Onyx, a large Ciprico disk drive, and three monitors for theater flyers across the back. In the opposite back corner were three black leather couches from one of the two decompression areas at work. In front of the theater on the right was a 4 foot square and 10 foot tall island with Energy Innovations data acquisition QC flyers and posters. Opposite was an personal computer running the MicroSoft NT operating system and dedicated to MuSE demos. In front of these two areas was a diagonal 20 foot tall and 2 foot wide divider with a walkway into the booth. On the backside were cabinet level table areas on both the left and the right. There were posters all across both sides talking about `Opening Doors Into Perceptual Computing.' The brashist statement was `Any Operating System, Any Computer, Anywhere.' In front of this island were 2 smaller computers on either side of the walkway. On the right was an HP Unix workstation with a small three window Panoram monitor (a minature of the theater at our offices in London and Houston). This got a lot of attention, even though it price lists for $27,000, or about double what it costs to put three monitors next to each other on a desk. Next to this was an Integraph NT, which was used to collaborate with the large Panoram theater, as if it was London and Houston collaborating. On the left side was a Dell NT and a HP NT. There were joysticks on each of these four systems, and customers were encouraged to sit down and try out the MuSE driven user interface. Across the front corner was a 4 foot tall reception area covered with brochures and give aways.
There was a schedule of demos in the theater next to the reception area. We had 3, 40 minute demos in the morning and in the afternoon. At the end of one of the demos in the morning and one of the demos in the afternoon there was a drawing for a free Mirage, the reversed paralax mirrors with a hole on top and an object on the bottom, which projects to the top and appears to be something you can pick up. Sunday evening the booth was decorated with Halloween stuff, and there was candy at various places in the booth all week long. It was amazing to me how well it all came together. Especially since Steve Hunt left, Peter was assigned to pick up his work, and the booth design and contents kept changing until two weeks before the show. It really did come together nicely, and in my opinion Gary Crouse and Steve Suckman from MuSE should get most of the credit for how well we came off. Our booth was one of the busiest on the floor. There were over 10,000 attendees. And all in all Monday was a great day. There were glitches, like the sound system for collaboration for my demo. However, we got better as the week wore on. There were dozens of folks that came by the booth just to find me and congratulate me on receiving the Enterprise Award.
I left the booth at 6:00 and went out front where Andrea picked me up. We drove over and parked in the theater area parking and walked a few blocks to the Landmark party which was at the Sky Club. Their party invitation was a take-off on Continuum in that it says `A New Dimension in Space and Time.' They gave away a Nissan Xterra in their booth. The invitation read:
On the way over to the Spy Club, which is a Yuppie bar in which the average age of visitors is 25 and there are always lines on weekends, I got a call on the cell phone from my friend Caroline Sumners asking where Mr. Finstad was. Last Sunday, during the Continuum Board Meeting, Kjell had told us he is building a large mall in Stavanger called Havana. He will have this finished in April and he plans to have a planetarium in the mall running MuSE and once it is proven to take it to malls all over Scandanavia and then across the globe. I told him he should talk to the Director of the Houston Planetarium, who is the leader in developing this type of technology. He asked me to get hold of her, and so I went down to my office, looked up Carolyn's phone number in the Walden 3-D data base at home, went back to the meeting and called her. I apologized for calling on Sunday morning, especially after not talking to her for over 5 years. She headed up the trip to Monte Alban when Roice and I went to Mexico to observe the eclipse, and I did several projects at the planetarium after that trip. She is absolutely brilliant, and it was nice to reconnect. Anyway, we made arrangements for Kjell and Jeff Hume to visit her Monday evening while Andrea and I were making an apperance at the Landmark party. However, Kjell and Jeff were late. So Andrea and I walked back to the car, got the cell phone numbers, called, and by the time we got hold of them, they were at the Planetarium.
So it was almost 7:00 by the time we finally made it inside The Spy
Club for the Landmark party. Bars are not my favorite environments.
The noisy environment with flashing lights always reminds me of The
KeyNotes. The drinking and sexy dresses make me uncomfortable. We
just arrived when Marti Berryman found us and talked to us for a while.
Then Bob Peebler showed up and we talked for a while. I told him I
thought he was doing a great job of capitalizing on the Enterprise
Award for Landmark's marketing purposes, and he denied that was his
objective. Said, `Roice, just because that is what you would do, it
doesn't mean we aren't just doing this to honor you guys.' I smiled.
