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.
"My week was dominated by Swede Nelson. Swede, whose real name is Duayne Owen, lives in the San Francisco area, a few miles from Stanford University. His wife Alice has three Mercedes, one of which no one drives but her. They have been married about 12 years, and it is a second marriage for both of them. Swede is 71 years young, about 6'4", white hair, has occular implants and uses black hornrimmed glasses to see at a distance. He is fun, exciting, quick, lively, interested in what I am doing, and a believer in the philosophy behind Dynamic Resources Corporation. He is interested in mentoring, and likes to have me ask him a lot of questions. It would be easy to focus on cigar smoking, cigarette smoking, swearing, and stories. However, I'm going to describe Swede using a story he told me, and then repeated for several others, this week.
The story was to listen to Swede describe his favorite place to be delayed when traveling: The Salt Lake City Airport. He likes it when planes are delayed in Salt Lake. As he described his first time to experience watching a group of missionaries leave, the tears came to my eyes, I recalled my trip to Salt Lake to see Paul off, and I recalled that this is part of the credit card bills I am still paying off. I can't write about it without tearing up, and recalling the sweet feelings associated with seeing my son, who was never much of an angel, leave in the service of our God. I would not have missed it for anything. Swede describes these departures as nice, and nothing compared to when the young men come home. There is a large group of people waiting for the plane, and when this young man comes into view the banners go out, there is cheering and clapping, Dad goes up and gives him a hug which shows how proud he is, then he has to get out of the way because Momma is right behind him. And when she grabs hold of her son, it is like she will never let go. She may hold him for 5 or 10 minutes. Then Grandpa, and Grandma, each brother and sister, including the smallest children, Uncles, Aunts, and cousins, each getting their turn to talk to the returning hero. According to Swede Nelson, `This is what life is all about. There is every emotion you can imagine. The love is overflowing. There is nothing I would rather do than walk around the Salt Lake Airport and watch these reunions, one after another, each different, and yet each the same. Each one showing what real love is.' Paul, I apologize I was mixed up on the day you were coming home, and that there was so much background emotion as to keep me from effectively orchestrating this same experience for you.
Swede Nelson had set meetings up in Houston, and arranged to spend a day or more with me. Originally we were going to get together on Monday afternoon, and his plans changed and he spent the time after he arrived from San Francisco on some other projects he is working on. It took me most of Monday to write two letters about Rob: one to Harris County Child Support and one to Principal McDonald at Taylor High School, expressing my concern, the fact that if there is anything I can do to help I will, and I will not provide cash that allows the behavior I observed last Saturday to continue. It seems like this is the only logical consequence I have any control over at this stage. The rest of the day was spent on telephone calls and preparing a description of 3 Areas-OF-Interest (AOIs), 21 Areas-of-Mutual-Interest (AMIs), and 4 International-Areas-of- Mutual-Interest (IAMIs). The Dynamic Resources story is getting stronger and stronger each time I go through an iteration.
Tuesday morning I was working on the packets until 7:35, and as a result it was 8:10 before I picked up Swede Nelson at The Drury Inn at I-59 and Dairy Ashford. I was to be there at 8:00. Oh well! We drove downtown. I stopped at Wulf's office to show Swede the advanced 3-D seismic processing shop down the hall from Interactive Interpretation & Training (II&T). We got to II&T at about 9:15, introduced Swede to Dave Agarwal, Les Denham, and Bob Horner, got a cup of coffee for Swede, and were just settling in when Neal Brossard of Residuum Energy arrived. Neal and Swede hit it right off, and Swede was fascinated by the Residuum presentation. I interrupted the presentation for a 45 minute teleconference with Ted Collins in Midland. After Neal finished his presentation, Bob Horner got us some lunch and we talked through the Dynamic Technical Team. Then Les Denham showed Swede 2 prospects in 2 blocks which are available for purchase in the Matagorda Island area in the shallow water offshore Texas. Swede had no idea this type of lease position and Prosects were available through Dynamic.
