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"I had good intentions to go to Austin this week and see Roice, Jared, Melanie, and Sara. Oh well! It was Homecoming 2000 for Taylor High School this weekend, so maybe you all should have come to West Houston.
This has been a week of conflicting emotions for me, and the above paragraph kind of summarizes the conflicts. Maybe it was admitting my shortcomings in last week's thoughtlet about `changing my mind' (0041.html. Maybe it was because it was the last of `15 Days of James Bond' on TBS, and I watched eight of these movies during the week. Andrea says I like James Bond because he is always out to save the world and make a difference. My sarcastic side figures it is probably the `acceptable' violence and gratuitous sex scenes. Maybe the conflicting emotions are because Nate moved out, and now he and Heather are seriously talking about divorce. Nate is too busy to talk to me on the phone, and Heather seems to mostly wants us to take her side. I have been around the block enough to know this type of issue is never one-sided. Also, I have learned I can not change another person, I can only delay their decisions and hope they are humble enough to use the delay wisely and to repent and change themselves. Selfishness and pride are root issues with almost all of us. And the consequences of not recognizing this almost always leads to years of unnecessary pain and loneliness. Nate, I realize e-mail is better than no communication. However, as is shown in these Thoughtlets, and as my biological kids will attest, e-mail is not enough better to make up for talking and real communication. In a sense, e-mail is a cop out for not having the personal tools or for not being able to communicate effectively. Maybe the conflicting emotions are related to homecoming 2000. This week Rachel put in over 20 hours on her Laurel project to make a modest dress for homecoming (and Andrea probably put in over 30 hours). The dress is beautiful, as is the young woman so nicely filling it out. Her date was handsome and well mannered. Their group came to our house for a party after the dance, from about 11:00 until 1:30 this morning. On reflection the conflicting emotions relative to homecoming 2000 seem to be centered around the fact that too often it is hard for me to appreciate the moment, and to not get caught up in rehashing the past or obsessing on possible problems in the future.
So building on the above run-on paragraph, I will summarize my week, and show how Homecoming 2000 was a theme for the week. It started when we were at the Staheli's on Sunday evening, and one of the topic's of conversation was Rachel's homecoming dress. At the same time, Matt and Logan, who is only 7 or 8, get along really good. Since Monday and Tuesday were holidays for Matt and Rachel (teachers had in-service), Matt ended up spending the night in the Woodlands. Monday morning at 11:30 I went to Rice University to talk to Tony Elam (Melanie and Sara, this is why I did not make it to Austin on Monday). We had a great meeting, and I feel like there could be a nice professional home for me at Rice for the next few years. We talked until after 2:00, and I left with a picture in my mind of what I need to do to demonstrate to Rice how some of the stuff I have been working on in Knowledge Management could be used by Rice. I drove from Rice to the Woodlands and picked up Matt from Staheli's. He had had a good time, and did not want to leave. We stopped at Target in The Woodland's and bought Matt a set of nice bookcases not in stock at the Fry Road Target. They are made of particle board and are very heavy. Monday evening I watched different James Bonds in `Octopussy' and `On Her Majesty's Secret Service.'
Tuesday morning Andrea and I helped with our first youth temple trip to the Houston Temple (0034.html, 0035.html, and 0039.html). I was in the baptisimal font for the last half of the baptisms. Brother Talley was doing the baptisms when both Rachel and Matt were being baptized for the dead (I Corinthians 15:29). The homecoming dress project was about a week old by this time, and there had been words of frustration about this project. It was so nice to come out of the temple, to look at the lovely grounds, to go to a Chinese buffet, and to enjoy each other with the spirit which naturally comes following a visit to The House of The Lord. At the resturaunt a lady asked Matt why he was not in school and why he was so dressed up. After explaining about teacher training, he said `I'm Mormon and we went to our temple to do baptisms for the dead.' Matt I'm very proud of your faith and simple answer. The spirit which was with us after going to the temple did not keep me from watching the 007 movie `Thunderball' in the evening. I did clean up piles of unread Houston Business Journals and magazines during the movies this week.
Wednesday I had lunch with Peter Duncan. Peter is still working at Continuum, and he is also moving to another company called Chroma Energy. Our meeting involved his work at Chroma Energy. He is involved with some exciting pattern recognition tools, which relate directly to the pattern finding in the Walden 3-D Design Process (see 0039.html). There is a wonderful opportunity to work together, as long as we can get past the intellectual property issues of who owns what. So I agreed to move up writing an edition of the Walden 3-D Journal on Advanced Pattern Finding, originally scheduled for early next year, and to having it complete by the end of October. When I got home I called my friend Bob Ehrlich in Salt Lake, and we started the conversation about how we will get his pattern finding tools to the oil and gas industry. In fact, he has left EGI (../9725.html, ../9733.html, ../9735.html, ../9740.html, and 0008.html) since we last talked and he is actively using his pattern finding tools to do exploration in interior cratonic basins like The Williston Basin, The Denver Basin, The Michigan Basin, The Ohio Basin, etc. It is going to be a lot of professional fun to be able to work with Bob. Mom, Bob is Jewish in Salt Lake. When I got home I spent a couple of hours getting three bikes working (the smallest one never did work very well). We had a Bike Ride with Laurals for our Venturing Crew Activity. They had fixed us a picnic dinner, and it was a nice evening. I went back to the church for the monthly Scout Committee Meeting. This was the first meeting I had attended for several months, and they are really getting organized. A Board of Reveiw was set up for Matt's First Class Scout Badge. Brother Dowd is the new Advancement Chairman, and he is doing a really good job.