He gave me a gold Monte Blanche pen, engraved with `Roice Nelson, Jr.,
Landmark Founder.' I expect the pen cost several thousand dollars.
It is really pretty 
,
and
although it is a long way from who I am, I expect I will find times
when it will be useful to use it to sign various documents.
We talked to a bunch of different people. John Gibson was sitting on one of the few benches talking to Bill Hottman. We sat next to him, and when he saw us he said `Roice, do you know Bill Hottmann. I smiled and did not remind him of the conversation with him and Bill at the Landmark Technology Conference in 1998 (../9809.html). When we walked into the upstairs bar, there was Bob Limbaugh with a glass of alcohol and smoking a big cigar. First time in years he has talked to me. He looked at me, and said, `Well Roice, here I am with two of the sins of the world, and I'm enjoying it.' Just before we started Landmark some of Bob's family joined the church, and he always has expressed interest, and never has made it past the Word of Wisdom. He continued, `I am not going to pay for this cigar, I'm going to let Landmark pay for it. Thanks for your kind words today.' Interesting how little we change over the years. His wife Lucy came up, and I apoligized for how jittery the kids had been when we received the Enterprise Award. She said, `I asked the little guy if he wouldn't rather have been at school, and he said, "No, that's my dad," and ran off.' It was nice to hear.
We talked at some length to Carole Wright. She reminded me of the first time we met in Australia, maybe 12 years ago, and how I asked her why a cute girl like her wasn't married yet. Said she is still asking herself that question. However, after leaving Landmark and going on her own to teach and do corporate training and corporate communications she has really found herself. Melanie, along with Laura Pankonien and Susan Helgeson, Carole would be a great person for you to get to know. We talked to Bill Resley, who is now back at Landmark. About 12 years ago, one of our mutual friends at Mobil, Tom Hearst, called me and said Bill wanted to stay in Europe rather than transfer back to Dallas. I made introductions to the London office, and Bill became Landmark's best European demonstrator and trainer. When he left he worked with my friend Sean McQuaid (../9819.html). We talked to Susie Mastoras Peebler. I told Andrea about the short consulting job I did for Texaco at Universal City in North L.A., and how Suzie and I became friends, how she came to work for Landmark, and became Landmark's best North American and show demonstrator. And now she is married to the boss. We settled on having Bob and Suzie come out to dinner on December 12th and then go to the joint Epiphany/Katy Stake Christmas Choir. About this time we got another call from Carolyn Sumner saying they were all just leaving the Planetarium. So we excused ourselves, walked back to the car and drove out to Landmark.
The system, specifically voice recognition, was not working, and Jeff was really frustrated. However, we had a great discussion, and it was sure good to see Carolyn and her husband Gary Young again. Mr. Finstad was suitably impressed, and we have a plan on how to develop a plan prior to his returning the first week of December. Carolyn likes our theater, and merging the digital movies she is creating at the Houston Planetarium with the work Continuum is doing has very exciting possibilities. For instance, she wants to create a special show in conjunction with the Utah Winter Olympics on winter sports on other planets and moons in our solar system. For instance, she plans on showing with animation files how far someone can ski jump on various ice covered moons of Saturn and Jupiter. My connections with the Utah Planning groups will prove very useful. We dropped Kjell off at the Crowne Plaza at Highway 6 and I-10, and got home about 11:30 PM. I was almost completely horse.
Tuesday morning I left the house at 6:00 and worked on catching up on
e-mail until the shuttle van was ready to take us down to the
convention at 7:30. It was interesting riding downtown in the van.
Continuum is turning into a funny company. Sometimes I wonder if
I will ever be able to implement the things I have learned in a
systematic way. As long as there is free agency and more than one
person to please, I expect the answer is no. Maybe if we make enough
money we can control the environment on a start-up enough to implement
what I am coming to realize are radical ideas in organizational
development. Maybe if I write about my ideas, one of you kids or one
of your kids will pick up on the ideas and implement them. It is
frustrating to see folks making short term decisions, which they do
not seem to understand the consequenses of. And to top it all off,
I get so frustrated because I have such a hard time finding words to
explain what seems so obvious to me. Sometimes I do find the words.
The presentation I gave at HARC on the 28th of October (9944.html)
titled `The Impending Obsolescence of Maps,' was rewritten as a cover
article for the daily show newspaper put out by Harts. They titled
it `Models Will Eventually Replace Maps' and a digital photocopy of
the article is at ../gifs/MapsToModelsArticle.jpg
.
