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.
"Friday night was the first Ward Father's & Son's Campout I think Nottingham Country Ward has ever had. I have refered to Father's & Son's Campouts in other Thoughtlets (../9707.html, ../9820.html, and ../9943.html), and these were always Stake activities. A decade ago, on the 8th of March 1991 there was a Stake Father's and Son's Campout at Brasos Bend State Park. I remember Ken Turner was there, and we spent time talking about my recent trip to Australia, Indonesia, and Japan with my Father. Mosly I remember it because I created the following song, and specifically I remember it, like you will each realize you best remember, because it is written down in a notebook:
I remember going to many Katy Stake Father's and Son's campouts. As time passes the memories grow dim, because I did not take the time to document my feelings. I remeber several of the early ones after we first moved into Nottingham Country Ward, ~1985-1989, were at Chudly's ranch out in Waller. I remember we had several at Stephen F. Austin State Park, and how there was never a place to park the car there were so many people at the campout. Then we started having them up at Cypress Spring Park. Since these were stake activities, there was always a lot of people. Of course, the folks that mattered to me were those who would seek me out and spend time talking with me. Over the years this has most consistently been an artist, Ken Turner, and a musician, Jim Conners. Those nights were fun. There were the kind of times Henry David Thoreau wrote about in his book `On Walden Pond:'
This Father's and Son's Campout was different. Matt wanted to run and play, start fires and drive his toy car, play tennis and football, etc. There was a banker, an oil company process guy, an insecure divorced boy who was once one of my scouts on a Philmont trek, a `Big Five' accounting guy, a pipeline guy, an oil company accountant, and other right brained guys. One of my Venture Scouts was there with his guitar, and I twisted his mind a little bit, pointing out relative carbon-dioxide contributions from cement and car emissions. Paul I need to quantify this, and I hope you can get the research for me prior to a class I am going to teach at Taylor High School on the 16th of May. His Dad was suprised to learn of the concept of dynamically replenishing hydrocarbon fields. There was a brief conversation about the banker's two four letter words: cash flow. The trees were the same as when I wrote the following song at Cypress Creek Park at another Father's and Son's Campout:
However, there was no right brained eccentric at this father's and son's campout. There was no artist nor musician, to pull the big thoughts and words out of the sky and wrap them around my brain and tickle my imagination. Brother Branning did ask me to work with his son Mitch on the Geology Merit Badge. Saturday morning I took 10, then it dropped to 6, then the number dropped to 5 boys on a two mile hike to explain the process of erosion, as it relates to topography, ravines, river base-level, fans, grain-size, slope, scale, and other esoteric concepts upon which all of our agriculture, all of our natural resource extraction, all of our housing, and all of our society are built upon. I could not help but think of all of you guys, my 10 kids (including those who no longer want to receive a copy of these musings), and wonder if there will only be 5 of you who will end up sticking with me to find eternal life together. Then I wonder if I have any chance of finding eternity. Probably I should not consciously and deliberately forsake my particular calling to do the good which society demands of me, to save the universe from annihilation. Or were those words that came from some other 1-dimensional or 2-dimensional woods, long ago and in another universe?
Monday morning I left at 7:30 after spending over an hour answering e-mails and such. I got to Earth View a little bit after 8:00. Sam copied my zip drives on his NT and wrote the files out to a disk. I went downtown and reviewed the work Les Denham had done in putting together presentations of the Matagorda Island project for BP. Then I went to the Astrodome for the OTC. Most of the Astrodome parking lot is torn up for the building of a giant new football stadium. It looks like it is going to be bigger than the Astrodome, the 8th wonder of the world. I finally found where the authors meet, and downloaded the CD, linked all of the movies, and turned it over to the AV guys. All of the people in my session showed up. First Roger Anderson, then Wayne Esser of Boeing, then Tom Frantis of Exxon-Mobil, then Robert Hobbs of Veritas, then Jackie Singleton of Phillips, and finally Geoff Dorn now at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Great group of people. We had a lot of fun talking before the session, and then the session happened. Everything went very smoothly except my talk. When the files were copied from the computer I built the files on to the new computer all of the movie links were lost. So I punted for a change. How can one change the universe if they are always punting.
