"When Paul called on Sunday night he told me about Grant's Ant Farm. They purchased an ant farm for Grant and he loves it. When it arrived, it was from Hurricane, Utah, which Paul thought was very funny. And all of the ants but two froze in the mail, which wasn't very funny. However, they put it together, and Grant will sit for hours and hours watching the two ants in his ant farm. Then he will come running in and say, 'Mom and Dad the ants are talking to each other!' I can see this in my mind, and I love it. In fact, if someone asks Grant what he wants to be when he grows up, he says 'a myrmecologist,' which is someone who studies ants and comes from the Greek 'myrmeco-' for ant.
Besides dogs and cats and horses and cattle, I recall two types of pets when I was growing up. The first were chameleons, which I kept in a wire cage in my room, and would get out to play with. I loved how they would change their skin color to match what I was wearing. They did not seem as fast as the type of lizards in our greenhouse and yard, and yet I expect they were similar to ones I can now catch in our yard. I've wondered if I need to catch some of these and send them to the three grandsons so they have a pet to feed and take care of. I know several of them lost their tails when they would try to run away from me and I was too slow to catch them. It was amazing to me how they would always grow their tails back.
The other type of pet I had were ant farms. I had several ant farms while growing up. Looking at the pictures of Grant's concentration on his ant farm brings back dim memories of me looking at my ant farm, and how much I liked to watch my ants build their three-dimensional cities. Maybe this is where my obsession for Walden 3-D and the new type of city came from? It was amazing to me how hard they worked, how they seemed to communicate with each other, and how they seemed to have a plan as they dug their tunnels and created their homes. Ant Farms are neat, and I am so pleased to learn that Grant has discovered the joy of having an Ant Farm. And to think, it came from Hurricane, Utah.
On the Dad's farm there are large mounds built by fairly large red ants. These mounds are well sorted grains of rock. I recall going to help my Grandma Nelson go out and find one of these large ant mounds and filling a bucket with these well sorted grains of quartzite and agate (I expect between 1/16th and 1/8th inch in diameter). Then we would take this bucket of tiny rocks to the chicken coup, and place it where the chickens could eat it. The rock grains would collect in their gizzard and were what ground up the grain and food they ate.
I recall messing up these ant piles whenever I would see one, and then sitting for hours, when there was not a job that needed to be done, and watching the ants slowly rebuild their 3-D city. I could imagine them being mad at the giant that messed up their home. It was amazing to me how quickly these messed up mounds would return back to a dome overlooking the surrounding country side, and high enough so that when it rained it would drain out of their home fairly quickly. Those were the days. Days when there was time to explore and to watch and to think and to wonder and to imagine and to plan and to be a child. It is so fulfilling watching Grandkids go through this same cycle, and especially with an Ant Farm.
Monday night Melanie sent me an e-mail, specifying a 'Fun Fact':
Monday evening this came from Paul in an e-mail (all of the referenced photos are at http://www.walden3d.com//photos/Family/03_PaulKate/01_Grant_Matthew/070213_Ant_Farm):
Tuesday we received a nice card in the mail:
Early in the week Andrea told me about hearing about someone who invited an older person in their ward to go out to dinner with them on Valentine's Day, and then got them to tell them about how they met their spouse and how they are coping with being alone. She suggested it would be fun to do this with Brother Jensen, the sun of the Brother Jensen who died in 1997 (../9802.html). As Andrea mentioned Brother Jensen, I recalled when we bought our brand new off purple colored Caravan, drove it into the church parking lot on the first Sunday we had it (about 1993), parking next to Brother Jensen's father, how he swung his car door open and put a big ding in our brand new new car, how kids started to say something, and how both Marti and I said 'It doesn't matter, don't worry about it.' I called, and Brother Jensen was very excited about coming over to dinner. His first question was, 'Is it casual?' I loved it. However, Brother Jensen called Andrea on Wednesday, Valentine's Day, to say he was sick, and they agreed to postpone our dinner. I look forward to when we are able to have him over.