There was also
a photo of the 4 Landmark Founders getting the Enterprise Award in
this same magazine 
.
We had good traffic in the booth. Gary Crouse started the morning off by having me spend time with Martin Peersmann who is the Head of the Secton of Geo-Applicaition Development for TNO, the Netherlands Institute of Applied Geoscience, part of a national research institute. I had worked with Martin before when we were doing the HyperMedia thing, and as I recall he replicated what we showed him and competed against us. Maybe it was with the original Landmark Graphics developments. Anyway it was a very interesting conversation. One of the things they are struggling with is water. Too much water and responding to all of the flooding in Holland. They need a command and control center to monitor all of the data they are now collecting, and to mobilize units to go and minimize the impact of flooding. For instance, when it rains too much, the soil under the dykes becomes fluid, and the dykes will break. This can be predicted, and steps taken to minimize the impact. I told Martin it sounds to me like the modern version of the boy who put his finger in the dyke and saved the country from flooding. Ben and Paul and Rob and Nate, you might find the work they have published interesting (http://www.nitg.tno.nl/dss or http://www.nitg.tno.nl/webatlas). Always the optimist, however realizing history often repeats itself, I expect we will be doing some joint projects with these folks over the next few months and years.
Steve Poole, who is an independent software developer who has done a lot of visualization work for the spooks, those guys who listen to parts of all of our conversations, and the National Labs, like Los Alamos where they simulate nucear bombs, expressed interest in helping us solve some real visualization problems. Dave Cooper, who is now the Chief Geophysicist for Pan Canadian, was very excited about our ability to display multiple seismic volumes, and specifically to use our environments as a means for remote collaboration. Dr. Carlos Alberto Dias, who received a special commendation award at the SEG Awards Program, spent some time talking to me after my collaborative demonstration. An indian raised in a hut with a mud floor, he largely self-educated himself, got accepted to U.S. universities, and ended up with a Ph.D. from Berkley. He has established 5 universities in Brazil over the last decade, and is making a major impact on the education, and specifically the oil & gas industry in Brazil. When the scriptures talk about the Lamanites to blossom as a rose (D&C 49:24 and 117:7), I believe the Lord is talking about the Carlos Dias' of Central and South America. It is exciting to watch this transformation.
Dr. A.W.H. (Albert) van der Kallen, formerly the Vice-President of Research for Shell in Risjwick, now retired, spent about two hours with me on Tuesday afternoon. We went through IDEF-0, IDEF-1X, IDEF-2, IDEF-3, and how these activity, data schema, simulation, and work flow information models relate to databases for skills, competencies, best practices, solutions, case histories, resources, etc. We also talked through some of the softside issues I have been working on over the past few years, specifically the importance of effectiveness (time management), efficiency (principle based leadership), needs (the Birkman quantitative measurement of needs, wants, stress factors, etc.), and capacity (planning horizon and age based on the book Applied Potential Capacity by Jacques and Cason). This was one of the best conversations I have had this decade. It was really exciting to me to be able to share these ideas with someone who immediately grasped them and was excited about the potential implications of implementation.
Andrea got to the show as I was talking to Albert. She helped at the
front desk. Sean McQuaid also stopped by, and gave Rhonda a wedding
gift for Andera and I. It is The Oxford Book of English Verse, and
includes a photo taken by his daughter of me with Sean and his wife
and son during our Easter Picnic in 1998 
.
If you have read this far, I hope you realize that it is impossible to
use words to capture all that happens at an SEG Convention. Think about
this statement the next time you read a biography or an autobiography.
For each life is much more complicated than a simple convention. Isn't
it wonderful how God has provided such a unique testing environment for
each of us to prove to ourselves whether we wish to return to be with
him again or not.
At about 5:00 Andrea and I left the convention and went over to the AGL. It was the first time Andrea had seen where I worked from January of 1980 to November of 1982. Dr. Dan Ebrom, a Texaco Researcher and former Director of the AGL was there. He was the Vice-President of the GSH (Geophysical Society of Houston) who talked me into doing the Immersive Environments Spring Symposium (9916.html). He had a lot to say to Andrea. Also Dr. K.K. Shekeran, who I hired and trained to take my place when I left the AGL/SAL, was there and he pointed out the SALNEL physical model, which I named after myself in a moment of boasting and forgetting that the ideas truly are seeds planted in our mind by our Father in Heaven and his agent The Holy Ghost. The model plan, and the resulting time-slice images are documented in my book New Technologies in Exploration Geophysics (NTEG) on pages 147-149. The lab has been rebuilt over the last couple of decades. The old trailers we put in to handle overflow students and staff are still there. There were a lot of stories to recall for Andrea. We went from the AGL over to VERI (Virtual Reality Research Institute), the new name for VETL (Virtual Environment Technology Laboratory). Dr. Bowen Loftin, Pat Hyde, Hector Gonzalez, and others were glad to see us. I have been so busy with Continuum and getting settled in with new family members I havn't been over to the lab for several months. It was good to visit.
