cc: file, Andrea, Tony Hafen, Sara and Des Penny, & Maxine Shirts
"This is another of those weeks where I am reminded of my (and by extension) your mortality. Friday I got home from work to learn that my sister called with news that Aunt Mary died. I remember Aunt Mary always being there, and always cooking candy. We had some nice dutch oven dinners at her house, and yet what I remember is the candy.
When I attempted to pull HyperMedia Corporation out of the ditch, I stopped to visit Aunt Mary, and the idea of having her make homemade caramels for our booth at the SEG came up. For several years I would order a few boxes of homemade caramels, and she would send me boxes to distribute at the SEG. After the first year I had several folks who would look for my booth and come to see if I brought any of Aunt Mary's caramels with me this year. She thoroughly enjoyed making the candy, and listening to me tell her how much people liked the candy. Annette now has the burden of carrying on. Maybe I can get GDC to have Aunt Mary's caramels in their booth at the SEG.
I remember when she put together the memorial folder for
Uncle Bud (../9937.html) and how impressed I was with all of
the material she had put together. When she gave me a copy
of Uncle Bud's book, I took a bunch of digital photos of
photos she had of my Grandpa's house (Roice Bengt Nelson,
who died before I was born), his father's cabin (Bengt
Nelson, Jr.) on Cedar Mountain, his maternal grandfather's
home (Joseph Sneddon Hunter), his maternal great-grandfather's
home (Joseph Hunter), and others. These photo's, and more
contemporary photos of the same places, are at:
http://www.walden3d.com/photos/Family/AncestorsNelson
I have great plans for creating a web library of this kind
of family history information. Time will tell which parts
of these plans I am successful in implementing. Aunt Mary
knows I have a deep need and desire to remember my ancestry
and to pass it on to my descendants. We talked about it
many times.
I remember when she called me up a couple of years ago, quite mad at me because my old car was in her garage and she wanted it out of there so there was not additional things for her kids to clean up after she died. I had let my cousin Leon, Aunt Mary's youngest son, take the car after Dad died, and he told me he had it in a storage shed. Turns out the storage shed was his Mom's garage (../0220.html). Oh well! Andrea suggested I talk to her brother, and so I immediately called Grandma Shirts and got permission to put the car in her garage, and then called Russell Shirts and made arrangements for him to move it from Aunt Mary's garage to my new Mom's garage (../0250.html). And then we donated it to SUU (../0331.html and ../0335.html), and so this trial passed. Actually I think Aunt Mary was more upset with Leon than she was with me. And at the same time, every time I visited she was always telling me about Leon's restoration of this car or that car, and how proud she is of him.
There are a several references to Aunt Mary written in these thoughtlets (../9848.html, ../9937.html, ../9944.html, ../0212.html, ../0250.html, ../0305.html, ../0315.html, ../0322.html, ../0335.html, and 0411.html). However, a few words here and there will never capture the depth of a deep, eternal friendship and relationship, the kind that transcends age differences. I had such a good relationship with my Aunt Mary May Winters Nelson.
Sara told me the funeral will be next Tuesday. This is when I rescheduled the meeting planned for BP. Fred Hilterman, Lee Bell, and Cindy Peevey, all of GDC, are scheduled to attend with me. In addition Vince Felt has scheduled folks from BP, and I have hesitated to change it. I will call Vince tomorrow morning, and if he can postpone it one day without loosing the people and momentum, then I will see if I can figure out a way to go to Cedar City Monday evening. However, with another trip to China coming the 13th-22nd of May, there is an awful lot to get done, and so I doubt if I will be able to go and express the depth of my feelings for my Aunt. After I wrote this, we found out the funeral was changed to Wednesday, so I am going to go up. I will get into Cedar about midnight Tuesday, and back to Houston about 1:00 Wednesday night. Busy times again.
I had a busy and frustrating week. I have been working with some of GDC's rock physics data in a spread-sheet that is GFx56274 (98 x 56,274 or 3,402,304 grid cells) in size. A couple of days this week were spent trying to get formulas to propagate across this spread-sheet. For those interested in such things, the computer is an hp ze4200 with a celeron (crippled pentium chip) and 512 MB of RAM.
On Monday Yao Zhang, Senior Consultant to BGP, visited GDC. We had a lunch meeting with Dave Johnson, Mike Dunn, Lee Bell (President of GDC and my boss), Richard Verm, Hugh Frazier, and Tom Concannon the Financial VP for Geokinetics. Very interesting meeting and follow-up. Because of the meeting Dave Johnson and I will be going back to Beijing the 13-22nd of May.
Tuesday Haden Hudson sent me a photo, which was simply
described as being worth 1000 words. I agree, and someday,
maybe I will be able to find the words to describe my deep
feelings and fears tied to Viet Nam, Iraq, freedom, liberty,
and the quality of life in The United States of America. In
the meantime, I encourage each of you to think seriously
about the attached photo, especially in the context of Mary
May Nelson (above) and Peter Shirts.