Thursday morning at 9:30 I met with Tom Ryan, a downstream consultant for 27 years, about controlling particulate emmissions from diesel engines with a copper additive. We had a conference call with his partners in Ohio. Tom and I agreed to represent their effort and to approach Shell, Apache, and Chevron in exchange for 5% of the first million we raise, 4% of the second, 3% of the third, 2% of the fourth, and 1% of each additional million dollars raised. I give this a low probability. Yet it is important and certainly is in the middle of my value of sustainability (see http://www.walden3d.com/values). I went from this meeting to the GSH Board Meeting, where I am still an Alternate Section Representive. I reported about the RC-SIG meeting in London, Ontario (0038.html), and about the cancellation of the GCAGS Immersive Environment lecture and tour. I spent the afternoon finally starting the Dynamic Oil & Gas Prospectus. I kept working on this during Sean Connery's rendition of Bond in `Goldfinger.' I remember goint to that movie when it first came out in the Cedar Theater with my Dad.
Friday was spent working on the Prospectus, until a 1:00 lunch with Todd Staheli. I gave Todd the business plan on particulate emmissions to test in Shell. Earlier in the week I had a call from Arnie Vedlitz, Executive Associate Dean of the Bush School at Texas A&M and Director of the Institute of Science, Technology, and Public Policy. He was calling for a reference on Ron Szabo, who is going to go to work for him, and was my key employee at HyperMedia Corporation (../9803.html). We ended up talking for an hour, and I described our work with knowledge management, the Infinite Grid(SM), and data mining. He got on the web and we looked at www.walden3d.com/E/E.html and www.walden3d.com/SIC while we were talking. He is planning a major policy summit next spring, and based on our conversation, he want's me to be a speaker. It appears we are several years ahead of thier thinking, and they might adopt the processes Bavinger and I were working on and attempted to prototype under the auspicious of Governer Mike Leavitt in Utah (../9717.html, ../9830.html, ../9836.html, ../9923.html, and 9933.html). Depending on who wins in November, this could be a very interesting turn of events in terms of seeing some of the Walden 3-D ideas implemented on a broad scale. Todd was estatic with the news. He has planned his whole life to go into government, most recently narrowing this down to probably working in the State Department, with the mission of helping to prepare the govenment to hand over to the Savior when He returns. Todd is currently thinking he will spend another 15-20 years in industry, and then he will be able to afford to take this step into public policy. We never know when doors will be opened for us and when we will have the opportunity to do that which we know in our heart is why we were sent to the earth when and where we were. I came home to two women worried about a dress for homecoming 2000. Maybe all of the conflicting emotions were why I ended the day watching Bond in `Diamonds are Forever,' and `A View to Kill.'
Saturday morning I went to Ward Choir Practice. Between homecoming 2000, Michelle Cahoon's wedding reception, Stake Vollyball, and all of the other overbooked activities, there were only 5 of us there. I worked on the Dynamic Prospectus most of the rest of the day. I did take time during `From Russia With Love' and `The Spy Who Loved Me' to put together Matt's new book cases, to clean off `Bat Cave' folding table which has been in the front hallway for a month, to clean my piles of stuff out of the living room, and to talk with Ken Turner about giclee prints, the HGOL website, and the new digital camera. Rachel's dress for homecoming 2000 came together at the last minute. It is beautiful. Ken took part of the camera back to New Ulm and so I can not download the pictures I took yet. However, you will be able to look at them later this week on the web at: http://www.walden3d.com/photos/Family/09_Rachel/. Rachel's date was with Kyle, a friend from Mayde Creek High School. They went to dinner in the wine room at Carmello's, to the dance, and had a party at the house from about 11:00 until 1:30 AM. I spent the time working on Dynamic Oil & Gas Prospectus, which was now about 25 pages when I stopped. However, it would not print, so I turned off the new Power PC (0039.html), and now the computer won't reboot. It gives an error message of `Bus Error' and I can see I might end up redoing the last three day's work. Oh well!
There is one other important homecoming 2000 point I have not shared until now. I did not share this before because I didn't think the Burgerners would want it talked about until now. On Tuesday September 22nd Linda Burgerner called and said she was not going to be able to drive Andrea and some other sisters to Sealy Branch where they were going to give a presentation to the Relief Society Sisters. We have been friends for a long time and she confided she has been having some memory problems, and was going in for a MRI (Magnetic Nuclear Resonance) scan of her brain that evening. She said she was going to bring some cookies right over for Andrea to take with her. She arrived about an hour later, apologizing because she got lost on the way, and could not find our house. She was in tears as we hugged each other and I told her she would be OK. My immediate reaction was another case of Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease (Mad Cow Disease) in our ward (../9932.html), and what are the ramifications might be and if there might not be dozens of us coming down with the same thing. Linda called Andrea the next day and said the doctors found a tumor about the size of a baseball in her brain and they were going to operate at 6:00 AM on Monday morning. Partly because Linda is the Stake Relief Society President, and partly because everyone loves her, there was a special fast for her Sunday October 1st. Last night at Michelle Cahoon's wedding reception Linda came up and we hugged and shared another tear. The tumor was benign. It was a lung cell that started growing in her brain when she was an embryo. They cut the top off, it drained, and she said `I can find your house again!' She is still having some problems with motor skills and memory, and she said Ron `Always accused me of being an airhead.' It was so good to see her back to her normal spunky self. `Count our many blessings!' Michelle's reception was really nice. It was in the same place at Windsor Park Paul and Kate had their reception. And Paul and Kate, Michelle and her new husband Robert Meyers, live in American Fork. The other really interesting thing at the reception was that Michelle's wedding dress was the same pattern Andrea and Rachel have spent the last couple of weeks working on for Rachel's date at homecoming 2000.
Have a great week, and please remember Nate and Heather in your individual and family prayers."