We were invited to the Presidential Banquet. However, Andrea, as Young Women's President, was also supposed to be at a regional meeting at the LDS meeting house on Bissonet (down by where we used to go to church when we went to the Maplewood 2nd Ward). I was so tired and hoarse by this time, that I just slept in the car while Andrea went to her meeting. I also read a few chapters of Clancey's Netforce: Hidden Agenda. The meeting lasted from 7-9:15 PM. After this we went to the Westin Oaks Hotel at the Galleria to the Presidential Suite on the 24th floor. I took my guitar, which is the first time I have ever done something like that in all my years in the SEG. Peter Duncan had recommended it.
When we got there we ended up talking to Dr. Don Paul, Vice-President of Environment for Chevron, for the first while. Don has been C.E.S.'s major sponsor within Chevron. The meeting in San Francisco a few weeks ago (9936.html) was with Don. Don was a fraternity brother of Kevin Kinsella (../9816.html, ../9824.html, ../9837.html, ../9847.html, and 9932.html), and back in early 1982 we had asked Don to be a co-founder of Landmark Graphics. This was before Limbaugh, Hildebrand, or Mouton. He turned us down, and we have talked about it many times, usually at SEG Conventions, over the years since then. There is no question in my mind that he made the right decision. He is the top technical man at Chevron. As he described a meeting he had with Governor Jeb Bush in Florida, it once again became obvious how fragile the oil industry's economic viability is. Norway is attempting to require Phillips Petroleum to pay to dismantle a large production facility in the North Sea. If this happens it will cost Phillips over $2.00 per barrel for every barrel of oil they have ever produced there, and will possibly force them into bankruptcy. The environmental requirements of Florida and California are approaching the same fervor. Governor Bush, note this is a Republican Governor, said that the oil industry is going to be targeted the same as the tobacco companies have been over the last decade. This is a serious problem, and especially as we go into this winter, it will be interesting to see public reaction. It is a fact that natural gas supplies tied to existing transportation systems have largely been used up. It is a fact that there has been a major switch to natural gas, particularly for generating electricity and heating homes. It is a fact there are going to be tremendous shortfalls of natural gas, if not this winter, certainly within the next few winters. Unlike tobacco companies, which have economics based on users personal addictions, petroleum companies provide products which have real value in transportation, synthetics, etc. I still think we need to see the price of a gallon of gasoline increased to the price of a gallon of coffee or even `natural water' so that people appreciate and better use this natural resource. I'm not sure how to respond to Don's identified concerns, and I will be spending a lot of thinking time working on it over the next few years.
We went in and listened to Peter play a couple of songs on his guitar. He asked if I brought my guitar, and when I answered affirmative, asked me to go get it and play with him. I stayed and played with him and the others until about 12:30 AM. Tried to sing a song once, and my voice was completely gone. So I followed and played rhythm chords in the background. It was fun. Finally we were playing a song and they were singing `I wanna go home' and I heard Andrea singing out especially loud. So we packed up the guitar and took off. It was interesting to have several folks from Mobil there and to have them (1) so suprised I play the guitar, (2) so complementary about the Enerprise Award, and (3) so flattering in their comments to Andrea about what has happened over my career so far. We got home about 1:30 AM.
Wednesday morning I drove down to the Convention Center. Andrea had stuff to do all day, especially with the `Young Women in Excellence' program Wednesday evening. The booth was as busy as ever. I collected a lot of cards again (a total of about 90 cards for the week, and the cards are the triggers to remind me what to write about here). One friend it was good to see was John Suydam. John was at Superior Oil when I was working at the SAL. We did a couple of research projects together, one of which, SALFRS, is documented on page 144 of NTEG. As often happens with the zeit geist (spirit of the time), John has been thinking about the use of sound as a discriminator of specific reflectors. This ties directly with the preliminary patent Dave Monk applied for. John is interested in working towards a joint research project, possibly funded by Unio Pacific Resources, which is where he went after Mobil bought Superior Oil. Since it is almost 10:00 Monday morning, and I ought to go to work today, I will not try to be as detailed in describing the rest of my week.
