"Well, it is 8:00 PM on Super Bowl Sunday, I just watched Paul McCarthy perform, and am finally getting around to writing out this Thoughtlet. I won't finish it tonight, specifically because I did not pick out any digital photos to add, and I think it would be good to include a picture of the four folks and one technical support person I was responsible for hosting for the last three weeks. But first, let me review the non-training things that happened this week.
First, and most important, Bridget and Justin had a baby girl, Rachel Dominique Lee. Our new Rachel is 7 pounds 14 ounces and 21 inches long. She was born on Wednesday, the 2nd of February 2005. Andrea was in Utah all week, and talked to Aunt Sara, who was very excited and going to Woods Cross to help and to be with the baby. Aunt Sara's message was that she was so glad Bridget was through with this dangerous stage.
Andrea left Monday afternoon and flew standby to Cedar City. Then Grandma and her drove over to Ruby's Inn on the edge of Bryce Canyon, where they spent the week with 100 other avid quilters. Andrea missed her seminary class and being home, and she really enjoyed being with Grandma and the quilting classes she took. It was interesting to me how worried she was when she got home about taking this time to be with Mom. She is still afraid that one day she will wake up and once again there will be no money and lots of responsibility. Her fears bring up my fears. I hope I don't go under again. One HyperMedia in a lifetime is enough for anybody.
Second, and also important, a young girl named Brandy called and asked for Rachel's number. It turns out Brandy started school at Taylor when Rachel did, and Rachel gave her a Book of Mormon. Her parents burned it. Her brother later joined the church, and so did she. She wanted to call Rachel and tell her thanks, and how wonderful the change in her life has been. There was a tear in my eye as I hung up the phone. Rachel, I am very proud of your example.
According to my calendar it was Robert Shirts birthday on Monday, Marilyn (Russell's wife) Shirts' birthday on Friday, and Jared's birthday on Saturday. Opps! Sorry I didn't get you a birthday card Jared. My excuse is Andrea was out of town and she does this sooooooo much better than me.
Monday night Matt and I ate leftover Turkey. Tuesday and Wednesday nights we ate KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken). Thursday night we ate ham, potatoes and gravy, and corn from Boston Market, and Friday night we ate pizza bought at Randalls. Last night Matt ate at the Stake Youth Activity, an MTC Experience, and I had started my fast.
Up through Thursday, most of my time was spent with training the Chinese. However, there was a Tiles meeting on Tuesday. Tuesday night Matt called Mom at 10:00 to have her say a prayer with us. The cell phone doesn't work at Ruby's Inn by Bryce Canyon, and so he couldn't through. Matt wanted me to put this fact in the Thoughtlet, even though he doesn't read them. Oh well!
Wednesday I worked late with Tony Traweek on creating a process to automatically generate SEG-Y Rock Property Volumes from the Tiles database. On Thursday, Dave Johnson called a meeting on China with Lee Bell, Mike Dunn, and myself. I recommended we renew Jialin's contract and stay in China another six months to see what kind of contracts we can close. It was agreed, and hopefully the resources to do the seismic and well modeling will be forthcoming so we will be ready for our big China tour in the middle to late March. On Friday I spent the morning at Anadarko with Sam Mentemeir working on our paper for the Spotfire User's Conference on the 22nd of February (0509.html).
Matt helped lock up the church each night as part of his community service agreement for getting in a fight at school. On Saturday morning he spent 4 hours cleaning the church, alone. Everyone seemed pleased with what he had done. I dropped him off about 7:30 and then took my car down to the Saturn place to be serviced. I worked on `An Open Mind' while they worked on my car. Matt called for a ride just as I was leaving the Saturn place. He changed clothes while I bought a piece of wood to fix the ladder into the attic at Lowes, and then we went to Target for him to apply for a job. It took longer than the time he had available, and so we went and ate lunch at IHOP (The International House of Pancakes). I had some really good blueberry pancakes and Matt had `Pigs in a Bun.' He seemed to be in a good mood when I dropped him off at the church. Later I learned that he forgot to tell me I was suppose to be there with him to drop him off and to pick him up. Oh well! I didn't know, and I do not read minds.