So Wednesday night, since we did not have plans, Andra and I went to the temple for Valentine's Day. When I got home, Rotor-Rooter was at the house breaking off the 'plaque' that had built up on the shower drain pipe. It took him until about 5:30 to finish, and so we did not make it to the temple until the 7:00 session. We did make it by the bookstore, and they had CTR rings in, and so I got a dozen CTR rings for my Primary Class. The temple session was nice. There was a Reservoir Engineer who had contracted to review the Emerald Data on my Landmark License, and who was never paid by his Nigerian client, and so I was never paid, in the session. I wondered how those who lost money on HyperMedia feel when they are around me? Oh well! It was nice to be in the temple on Valentine's Day with my sweetheart. Life is good.
On Thursday the 15th I made my monthly call to Jan Miller. I'm getting better at this, I just asked for Nena Madonia, her assistant. Nena told me there is an Editorial Board Meeting Friday morning, and they want to research the opportunity, make sure I am the right person, and make sure they are the right company to represent me. She told me that Jan Miller did take the document I sent with her when she had a minor surgery, and this is a good sign. She said they will do a lockdown with the team tomorrow, which they call a focus group, and talk through all of the options relative to this project. I pointed her the www.walden3d.com website, and she said this is good. Then I took her to www.walden3d.com/resumes/hrn.html to review my extended resume, and specifically professional papers I have given. She said this is really good. Then I took her to www.walden3d.com/DOE so she could review the most recent version of my resume, and so she would know I was selected to represent the SEG on the Department of Energy Committee, even if final selection of committee members has not happened yet. Next I took her to www.walden3d.com/d to review my oil and gas exploration plans, and specifically www.walden3d.com/d/NetWork.html so she would have a feel for (1) the number of professional friends I have who will work with me on projects of mutual benefit, and (2) so she could see an example of the power of linking names and data against indices, like the ones I have included in An Open Mind. Nena agreed to call Friday after the meetings and to tell me how the lockdown went. She had not called by the time I got home from work Friday evening, and so I called her. She was away from my desk, they took my number, and said she will call back. She did not call back Friday. Oh well!
Work was virtually non-existent this week. I was there every day. However, there was a migration job running, the input traces for the rest of the migration job had been corrupted, and there was nothing I could do on the Redtack project. I had finished up picking velocities for the Offshore Gabon project, and Bill Youngblood did not have any other velocities for me to pick. I do not like these kinds of weeks. However, I buckled down and worked on my Galveston Futures project. I did get a lot done on this. On Thursday morning Dave Johnson came in and shut the door to talk to me. He has been traveling and I have not seen him for a few weeks. I told him Andrea asked me every night if Dave came in and talked to me that day. He told me, as a friend, he recognized I am not happy picking velocities, that the industry is a different place than it was 3 years ago, and that I really need to go out and get a job where I will be happy. Pretty unusual personal advice to get advice from your boss' (Mike Schoemann) boss' (John Gillooley) boss' (Lee Bell) boss. Andrea did not care for the advice, especially since it implied there might be a forced change after April 1st. However, the next morning Dave came back in my office, closed the door again, and wanted to stress he is not going to 'run me off,' he was just sharing advice to a friend, i.e. no one does well staying at a job they do not enjoy. I told Dave about An Open Mind and Galveston Futures projects. He said they both made sense, and he does not understand why I have such a need to make such a big impact on the world, especially since I already have. I told him Andrea thinks I'm still trying to prove I have value to my mother. It was a nice and a frank and an open discussion. Later in the day Lee Bell came in to tell me the new computers are being installed. He is very excited about how much more compute power there is in these new parallel processors, which have more processors on the chips, and which take up less space and use less power. I talked about the book I read a few years ago which predicts a computer will have the compute cycle time of a human brain by 2025, and of 1,000 human brains by 2050, and the impact this will have on how we live. He agreed. However, it is my opinion that unless we change the way we live, specifically the way we build our cities and recycle our waists and are more sustainable as a society, more like an Ant Farm, our society will not last to see these projected compute cycle innovations implemented.