Wednesday morning Cindy Peevey and myself had a 4 hour meeting with Hugh Rowlett at ConocoPhillips. It was a very good discussion of his responsibilities at ConocoPhillips and of the services and products which GDC has and which can support his activities. One of the things he is most interested in is my Best Practices and knowledge management technologies (the Knowledge BackboneSM). I anticipate several very nice projects will come out of this meeting for GDC. It is also interesting that the meeting will be continued in Beijing, and that Dave and I will end up staying at the same hotel as Hugh Rowlett (Chief Geophysicist), Jeff Jurinak (Chief Reservoir Engineer), the Chief Geologist, and the Chief Financial Officer for ConocoPhillips (0421.html).
Wednesday the AudioTech book-on-tape I was listening to summarized 4 primary and 4 secondary business practices which create lasting business success. I feel these are worth passing on for your consideration in your various different activities:
Thursday afternoon we had a meeting to plan the future of
interpretation at GDC. As the new Vice President
Interpretation Business Development, I had a vested interest
in this meeting. It was one of the better meetings we have
had at GDC since I arrived. The people at GDC are good
people. There is some political maneuvering, which I do
find disgusting. But for the most part I have not found
anyone playing these games with a vindictive attitude.
Friday Dave Johnson took me to the MicroCenter at 11:00. We spent about 2 hours there, and he purchased an hp media center lap top for me with 80 GB disk, 1 GB RAM, and a pentium 4 chip that is about as fast as any running today. He also bought a 512 MB flash disk, a wireless mouse, Microsoft Office, and a carrying case. On the way over to the store we were stuck in traffic and I summarized for him the mission of Walden 3-D, and the various projects I have been involved in over the years. He wants to meet with the NASA folks about the 90 exploration areas NASA has identified based on space-based geomorphology (../0321.html). He thinks my proposed mining of thermogenic gas hydrates at the ConocoPhillips' Joilet Platform is pretty speculative. He did say, `Now that we have you signed up, I guess I can tell you what you are really worth.' I responded with the salary they agreed to pay me, and he said, `No, you are worth a lot more than that.' If I'm going to work for someone, it is nice to have my boss' boss telling me that I am worth millions and millions of dollars. Time will tell. I did get half a dozen e-mail's off to China about our trip in a couple of weeks. I worked until about 8:00 Friday evening, finishing up a Powerpoint presentation on Spotfire which I had committed to put together, and which had been delayed because of the shopping trip. Oh well! I picked up a Wendy's bacon burger and a Frostie on the way home, since Matt was on the Choir trip to Corpus Christi and Andrea had already eaten.
Saturday morning I went for a run, got a haircut, and attempted to fix the oven. Turns out three of the heating elements are burned right through. Guess the oven was not suppose to last over 20 years. Oh well! Andrea went shopping, and we ordered a new oven, which will be installed next week (0419.html). Then I spent most of the day working on setting up and moving files from the old computer over to the new computer while I watched old western movies. `I should have been a cowboy,' 'cause I sure do enjoy watching the old western movies. Andrea and I went out to dinner as a celebration of our first paycheck. And at Melanie's recommendation we went to see `The Prince and Me.' The beer and bar's, the indiscretions and lifestyles, combined to place the movie in my not the best category. However, Melanie is right, the actress star looks and walks and talks just like Sara and just like Melanie. I found tears in my eyes through most of the movie as I watched my girls on the big screen struggling with the complexities of life. Despite the modern society components of the movie, I recommend each of you take the time to go and see Sara and Melanie on the big screen. It is a real treat in that respect.
I forgot about Welfare Meeting on Fast Sunday this morning. When Andrea woke up at 6:50 and reminded me, I was up like a shot, showered, shaved, and was at the church in my suit by the time the meeting started at 7:15 AM. Probably not the best way to start the Sabbath. Meeting were nice. I do enjoy renewing my covenants each Sunday by taking the sacrament. There are really good folks in The Nottingham Country Ward, and the testimony meetings are particularly uplifting. Greg Branning is a great Sunday School Teacher, and Steve Holleman did a fine job running our High Priest Quorum Meeting. I came home, took a nap, and set the new computer up so that it was playing high resolution television from our cable connection when Matt got back from his Choir Trip. He liked it, and just wanted to get on the computer and play his games. Andrea had fixed a nice lunch, as always. And I wrote about Aunt Mary, and read an article her Aunt Nadine had sent Andrea about her about her ancestor, Peter Shirts. The following was from the Spectrum, Sunday, January 27th, 1991:
I was found this story very interesting. Maybe I like the old cowboy and Indian movies so much because Bengt Nelson (my great-great grandfather), and his contemporaries, including Peter Shirts (Andrea's great-great-great grandfather) were the real indian fighters which the movies exaggerate. And maybe, as is demonstrated by my feelings this week, it is because my own mortality comes to the front when I consider the lives of those like Mary May Nelson and Peter Shirts."