From II&T we went to Bob Behrman's office. Bob is 87 years old, has retired a couple of times. Bob was involved in the HyperEdge Expert Association, and I introduced Swede to him as an archetype of the 200+ retired explorationists in the Houston area who will become suppliers of new exploration Concepts, Leads, and Prosects (CLPs) to Dynamic, once we are funded. His office is in back of his house in the Memorial area. From here we went to Alf Klaveness' office at Klaveness Research to look at his deep cotton valley Prospect in Houston, Travis, and Walker County. Alf is not 87 for another couple of weeks, and again the idea was to stress the mining of ideas and experience as well as data mining. Swede was particularly impressed with Alf's pulsar, and as a very bright petroleum engineer was able to figure out the internal workings and come away believing this should be used on every oil well ever drilled. Alf's office is at the tollroad and I-10. Then we went to Sam LeRoy's office at Westheimer and the next street past Kirkwood. Sam's dynamic pressure fields were a real eye opener for Swede, who understood what had taken me four or five times listening to the presentation to grasp. I had a hard time getting Swede out of Sam's office, as he was also showing him Prospects and other immediate opportunities. As we drove out Westheimer to the house, Swede said, this is definitely a $10 million deal, and not just a $2 million dollar deal, and it is going to happen.
We got to the house at 7:00. When Swede and I arrived, Alf and Lee Klaveness were here. It turned out it was their 59th wedding anniversary. They were talking to Lee and Laura Kay Ethetton. Andrea was in the kitchen busily getting food ready for me to barbecue. We had barbecue salmon and shishkabob made with steak and vegetables. There were salads, fancy drinks, some of the NetWork brought Portobello Mushrooms, deserts, etc. Andrea had bagged 8 bags of leaves, Matt did the edging, and it was a real big production. Others in attendance were Les and Lisa Denham, Dave Agarwal, Bob and Elizabeth Horner, Dick Coons and Cheryl, Steve Joseph, David Kessler, Blaine and Judy Taylor (with a wedding present for Jared and Melanie), and Mike McCardle and his girlfriend. I don't remember her name, yet I spent time at the last barbecue and this time talking to her about the company image and what would be good to do for logo's, etc. Peter Duncan called and he and Peter Whitehead of Chroma were not able to make it. All in all it was a wonderful evening. Blaine and Judy took Swede Nelson back to his hotel, which was sort of on the way to Richmond. It was about 11:00 by the time the house was back together. Neither Andrea nor I had any problem falling asleep.
Wednesday morning I picked up Swede Nelson at 7:00 and we went to Cliffs on Westheimer for a two hour breakfast. During the breakfast meeting he laid out the business model he has been designing for Dynamic Resources. He believes we will be able to get 2 investors to each put in $5 million. Earlier in the day I had mentioned this to Rachel and Matt, and Rachel shrugged it off, like `I've heard this before.' Oh well! At 9:30 we went to see Heloise Lynn for our 9:00 appointment. Oh well! Swede was very insightful about Heloise's prospects and what we need to do to package them. We got to Dick Coons house at 11:30. I ended up missing most of the presentation of the Ship Shoal blocks. There was a phone call from Trinidad and Dr. Noel Tyler, with whom I used to work at the Bureau of Economic Geology in Austin. He has prospect opportunities in Trinidad, and he is interested in using one of my Landmark licenses in the evenings and on weekends. I ended up conferencing to Les Denham at II&T to talk through the limitations of remote access. Swede counted the 15 computers in Dick's house, and left with a new appreciation for the distributed virtual oil company. We had a quick lunch at Landry's and went to Continuum for a demonstration of Rudman and the Nehring database. We then went upstairs for a prospect presentation by Brad Birkelo of Digital Prospectors (../0050.html and ../0052.html). It was fun to review and comment on their prospects. Exciting too. And I had Swede back to his hotel by 5:00, so he could make his dinner appointment on time. My scouts were suppose to have a career night on CAD (Computer-Aided Design), and they ended up spending the time working on their video for the upcoming BOM Awards night (BOM means Book of Mormon). I left early to go to Matt's court-of-honor and missed his getting his camping merit badge. Oh well! Came home and worked on an Infinite GridSM representation of Dynamic's prospects until 11:30.
