04 Mar 2007 #0709.html

Galveston Futures

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Dear Family and Friends,

Welcome to this week's "Thoughtlet."

These words are my personal diary and a weekly review of ideas, beliefs, thoughts, or words that will hopefully be of some benefit to you: my children, my family, and my friends.

"Sunday evening Paul and Melanie called. During Melanie's call she said, 'So this is the big one!' I asked her what she meant, and she said, 'The big one, the week you have been working for on your Galveston Futures project.' I think my reply was half-hearted to say the least. And I guess the reason is I have been down this road of doing a lot of work on a project which excites me, then having it kind of fade away, so many times, I did not expect much for all of the work. Good thing I didn't expect much. And I get ahead of myself. I have been working so hard on the Galveston Futures project for the last five weeks, that I hadn't even stopped to consider all of my work was coming to an end and that the meeting was this week.

iMonday was spent picking velocities on the lines that had been migrated before the problem with the input data being corrupted. From the moment I got home Monday, until '24 started at 8:00, and then once 24 was over until midnight, I was working on the Data Type Index for Galveston Futures. During '24,' Dr. Matt Miculich, who graduated from the University of Utah and who retired as the Chief Geophysicist at Chevron a few years ago, called. He was calling on behalf of The University of Utah, and specifically on behalf of a new endowed chair for Dr. Bob Smith. Bob is retiring in December of 2007, and in the spring of summer of 2008 there will be a two day party for everyone who studied under Bob. They also want to set up an endowed chair for him at The University of Utah, and are seeking donations. Of course I explained to Matt how broke we are, and told him if something breaks loose I will be sure to donate. It was a nice conversation, even if I missed some of '24' attempting to concentrate on the conversation.

iTuesday morning the corrupted data were finely reloaded (it had taken almost 2 weeks), and I was finally able to restart the migration. I also finished picking velocities on the lines which had been migrated before. This meant there was nothing else I could do on the project. Mike did not have any other velocities for me to pick. And so I started working on a Sketch-Up model for the Galveston Futures discussions on Friday. This was about the last part of the project I wanted to do. Tuesday was the day I received my e-mail from and to Bowen, which I included in last week's thoughtlet (0708.html). So it was the first time I realized that all of this work just might be another of Roice's dreams of great progress. Oh well. Tuesday afternoon I was asked to stop the migration so Brian Schulte could have the migration license for a higher priority project. Frustrating! First thing when I got home I called Nena at Jan Miller's office about An Open Mind. Nena was just going into an hour teleconference, and I was told she would call me once it was finished. Then I worked on finishing up the Data Type Index until 'The Unit' started at 8:00, and then after it was over until about 11:30.

First thing Wednesday morning I finally talked to Jialin, after an over 2 month long refusal on his part to pick up his cell phone and then a one month refusal to call him on my part, specifically because he would did not answer his phone for over a month. I don't know if my refusal to call him teaches anything, and yet I am convinced you can not keep empowering this type of inappropriate behavior. The first time I talked to him he said he would send me an e-mail within an hour. I passed the word on to Dave Johnson and Mike Dunn. Lee Bell was out of the office for the funeral of his favorite Uncle. He did send anything within an hour, and Dave wanted to know what his good news was, so we called him back. Jialin has made progress on Geokinetics being paid by Da Qing and Tarim. However, I'm sure Dave left the conversation more convinced than ever that we will close all China operations down once we get paid the three outstanding payments.

Later Wednesday morning Paul sent me this e-mail in response to a comment in an e-mail I sent him about going to see Melanie and family with a Beetle convertible, which I pass on to tell on him and his underhanded manipulative ways:

'They were out of beetles, but we still had fun. It was great to meet Halle and see everyone else too. We went to dinner (we were all plenty hungry - I lost track of time and got out there a little late). After dinner we went back to the house and I got presents for the kids; this is key to getting into their subconscious early and claim my rightful role as the favorite uncle. :) Paul'

Wednesday afternoon Mike Dunn and I had a meeting with representatives of SPADAC. It was set up by one of the Geokinetics Board Members, Gary Pittman, who sent the following e-mail Thursday morning:

'Mike & Roice, I appreciate your taking the time to meet with Spadac. It was probably not the best use of your time. I think they should have done a better job trying to convey the applicability of their technology to the energy industry. Spadac's other founder and CEO, Mark Dumas, made a much better case to me. Gary Pittman'

