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.
"This week it has come home to me time and time again that the world really is very small. I will use my activities of the week to describe how this idea was reinforced time and time again.
Monday morning started with the following e-mails:
Needless to say, I had written those e-mails Sunday evening after my weekly call to Mom at Porter's Nursing Home, and just reread them before sending them out first thing Monday morning. The thing is that in 3 minutes I sent 50 pages of material to four people who could have been anywhere on the planet Earth. The world really is very small.
As mentioned last week, I started with a meeting at 8:00 about the core imaging capture system out of Brisbane, Australia, and being organized by John Pohlman in Reno, Nevada as Calibrated Imaging Corporation. To respect the privacy of the individual I met with I won't go into details. It was a fascinating meeting. I learned how poor the Prospectus I have put together is from some specific points I had not understood. I'll fix these as soon as there is time. It turns out, the interest in the technology is not for investment. Rather the individual I met with is in the process going through an FBI check to serve in the Bush Adminstration and to clean up all of the data storage in the Department of Energy. His comments were right in line with the unsolicited proposal I sent to the Bush School at Texas A&M a few weeks ago (0047.html and 0049.html). On an unusual impulse I had printed a copy before I left home, and so gave it to him. Who knows where this will go. The world really is very small.
At 9:00 I met with Brad Birkelo at Digital Prospectors, who are on the second floor of the building Continuum Resources is in. It was a good meeting. I was asking for a consulting job to help with cash flow, and at the same time attempting to lay ground work so his team could be members of the Dynamic Professional NetWork. One of his partners worked with me at HyperMedia Corporation. The other one had worked with me at Landmark Graphics. They have several clients who I have worked with, and there seems to be a very nice fit between their needs and what I can provide. I'm optimistic this will prove to be a source of income and collaboration. The world really is very small.
When I got home in the evening I learned Dennis McMullin had sent me an e-mail at 8:12:54 saying:
And then another one at 10:43:18:
I had a phone message from one of Roger Anderson's key guys: Toshi from Japan. I returned that call in the car and was still talking when I got to Macaroni's. I went in and did not see Dennis, so I went back out and kept talking. About 10 minutes later I went in and saw Dennis was there all along. I felt really foolish, especially after standing him up again last week (0051.html). Dennis decided to stop giving me books I don't take time to read, and so he gave me a notebook, which I can use as a journal, all blank pages, which he could watch me read as I sat at the table. The conversation was almost the opposite of the last time we had lunch (0040.html). His company, Proxicom, has gone through major layoffs, and as I probed about their business, it turns out it replicates some of the stuff Albert Boulanger is working on through CES and vPatch. We both wonder how this will all turn out. The world really is very small.
I left from lunch for Sugar Land and my first training on using Chroma Energy's software. Dr. Sam LeRoy joined me for the training. Sam has been working with me since the days of the HyperEdge Expert Association. He got me the job at BHP Petroleum, where I worked with a team interpreting sub-salt exploration opportunities. This was just before I started writing the Thoughtlets, and before I took on the consulting job at the Bureau of Economic Geology in Austin. For what it is worth, BHP won over 70 leases in the Gulf of Mexico as a result of the sub-salt team's work. And I paid Earth View Associates 5% of the consulting money I made for giving me the lead on the job. More recently (0035.html, 0036.html, 0039.html, 0041.html, 0046.html, 0049.html, 0050.html, and 0051.html) Sam has been the other principal on the Dynamic Prospectus we have been distributing. I really enjoy working with Sam, and it is mostly because he is so smart and I am always learning new things from him. When we got to Chroma Energy they treated us like Royalty, and gave us a thorough introduction and demonstration of their product. I felt uncomfortable because each of the three folks demonstrating to us treated me like some kind of guru. When Mike Ring started the first demonstration I broke the ice by turning to Sam and saying `Mike and I were two of the 18 people who started work at Mobil Oil in Dallas in 1974. He was later the exploration manager in Nigeria and had numerous other major jobs in Mobil. Sam responded, `The world really is very small.'