Thursday morning started off with me finishing up the maps, and driving down to meet Swede Nelson at One Riverway, The Omni Hotel, off of Woodway and I-610 at 9:00. Our hour pre-discussion was interrupted by call from Randy Ethetton talking about Prospects in Oklahoma, and by Gary Crouse who happened to have a breakfast meeting there. Then Swede and I had a 2 hour meeting with Howard Settle, President of Century Exploration. He is interested and it will be 3 months before he will invest in Dynamic. As I walked through the hotel there were memories of the first meeting with Kevin Kinsella about what became Landmark Graphics (../9824.html and ../9945.html). Marti went with me to the evening meeting at the Omni, and Kevin insisted she wait in the lobby. She ended up seeing Shirley McClain while she waited, and was fine with it. After the meeting Swede and I had a half-hour debrief, and then he left for the airport. I stopped and ate lunch at McDonalds on South Post Oak, where I ate when consulting at BHP Petroleum. Again there are painful memories of being at a complete loss about what to do about my marriage falling apart (this was about 1994), and calling Sherry Sump in Oklahoma from this McDonalds one lunch time to ask advice. Oh well! It has certainly turned out better for me, and I still feel very sorry for Marti and especially for Rob. From here, I drove over to the Chase Manhattan building on San Felipe to met Steve Joseph and Blaine Taylor at Hanover Homes. This is going to be a fun and interesting consulting jop. We are to plan a `Just-In-Time Predevelopment Process' for them. On the way home I stopped and saw Merril Littlewood, who has expressed an interest in working with Dynamic. I also had calls from Peter Duncan at Chroma and Louis Berent with some prospects. I was totally wiped out when I got home, and was asleep by 9:00.
Friday morning started with a couple of phone calls from Swede Nelson in San Francisco, from Dick Coons, others. I spent some time catching up on my e-mail. There was a nice note from Melanie:
For what it is worth, I still love the Marti I married, although I recognized when I decided to remarry our relationship can never be the same as it was. And for those of you who have expressed concern about me quoting you in these Thoughtlets, I did call Melanie and ask if it was OK to put her comments in this week's Thoughtlet. I believe it shows maturity and security with oneself to be willing to share personal thoughts, and thanks Melanie for letting me publish your note. When I first started these things, I wanted them to become two-way, and quoting those of you who are willing to let me quote you is one way of developing bidirectional comments. And it is fine with me if you do not want to share your thoughts. Melanie has a job. It is non-paying, and she is very excited about it. She will be working for the Director of the Aurora Chamber of Commerce for about 15 hours per week. Congratulations! There was also a nice note from my sister (which I also got permission to share with you all):
Sara, you will be interested to learn that Friday morning Modern Pest Control came by and pulled a trap with a 15 pound possum from the attic. What next? I was very busy with a lot of different things, and finally left the house at about 12:30 for a meeting with Peter Duncan at Chroma Energy and to work on Matagorda Island data. I left Chroma at 5:00 and home at 5:30. Andrea and I went to `A Flea In Her Ear' at the Alley Theatre with standby tickets. Lots of memories there. Oh well! Maybe I'll write about them some other time. We went to Birraporetti's after and split a salad and a shrimp appetizer.
Saturday morning was Special Olympics. I could talk about this a lot, and I will save it for another time. I did take about 100 pictures and they will be placed on the web, hopefully sometime soon, at http://www.walden3d.com/photos/Scouts/SpecialOlympics23Mar01. I spent the afternoon and all evening working on a cash flow Pro Forma for Swede Nelson. I went to sleep about midnight. Andrea had gone to sleep about 10:00. It was a long week, a good week, an exciting week, and a week with a lot of promise. I hope your week was similarly charged and I look forward to talking to each of you sometime soon, and I do not expect the conversation to be about Swede Nelson."