"This week was dominated by one of my first thing in the morning conversations with Dave Johnson. In my usual unabashed way, I started to give him my opinion on how certain parts of the company should be run, and I described my perception of an aspect of the culture of Geokinetics. He responded, "Yea, that is the same culture that allowed a former employee to be here since I have been here and to never do any work." I happen to think this particularly person, although hard to get along with sometimes, did some very good work. And I replied, "I've wondered what management thinks about my contribution here." Dave responded with, "We won't go there." And I said, "That's what I thought!"
It was disappointing, and yet I do not blame anyone but myself for my lack of motivation the last six months. Going to work for the purpose of going to work doesn't fit me. I want to go to work to make the world a better place. Everything I've been asked to do the last six months is temporary and has no long term value to anyone. Especially not to my grandkids. I have a real hard time being excited about something that will be forgot as soon as I finish working on it.
I'm sure Dave saw my reaction, because a few minutes later he walked back down to my office, stuck his head in, and said, "Roice, I keep you around because you are the most creative person I know. You have made great things happen in the past, and you are going to do it again. Most of your ideas, 999 out of 1,000, won't go anywhere. But you will come up with that one idea that will change everything. I want to be there when it happens and watch it happen."
So my value to Dave is I am creative! Maybe innovation is my value to myself also. It certainly doesn't have much impact on any of the 10 of you. Maybe I've been able to come up with an idea or two, which seemed out of the box, and which were of some benefit to you. However, I anticipate there are a greater number, part of the 999 Dave referred to, which have gone nowhere, and which have hindered your path. Oh well! Maybe this is the blessing and the curse of being creative?
Monday I went to the monthly POPS (Pioneer Oil Producer's Society) meeting at lunch. The talk was by a relatively young lady, who carries herself very well, and is the VP of Exploration for The America's for BP (British Petroleum). Of course, what I enjoy the most are Bob Scott's history lessons. He certainly did not disappoint me on Monday. I sat next to a new member, who is involved in mapping and measuring surface faulting in the Houston area. He described an elementary school which was built on a fault, how there was slippage of the fault, and how the building was under tremendous stress. When he was called in, he asked for a structural engineer to look at in, and the school was immediately shut down and the kids moved to other schools. The walls were under so much stress from the movement of the fault, that if they would have broken, they could have sent cement walls flying fairly large distances, and could have really hurt or killed several of the children. He was able to tell me about the Longmont Fault, which cuts Chimney Rock north of I-10. Guess he has had quite a bit of consulting related to that particular fault.
Over the weekend I had thought about inviting Hope Minor to attend the luncheon with me, specifically because she told me she wants to follow my path as a profession, and because the female VP from Shell was talking. It was Martin Luther King Day, and Hope was out of school. I did not invite her because the average age in the room is 80 (I'm a kid in that room), and it seemed a little too creative. As all of the visitors stood up and introduced themselves, I wished I would have invited Hope. Oh well! When you have hundreds of ideas others will call stupid each day, you learn to dampen your willingness to be unabashed in expressing all of them.
Alf Klaviness was at the meeting. He looks good. He is getting older for sure. We agreed we would have lunch together next Tuesday. Last time he canceled on me because of a commitment with his son, and hopefully I will be able to take a movie of him looking out over the Galleria and recalling the story about how he owned all of that property for the day before Pearl Harbor. And maybe he will even retell his experience at Iwo Jima again to the camera. If so, I'll post them next week (0704.html).
Tuesday morning Jialin decided to start communicating again. There were a dozen e-mails by the end of the week. I refuse to call him, as this seems like the only way to teach him not to hide like he does. He wants an invitation letter to visit the U.S. with one of the Oilfields, and I'm just ignoring the request. The good news is Ji Dong is paying for the work we did over a year ago, and we will get a commission, hopefully in the middle of February.
Turns out that besides the idea of creativity, lunches were a big deal for me this week. On Tuesday, for lunch I drove out past Kirkwood on Westheimer to the GSH luncheon to support Brian Schulte and his talk on AVO. I had put Stan Pottinger's book "The Boss: A Novel" in a small paper bag, which had some grease on it, and put it under my coat inside my pants in back. When Sam LeRoy arrived, I pulled it out, and told him I brought it for him to see. He was pleased, and someone made a snide comment about the grease on the paper bag. Oh well!