I responded with:

'Gary, Thanks for setting the meeting up. I enjoyed it much more than picking velocities. Some observations: * They were tired. Obviously travel and other meetings had an impact. * They did a better job than some of my colleagues thought they would of demonstrating applicability to our industry. The technology does not apply to either seismic acquisition nor to seismic processing, which make up almost all of Geokinetics' business. We have some world-class mathematicians at GDC, and they do not believe you can extrapolate a few samples to come up with anything of use. In other words, I was told before the meeting there will be nothing come from the meeting, from an actual end use basis. * However, I am extremely interested in their approach. It is directly related to some work I did before coming to GDC/Geokinetics, and which I own, call the Infinite Grid(SM). Based on the presentation, I would enjoy working with them, particularly in testing the interpretation/exploration market to determine if their technology has applicability in this part of the oil and gas business. For what it is worth, my background and interests much better fit what they are doing than what Geokinetics has me doing right now. Hopefully we will get into discussions on potential overlapping approaches over the coming months, particularly if they decide to pursue the Pemex opportunity with Geokinetics, which we identified. Thanks again and Best Regards, Roice'

Maybe this meeting was the 'Big one' Melanie was referring to? Wednesday night and Thursday nights were spent finishing up the Knowledge BackboneSM Index. I also discoverd an error with the TimedexSM Index, which I worked on Thursday evening and Friday morning. I got my migration license back last thing on Thursday afternoon, so I restarted the migration before leaving for my three day weekend. I had been able to complete most of the Sketch-Up model of Galveston Island during work hours waiting on migration licenses and results. I worked on it Thursday during 'Smallville,' and then after completing the indices, until finishing up about 12:30 AM Friday.

Friday morning I slept through my alarm, and Andrea woke me up as she left for Seminary. I made a set of movie files from the Sketch-Up model, and it took me until 9:00 AM. We left for Galveston Island and the Galveston Futures discussions about an hour after I intended. However, using the HOV lane to downdown, and missing much of the morning commute traffic, we were still on Galveston Island by 10:15 AM. I dropped Andrea off to spend time with Karen Loftin, and then I proceeded to get lost finding the Texas A&M University at Galveston campus. Turns out it is on Pelican Island, and my map did not print all of the text, so I finally called Andrea and got Karen to give me directions. I was 15 minutes late to my big meeting. Oh well!

The meeting was with Dr, William Merrell, George P. Mitchell Professor and former Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Willam A. Seitz, Associate Vice-President of Research and Graduate Studies and now Dr. Merrell's boss, and their boss Dr. Bowen Loftin. I took five pages of notes about what they are working on. The bottom line is their activities are all unfunded academic research projects, and like most academic projects most of their time is spent chasing funding. The discussions were interesting. I learned a lot about what they are doing. Bowen took us to a nice lunch, with very poor service, and I got to watch the two Bill's make fun of each other like a couple of kids or an old married couple. Then we went back, and I had about an hour to present key components of my 375 slide presentation with 1,600+ index pages as back-up. I was pleased with their questions and interest. It was sad to realize that if I want to proceed with them the way I had built up in my mind could be done, it will start by raising money to fund the project. Needless to say, I was more than a little deflated about all of my work on Galveston Futures. As I told them, I had two motivations for doing all of this work:

  1. To prepare a viable prototype for them to evaluate; and
  2. To consolidate 37 years of thinking about these subjects so I can show it to others.
  3. . I went into the meeting hoping for #1, and I left the meeting realizing any road forward will be based on #2. The Doctors all had meeting that started at 3:00 PM, and so we finished up at about 2:45 PM. Andrea was at Walmart with Karen and Karen's mother. I got a brief nap before they got back. Then we drove back to Katy and went straight to the Katy Cinemark. We had not been to a movie since the first week of January, first because of cash flow, then because of my Galveston Futures work. We went to see 'Breach,' which is about the capture of the person responsible for the biggest breach in U.S. security ever. Pretty good movie for adults. Then we went to see 'Music and Lyrics,' which is at the other end of the spectrum. It is about a washed up 80's singer, played by Hugh Grant, who needs to write a new song in a week, and ends up working with the lady who came substituting to water his plants, played by Drew Barrymore. Some of the dance scenes should have been rated 'R,' and other wise it was an OK movie. Both were a good escape from my disappointment about my Galveston Futures meeting.