Matt's friend J.R. came over to the house while Matt was at the church locking up with Brother Rankin. It turns out that J.R. was caught having had some porn on the computer screen. He claims it was just a pop-up and he did not go looking for it. However, his Mom, who has remarried, told him he was just like his Dad (whom he claims is a drug addict), and kicked him out of the house. Before the actual kicking out occurred, Matt gave him a Book of Mormon. About midnight, after being kicked out of the house, he came over to our house, and we spent about a half an hour talking and counseling with him. He spent the night with his and Matt's friend Andrea, and I have not heard anything else today. Matt felt very good about giving him The Book of Mormon, and it was a good experience for Matt.
And I guess it is time to write about my topic: Xing Jiang Oilfield Training. Mike Dunn sent me an e-mail a little over a week before the training was to begin telling me I would be responsible for the training. The training was for software which they had purchased before I came to work at GDC. It was a kludge of GDCMOD (the well management and log processing and modeling package), ET-VIEW (a seismic viewing engine), CS-PICK (a seismic velocity picking software package), and jRougue (the geophysical rock properties database). I do not know how to use this software. The user interface is very obsolete. The software needs to be rewritten. Richard Verm is the only person who knows how to use the software, and he refused to have anything to do with the training because he was too busy doing revenue generating projects. In many ways the assignment was like being put between a rock and a hard place.
Carlos Venegas is the programmer who has been supporting this software since Luh Liang was fired. Luh was one of the Phd students I worked with at the Seismic Acoustics Lab under Fred Hilterman, and along with the opportunity to work with Fred and Richard again was one of the reasons I decided GDC would be a good place to work. Fred is at the University of Houston full time, and I seldom see him. Richard is just plain mean. And Luh was fired right after I accepted and before I started to work at GDC. Guess that shows how well I plan out the people side of my business life. Anyway, Carlos and I have become friends, and he is very good. So we put together a plan.
Mike Dunn had arranged with Xaio, GDC's previous China agent, to have Frank, GeoTech's pre-sales and post-sales technical support engineer, come with the students for training at GDC. Frank was to do the translation, and he was responsible for training in ET-VIEW and CS-PICK, which covered one of the three weeks. I took the first day, and laid out the plan for the three weeks. Frank had the next 4 days. The second week Peg Guthrie taught her one day course on GDCMOD over 4 days. Carlos taught the other day, reviewing how to build a GDCMOD database. The third week Carlos started off the first day talking about jRouge and how to create the database. He also reviewed MySQL, which is the public domain database behind jRouge and GDCMOD. I took Tuesday and went over D-TIPS and Spotfire use of the jRouge database. Jeff Harwell came through on Thursday and reviewed how GDC does seismic processing. They had questions on stuff only Richard Verm knows how to do, and Richard ended up coming in to talk about it for an hour. But not until after he got on Maureen's case about not having someone there to copy the material he was going to hand out, and to make sure Maureen knew that the whole Xing Jiang Oilfield Training Course was completely screwed up because of a `lack of planning.' This was the last morning of the three week training, when the material Jeff Harwell got him to talk about was the only thing left to cover. I felt like I had been set up to fail. But I didn't.
The actual training was considered a great success by the attendees. The only complaint they gave was about Richard's software, and specifically about a very poor user interface. However, my reason for writing about the Xing Jiang Oilfield Training was not to bring up the petty politics which accompany working in a company, any company, but rather to talk about the other things I set up to make sure that the training class would be remembered positively. I expect some of you kids will be in a similar situation in the future, and hopefully these little thoughts will be of some benefit to you.
First, I expected this was the first time to the United States for most of these Chinese class members. It turned out one of the ladies had been the the states before. So I knew that the social and tourist activities would far out weigh the technical training experience in terms of what would be remembered. Second, I wanted to stress the difference in US and Chinese cultures up front and in a way that immersed them in a different way to live. So the first thing I gave to them, the first Monday morning they arrived at GDC, was a one page spreadsheet with 6 different activities for them to select from for the two Saturdays I was responsible for showing them around Texas. To teach them the importance of choice, there were four of the items which were single all day trips (San Antonio, Corpus Christi, Dallas, or the Tsunami Tennis Tournament), but the other choices had 6, 7, and 11 choices of multiple things to do, and they had to choose 3 of these things.