At 4:15 Peter and I left the convention and took the HOV Lane (High Occupancy Vehicle) to get back out to the office by 5:00. I had four folks from the Boling Salt Dome project waiting to see me. This is a project I worked on in 1995-1996 to provide technical validation for putting a low grade toxic waste depository in salt caverns solution mined in the Boling Salt Dome. The caverns would be 165 feet in diameter at the base and 110 feet in diameter at the top and 2,000 feet tall. A paper describing the results of my interpretation work is at: http://www.walden3d.com/w3d/virtual_seminars/UCSC_08May96/index.html. When I told Michelle and Rhonda I was taking them upstairs for a presentation on my PC, they both told me I might want to use the conference room. My office was full of black balloons, black streamers, black plastic confetti, wadded up newspaper, and a variety of mobiles, and wall hangings referencing my 50th birthday. I retrieved my PC and gave a brief presentation in the conference room. Fesheng Yang printed out hardcopy for them and put some of the images in a PowerPoint File for them. Mike Shelton agreed to pay me the money he has been delinquent on for several years, both to me and to Denny Loren.
Carl Brassow and one of his associates stayed for the Kelman/Continuum Open House. I gave the presentation `The Impending Obsolescense of Maps' again. Had a good audience with a lot of folks I have worked with over the years. So I was able to relate comments to specific projects we worked on. There was good rapport with the audience, and it was one of the better presentations I have given. It was a lot of fun, and I was glad to sit down after it was over. Then Peter Duncan stood up and told everyone `Roice is becoming obsolesent.' They proceeded to bring in a birthday cake with 50 candles lit on it, and the 80-100 geoscientists in attendance sang Happy Birthday. By the time I finished cleaning up and headed out, I just made it to the Church at 9:00. Rachel had already left and I'm sorry I missed her presentation for Young Women in Excellence. Reminded me of the song `Cat's in the Craddle.' I went home, read a bunch of e-mail, and went to sleep early.
Thursday morning I slept in and woke up just in time to wave goodbye to Rachel as she left for seminary at 6:00. I got to the office about 8:00, and caught up on e-mail and phone messages. Then I sorted and copied business cards from the convention and wrote out follow-up notes for Continuum. At 10:00 there was the first of three collaborative demos with London. There were about 60 visitors. The demo went very good. A couple of dozen folks stayed in the theater and we showed some multi-attribute large 3-D seismic surveys. There were a lot of questions, and it went very well. Allister Brown was in the audience, and it was obvious he only thought of Virtual Reality as the Head-Mounted Displays (HMD). Finished the cards between the meetings, and was downstairs to welcome people coming to the 12:00 demo. As soon as they were seated, I took off for Austin, where I was an expert witness in a meeting with the management of TNRC (Texas Natural Resource Commission). This was with Carl Brassow and Mike Shelton and company. Interesting meeting. Interesting how concerned the director was that someone was going to call him up and ask questions if he gave approval. The lawyer representing SEM (Secure Environmental Management), the group I have been working with, was also the lawyer representing the company whose garbage truck jack-knifed in front of Governor Bush and brought national media attention to waste management in Texas. They were very satisfied with my contribution. I consider this both an interesting and a strategic project. What we do with toxic wastes is a serious issue. Using salt domes as long term storage is questionable to many, and I am coming down on the side of those who see it as stable for the next few centuries.
After the meeting I went to People Books to look for a book I found there several years ago. Didn't find it, and I bought myself 3 other books, as if I wasn't far enough behind on my reading. Always the optimist. Then I met Melanie at the Institute, we picked up Sara, and we went out for a very nice dinner. Thanks for the card girls (for other cards and photos see .../photos/Family/RBN1aRoiceNelsonFamily/FiftithBirthday). I miss Roice. Oh well! As we were waiting for a malt for desert at Jack-In-The-Box, Mr. Meng Ersheng called and asked me to go to work for The Bureau of Geophysical Prospecting of China National Petroleum Corporation. It was kind of a surreal conversation. I agreed to meet him Friday evening for dinner, and to talk more. I stopped to see Bill Bavinger's friend/contact/co-worker, Pleny Fisk, and got back to Houston about 10:15 PM. Another long day. Fell asleep watching Jay Leno.
