"Do you remember this famous quote from Charles Dickens in his book David Copperfield, written in 1849:
Finances definitely have a significant impact on whether we find happiness or misery. Having got an unexpectedly large payment from the Nigerians (I was expecting less than half what we received), it has de-clouded our week week with happiness. Even though there have been the typical trials of life swirling around us. For instance, Monday morning started with the following e-mail from Mic Patterson:
This means we are forced to write of a $100,000 loan and $110,825.93 in accrued interest. In the spirit of happiness or misery or maybe stupidity, I responded with:
Shortly after I got to work, Carlos came in to visit. He typically comes in about once ever other week to catch up and tell me about his daughter Audrey's latest accomplishment. So I was surprised to see him. He asked how my weekend was, and I asked about his. It turns out his sister Soynia's expected to soon-to-be father-in-law had a heart attack and passed away unexpectedly. This was the first time Carlos has faced death of someone he knows, and he needed to talk. I gave Carlos a Book of Mormon and suggested he read all the references in the index to resurrection. Happiness or misery, just like whether to be easily offended or not (../0651.html), it is our choice. Carolos took the Book of Mormon, and seemed to be fine when we talked a couple of times later in the week. Carlos came in again on Friday and showed me a user interface program he has built for the seismic processors. I gave him suggestions to consider prior to rolling it out on Monday.
Lee was back in the office about noon. He had 2 stints put in his artery to the lower part of his heart. He was awake during the operation, and very positive about it. Fred came in while we were talking, and he mentioned that his father had the same operations, and it paralyzed him from the waist down for the rest of his life. It was a long time ago, and it still was a very vivid reminder of how far medicine has come in just the last few years. Happiness or misery can be tied to medical developments. Later in the day, I learned medicine can not solve all medical issues. When I got home there was a phone message from Alice Nelson in San Francisco telling me Swede Nelson died of an aneurysm last July (../0113.html). Alice's voice message was very upbeat and positive, and even though she was reliving the trauma in her phone call, it was obvious which side of happiness or misery she has chosen. She was so positive about how Swede had not suffered. Because her phone numbers have been changed, I responded with a facsimile, which said:
Tuesday the Mexican Pemex contract was finally signed. Three years in the making, and traveling both sides of happiness or misery, Luis Viertel has done a great job on getting this business for Geokinetics Processing & Interpretation. Also, since the Nigerians paid, it seemed like it was the right time to tell them what I plan to do about not receiving the $50,000 in consulting fees for the Marginal Field interpretation work I did. Not getting paid this much has caused a lot of unnecessary misery over the last few years. My e-mail was sent to the new manager of VRMT, Hendrique Toro:
He responded in a funny way, since he is managing all VRMT activities in the U.S.:
Thursday morning there was an interesting article about Pemex Cantarell field in the Houston Chronicle. It certainly confirms my fears, as expressed in Thoughtlet #0644, have a basis in fact. The article specifies Cantarell will yield 14.6% less hydrocarbons this year than in 2006. This was in the first news conference of the new leader of Pemex. The article specifies the government receives more than one-third of its income from Cantarell. I am afraid this is going to lead to the bankruptcy of Mexico. Misery. However, Geokinetics finally got their multiple year service contract signed with Pemex on Tuesday, and hopefully we can apply some of our technologies in deep water and extending Texas trends into Mexico and help postpone this tragedy. Happiness. The impact on the lives of those who live in border states of another Mexican bankruptcy could be significant.
There was also an article about planned 'bunker buster' bomb tests planned for the Nevada test site, which residents in Southern Utah are convinced will send up radioactive dust, which will once again blow into Southern Utah. The article refers to thousands who have got radiation related cancer, and to a series of emotional meetings in Las Vegas, St. George, Salt Lake City, and Boise. The government claims all of the dust from the expected 4,500 foot mushroom cloud will remain in the Nevada test site. What do you think? Misery or happiness?
A third article on Thursday morning was about the Baker Road pig races. Katy First Baptist Church's senior paster resigned from the Katy Ministerial Alliance after criticizing the organization for including Muslims in interfaith gatherings. He is quoted as saying: "There is a lot of talk about Allah and god being the same, but they are two vastly different ideas and Islam is a radically different religion from Christianity." He went on to say he views Islam as an anti-democratic religion, and that if Muslims become a majority, our basic religious freedoms would be undermined and mostly dominated by Islam. I sense the beginning of the arguments which will be said by these same groups when Mitt Romney formally announces his candidacy for U.S. President. After all, "Mormons" are radically different from Baptist and Evangelical religions, Mormons will defer to their prophet, and this will undermine democracy. What a bunch of baloney! Oh well!