On the way home from Sugar Land I went by a couple of stores to check on a possible Christmas gift. I couldn't find what I wanted, and then ended up at `Babys R Us,' where I bought a triangle blanket for Ethan with mirrors, and other stuff on it to keep him occupied. It reminded me of the triangular, Buckminster Fuller inspired tree house, I built in back of our house on Blue Quail Drive. I also bought a neat little toy from Grandma Nelson for Ethan. I spent too long at the store, especially since most of the stuff was listed as being for babies older than 9 months. So I got back to the house just after 7:00 PM, and just before Richard, Coleen, David, Angelia, Jared, and Emily Moore arrived to go caroling with us as Home Teaching visits. Although there were several who were not very excited about the whole thing, it really turned out nice. Matt and I Home Teach the Moores, the Hollemans, and Haden Hudson, and we saw someone at each home. We went to the three families Richard and David Home Teach. Celeste Nielson as well as Reynolds and Lauanna Cahoon were home. We also sang to Collins and Barbara Steward, Larry Law, and Gary Jones' family. Then we came back to the house, drank hot chocolate, and talked for an hour while kids played upstairs. Richard is probably gong to be transferred to Jakarta or to Singapore this summer. The kids are not excited. He wished they could have just stayed in Dubai and moved to Jakarta from Dubai. Oh well! It was interesting to listen to Richard describe how he likes to go to the grocery store and just walk down the isles and look at all of the stuff we take for granted. I guess this comes with living 8 years on the Saudi Arabian peninsula. We talked our mutual friends Paul Sullivan (and Karen), who is now the head of Shell Research in Risjwick, The Netherlands. As they left one of our better Family Home Evenings, I could not help but think: `The world really is very small.'
Tuesday morning Andrea and I were going to leave early for Dallas. It ended up being closer to 1:00 PM than morning. I got up early, and was ready at 7:00 AM. Then I read e-mails, responding to Joost, who lives in Adalaide, was visiting a client in The Hague, The Netherlands, and then was flying to Denver to check on his house, which he hopes to move back into next March. He called, and we arranged to meet on Saturday, when he diverts his flight from Denver to Los Angeles through Bush Intercontinental Airport so he can be home in Adalaide, Australia with his kids for Christmas. Then I wrote a long response to Christian Singfield in Brisbane, Australia and his partner John Polhman in Reno, Nevada about the meeting regarding the core imaging capture system mentioned above. This took longer than I thought. Lastly there was an e-mail to Peter Duncan, including reworking the Chroma contract again, printing two copies, signing them, and having Andrea take them to the Barker Post Office so he would get them before Christmas. It took quite a while to put this e-mail together, specifically because one of the things I am going to be doing for Chroma is contacting `friends and family' and telling them about Chroma's software. Peter wanted me to come up with a list of people to contact. The list I put together totaled 108 names of people who live all over the world, again showing that the world really is very small.
Anyways, by the time I finished all of this stuff, and we got in the car, both Andrea and I were stressed, especially since we were going to leave for Dallas at 7-8:00 in the morning. Andrea almost didn't go with me, and we ended up listening to books-on-tape most of the way there. The last tape was about legends of various indigenous people concerning the Great White Bearded God who visited them. The tape described traditions of Hopi Indians of New Mexico, Iroquois Indians of Pennsylvania and surrounding region, Mayan Indians of Guatemula, Incan Indians of Peru, Inuit Eskimos of Alaska, as well comments about traditions from the Far East and Africa. All of these oral traditions demonstrate the world is very small.
The tape also included the George Washington vision of the future while at Valley Forge, which I do not remember hearing in it's fullness before. This vision was told to a reporter by one of the Valley Forge suvivors just prior to the Civil War. The vision described the Civil War, World War I, World War II, and a third World-Wide tribulation with quite a bit of detail. It was the only thing on the tape which was documented, and so although the tape was interesting, I passed it off as pseudo-science and yellow journalism. The conclusion that there are similarities between most religions (if one believes there is one God over this earth, then logically all religions come from a common origin) is the same conclusion I have reached from my travels across the earth. However, the presentation style came across like Hitler's speeches, John Birch flyers, right-to-life and pro-choice advocates, black-power movement leaders, those seeking entitlements (a free ride from the government or from me as a tax payer), or anarchists. In the emotions of knowing we are right, we can cross a line, and misdirect, mislead, or otherwise make mistakes. The Lord nicely summarized this world-wide human characteristic very well to Joseph Smith when he was incarcerated in Liberty Jail and we received the words:
D&C 121: 35, 37-39 (../9815.html)
But getting back to the week. as we approached Dallas I called Jim Trimble at the Rudman Partnership on the cell phone. He was not ready to meet with me about their property in Washington County, Colorado, nor Matagorda County, Texas. The secretary at Meridian Oil & Gas was leaving at 5:00, and because we got off so late we would not have been able to make it to Flower Mound until about 4:45. When we called the temple, we learned that the wedding we were going to attend was not occurring until 3:00 PM, and so we tried to find Jana Betrand's house, and didn't. We got to Ben and Sarah's house a few minutes before they did. Andrea was finishing up Audrey's cross-stitch, after months and months of dedicated work almost every evening. Ben and Sarah, it was a very nice visit. Thanks for having us. We both really enjoy Ethan. For the rest of you, we went out to dinner at Papasito's and Ethan had has first taste of Salsa. I wish I had had the camera there to catch his face as he reacted to the taste. We did take a bunch of pictures, and hopefully someday soon I will get them all moved to http://www.walden3d.com/photos/Family/02_BenSarah/01_EthanEvans. Then anyone in the world can review them, again showing the world really is very small. It was a wonderful evening, and we both slept in. Sarah I hope you are feeling better, and it wasn't the nachos.