Their first choice to go to NASA, Galveston beach, Moody Gardens, and the play Smoky Joe's Cafe at the Opera House in Galveston. Our budget did not allow all of these, and so we ended up dropping off Moody Gardens. This was on Saturday the 22nd. After Andrea's surprise 50th birthday party at 7:00 AM, Matt, Carlos, and his fiancee all headed to Bellaire and Gessner to pick them up. I had a 15 passenger van from Enterprise Van Rental to take everyone in. We got there just as Susan, one of GDC's Chinese seismic processors arrived. Susan was a lifesaver, because the spoke very poor English, and she could talk to them about the U.S. and what she has learned since she moved to Houston in the late 1970's.
The first photo shows the group. Matt took the photo. Frank, the translator and teacher from GeoTech, is on the left. Then Guo Hongxian, a seismic processor who speaks no English. Susan from GDC is between him and Carlos' fiancee. Then Carlos, then me, then Mao Haibo, then Ding Guorong, and finally Zou Yuping, who had been to Houston for training once before. We loaded up in the van and headed out for NASA, with digital camera's snapping photos every few minutes all the way there and back.
I bought General Admission to Space Center Houston. They had tickets where you could get an audio tour of the center by an astronaut. However, I because of their poor English, and because of our limited budget, I decided it was not worth the expense. It was cute that each ticket has written on it: `There is intelligent fun out there!' Space Center Houston was having a `War Hammer 40,000 Tournament' and all of the men participating looked and acted like 50 year old nerds. It was kind of funny, and as I thought of all of the time that is being wasted playing these games it made me sad. Even Matt, who is really into this game, was not into the tournament. We kept together to go up and see the shuttle mockup, to the IMAX movie, and then to the tour of the facilities. It was the second time for Madam Zou, and she was still interested. When we got back from the tour and they brought out the photo of our group, I took a digital photo of the picture. They got quite upset and made me erase the photo, saying it was copyrighted by NASA. I complied, and I think one could get that attitude taken to court and thrown out. After all it was a photo of me, and I expect a legal case can be made that I my own the copyright on my own image, and they are the ones who are breaking copyright by attempting to force me to pay for my own photo. Another windmill to tilt at someday!
The group scattered after this. I got everyone in to see the moon rocks. They took digital photos of everything. It was fun and contagious to watch their enthusiasm. They also went to the gift store and several of them bought things which surprised me they had the money to purchase. I kind of rushed them out of NASA, because it was almost 1:00, and I needed to have them fed by 2:00 so we could make it to the 3:00 theater tickets at the Galveston Opera House. I took them to my favorite hole-in-the-wall place by NASA (../0319.html), where I took Ed Roger's Harvard friend who was writing the novel. They seemed to really enjoy the Cajun food and took lots of digital photos of the stuffed animals on the walls and the various things and decorations hung up. We did not get out of their until about 2:15, and I thought we would be late.
However, we arrived at the theater at 2:55, and although there were no two seats together, we all were seated before the curtain call. I remember being surprised when `Smoky Joe's Cafe' was one of the options they were quite adamant about seeing when I first gave them the list of Saturday activities. Even though it is the longest playing musical in Broadway's history, I had never seen it before. It was basically my parent's, and maybe I should say my Mom's, generation. There was some Elvis Presley, and most of it was before Elvis. The whole story was song and music, and I felt sorry for the Chinese who could not understand any English. The play was in the Grand 1894 Opera House in Galveston in Mezzanine, and I had seat Left CC 12, an obstructed view. The Chinese all seemed to like it.
After the musical we walked over to what I thought was the beach. It turned out to be the other side of the island and was Galveston Bay. There was a big cruise ship leaving, and as I watched this large ship, I realized I could probably enjoy going on a cruise on one of these ships someday. So someday. Maybe. Since I know Andrea would like to do something like this. But only if it allows us to visit some Maya ruins in Meso America. Anyway, the Chinese were really funny busy taking photos of each other and me. Then Carlos and his fiancee left to pick up her brother from the airport. I took the others to find the beach, but where I turned around and parked there was no beach, just large chunks of granite. Matt and I went and bought some bottled water for everyone, we drove back to Houston, and after dropping them off Matt and I were home by about 8:00.
Monday morning the week of NAPE 2005 (0505.html) turned into a real hassle, and I did not write about the experience in that Thoughtlet. I took the van back to Enterprise on the Katy Freeway frontage road between Barker Cypress and Highway 6. And I forgot to bring the keys to the blue Saturn. So after paying for the van, and realizing I didn't have the keys, I called Andrea. However, she had gone for a walk. So I spent the next hour working on some stuff in one of their offices, waiting for Andrea to get back from her walk. She did get back from her walk, she brought me the keys, and I made it into work about 9:30 AM. Oh well!