Friday night Melanie, Colby, Taylor, and Halle joined us for the evening. There was a Wright Family wedding at the Houston Temple on Saturday, and they drove Glenda and Jackie over in their car, dropped them off at their son's place on Barker Cypress Road, and came to our place. Andrea and I took them to Kobe, the Japanese Restaurant we went to a couple of weeks ago. Colby was afraid of the fire, and did not like any of the food, and so did not eat anything. Taylor ate the onion soup, fried rice, and broccoli. Halle got scared and cried when the big flames came on at the beginning of the meal. All in all I consider it a successful introduction to something quite new. When we got back to the house, there was a more traditional birthday party. Andrea had made a pink cake with white frosting (http://www.walden3d.com/photos/Family/05_JaredMelanie/02_Taylor/070216_Taylors_3rd_birthday), with three birthday candles on the cake. Oh to only have three birthday candles on a birthday cake again! Oh well! Then Taylor opened her birthday card, which include 20 $1.00 bills. Talk about big eyes. Melanie had asked for a copy of my 'New Technologies in Exploration Geophysics' and 'An Open Mind' books, I had wrapped them and a couple of others up, and Taylor opened them all for her Mom. Everyone had a good time.
Later in the evening, after the kids were asleep and after 'Numb3rs,' Melanie and I had an extended talk about what I mean by a 3-D city. When I talked about information space, and about designing everything in information space it did not mean anything at all. When I said that there would be a door which could be opened, and a box pulled from out of a cupboard like space with groceries ordered on-line, it meant a little bit more. When I talked about no cars, and walking everyplace for exercise and to have a tie with nature, it came across like going back to the 1800's. When I talked about Segways (the two wheel scooters) and monorails or trains between habitats and building on 5% of the land and leaving 95% of the land open for nature, it seemed more futuristic. When I talked about free-range chickens, and kids learning where their food comes from, Melanie related directly to it, because the Young Men's President in Vidor is planning on having the Young Men / Young Women kill, boil and de-feather, and prepare a chicken for dinner. Anyway, I am optimistic that just like an Ant House shows a child how nature works in multiple dimensions, something a child does not learn from any book, the work I am doing on the Galveston Futures project will provide a better picture for folks about what I mean by a 3-D city.
Melanie and her kids were off by 8:30 Saturday morning, after eating some yellow with red sprinkle pancakes. I spent all day Saturday working on the Galveston Futuresproject. The trees had been trimmed on Thursday, new sod put down on Friday, and the last of the broken sprinkler heads was replaced on Saturday. Chris Schmidt made a point to note how nice the yard looks now. He hired the guys to trim some of his trees, and the neighbors across the street on the south side of Gulfwind had them place some new sod for them. Andrea helped me take a bunch of digital images from books for my project. I felt good about how the day went. Monday is a holiday, and there is definitely a lot to get done in order to pass on the location to Bowen so he can see what I have been preparing for his planning session on March 2nd. Saturday night Andrea went to a Relief Society Social, where they ate sushi and watched a Bollywood Movie, and she was in her dress from Nigeria.
Sundays Sacrament Meeting was really special. Brother Beckstrom had set the stage last week, and it was a testimony meeting built around hymns. Folks would go to the microphone, describe why a particular hymn was special to them, and then the congregation would sing the first verse of the hymn. I cried through the whole meeting. Music, and especially the songs about the eternal truths of the gospel, really touches my soul deeply. Primary class went well. I had the Bishop come in at the beginning of class and talk about the Savior. Then after he left I asked the kids how Charlotte Warden, who was home sick, would know that he came. Then we talked about witnesses of the Savior, including the ancient Apostles, Joseph Smith, Lorenzo Snow, and others. One of the kids said, 'this is really important,' at one point in the lesson. I sure think so. After all, if the basic principles of the restored gospel are true, then we want to make good choices for our lives are as transparent to our Maker as the lives of ants in an Ant Farm."