Wednesday morning I spent three hours documenting the Rio Grande County, Colorado. I have a contract which gives me 6% if I can sell a 2% override for $1 million. I captured a hundred pictures, and started building a story to describe why an investor should be interested. The light in the room was perfect for Andrea's cross-stich, and so she was busy while I was busy. We left their about 1:00, ate the leftovers from Tuesday night in the car, stopped at the temple and left the wedding gift (this is not a good idea, as they are not prepared to handle this kind of request), and drove to Houston. Just as we left Dallas city limits, there was a call on the cell phone from Christian Singfiled in Brisbane, Australia. We talked for the next hour and a half. He had to call me back three times, when we crossed to new cell towers. As Andrea worked on the cross-stitch, she asked where the phone call was from, and as I said Brisbane and the phone rang again, she said `This is just too wierd.' The world really is very small.
We got back to the house at 6:45 PM and left to take the Young Men and Young Women caroling for a joint activity at 6:55 PM. My car had a good time. I took them to some of the non-member families we went to last year (0001.html), although we didn't have time to go the Kesslers. I was tired by the time we got home. There were a dozen spam e-mail messages from around the world. There was a message from Wulf reminding me of a lunch on Thursday, a message from Kathanne Lynch in Denver about not investing in the Rio Grande county opportunity, a message from Jay Leonard, also in Denver, about working with Joost and responding to his e-mail from The Netherlands after I recommended he contact Jay in my e-mail to him in Australia, three messages from Christian Singfield in Brisbane, and a nice thank you note from Sara in Cedar City saying that Heather brought by the poinsetta and that Brian gets to have his wisdom teeth out the night before the night before Christmas Eve. As I read these, it was again brought to mind the world really is very small.
Thursday morning e-mail included a note from Roice saying he was going to stay with us Christmas Eve. Yea! There was a note that David Devor is remarrying on February 1st at the Noveltel in Jerusalem. I wish I had the money to take Andrea and meet him and his new bride Chana. David's wife died of Alzheimer's a few of years ago. I have never met him, and yet through e-mail correspondence, he has become a friend and was a great support to me in my time of trial. There was an e-mail from Bob Ehrlich in Salt Lake (0048.html), from Donn McGuire at Anadarko, from Gary Jones' son Stephen Jones about Friday's campout, and from Rhonda Hartmann, who said Continuum does not want the old HyperMedia booth and I am welcome to pick it up in January. So it was in the back of my mind, as I left for lunch Wulf invited me to downtown, that the world really is very small.
The SIPES lunch was at Petroleum Club on top of the Exxon-Mobil building a block from where Sara works for Rick Zimmerman. Wulf paid for my lunch, and it was his first meeting as a member. We sat next to Frank Hamtak, who had been a fellow student with me at the University of Utah back in 1973-74. It was fun to catch up. Frank is a consultant. He has most recently worked offshore West Africa, and in the Gulf of Mexico. He was excited to learn about Dynamic Oil & Gas, and has an investor/promoter he wants to hook me up with. The presentation was a very interesting talk about rim faults around salt domes. Karen Lanning was at the meeting from Round Top. Karen was the Chief Geophysicist at Anadarko, before moving to Round Top to raise her child. She consults from there, and is one of the people I plan to bring into Dynamic once we get funded. She has become friends with Anders Saustraup (../9711.html, ../9712.html, 9852.html, 9939.html, 0011.html, and 0012.html). Karen wrote a neat novel about Antartica, called `Entrophy,' which I read a few weeks ago. I found two typos, circled 32 unnecessary swear words, and wrote up a criptic review of her effort. She sent me an extended response, and as we meet after the talk, I said `I was embarrassed to see you here, because I have not taken the time to respond to your response to my critique.' We talked for a minute, I turned to Wulf and said he has a mountain named after him in Antarctica and she needs to include it in her story. Wulf was suprised I remembered this from his year and a half in Antarctica. Then Craig Moore, President of the HGS (Houston Geological Society), came up and repeated my words to Karen, promising to get with me after the first of the year to talk about Dynamic Oil & Gas. The world really is very small.