    Saturday morning Andrea left early for a 'Women's Conference called 'Time-Out for Women' in The Woodlands. I slept in until about 8:00. Ate breakfast and read the paper. There was an interesting article on Pemex Oil Fields, which relates directly to things I have written before about Cantarell (0644.html and 0706.html). Then I went out and worked on catching up from the yard work I had ignored the last month. Mostly I worked on trimming back the Roses. There were 10 rose plants when I started, and 17 when I finished. I have lost track of all of my plans for the roses over the years. I know the first six rose plants put in there each were named after one of my kids, and they were each a different color, which colors can be correlated with the colors in 'Prime Words.' However, some of the colors of the actual roses did not turn out as advertised when I purchased them (for instance there was no orange and no lime colors ever appeared), some of the plants died, some were split and replanted, and some of them might have been renamed for others as time passed. Hoever, each Valentine's Day, when I work on the roses, there are tons of memories and thoughts that flow through my mind regarding the roses. This year, when I dug up one of the roses which had died, it was interesting which roses the roots to this rose bush went to. And it is interesting starting with 10 roses (10 kids), and ending up with 18 (10 kids plus 8 grandkids). After cleaning out the roses I raked the leaves from the back yard, trimmed the rose bush Melanie's gave Andrea, and picked up all of the waste material. It was 4:00 in the afternoon by the time I got all of this finished and had a shower. So I went to the grocery store, bought roses for Andrea, milk, orange juice, toilet paper, and fixings for my lunch salads. Then I went and picked up the mail at the Post Office Box, and got home and had everything put up just as Andrea got home.

    Andrea wasn't that hungry, and it was Fast Sunday, yet she sill went with me to eat my lunch/diner at Hartz Chicken. I can't believe how tired I was, and how sore I am today, from just doing a little bit of work in the yard. Oh well! Guess I'm getting old. We got back in time for me to watch Michael Caine and Pierce Brosnan in 'The Fourth Protocol.' I had never seen it. It is English, and is about a Russian agent, Pierce Brosnan, attempting to set off a nuclear bomb next to a U.S. Air Force base. Pretty good thriller. Andrea missed a lot of the movie because she was picking up food storage which had been picked up for us by Beckie Morales. We went to sleep after the movie.

    Sunday morning I gave opening prayer for Fast & Testimony Meeting. Andrea was surprised from the stand when she was asked to give the closing prayer. My primary class lesson was on prophets, and went well. Shortly after we got home, young Eva Davis brought by the last of our ordered Girl Scout cookies. She wants to be a geologist, and so it was fun to show her the rocks in the back yard and the bedroom and to let her select a rock from the box. We went to choir and set up Andrea's Seminary classroom. Then we came back and I put this Thoughtlet together. And all in all I have been putting aside my disappointment in how the discussions went regarding Galveston Futures."

    Since the 38th week of 1996 I have written a weekly "Thoughtlet" (little statements of big thoughts which mean a lot to me). Until the 43rd week of 2004 I sent these out as an e-mail. They were intended to be big thoughts which mean a lot to me. Over time the process evolved into a personal diary. These notes were shared with my family because I know how important the written word can be. Concerned about how easy it is to drift and forget our roots and our potential among all of distractions of daily life, I thought this was a good way to reach those I love. It no longer feels right to send out an e-mail and "force" my kids and my family to be aware of my life and struggles.

    Everyone has their own life to lead, and their own struggles to work through. I will continue this effort, and will continue to make my notes publicly accessible (unless I learn of misuse by someone who finds out about them, and then will aggressively pursue a legal remedy to copyright infringement and I will put the Thoughtlets behind a password).

    The index to download any of these Thoughtlets is at http://www.walden3d.com/thoughtlets, or you can e-mail me with questions or requests at rnelson@walden3d.com (note if you are not on my e-mail "whitelist" you must send 2 e-mails within 24 hours of each other in order for your e-mail to not be trashed).

    With all my love,
    Dad
    (H. Roice Nelson, Jr.)

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    Copyright © 2007 H. Roice Nelson, Jr.