Guichang Lin, now a Senior Staff Geophysicist at Anadarko, was at the meeting. He had driven down from The Woodlands to listen to Brian Schulte's talk. I learned that the third Chinese student we pulled out of China, Zhou, is also at Anadarko. Guichang has 2 children, a son and a daughter. His daughter is autistic, and it is hard. He was genuinely pleased to see me, and vice-versa. In case you have forgot, or didn't know, We He, the father of my Chinese Grandchild (../0026.html), was the first of the three students we pulled out of China (../9821.html, ../0026.html, ../0224.html, ../0232.html, ../0310.html, ../0337.html, ../0341.html, and ../0450.html).
Brian's talk was not as good as it was at Geokinetics. He was a little prideful, and he talked way too long. Instead of the too long 45 minutes at the office, it was an hour. However, he did address each of the points I had made about his practice presentation. After the talk, Steve Carlson came up to me to tell me he has left Occidental and is working for Chroma again. They have formed 'GeoPatterns Technology, L.L.C.' to provide Chroma services to the industry. We traded cards, as this could be useful to Dynamic Resources. Lloyd Weathers and Mike Padget each made a point to say hi. I did not feel at all like the last GSH meeting I went to (../0647.html). Maybe I'm healing emotionally. Maybe writing about it was all it took to help me get over reacting to anticipation about how my geophysical friends will treat me because I have been divorced. Especially since many of them have gone through the same ringer. On the way back to the office I learned Audrey was rear-ended and her car is possibly totaled. She is OK and she has been to the Doctor and the baby seems to be OK. Scary!
The migration of every 50th line which I started the previous Wednesday was about 2/3rd through when I got back from my second lunch in two days. I was repicking the velocities, and at about 3:00 I decided to take a break and make my montly call to Jan Miller's office to see if there was any status on 'An Open Mind. I got past the receptionist, and Nena Madonia answered. She asked who I was, and when I started on my spiel about sending a book in June 2006, she said, 'Are you the author of An Open Mind.' I said, 'Yes.' She said, 'Your work is phenomenal! At first we were attempting to find out if there is a market. And it turns out it is very big.' I said, 'It is gigantic, and it is getting bigger all of the time. Are you aware of the recent movements for environmentalists to work with religious groups to attack environmental problems, and how these groups are on different sides of the fence regarding most issues?' She told me she was, then asked how I found Jan. I told her I first became aware of Jan because of an article in The Houston Chronicle about her representing Joel Osteen's new book, and how I recognized this was the type of representative I wanted for my efforts. Then I described doing some research on the web and finding out Jan had represented the original Stephen Covey '7 Habits' book, and this cinched it for me. This was when I sent the original e-mail. Then I described going to the Nelson Family Reunion over July 4th, and talking to 'Big Roice,' who had worked with Jan on the original Covey book, and how highly he respected Jan. Nena told me how she loved 'Big Roice' because he said such nice things about her boss. She was busy, and told me An Open Mind would be reviewed by Jan Miller within the next week. I told her it didn't need to be in the next week, and that I was just calling to see if a decision had been made yet. Exciting phone call! Time will tell.
Tuesday night we received the annual inheritance check from Aunt Sara and Uncle Des, which allows us to pay our taxes on the house again this year. I celebrated by eating dinner, even though I was over my goal weight. There was also a note from Melaine telling me I forgot to attach the Thoughtlet to the e-mail sent earlier in the morning. Oh well!
Wednesday Roice sent some photos of the Austin ice storm (http://www.walden3d.com/photos/Family/01_RoiceSarah/070117_Austin_Ice_Storm) and wrote the following concerning our chess game:
Turns out I was the issue. I was in check with Roice's Queen, did not see it, and was attempting to take his rook. The game would not let me make such a dumb mistake. Oh well!
The weathermen had been hammering how hard Houston was going to get hit with the ice storm, originally expected to arrive Monday night, and it finally arriving on Wednesday morning. School was called off for KISD after the kids were already in Seminary. The HOV lanes were shutdown. Mike Schoemann decided to wait and go in at 10:00, and then he postponed this until noon. I spent the morning building the interpretation portion of a report for the Tarim Oilfield. The report I got from processing had 22 figures and standard text. I added 86 figures and a bunch of interpretation text. Hopefully this is enough to get the report accepted. I think John Gillooley and company are waiting on Richard Verm to get back from the dGB Consortium meeting in Holland and provide migration and AVO attribute examples in order to complete the report and send it off. Based on my note to John Gillooley about the report, he sent me a response, copying Lee on Wednesday night. Early Thursday morning I responded to John's e-mail with:
This turned out to be a good response to John, and defused some of the baloney accompanying Jialin's spurt of e-mails. Because of Brian's practice talk last Friday I didn't walk the stairs. Monday was POPS. Tuesday was GSH. Wednesday was the ice storm. And so Thursday was the first day I walked the stairs in a week. Oh well! It definitely shows on the scales, even though I have not been eating much dinner.
