"Another slow week. At least I got started on posting the first 3 of the 38 Thoughtlets I'm behind on. I have written the next 4, then there are 21 named and outlined, then 10 which I have written (including this one). My goal is to post one each day (translation: convert the text file to html so it shows up on the web) until I am caught up. However, I might have to do them out of order and come back and post some of the ones that are not written yet later. Oh well! Other than Paul and Melanie, who asked me to continue to e-mail Thoughtlets to them, and Matt, who asked me to mail Thoughtlets to him, I question whether anyone reads these anyway. Hopefully it is not just wasted effort. I guess in a worst case writing them at least gets me to spend a few minutes in reflection, and maybe some of these voluminous words will be of some benefit to a Grandchild, if not one of you.
For my first week of being full time in the Depth Migration Group, I did not accomplish one thing of value to the company. It is normal for there to be some down time when you change responsibilities at work. But this week has been ridiculous. Oh well! It is not my company, I can not make up for hardware problems, and sometimes when you work for someone else you just have to bow your head, keep on going, and not complain. There was a meeting on Tuesday afternoon with the head programmer from dGB. He is from Sweden, and it was fun to talk to him about my Swedish roots. This was also my introduction to depth migration. As mentioned before (0644.html), the Depth Migration Team Leader is Mike Schoemann, whom now I car pool with. The first step on a depth migration project is to get the data on disk in a format that the processing program can read the data. The entire week has been spent attempting to get past this first step. Mike has submitted the job several times, and each time the job has bombed out, and has to be restarted. He will be working on it this weekend from home, and hopefully next week I can start doing some work in my new group.
I did do a few things of benefit for the company. I wrote a proposal for building TilesTM offshore Brazil in the Campos and Santos Basins for Petrobras, I put together some material on the relative location of the Kerr-McGee properties offshore China and the Nan Pu project we worked for Ji Dong Oilfield, I placed calls and did follow-up for Mike Dunn, and I did a bunch of research on things that interest me. The company seems happy with my performance, and so I guess I should feel happy. It is weeks like this that make me want to work for myself, where I don't feel a need to justify what I am doing with my time to anyone but myself. Oh well!
Tuesday was the first Halloween of the rest of our lives. We went to two movies to get away from the house and the trick-or-treaters. The first movie was "One Night With the King," the story of Esther. It is very well done, and is an appropriate movie for someone in the family to have in their collection, and to make it available for borrowing by other members of the family. I don't know if all of the history is true, and as I get to this part of the Old Testament, I'm expect I will refer back to this movie. This movie started about 5:30, and Andrea barely made it to the theater from her Japanese class in time for the start. It ended about 7:30, and I said I expected there would still be kids coming by the house. So we looked and "My Fried Flicka" started a few minutes later. So we bought two more tickets and went and watched this. I loved this movie, and definitely want to have a copy of it at the house to show Grandkids when they visit. Maybe it was the outdoors, or maybe it was the horses, or maybe it was someone who doesn't go along with what everyone else wants or expects. The bottom line is I thought Tim McGraw did a very good job, for a country singer, and I love the story.
Wednesday at 2:00 GDC had the annual meeting. For the first time since I have been at GDC there was an invitation for everyone in the company to attend the annual meeting. Dave had someone send out the invitation message under Maureen's name on Monday(she is on vacation in New Jersey, where she is from, where she got the slogan she puts on the bottom of her e-mails: "Strong before our birth are the Sons and Daughters of the Garden State," and which I give her a bad time about because it is one of the clearest teachings about the pre-existence I have heard outside of the church). Then on Tuesday Mike sent a message encouraging everyone reporting to him to attend.
So Fred and I walked over together and sat next to each other. The meeting was very well scripted. There was really no opportunity for anyone to do anything, unless they wanted to act like a protester. I was quite disappointed in the meeting on several fronts. First, the formal scripting seemed contrived and like those running the meeting were hiding things from employees and shareholders. Second, I did not think Dave's presentation was very good. Too many words. Mike later told me this presentation was prepared for analysts, who had a book in front of them, and were following along with the words. There is no question in my mind but that I could have given the presentation in a much more polished manner than Dave did. Oh well! That's not my job. Maybe I was reacting to his use of the words "we are trying" several times, and my automatic correlation of the word try with Mom's oft quoted statement of Grandpa Hafen that "steers try too." Third, there was a 10:1 reverse split of the stock, which immediately did not seem right to me. Fourth, the corporate goal was announced and re-announced as being to "Become the leading seismic company in the world." This is too Freudian for me. I can live with "best," but "leading" came across to me as "biggest," and seems to me to be nothing but egotistical. And Fifth, all of the people that work for the company and who were introduced are in the seismic acquisition side of the business. I have long realized I am a Vice-President in name only, with no Vice-President type of responsibilities. However, Dave did not recognize Fred, the Chief Scientist, and the person who started GDC, now Geokinetics Processing & Interpretation (0641.html).
After Dave finished, I turned to Fred and asked him what he thought of what his baby had become. His immediate reaction was, "It ain't my baby anymore!" I told him it would always be his baby, just like Landmark is always going to be my baby, and how disappointed I am when Landmark does things I disagree with. He smiled and talked about when they first started the company, and got a million dollar loan from Digicon at 23% interest. It is sad folks do not remember what entrepreneurs sacrifice to create companies. And it is sad for entrepreneurs to look back and see what they have sacrificed for. I will never be able to make up for the time not spent with you, my children whom I love more than anything in this world. And, even though a company like Landmark might change the way all oil and gas companies in the world look for oil and gas, the company becomes controlled by the money people (read that Satan), and becomes an amoral force firing and hurting people, pursuing temporary goals like quarterly earnings, and otherwise becoming a disappointing child. Maybe in the eternities I will be able to look back and see the benefits that came to millions, including you kids and your kids, because we helped develop better ways to look for the best type of energy know to mankind.