As mentioned above, Carlos taught on Monday, and Peg Guthrie taught the Xing Jian Oilfield Training from Tuesday through Friday. Friday evening Carlos and his fiancee took the Chinese to see a Rocket's game, and specifically to see Yuo Ming, the star center. This had become a political bombshell. When I first found out they were coming I told Maureen I wanted them to go to a Rockets game. She got the pricing, and it was really high. There was no way we could afford to do every on the budget Mike had given me. Then a couple of days later Maureen said she was able to get a really good deal. It was $2,000 for a suite for seven with all the food they wanted. I did not do the basic thing of dividing by 7 to realize this was almost $300 per person. Anyway, Maureen said it was a good deal, and so I said OK if Mike Dunn says OK. Mike said OK, and I think it was because he was going to take them to the game. However, after the tickets were purchased and had arrived, Dave Johnson found out the price, and was not pleased. I felt like Adam in the Garden of Eden, telling the Lord `the woman gave me of the tree and I did eat.' Anyway, it then became a political football. I would not have minded taking Matt and Andrea to a Rocket's game, and I was not planning on going. I think Mike was planning on going, and he didn't because he gave the financial approval. So Carlos and his fiancee ended up with the five Chinese in a private suite for the Rocket's game against San Francisco. I did think it was funny how it turned out.
The next day was Saturday the 29th, and the day for the second tour in conjunction with Xing Jiang Oilfield Training. No one at the office would volunteer to take the Chinese anyplace, and since I was assigned to be in charge of the training, I ended up taking them, even if I had many other things I would have much rather been doing. Oh well! So Friday after work I stopped and picked up another van from Alamo, dropped off Carlos at the Katy Park and Ride, and got home in time to watch `Enterprise' and `JAG' and `Numb3rs,' my current Friday night television addictions.
I got up early the next morning and was at Bellaire and Gessner at 6:30 to pick up the five Chinese. We got back to hour house at 7:00 for breakfast (second photo). This was the first time any of them have had or seen pancakes. Gloria, from GDC, was already there and was helping Andrea fix the pancakes and sausages when we arrived. After breakfast I sang `The Wooden Shoe' and Frank later gave me a digital video recording of the entire song. It is interesting to hear myself and how far out of key I sometimes sing. Oh well! When there is enough disk space, I will put the digital song on-line and connect a link to this Thoughtlet. While we were in the front room, after the song, there was a quiet moment and I asked Madam Zou what she was thinking. She said, `I think you have enough.' Sometimes when I sit in this white room alone, and there is no one else in the house, my mind goes back to the pioneers in Cedar Valley, and brings them into the room with me, and I can imagine them sitting there and thinking, `So this is what the Celestial Kingdom is like!' Her words were an echo of these thoughts. One of the Chinese asked me about our church, and I showed them a copy of The Book of Mormon. They were interested, and so I ended up giving all five of them a copy. They seemed pleased, and I got the impression Andrea was starting to see my point that we are already on a mission, just because of my work and the number of different people I bring by the house for various discussions. After this we all went outside and took another picture (third photo), got in the van and drove to Columbus.
I forgot to write (0502.html) that on Saturday the 15th of January, Andrea, Carlos, and I drove out to Columbus to see Ken Turner's new art gallery, the Chapman-Turner Gallery. I had given Ken prints of digital photos, which I thought could be the basis for Matt's and for Audrey's paintings. On that day, I gave Carlos a copy of The Book of Mornom. Also, Ken let us borrow his painting of Christ in Gethsemane for Andrea's seminary class. One of the reasons I stopped in Columbus was to return this painting to Ken. Of course, the following Monday Ken had his checkup, and the following Thursday he went in for bypass surgery, and the following Saturday Andrea and I visited him and Nell at the hospital (0503.html). It was fun to watch the Chinese folks exploring Ken's Art Studio. Nell drove in to Columbus from New Ulm, to open up the shop, because Ken is still recovering from the surgery. Later on the trip I asked the Chinese what they thought of Ken's gallery, and one of them piped up and said, `Your home is an art gallery.'