I went from downtown to Geophysical Development Corporation, where I waited an hour for Mike Dunn to get back from lunch. We talked about me helping them with reports on deep water sub-salt prospects in the Gulf of Mexico. I think Sam LeRoy would do a better job than I would on the type of reports they are doing. We also talked about how GDC might be able to get involved with the core imaging capture system out of Brisbane. We spent quite a bit of time discussing Chroma Energy and how this might help GDC. I will set up a demo of the Chroma Energy software right after the first of the year. I dropped another set of the core photos I had printed from the web, stopped at got gas at the Shell station at Mason and I-10, and got to the Park and Ride right at 6:00 to pick up Audrey. She had had to wait for 10 minutes. Audrey fixed Sopapilla (chicken, tortilla, and hot tomatoes) which she learned from Sara. Andrea was at the airport picking up Heather, who had just flown in from Las Vegas. I drove out to Stephen F. Austin to make reservations for Friday. They were closed, and I should have made the reservations on the web. After all, the world really is very small.
After dinner I went over to one of the members of our scout committee to pick up a black powder rifle for our campout. It was the first time I had spent much time talking to Patrick Dowd. He mentioned they had moved here from Plano. I asked him if he happened to know Lloyd Warner. `He was my Bishop when I first joined the church! His wife is the most wonderful person. I grew up with their kids!' Then I mentioned Ron Malouf, who was in the Dallas 1st Ward Bishopric when I was Elders Quorum President, Executive Secretary, and Ward Clerk. His response was similar regarding Ron. Then we went out back and he demonstrated how to fire the black powder rifle. I asked if he wasn't worried his neighbor's reactions to firing a gun in the Green Trails subdivision (they live in back of us off of Kingsland). He said, `No,' and then qualified it by describing how Alan Peterson and his group The Midlife Crisis had been practicing in his garage one evening and one of the members of the ward, who lives in back of them, walked into the garage to ask when they were going to stop. As I left his house with an 1853 Enfield rifle, I again realized the world really is very small. Uncle Lloyd and Aunt Luana, now you have to come and visit us, just to check up on one of your converts.
On Friday Andrea and I went to the Houston Temple with Heather. It was neat. At the front desk was John Laux, who was my High Council Advisor when I was Elders Quorum President in Maplewood 2nd Ward. I did a vicarious endowment session for Jonas Peter Carlsson, who was born on the 11th of January 1834 in Igerhult, Vena, Kalmar, Sweden, which is just around the cape and up the west coast of Sweden from where Bengt Nelson, Sr. was born on the 28th of September in 1834 in Ljun, Malmohus, Sweden. In the dressing room was Buddy Miles, who is a camera man for Channel 2 and who I had talked to about helping with what I preceived as Paul's mistreatment by KISD (../9802.html). Reed Peterson was also there and after I said `Hi Grandpa,' he responded with `How did you get in here?' As we were leaving the temple, there was another man at the front desk. He is Jennifer Turner's father (John and Jennifer are in Nottingham Country Ward), and lives in the same ward as the parents of Matt Reynolds (../9832.html, ../9905.html, ../9927.html, 0010.html, 0013.html, and 0033.html). As we left the temple I mentioned to him how nice his daughter's talk was in sacrament meeting earlier in the month. The world really is very small.