When we got back to the office, Luis came in and asked what I thought of the meeting, as he was not able to attend. I told him that I expected the 10:1 reverse split cost me most of my retirement. I said the same thing to Andrea when I got home, and she said she did not understand. So I made the spread-sheet shown to the right to explain my concern to her. Our retirement is the stock options GDC provided me when I went to work for the, 2/3rds of which I am vested in now, and the last third of which I become vested in in April of 2007. The green column summarizes the net value of the shares after paying the $0.52 option price if the stock were to grow from the current price of $2.70 per share to $27.00 per share. This is a reasonable growth, if the company continues to do as well as the components have done, and if the goal of becoming listed on a larger volume stock exchange occurs, as has been the stated goal. One way to value this is to average this range of prices, which means my retirement could be considered to be $354,837.58. This all changes with a 10:1 reverse split. Now, instead of 25,333 shares, we have 2,533 shares. Instead of them being valued at $2.70 per share, they are valued at $27.00 per share. This places the stock in the range that a larger volume stock exchange trades stock, i.e. $10-$30 per share. It is a way to get the stock at the right price for this type of a public offering, basically by cheating. What it means to Andrea and I is that the most the stock will probably rise is to $40 per share, and it could very well drop to $10 per share, as shown in the yellow column. Averaging these numbers gives us a retirement of $41,806.78 or a loss of retirement value of $331,030.80, approximately. After doing this spread-sheet I am definitely ready to go work for myself again. Oh well!
Thursday was Rob's birthday. I called and sang happy birthday to his answering machine. He called me back in the afternoon. Only the second time I've talked to him in several months, ever since he spent 36 hours in the county jail for a DWI charge. I learned his Grandma Sharp and his Mom helped put the the $2,500 legal fees so he could get the charge removed from his record. He said he was going to come over on Thursday evening after he finished cooking a big rack of ribs. Andrea and I went to the Stake Center for a fireside on personal finances. It was by Dr. Ned Hill, the Dean of the School of Business Management at BYU. He based his talk on 14 suggestions on good things to do in handling personal finances, which I think are worth writing out for each of you to consider:
Friday evening he came over about 5:00. Andrea had made a good beef curry and rice dish. Then we went to see a movie Rob was interested in at Katy Mills: "Open Season." Andrea had wanted to go, and I was not that interested. However, I was very pleased Rob wanted to go to a movie with us, and especially that it was this type of movie. It was nice computer graphics. The humor was adolescent boys, with bras used as sling shots, and the like. It is nothing like "Cars" nor "My Friend Flicka" for grandkids. Andrea wanted to go to the Taylor vs Cinco Ranch football game, as she has seminary students on both sides in the bands. So Rob and I dropped her off, and went shopping for his birthday presents for the last three years. We spent about $200 on nice clothes, and I think he was very pleased with what he selected. We went home and had birthday cake and ice cream. Rob held his breath, and so I ended up blowing out all of the candles. Then we watched "Numb3rs." Rob had never seen it before. It was the first one that I remember being sexually risky. Oh well! I'm afraid Rob has most certainly seen worse. All in all it was a nice evening. Sara Ellyn called about 10:40 to wish me a happy birthday and to say goodbye before she heads off to El Salvador. She sounded good. Haven't talked in quite some time, since I haven't been calling.
Saturday I saw the cards which Andrea and her Mom sent me. There was also a birthday letter from E.T. Hullett at Don McGill Toyota, where we bought the Prius. Aunt Sara sent me a couple of e-mails and a letter expressing Happy Birthday. She also sent a photo of Matt in high heals on the front page of the SUU News. Matt was not pleased to learn we had the article. Oh well! Matt sent me a nice birthday present, which arrived on Saturday (he paid $22.00 to send it next day delivery). It was three CD boxes that include the following movies:
I was outside mowing lawns, attempting to edge (the belt on the edger broke), and trimming more branches off of trees in the back yard when the mailman brought Matt's package. I spent the afternoon transferring files from the PC to the back-up drive, and working on Thoughtlets. Andrea and I went to see "The Queen" at the Edward's Theater at Silber and I-10. It is really sad walking through the mall to the theater. There was nothing there I would want to buy. However, the architecture reminded me of things I have thought about for Red Cove. Andrea said it was too modern and impersonal. The movie was interesting. Not a Grandkid's movie, and I think it is a pretty accurate picture of the royal family and their activities. It was interesting to me that the theater was full of folks my age and older. When we got home, I worked on writing this thoughtlet some more, and then Andrea and I watched two more episodes of the third season of "24." As we finished the second episode about 10:30 PM, I thought "Maybe the implication of Matt's gift is right. Maybe all I have to do is to sit around and watch movies."
Sunday was quiet. Because we will miss two Sundays in November, when we go to St. Louis for Thanksgiving, I got the lesson material together for a substitute teacher. My lesson was on the sacrament. There were 5 boys and 2 girls in class, and one of the girls was 40 minutes late. I felt the class went pretty good. Andrea bore her testimony in Sacrament Meeting. She talked about the shelves she redid for me in the back yard for rocks, and how once the paint was on they were too big for the slots and she had to go back to Lowes and get a master carpenter to shave off the edges so she could get them finished for my birthday. And then she talked about how the Master Carpenter, our Savior, needs to trim each of us, in order to help us so we will fit through the eye of the camel and into the Celestial Kingdom. It was a very nice Fast and Testimony meeting. It wasn't until I got home and finished writing this thoughtlet that I even remembered the 10:1 reverse split."