cc: file, Andrea, Tony Hafen, Sara and Des Penny, Pauline Nelson via mail, & Maxine Shirts
"The title is my suprise I promised in a previous thoughtlet (../0251.html). Yes, while I was carving on ebony with my new exacto knife carving set, I stuck one of them into the bone in my wrist on Monday evening. Ebony is hard wood to carve on, and I made a really stupid mistake. It bled really bad. All over the carpets, the kitchen floor and counters, my new christmas Dockers, my best blue shirt, and my watch (still haven't got that cleaned off). Second trip to the Christus Emergency Room. It was only 3 stitches. It hurt really bad on Monday night. My advice is don't stick an exacto knife in your wrist, especially into the bone. Bones hurt when they heal. I was up most of Monday night. And I was pretty limited with what I felt like doing on Tuesday.
I did have a meeting with Peter Duncan and found out about the new stuff he is doing now that he left Chroma. He is basically working with transmission and emmission tomography, which is a branch of earthquake seismology. Kate asked me to start putting a glossary with my Thoughtlets, and maybe this would be a good place to start. However, I won't, I'll just say this is a new way to do passive seismic acquisition, and it has the potential to be a big new business. There are a lot of neat possible applications, including exploring for geothermal deposits (hot water which can be used to generate energy and to heat houses). I see a great application for this in Hurricane and Enoch. Anyway, I'll get more specific and define things better if I get more directly involved, or if one of you ask questions and are interested in more details.
Tuesday night the hurt was less. I still had pain pills from when I hurt my ankle a year ago, and they helped me sleep some on Monday and Tuesday nights. Wednesday I had a meeting with David Douglas, who worked for me for a while at HyperMedia. He was the number one salesman for GeoQuest before working for me, and it is an ego trip to have these guys who know the history talk about how far ahead we were, and probably still are. Hopefully I can turn the current being ahead into some viable business. In the meantime, David is interested in seeing how the new work he is doing in Knowledge Management and Reservoir Characterization fits into the things I showed him relative to The Infinite GridSM and the Knowledge BackboneSM. Turns out he lives in the ward, and we had a nice discussion about the church and the Book of Mormon. He also knows Yan Dun Shi and asked me to say hello for him. I did get a lunch out of the meeting, and it was nice to reconnect with Dave. By Wednesday evening my wrist was about back to normal. Although the three stitches are a bit of a hassle. Just think, I get to take them out myself, or with Ben's or Brian's help, on Monday or Tuesday when we are in Beijing.
Today I finish getting ready for the trip. There will be a meeting with Dave Agarwal and Les Denham at II&T this afternoon, specifically to discuss the future of my Landmark licenses. Computer backups, finishing up four Thoughtlets, so I am a couple of days ahead, etc. There is one thing that bothers me, almost like sticking an exacto knife in the wrist, which I have decided to bring up. It has to do with spam e-mail, some of which is extremely offensive. As I have mentioned in a previous e-mail, I have saved all of the e-mails I have ever received, they are backed up and stored offsite (in case of a tornado or theft), and with the expanded header information, there is enough information to track which servers are forwarding this garbage, and to find patterns in terms of where it is coming from. Over the past year I have been looking for patterns that show where this stuff is coming from, and have identified the source. I believe I have enough evidence to take this to the FBI, who will seize computers and the felony charges will not be expungable. Some of you have told me you have had offensive e-mail forwarded from walden3d.com, which means someone who knows about the Thoughtlets has been sending garbage to addresses like roice@walden3d.com. To illustrate why this concerns me, and why I will take action if it doesn't stop, I have included the From: and Subject: line for garbage mail received during the month of December for your review (note that someone is stealing family identities, like my mom has a computer to use and doesn't know how to spell her own name):
Along the same lines, someone out there will be interested to know that the following computers accessed the page http://www.walden3d.com/thoughtlets/addresses.html in December:
Again, thinking about this week, my advice is still simply, do not stick an exacto knife in your wrist."