cc: file, Andrea, Tony Hafen, Sara and Des Penny, & Maxine Shirts
"Last Sunday evening, after I had written Thoughtlet 0432.html, I put a dish in the sink, and as I turned around, I knocked a drinking glass off of the counter, it fell to the floor and everywhere around me was broken glass.
Because of where I was last Sunday, I found my mind went back to the 5th of September 1993, Marti and my 20th wedding anniversary - our china wedding anniversary. This was the night I put 20 of our china bowls on the kitchen table, invited Marti to leave the computer in our bedroom - or maybe she was asleep by the time I overreacted - and come into the kitchen. I proceeded to break the china bowls one at a time with a hammer, stating that this is what I felt was happening to our marriage. There were a lot of reasons why I was so angry, so hurt, so abandoned, and yet there is no excuse for what I did. I have said and attempted to demonstrate I am sorry many times, and yet, as I searched through the Thoughtlets, it seems I have not explicitly confessed to this sin before to you kids. As I cleaned up the broken glass last Sunday evening, I recalled cleaning up the broken china 11 years earlier. And I once again faced the fact there is good basis for my feelings of being a failure. It is interesting how this event set the theme of my thoughts for the week - a theme of broken glass.
Monday was my first day to get feedback on all of the maps I made the previous Friday for John Walker and Ken Butler. It seems that whenever you are building a new map for someone else, you need to plan on going through at least one iteration of redoing it. Oh well! Better than stepping on broken glass.
Monday afternoon at 2:00, Hugh Frazier from Quantum, Lee Bell, my boss, and the President of GDC, and myself met with Arun Dharbal for 2 hours. Arun is the man I sat next to when I took the First Class Flight from Salt Lake to Houston on the way back from the Shirts Reunion in Coeur d' Alene, Idaho (0429.html). He and his friends are establishing new infrastructure companies in energy, communications, and transportation. Their communications company is called Sky Crystal and is based on building a plasma shield 30-45 miles into space which reflect communication signals back to earth. They are focusing on using this in India, China, and Brazil to bring coverage to 280 million cell phone users for a price of US$2.00 per month per cell phone user. They can focus the downcoming signal within 10-15 meters, and can transmit in excess of 2 gigabytes per second, which is what is needed for real time downloading of a signal from a seismic acquisition crew. Audrey, thanks for making it so I could meet this guy. He was born in India, is a U.S. citizen, and is black enough to look like he comes from West Africa. It will be very exciting to see where this all goes.
Tuesday was spent working on rebuilding maps. I received an e-mail from Jialin Yan that he could not open the scanned images of his new proposed contract. I couldn't open one of the images either. I ended up calling Maureen at home in order to get access to the images. Andrea was getting ready for seminary, and everything was really busy at the house. It was one of those weeks where we never did find time to discuss her suggested edits for last week's thoughtlet. This is why you get two thoughtlets this week.
I was still reading, and after Andrea went to bed, I checked the e-mail before going to bed. The following e-mail had just arrived:
Because of the Sun workstation I work on, when I put together
a Thoughtlet, it does not include images, except as attachments.
The attached image is Heather's e-mail with all of the cute
little smiley faces. I admit, I was shocked. Heather, I feel
like you have not wanted anything to do with me, basically
since you went back to Utah after spending a summer here. I
have been pleased to see improved communication with your Mom
after you graduated from college. I guess I should not have
been shocked. Aunt Sara told me you planned on moving in with
him when you moved to St. George, and so it appears there has
been some long-term positioning for this end result. I did
not sleep very well Tuesday. The story that kept going through
my mind concerned some beautiful young women who decided to go
skinny dipping in a farmer's pond. When they were in the pond
the farmer came down with a bucket, and they all hurried to the
deep water where they were covered up. The farmer said to
them, `Don't let me bother you, I'm just coming down to feed
my alligators.' The story was to demonstrate that age and
treachery always win out over youth an inexperience.
Wednesday morning I did not tell Andrea about the e-mail before she went to her first morning of teaching seminary this year. However, before her and Matt left for seminary, I did suggest we go to the temple Wednesday night, instead of going to see Princess Diary's 2, which had been discussed.