We went from Columbus to San Antonio. As we drove, I recalled for them the fact that Colorado County was temporarily the home of Sen J. Katayama, the hero of Chinese communism. After being a rice farmer west of Columbus, he went to China and introduced communism, and is the only Chinese honored by being buried on Red Square in Moscow. I did not remember his name, but looked it up from some of my notes from our work in Columbus in the early 1990's.
We drove on into San Antonio and went right to The Alamo. They loved The Alamo. They took lots and lots of digital photos (fourth photo), went to every exhibit, spent a lot of time in the souvenir shop, and generally acted like tourists. We just missed one of the the descriptions, and ended up staying for a little extra time to hear the one at 1:30 after the lunch break. Andrea and I bought a CD of the recent movie about The Alamo, Thirteen fateful days in 1836. Every time I think about how the same time the church was being established, Texas was being established, and I see this pattern of Heavenly Father setting up events to make a significant difference for my generation and for my kids and grandkids.
After the talk, we went to The Riverwalk. Everyone was pretty hungry and so we went to the first Texas Bar-B-Que restaurant we found. Very big helpings, and it was fun to watch them talk about the food. The fifth photo is eating lunch in the restaurant.
After lunch we walked over to The Institute of Texan Cultures at UTSA (University of Texas at San Antonio) for the Winter Wonder Land exhibit. This really is a very nice exhibit, and I hope each of you will go by and visit it sometime. You need to allow longer than the hour or two we allowed. The thing that got to the Chinese the most was when they went in the very back of the museum, there was a cowboy sitting like a manikan, and when they got next to him he moved and said hello.
I liked the description of `The Tree of Life,' originally a Meso American spiritual tale which spread through out North America and was described as being a key part of most American Indian folk lore. The Book of Mormon is true, and it is important for everyone to find this out for themselves. The implications of this knowledge are phenomenal when considered in an eternal perspective. We bought some Christmas presents for grandkids, and a plaque for Rachel which quotes Davy Crocket as saying: `You can all go to hell, I'm going to Texas.'
We went from the museum back to The Riverwalk. Here we listened to some South American musicians. It got dark and fairly cold, and so we eventually made it back to the van and I drove us back to Katy to drop of Andrea and Gloria. On the way I was holding Andrea's hand, and Frank took a digital photo of it. On the way from our house to their house, Frank asked me if I was mad at him for taking a photo of this. I laughed and said `Of course not.' Then he talked about how his parents used to hold hands, and how he wants a wife who will hold his hand. There are some things that are universal and independent of very different cultures. It was 10:00 PM by the time I got home from dropping off the Chinese.
I wrote about the following week above and below, although it took me a week to get the photos downloaded and to write up the events tied to the Xing Jiang Oilfield Training. The training finished on Thursday (sixth photo), with the Chinese going to the University of Houston to meet with Fred Hilterman for the afternoon and evening. And the Chinese left for Los Angeles and Las Vegas on Friday.
This morning was Welfare Meeting. I missed the meeting in December because I was in China and in January, because I just got back in from Utah and forgot, didn't know the new time for the meeting, and forgot about it. There has been a lot of changes in the ward in the last two months. Interesting how fast changes happen and we don't even know about them when we are not in Primary or Sunday School or working in a Priesthood Quorum. I need to get used to being old and on the sidelines with a big `D' (for divorced) on my chest. When I got back to the house, it was very quiet. Matt had not gotten up, even though he asked me to wake him before I left for the meeting. Andrea did not get back until about 2:30 in the afternoon. And rather than work on this Thoughtlet, I sat down and started to play the guitar.
As I looked around the room, my mind went back to my ancestors in Cedar City. As stated above, once again it forcibly struck me that if one of them were transported from the dusty farms of Cedar City into this room, I could imagine them feeling like they had died and gone to the Celestial Kingdom. This thought continued to play out in my mind, as I thought of Madam Zuo's comment on last Saturday morning: `I think you have enough.' I started the following song, and finished writing the verses during Fast and Testimony Meeting. I call it:
Church was good. I enjoyed Brother Branning's class on The
Holy Ghost. Then in Priesthood Meeting Jeff Jurinak, our
new High Priest Quorum Group Leader, gave an excellent,
although short lesson. I wrote another possible stanza for
Prime Words from his comments (a):
I couldn't help but wonder if this also applied to the
Xing Jiang Oilfield Training."