Friday's e-mail started with a letter from Wulf about the OFAC letter regarding Iranian Sanctions and whether Dynamic Oil & Gas can interpret and sell the Persian Carpet Survey. There were phone calls to Richard Nehring at NRG Associates in Colorado Springs, and Residuum Energy. It seemed like there were a dozen things going on at one time. And as I was hurrying to load up my camping stuff in the trunk of the Saturn, the key fell out of my shirt pocket in the trunk and so I had to take an half-an-hour and break into the Saturn with a clothes hanger. Andrea helped me, by going to the store for the food, and Brent Peterson came by and took Matt to the church, so I was who everyone was waiting for when I got there a half-hour late at 4:30. Then I had to stop and get some charcoal, and so it was 5:00 by the time I left Katy for the campout at San Felipe. Christian Singfield in Brisbane called me as I was approaching the exit. He had not checked his e-mail, so he hung up and was going to call me back. Turns out the camp is between two or three cell phone coverage areas, and he never could get through. Still, the world really is very small. I'll summarize the campout by writing out the words to a song I wrote about it:
I left camp before anyone else in order to get back for a meeting with Dr. Joost C. Herweijer at Bush Intercontinetal. Andrea went up to the airport with me because the four ladies in the house were on each other's nerves. We missed him, because Air Express was not at the cargo area of Bush Intercontental, it was off of Greens Road almost to I-45. When he called and we got directions and picked him up, we went to the Wyndahm Hotel at Greenspoint and spent 4 hours discussing how we might or might not work together. The SGI (Silicon Graphics Inc.) energy marketing Vice-President introduced us via e-mail. It turns out Joost knows Bob Ehrlich and is a direct competitor of Jeffrey Yarus, Sara's friend's Dad and one of Bob Ehrlich's students. Joost has been working for Santos as a subcontractor on a Landmark contract and we know many people in common. His new product is based on a simplified version of the Knowledge Backbone (SM). One of the things about our meeting which really suprised me is that he lives in a co-housing unit in Adaliade and owns a co-housing unit in Denver. I have been fascinated with the idea of co-housing since I first read about it in `Collaborative Communities, co-housing, central living and other new forms of housing with shared facilities' by Dorit Fromm back when her book was first published in 1991. The world really is very small.
When we got home there was an opportunity to do a little PAIRS communication work with the four ladies in the house. After which, most of them went to a movie, while Andrea baked pies and I drove to Hobby Airport to pick up Paul and Kate. They were a little over an hour late, and it was almost midnight when we got home. Every time I drive to the airport I realize the world is very small.
Sunday was our choir program. We sang:
It was nice to have Paul, Kate, Heather, Audrey, Rachel, and Matt with us. Jared and Melanie drove in from Vidor in time for dinner. Roice and Sara came over from Marti's. We had a wonderful dinner, and a nice evening together. I didn't get this Thoughtlet finished.
Christmas Day was one of the best and most memorable Christmas Day's of my life. It started at 5:00. Sara arrived just as we were getting all the kids up. For the first time since I have started using the new digital camera, we filled up a CD. Eventually I will get these images moved to http://www.walden3d.com/photos/Christmas/2000. I was afraid it would not be a good Christmas, because we are striving to keep the reigns on expenditures. It turns out my fears are unfounded. There were nice gifts, and everyone seemed happy. I won't attempt to talk about gifts, because they are pretty much documented in the digital movies and photos. Personally, I was most touched by the CD Roice made me of his original songs, the photo album all of the kids gave to Andrea, and map of the world-wide Internet as of 01 January 2000. I must admit I ate most of the honey covered almonds Sara and Des sent. The Internet map highlights how the world really is very small.
The only negative of the day was Rob didn't come by at all, because `Dad and I have issues,' and `I'll go over if Mom goes over.' Oh well! Andrea and I had stayed up until almost 2:00, and so after Andrea and I took Heather to the airport I took a nap. Andrea woke me up at 12;45 PM saying the kids wanted to go to see Tom Hanks in `Cast Away.' We made it, with everyone but Rachel and Audrey. Later in the evening Rachel, Matt, Andrea, and I went to see Walt Disney's new movie `The Emperor's New Groove.'
I wanted to end this week and this year's last Thoughtlet with a comment about the Tom Hank's movie. It starts in Wyoming, moves to Moscow, goes to Memphis, goes to an isolated Pacific island, goes back to Memphis, and ends in Wyoming. The interplay between the different sites is spatial poetry. It reminded me of Sara describing her study abroad next semester in France, of her friend Kari coming over to visit her, and of the reaction of those who heard her talking about her plans. As I have summarized the activities of the week, the message coming across loud and clear to me was simply the fact that the world really is very small."