cc: file, Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail., Sara and Des Penny, Claude and Katherine Warner, Lloyd and Luana Warner, Diane Cluff, Maxine Shirts via mail.
"Sometimes when I sit down to write these Thoughtlets I get an overwhelming feeling that the effort is nothing more than an ego trip, and I am trying, maybe looking beyond the mark, to prove to myself my life is worthwhile. Who among you whom I send these notes to really cares what I did on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday the 18th? Will it matter to me in 10 years, or more importantly, will it matter to any of you? Then I think about my phone conversation with Sara, where she off handly said, `Yea, I read about that in your Thoughtlet this week,' my mind jumps to the growth rings in a tree or the layering of sediment as sand is deposited at the bend in a river or at the beach, and I am reminded of the long term potential of these weekly words about the river of my life. Sort of like a game at the bowling alley, the words in these Thoughtlets describe some gutter balls, some 1 or 2 pin bowls, a few splits, the 8 or 9 pin bowls, spares, and even some strikes. And like with bowling, consistency in practice will hopefully lead to improvement. In geologic terms, ego is the matrix (mud) that holds the quartz grains, and hopefully a few diamonds. The power of words is that a dull stone to one person can be a gold strike to another. So I continue to hope this effort is worthwhile, and that along with the gutter balls, there will be some strikes which pull at your heart strings and help make you each better people than you would have been without the background music of these words. In otherwords, hopefully these words are not simply therapeutic for me, they also will prove useful for each of you.
So what happened this week? We had Family Home Evening on Sunday evening, and watched the last of the PBS Special on Joseph Smith. It is really good if any of you want to borrow it. Ray Levey from the University of Utah EGI stopped to see me (../9722.html, ../9733.html, ../9740.html). I havn't talked to Ray since he used the isosurfacing being developed by Chris Johnson in Electrical Engineering, which I showed him how to apply to seismic data, and cut me out of the deal. He is now firmly in control of EGI, and he comes across as if he is still trying to get something for nothing. Matt had baseball practice, and Rachel had an athletics award meeting for being on the J.V. Soccer Team. Tuesday I went to a GSH Luncheon. I forgot to mention I was nominated to run for GSH Secretary, and it was announced at the luncheon. I forgot about the luncheon and didn't go with my tie on. I spent all available time on Monday and Tuesday writing an abstract for the 2000 SEG Convention, which will be held in Calgary in August. Tuesday night I worked on Ken Turner's HGOL web pages.
Wednesday we had a Paradigm User's Meeting in the theater. I had invited the speaker at the HGS Luncheon meeting to visit, and he spent a couple of hours with us, including lunch Wednesday. He has developed some nice neural net software technology for automatically classifying gas chimneys, direct hydrocarbon indicators, faults, and other geologic signatures in seismic volumes. The afternoon was spent ranking which of the several hundred software enhancements for CoReExplorer(tm) will be done in which order. Wednesday night the Venturing Crew had a joint basketball game with the Scouts. It turned out to be a very good activity, with a lot of the guys coming out. Everyone seemed pretty excited about the all night bowling which was coming up on Friday.
Thursday and Friday were spent working on a patent application, following up on the RC-SIG meeting, working on GUI (Graphical User Interfaces) for CoReExplorer(tm), and in some demonstrations to Globex, Samadan Oil, and others. Rob, it was really good to see you Thursday evening, and I enjoyed having you come over and watch my Valentine's Present, October Sky (../9908.html), with Matt, and Andrea, and me. On Friday Linda Sternbeck brought the cover for May The Leading Edge, and it has turned out very nice. Richard Uden showed a new model he has been building for the CoReExchange Meeting. Afterward the presentation I found myself bragging about the visit of Jim Applegate from The University of Lousiana at Lafayett (ULL, formerly The University of Southwest Lousiana or USL, which is where we prototyped the HyperMedia software, which became the basis for HyperMedia Corporation) to Dave Ridyard. Jim is coming on Monday and has a $200,000 budget to begin the purchase of an expandable immersive environment. Dave pointed out we get very little margin on selling hardware, and then he told me he had a meeting earlier in the day with a major contractor who worked with him to lay out the plans for Continuum to sell $80,000,000 worth of CoReExchange(tm) licenses to their customers. I felt properly humbled and put in my place. I ended up working on some CES stuff after work, and got home just in time to go meet the guys for the all night bowling activity.