Then I called Sara at 6:00. The call did not go through 4 times, so I went through the AT&T operator. It probably cost $100. Oh well! I wrote notes on her vacation as she talked, and these notes are at http://www.walden3d.com/benin/letters/040811.html It was almost as shocking of a phone call as the previous night's e-mail. I guess nobody promised life would be easy to understand nor to predict. Sara, you sound happy. Although at one point of the conversation you got very quiet, and it took a long time for me to hear and to understand what you were saying. Oh well! I'm glad you got the book, your early birthday present, and that you have found the first two-thirds of it interesting reading.
Wednesday morning Doug Harless and two of his colleagues came into the office at 9:00 AM. They were there to talk about Doug's new company and about building Linux clusters for GDC. There were a lot of repeated words, and I kept almost falling asleep. I also went to lunch with Doug and his partner at Willy Gee's on South Post Oak. Lunch was seafood gumbo and key lime pie. The purpose of the lunch was to discuss the possible investment in an oil company of up to $100 million by one of his friends. Not only does this friend have that kind of money to invest, they need to take care of a $250 million tax loss carry forward. It seems like I have a lot of these `big' discussions, and it also seems like they don't go anywhere. Doug's partner is a computer scientist, and I described the type of indexing that could come with a full implementation of the Knowledge Backbone(SM), Infinite Grid(SM), Timedex(SM), and data types (like the data types we defined for geology in the Abbott On-Line Atlas). He got very excited about the discussion, and sees several places where they could open up discussions concerning these technologies. A couple of the National Labs, where they are selling their Lunix clusters, are moving into Homeland Security in a big way, and as I described this indexing approach, he immediately saw how it relates to Homeland Security. I started moving into my new office on Wednesday afternoon. The biggest issue was mounting a big, very heavy white board, which had been in storage for quite a while.
It was good for Andrea and I to go to the temple on Wednesday evening. On the ride there, Andrea talked about her feelings. She loves Heather, and wants her to be happy. She does not want to knock a fragile relationship off the counter and end up with unrepairable broken glass. She recognizes, better than I do, that once kids are gone, they get to live with the consequences of their choices, and we can not do a thing to help them beyond loving them. One nice thing about our temple session was that Susan Keller was in our session. She always had a crush on Ben. She is the Relief Society President in the Single's Ward. It was touching when, in the Celestial Room, I told her that it has only been a few weeks since her Dad stood in proxy for my Dad as I was sealed for time-and-eternity to my parents (0426.html). The second thing special about going to the temple came as I thought about the life of the man who originally had the new name I was given for the proxy I went through the endowment for. It helped me put all of the stuff that has been happening recently into perspective for me. The third thing special about going to the temple this Wednesday night was the comfort for me to place the names of those I am concerned about on the prayer rolls of the temple. And fourth, and probably most important, there is a good spirit and a good feeling accompanying going to the temple. It helps put things in an eternal perspective.
Thursday I had caught up on my sleep, and so I was able to concentrate at work better. I was busy making more maps for the Tile-01 report. There were also more boxes of books to unload. I left at 4:30 to take Gulf of Mexico block boundary data to Tony Treweek at Unocal so he could convert them to the right projection system for the maps I am building. It turns out that Unocal is right across the Southwest Freeway from where I spent two months consulting for Chroma Energy. So I had a desire, and stopped and bought stuffed jalapino's and creamy carmel shake at Jack-in-the-Box across Dairy Ashford from Chroma, where I often went to eat when I was consulting there for Peter Duncan (../00042.html through ../0150.html). Andrea had Relief Society Thursday evening, and I spent the evening building things with my Zoom Tools. I'm getting ready to meet with Ray Gardner the week I spend in Cedar, and the purpose of the meeting is to talk about the Barker Reservoir Project I've been thinking about the last couple of months. Ben called right after Andrea left for Relief Society, and we had a nice discussion. The first thing Ethan told his friend at school was about going to see the Aquarium.
Friday morning there was a newspaper article about a Vidor man who died from West Nile Virus. I worry about Taylor and Colby, about Melanie and Jared already, and now this gives me something else to obsess about. The previous Friday there was an article in the paper about police finding 50 bodies in shrines in the eastern Nigerian town of Okija, where they were killed in ritual killings, killings having to do with business disputes. And Sara Ellyn is a few miles away, teaching the Beninese business development. Talk about something to obsess about. Oh well!