Robert Hobbs told us that Magic Earth (../0006.html, ../0011.html, ../0017.html, and 0026.html), Continuum's perceived competition, which was spun out of Texaco a year and a half after Continuum started, was purchased by Halliburton and Landmark earlier in the day for $100,000,000 (read my words: that is one hundred million dollars in stock exchanges, probably 25% of which was owned by the President, CEO, and Chairman of the Board). Oh well! Guess it proves the Continuum concept was on track. I did call Mike Zeitlin (../9840.html, ../9938.html, and 9840.html), whom John Amason and I had taken to dinner at Carmellos and asked to be the President of Walden Visualization Systems, which became Continuum Resources, on my cell phone and asked him if he would like to invest in Dynamic Resources. He hasn't responded yet. How am I going to change the universe if:
Year | Event | Later Financial Success by Others |
1974 | Refused to sign Mobil's Patent Release Papers | Landmark purchased by Halliburton for $560 million |
1982 | Designed Landmark's seismic post-stack processing with Andy Hildebrand | In about 1996 Applied Geophysics was sold to Landmark Graphics and Rutt Bridges makes $60 million. |
1989 | Developed a hypertext browser for geologist with Terry Smith at the University of Southwestern Louisiana (which is still better than NetScape or MicroSoft Explorer for Geoscientists) | Mosaic introduced in 1993, and Netscape goes public in about 1995 |
1996 | Defined the Immersive Reality busines plan for Walden Visualization Systems with John Amason and Keith Rawlinsons | Magic Earth sold to Landmark and Halliburton for $100 million |
Maybe Father's and Son's Campouts are actually to keep us grounded to the fact money doesn't matter to God, nor to obtaining eternal life. At least that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
Tuesday I met Dave Agarwal, Les Denham, and the two interpreters who worked up Matagorda Island at Vastar's old office, now part of the BP family. We had a good presentation, and I was able to lay some nice groundwork for Dynamic Resources, and particularly the prospects Dick Coons is developing in the North and South Padre Island Areas. I left there at noon and went back to the OTC, where I was a room monitor, at the request of Alf Klaviness. It was an interesting session on subsea completions. I had about 110 per speaker in my session, tapering off to about 40 for my talk, which was the last talk. These guys had 230 per speaker, tapering off to about 115 for the last talk. Guess there is a lot more interest in things (pumps, christmas trees, ROVs: remote operated vehicles, etc.) than concepts (exporation plays, visualization, interpretation tools, etc.). Remember what Nephi taught us: `God ... hath created all things, ... both things to act and things to be acted upon.' (2 Nephi 2:14). I don't understand why these folks are more interested in the `things to be acted upon' than the `things to act.' Oh well! I know the difference, and as one of the `things to act' I will continue to pursue my particular calling. I got home about 7:00 and proceeded to start acting on the next set of things.
Wednesday morning started early putting together sales packets for prospects, etc. There was a catch-up phone call with Swede Nelson (0108.html and 0113.html). At 9:30 I went and picked up Dick Coons and we went to see Bob Williams about their prospect offshore Belize. Interesting stuff. I spent all the rest of the week putting these sales packets together. Wednesday night the Scouts did a joint activity on Emergency Prepardness. Matt received nice compliments from Brother Branning on his efforts and presentation of first aid kits. At about 10:30 we got a call from Steve Shirts asking Andrea to participate in a family fast the next dayfor his daughter Mavanee who has serious ear blockage problems. We started our fast with the evening prayer, before we went to sleep. It was really neat to be asked to participate in a family fast. Thursday night I took a break to go to Rachel's Choir Banquet. Before we left for the dinner, Andrea and I knelt in the library and closed our fast. There was a wonderful spirit there, and I know Mavanee will be blessed. I look forward to participating in Family Fasts for each of you and for your children. At the dinner, the pictures of all of the kids were really nice, and were well done. The senior play of what went on during the year was a little vulgar in parts, and it was really funny. I was proud of the senior girl who played Rachel in the play. It showed me Rachel is setting a great example. The meal was catered by Carabba's, and was the best school banquet I have been to. I did work until about 2:00 Friday morning, and restarted at 6:00. Andrea helped me and we had 9 sales packets ready to be sent by Federal Express when Matt and I left for the father's and son's campout at 6:00 on Friday evening. I was probably too tired for the kind of discussions which have usually occurred at camp anyway.
Matt and I got back from the father's and son's campout just in time for his soccer game, which they one 3 to 2. I went by and saw Rob and took Paul and Kate's wedding pictures afterwards. Rob was cordial and even said `Thanks for coming by.' He also said `I will call you if I want to do anything with you.' I could not help but think of Uncle Lloyd's comment to Paul and I when we visited a week ago: `It is so sad when someone turns down someone who want's to mentor them and who cares. There are just too few mentors around these days.' Oh well! I went and got a haircut and asked the lady we gave a Book of Mormon to how her reading is coming. She says her Grandson keeps talking to her about it (0105.html). Andrea and Rachel went to a Pacesetter's Review. I took Matt to the Eighth-Grade Dance. He had his suit on, and looked like a billion dollars. Andrea had helped decorate the gym with a Hollywood Theme (and had taken down the R-Rated movie posters), and so I went in and took some digital photos. Got a nice photo of Matt and one of the girls who he was talking to. As I left, Sandy Brown, who did some contract work for me at Continuum, corned me in the parking lot under our umbrella's and we caught up on what we have each been doing. When Dynamic takes off, I anticipate she will have an important role to play. She is leaving for a three week tour of China with one of her girlfriends right after school gets out. She says her husband thinks she is half Buddist.
When I got home from dropping off Matt and getting gas, I started working on the next proposal and forgot to watch the clock. Heather, this is to tell everyone I'm sorry I was late getting to the airport to pick you up. At least you only had to wait a couple of minutes. It is good to have you here for the summer, and I look forward to getting to know you better.
I bore my testimony in Fast & Testimony Meeting today, specifically talking about my feeling in fasting for Mavanee on Wednesday, and when I found the chart showing famines in MesoAmerica. It was the first time to do so in a long time (../0036.html). I also taught the High Priest priesthood lesson today, at Lyle Rowbury's request. He wanted a lesson on what husband's can do to build better communication with their wives, and suggested I use material from `that course' (PAIRS). It was a hard lesson for me to teach. It seemed to go OK. We celebrated Heather's birthday at lunch with an ice cream birthday cake. I definitely like this tradition. Rachel gave a nice Family Home Evening on service, and how her project of planting flowers at the nursing home has helped her feel good. It has been a nice day. I hope all of your days for each of you, this next week, are just as nice."