Friday started with a C.E.S. breakfast down by Rice University.
Pierre DuPont came down from Boston. We met with Monte Miller,
an Executive Vice-President at Koch Chemicals. They do about $2
billion in business a year. From there Roger and Pierre and I went
to Clear Lake to meet with Wayne Esser of Boeing. We came back up
town and at lunch at Guadalahara's off of I-59, and then went over
to II&T for a two hour conference call with Steve Joseph. A lot of
thinking, and very little to show for it. C.E.S. is not coming
together like we expected nor like we hoped. It is frustrating to
know you are working with a good idea and to not be able to
implement because of cash restrictions. Guess this is a lesson I
need to learn, for it keeps coming up in my life. I dropped
Pierre off at Hobby Airport, and took the tollroad back to the
office. I got to the office at about 4:10, just as the CoRe Exchange
was starting up. There was a debrief about the SEG, and then Ken
Weisnberg gave a great presentation on the National Oil Repository
project studied by Sandia National Laboratory. I left the office
about 5:30 and went over to West Park and West Chase to pick up Mr.
Meng. He brought us a couple of gifts, a batik cloth and a scarf,
and I gave him a copy of Prime Words. We took some pictures
,
and then went to a Chinese
Restaurant on Westheimer that I took some of you kids to once. It
is called Wong II. Mr. Meng offered me a job at $50 per week, since
that is all it would cost to live in Zhou Zhou. With an hourly salary
in excess of that, it doesn't make any economic sense. We had a nice
evening together. We got back to the house about 9:30 and I was
so tired I just went to sleep. Rachel had a friend staying over
Friday and Saturday night.
Saturday morning I got up at 8:00. Andrea was already feeding breakfast to a group of her Laurals. I have to admit, I just must be lazy, sleeping in until 8:00. Matt didn't want to go to his soccer game. So after talking about it at some length we went outside and mowed and edged the lawn and swept up the yard. I had to leave at 10:40 to pick up Mr. Meng and his colleague and take them to Continuum for a demonstration. Mike Yates and Steve Slawson came in to join me on this one. The demos went well, and Mr. Meng took Steve and I out to lunch at the same restaurant Andrea and I had gone to the night before with him. Mr. Meng gave me another gift, a very nice pearl necktie. It is really unique and looks nice. He assured me it only cost him $3.00. I gave him the stereoviewer (viewmaster) Ibought on our honeymoon, and so I need to buy another one next timeI make it to Zion. We talked about several ways we can work together,specifically by selling them a visualization theater and by supportingtheir field crew sales outside of china. It was 3:00 by the time I got home. It took Matt and I a couple of hours to finish sweeping up the yard. However it was an `A+ Job' when we were finished. Thanks Matt. I came in and took another shower, then cleaned up the office and helped set up for my birthday party.
Byron Arnason, who I reconnected with at the SEG, came by about 6:00.
We worked together in Mobil Field Operations. He was a return
missionary who hid the fact he was a member of the church from me.
His wife was from Cuba, and she told me once when I visited her in
Austin and Byron wasn't around. They have a daughter at BYU now. I
think Byron said she is a Junior. Paul if you want to meet her you
can get contact information from byronta@juno.com. Byron has always
been interested in potential field geophysics. He has an electrical
process called Tipper which we are going to run at a few places in
Southern Utah where I suspect there is some geothermal potential. It
should be a fun project, and it could be very beneficial to the local
economy. We were still looking at pictures when folks started to show
up for my 50th birthday party. Alan Peterson, Peter Duncan, and Jeff
Lenihan each brought their guitars. We had a lot of fun at the party.
Andrea put on a real spread. There were probably 50 people who came.
There are a bunch of photos at:
www.walden3d.com/photos/Family/RBN1a_RoiceNelsonFamily/FiftithBirthday.
I particularly like the one of the candles being lit
.
Although Peter Duncan
was out playing guitar until 3:00 Thursday morning, they left along
with everyone else about 9:30. So with my new set of teeth (see the
photos), I sat in the library and wrote some words to the tune I had
made up at Scout Camp with Matt (9943.html). The words ar below and the title is:
I apologize for the length of this Thoughtlet. I realize you all have better things to do with your time. Maybe I am boasting more than I intend. However, just maybe this week is the normal result of listening to the still small voice, and just maybe each of you will find yourselves in similar straights as you follow promptings planted in your mind by The Holy Ghost and end up with your own Enterprise Award."