Friday morning Lee Bell had set up meetings at DGB, a Dutch company which builds neural net enhanced seismic interpretation software. They have moved this software into OpenTect, which makes it available as open source free interpretation software for non-commercial use. I was very impressed with what you can do with the software. I expect it will end up replacing much of the interpretation software currently used by the industry. After the demonstration, Fred Amazadah took us to lunch at the Sugar Land Country Club. I had seafood gumbo and shrimp Caesar salad. After lunch I went back to their office and we finished loading the interpretation software on my system. Then I went back to the office, did not take the Chimney Rock exit, and ended up being stuck on the I-59 and I-610 interchange for an hour. Oh well! I got back to the office about 5:00 and sent off a couple of e-mails I needed to, before heading out to the house.
Friday evening Matt and his friend Andrew, who happens to be black, went to see `Alien vs Predator,' which is rated PG-13. Matt loved it, and told us all about the story when he got home, after he got over being upset with me. Andrea and I went to Mandy Jones' wedding reception. She married a German named Arnold, who was in the dance group with her at BYU. Tom Smith, President of SMT (Seismic-Micro Technology) was there with several of his direct reports. It has been many years since Tom was a graduate student at the Seismic Acoustics Lab. Some of you kids might remember when he and Yvonne took our family skiing on Lake Conroe (about 1982). We had a long discussion, mostly about geophysical stuff, at the reception. Andrea and I also talked to several other friends, including Linda Conners, Susan Reed, Cheryl Steine, Carolee Weber, and, of course, Gary Jones. The Greek Olympic Opening Ceremonies were on just before we left and was still on when we got back. I worked on my Book of Mormon pattern finding file. It turns out I turned off Matt's game and cost him a couple of months work. He was not pleased with me, and he took it all pretty good. Certainly much better than he has taken something like this in the past.
Saturday I was up at 4:30. I read paper, where the headline read `Wicked Charley Slams Florida.' There was a lot of broken glass in the pictures on the front page. Then I unpacked the three file cabinets in the pool table room upstairs. Boxed all of the HyperMedia, Continuum, and Dynamic files in in the file cabinets upstairs, against the wall upstairs, and in our room. Andrea and I went to choir practice at 9:05. Then we went to borrow Gary Jone's truck, but it has a cover on it. So I went to the U-Haul on I-10, and they were sold out, and then went to the U-Haul at Westheimer and Highway-6, where Ben worked after his first year of college, and rented a pick-up truck.
Matt helped me move the three file cabinets downstairs. They are really heavy, and I have really bad bruises on my arms. On one trip the dolly hit the bricks in the front entrance and we now have a broken brick. Oh well! Better than broken glass.
It was a hassle figuring out how to get the file cabinets into the One Riverway building. I now know how the loading docks work, and the guard was very nice in helping us get into the freight elevator. Matt was blown away with my office view. From the 21st floor, I look right down on The Galleria and George Bush's house (#41). Matt kept mentioning that he could see Reliant Stadium. We just stacked the boxes of files and books in my office. It will be a long week getting all of this stuff organized.
After we finished I bought two pairs of shoes for Matt at Oshman's across the Freeway from the house. It was the first time I'd been in there. In fact, I didn't know it was there before this trip. I also bought me some new running shorts, but they are too short to cover my garments, so I'll probably not use them outside much. Oh well! I took Matt to work, stopped at Jack-in-the Box, got gas, washed my car, went to Target and Office Depot to find a cord concealer for my new office and then bought roses for Andrea, which I had forgot to pick up Friday evening.
Our Stake Conference Saturday Adult meeting at 6:00. I was really tired and had a hard time staying awake. I did write a possible stanza for Prime Words based on one of the talks:
Stake Conference today was nice. I particularly enjoyed
singing the song. Several of the speakers, including the
visiting General Authority, mentioned how much they enjoyed
the song. Reynolds Cahoon does a very nice job. And the
words, which I wrote out in the previous Thoughtlet (0432.html),
are wonderful. Certainly they are not words which can melt
and remold broken glass, but they are words which can help
us keep from, in the first place, creating broken glass."