We met at CiCi's at 9:00, and it is absolutely amazing how much pizza 17 and 18 year old boys can eat. Then we went over to James Sneidman's and watched Ted and Bill's Excellent Adventure. At 11:30 we headed out to the Copperfield Bowling Alley off of Highway 6. I was afraid my arm would start hurting. It didn't. It was a really fun evening. My bowling scores for the evening were: 135, 70, 89, 131, 160, 127, 147, 114, 138, 134, 127, and 101. It was the first time I have ever bowled 12 games in a row. My team mates were Brent Peterson, the Young Men's President, and Bishop Vaughn Camp. I won 2 games, Brent won 4, and Bishop Camp won 6. My high score was 160, Brent's was 188, and Bishop Camp's was 174. I think this is the highest score I have ever bowled. My bowling is a lot like my life. I started out strong, winning the first game, then immediately went into a two game slump. Bishop Camp started strong with a score of about 130, and stayed strong all night. It was fun to watch the guys. There are some pictures of the evening at http://www.walden3d.com/photos/scouts/bowling18Feb00, including one of me sending the bowling ball down the aisle. Matthew Gallia won 3rd and Tyler Camp one 1st place for individual scouts. Brent Peterson one 3rd for scout leaders, and one of our teams one 1st for the overall best bowling team. As we left James asked if we could all go out for breakfast. Andrea had volunteered, and so I called her and several of the boys came back to the house for breakfast: Greg Jones, Scott Miller, Jay Omanson, Kevin Schultz, and James Snideman. After they left at about 7:00 AM, I went to sleep and woke up at noon to the phone ringing.
We spent the next two hours on the phone with CES guys talking about ownership of Vpatch (0003.html and 0004.html), the first significant business plan to come out of the CES business evolver. It was a fun conversation, and I was able to weave my experiences at all night bowling into the conversation many different times. Roger Anderson and Steve Joseph hope to raise $5 million in the next few weeks. Just after this phone call, and a shower, Melanie and Jared called. Jared was in Cedar City, and wanted to stop to meet Aunt Sara. He also wanted to know how far it was to Zion, and anything else useful to see. I forgot about the Kolob overlook, 15 miles south of Cedar, which would have been much easier to visit and very pretty with the snow. Oh well, maybe the road was snowed in and it wasn't available anyway. Melanie you sounded so excited, mature, and in love. I spent the afternoon proofing the Vpatch business plan. Went to the wrong baseball field to pick up Matt from practice, and was almost late by the time I got to the Pony League fields north of Katy, where Rob used to play baseball. Andrea had taken Rachel to a Know Your Religion speaker Youth Fireside. We all got home about the same time. Rachel went over to a friends house while Andrea and I went to see the movie `Hanging Up.' Walter Matthau has a vulgar mouth in the movie, and yet I think it would be worthwhile for all of you kids to go and see. I was still tired when we got home from the movie. Yet I ended up staying up and watching `Cat Balou,' a movie I rembember going to see with my Dad.
In fact, I slept until about 9:30 this morning. Today has gone by very fast, and all I did was get the digital photos ready to load onto the web, attending church meetings, writing this, eating dinner, going home teaching with Alan Peterson, and reading the scriptures with Andrea, Matt, and Rachel. Yet these are the types of activities which need to be done on a Sunday. As I was editing the ditital photographs, I couldn't help but find my mind wandering to all of the times I have spent in bowling alleys. I remember being bused from the Junior High School to the Cedar Bowling Lane, which used to be next to the Top Spot, and being taught the correct way to bowl. I remember Ray Gardner getting his thumb caught in one of the holes and being dragged half way down the bowling lane. I remember bowling with family members at the new bowling lane at the top of the Minnersville Road, in Fort Collins, in Austin, and at a couple of places here in Houston. I recognize I never learned how to play, and I still feel kind of guilty when I am not working. Yet bowling has been one of those play activities we have enjoyed as a family, and I look forward to many more family bowling tournaments. If you feel like you have been working too hard the last few weeks, I encourage you to take your best friend, or an available sibling, and go bowling."