On Thursday I listened to some more Audio-Tech Business Book Summaries. There was a cute summary of what created business success at General Electric:
or LATIN. In some sense these book summaries are mostly common sense. And yet there are obviously legions of folks who make very nice livings spreading this common sense around the world. Thursday evening, while sitting in the back seat and getting on the HOV lane to go back to Katy, John Walker called (../0426.html, ../0433.html, and ../0435.html). Other than the time John took his kids to Church at Nottingham Country Ward while I was on a trip to China, I had not heard from John since he left GDC and went to work for Fugero. He resigned from Fugero earlier in the day, and he called me first thing because he 'would like to work for me,' based on the time we worked together at GDC. Interesting (happiness). My initial reaction was that John might be a great team leader, if the Galveston Futures project becomes a valid business opportunity. Actually the first thing he told me was that he has found a nice Mormon girl, has talked to her father, he agreed, he has proposed to her, she has accepted, and they plan to get married. He went on to tell me she has twin sons who are just submitting their mission papers. So after he told me about the change in his work assignment, I asked him if just losing his job he is ready to take on the responsibility of helping finance these two young men's missions? Then I asked him if they were going to get married in the temple. Then I invited them to come out to the house and let me cook some dutch oven potatoes for them.
Friday morning John called me back, said Susan would like to meet us, that he has his three daughters for the weekend, and he was wondering if Saturday evening would work for a dutch oven dinner. I said sure. It turned out that Saturday evening was the Stake Valentine's Dinner and Dance, and so we modified the plan a little bit. John and Susan fed the kids before they got to our place. When they arrived, we introduced them to our St. George Temple family photo, then I sang "The Wooden Shoe" for them, and then we got them settled down watching "The Secret Garden." Once this was accomplished, John, Susan, Andrea, and I went to the Stake Valentine's dinner dance. We had a great time. Susan's first husband is from Cedar City and was best friends to one of Andrea's best friend, Carole Shakespeare Hulet's brothers. There were thousands of acquaintance overlaps, and I think John Walker was kind of in shock. We ate both lasagna and bar-be-que. The chocolate fountain was fun. We only danced one dance, because we needed to get back to the three girls. The middle girl likes rocks, and it was fun to show them my rocks. She used the cinnabar to draw war paint on her Dad. When she came downstairs from playing pool, she said, 'Do you have rocks?' I replied, 'I have a rock!' Susan broke out laughing, because in the Charlie Brown special about Halloween, when they get back from collecting trick-or-treats, Charlie Brown holds up his bag and says, 'I have a rock!' It was a nice evening.
I spent all day Saturday working on my Galveston Futures project. It is coming along quite nicely. Hopefully I will be ready to send an e-mail to Bowen a week from Monday telling him about the work I have been doing, so he can review it and suggest modifications prior to our meeting on March 2nd. The Saturday project was to build a spread-sheet showing all of the businesses listed in the 2001 edition of Select Phone, and to organize the spread-sheet so I will be able to plot business types via Infinite GridSM cells. The business types are defined by the SIC (Standard Industrial Code), which is used for tax classification and the Yellow Pages. The SIC codes can be organized as a process, showing movement from extraction (10-14) to agriculture (01-09) to transportation and public utilities (40-49) to manufacturing (20-39) to construction (15-19) to financial, insurance, and real estate (60-69) and then to public administration (90-98). I am not tying in services (20-29), wholesale and retail trade (50-59), nor non-classified establishments (99) into this analysis. Galveston is small enough there were only 698 businesses in 2001 fitting these criteria. This week will be interesting, because it is the first significant test of whether this type of data allows spatial mapping of process. Bavinger and I did the first prototype of plotting SIC density as Landmark horizon files back in 1996 (see http://www.walden3d.com/SIC). One of the emotional reasons driving my putting so much effort into the Galveston Futures project is Bowen's words to me at Carolina and Dirk's wedding, specifically when he talked about happiness and misery in the form of facing trials with optimism and a smile, and being an inspiration to people in ways not even realized. Seems this is what it takes to get past misery to happiness.
Church was nice this week. My Primary Class was very attentive. I especially enjoyed sacrament meeting. Alice Beckstrom (a) and Debbie Siebert (b) and Mark Beckstrom talked about the importance of music in our worship services. Thor Larsen, the other teacher in my class, sang an acappella tenor solo of 'When We Meet Again.' He is such a good singer. It is so much fun to sing the Primary Songs with Thor in class. Happiness. I wrote two possible stanzas for Prime Words based on the sacrament talks on 11 February 2007:
Between eating lunch, getting next week's Primary lesson ready, falling asleep for an hour, working on e-mails, going to choir practice, setting up for Seminary, talking to Melanie and Paul when they called, working on an e-mail I ended up not sending, and working on this Thoughtlet, it seems like the rest of Sunday went by really fast. I still needed to go back and write the first part of the Thoughtlet, and so it wasn't finished until Monday evening after a 2-hour '24.' Oh well! It is finished and it is once again being posted on-line later than intended. And the common theme seems to be happiness or misery."