After my lunchtime walk on Thursday, I called Lee into my office to ask him three questions. The questions and his answers are below:
Thursday morning I posted Thoughtlet #0649, only to receive the following note from Melanie:
I responded with:
Oh well! On a more positive note, Sara sent me a note saying:
I responded on Friday with some suggestions I pulled from my database. However, most of the folks I work with are men, and so I'm not sure my suggestions will be of much use. The best connection is my friend Laura Pankonien, who edited 'New Technologies in Exploration Geophysics,' and was the Exploration Editor for World Oil for many years.
Friday I was still a bit steamed, and not excited about going to work. George could probably tell, because he came down to my office to talk for the first time right after we got to work. We talked about the new Employee Self Assessment, and I told him I felt like Lee wanted to run me off. George came back down later in the day to tell me that Lee, whom he has worked for in two previous companies, does not place any importance to assessment forms, and George was sure my interpretation of what Lee said was off base. Gillooley came by to acknowledge how my e-mail gave him a better perspective, and how much he appreciated my approach. The migration job was finally completed, and Ricky Lara hooked up my two new 24" plasma monitors. There were some issues with getting them hooked up, and after about an hour it was all worked out. I spent the morning working on my self assessment. Lee came in to talk, and probably because George or John said something to him, just before lunch. He wasn't as busy as yesterday, and can be very charming describing how important what I am working on is. He asked me what I thought of the velocity interpretation I have been doing, and I told him it could be done by High School students. His 'What?' was responded to by my suggestion he put a half a dozen workstations in the large room across the hall, where I used to sit, put students on every workstation but one for me, and that being there to answer questions, I would be able to get 'N' times the work done, where 'N' is the number of people in the room. In other words, given a little bit of guidance, there is no reason to have someone as expensive as I am picking velocities all of the time. He listened. And he excused himself so I could do my 'stair-a-thon.' I was a half hour late starting, and it was only the second time this week I walked the stairs. After lunch I finished up my employee self assessment. I listed my essential job function as: Velocity Interpretation; my Self-Assessment of overall Performance as: See Attached; and my rating on a scale of 1-4 as: 2. Exceeds Requirements. Hopefully I'm being a reasonable example sharing this creative response with each of you. This was about the time I looked at my e-mail to find Roice beat me in the chess game in about 5 moves (see images/070119_Roice_Chess.png). I sent a note to Roice and asked him why he was sorry, and why he wasn't jumping up and down and being exuberant as the king of the pack? It felt good to have Roice beat me at chess after so few moves. However, I was still reeling from being told not to submit an application to the 'Unconventional Resources Technology Advisory Committee' on Thursday. I was glad when Andrea called and said she was downstairs and ready to leave for the temple.
Traffic was not near as bad as the last time we went to the temple from work (../0652.html). We got there about 4:30, and Andrea was able to go to the distribution center before the 5:00 Endowment Session. Turns out Andrea's good friend, Jana McClain and her husband Tony were there. Also Celeste Jones, whose married name I do not know, and her new husband were the witness couple. We had fun discussions, and decided to go to Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream Place to continue the discussions. Andrea really opens up with Jana and talked all about our Zion Christmas (../0653.html). Jana talked about her kids. Tony and I mostly listened. Tony is working with IES Basin Modeling Software (../9943.html, ../0308.html, ../0323.html, ../0324.html, ../0444.html, ../0445.html, and ../0446.html) in the Williston Basin. BP drilled 130 wells there last year, each one costing $2 million. Big numbers, and I think Dynamic Resources is going to be able to exceed this type of drilling program? I am really creative, or really crazy! On the way home from the temple I told Andrea I am going to submit an application to be on the DOE's 'Unconventional Resources Technology Advisory Committee' and use vacation time if I am selected. Andrea said that was fine with her, as she has only started to explore Washington D.C.
So Saturday I spent most of the day preparing the documentation the way they prescribed (see http://www.walden3d.com/DOE/HRN_DOE_Application.pdf). I put the following cover letter on the e-mail, and copied Lee Bell, so he wouldn't be surprised later if I am selected:
And frankly, in what ever little bit of modesty there is inside me, I think this solution to the conflict between my interest and Geokinetics' interest is very creative."
