"Well, I got behind again. Guess it doesn't matter since it looks like the 80/20 rule states the only time most of you will ever even look at these Thoughtlets, if ever, is after I'm dead. Guess I'm in one of my down syndromes. Oh well! I was going to name this Thoughtlet, Deerwood, and I decided to save that name for when I actually finish what I spent a lot of time working on. Rob visited for Family Home Evening (actually a week after Monday, the 6th of August), and one of his first questions was "Did you finish your closet?" I replied in the affirmative, and took him in and showed it to him (0731.html). He looked in side and said, "It smells like a hamster cage." I think this is a good name for this week's Thoughtlet. I certainly have felt like I am running around a flywheel in a hamster cage recently. And so as a name this name for this Thoughtlet works for me on multiple levels.
Monday morning I responded to an e-mail from David Devor before work. I got so into it, I forgot to watch the clock, and was 10 minutes late picking up George Schultz. We still went on the HOV lane, even though there is now up to a $1,000. fine for misuse of the HOV lanes. Both George and I are under the assumption this includes having 2 people instead of 3 people in the car after 6:45 AM. My e-mail to David led to several interesting e-mails over the course of the week. I'm not going to quote them, because anything to do with Project Mind is esoteric, and would only be of interest to a few of you.
I had stayed up until midnight Sunday because I fell asleep in the afternoon, and couldn't get to sleep when it was time to go to bed. The result was I was tired. The previous week Doug Harless had got hold of me and told me he had someone who would be interested in putting a few million dollars into Dynamic Resources. I had sent an e-mail to Gerald Broussard a couple of weeks before on Tuesday, the 31st of July. He called me back about 10:00 on this Monday, the 6th of August, and after a good conversation asked me to put my comments in an e-mail to him. So I spent lunch hour writing this e-mail, rather than walking the stairs. Again, I keep all of my e-mails, and they will be part of your inheritance, if anyone ever wants to go back and look through them. Other than this e-mail, most of my week was spent interpreting the deep water offshore Angola data for the pre-stack depth migration model Mike Schoemann is building. Interpretation is like doing a puzzle for me, and I enjoy both activities. However, it does seem like this particular interpretation project is like running on a flywheel in a hamster cage. Oh well! Monday evening when I got home from work Andrea and I went to see the "Bourne Ultimatum." Great action movie. Ties together the other two movies nicely. Still leaves an opening for another movie. Rob was not able to go with us. It was a nice evening.
Tuesday I finally took the time to send an e-mail to Rick Hawthorne regarding the web pages he sent me for his book "Gaven Images," which he wants me to post at http://www.walden3d.com/gi. Rick did not send me the images in the image directory, and needs an index.html file. His response came several days later. He does not understand how html works. I wonder if any of you do? In addition, they split his ward, he has been called to be in the Bishopric, and the Bishop and other Councilor have been out of town so he has been very busy. I figure Rachel, Matt, and Roice would be interested in this news.
I talked to Lee Bell about my trip to Washington D.C. last year, about the serious infrastructure issues in the U.S., and about how monitoring things like the footings under bridges is exactly what Geokinetics main business is about. This was brought up because of the bridge collapse in St. Paul / Minneapolis, and the folks who were killed in this tragedy. Lee gave me a very reasoned response about how different government and oil company markets are. Those who sell into oil companies can not sell to governments. And if you get a government contract, the accounting requirements are so different you have to set up a different group to do the accounting. He pointed out that in his experience, companies that sold to oil companies and the the government always have become two separate companies and have ended up spinning off one branch or the other. Then he told me he is usually the one who gets his ideas shot down, and it is hard for him to work with me, because he is always having to shoot my ideas down. I told him I felt this was very flattering.
I drove on Tuesday, and Becky brought Andrea down when she picked up George to go to the temple. Andrea and I wove our way through downtown and got on the HOV going south to get to Bay Area Boulevard and the hotel Paul, Kate, Grant, Ella, and Dallin were staying at. We went out to a Lupe's, which is just like the Lupe's in Katy that Todd and Michelle Staheli liked to go to, except parking is not so crowded. Then we went to the Kema Boardwalk. It was my first time there. The photos I took are at http://www.walden3d.com/photos/Family/03_PaulKate/070807_Kemah. It was fun to watch the excitement in the eyes of Grant and Ella. However, as I've mentioned before, after spending 2 years of showing "Man's Search For Happiness" almost every day, and because of watching my Dad get sucked into spending every dollar he had at the Utah State Fair trying to win me a teddy bear and being convinced there were magnets or something in the balls keeping him from winning, I really do not like amusement parks. The best parts of the trip to Kemah were watching the kids feed the catfish, thinking about how the boardwalk provides a nice metaphor for the Deerwood project I'm working on, and watching Grant and Ella play with the water spurts. It was a nice evening, and it was fun to spend this time with the Grandkids and Paul and Kate. It did not take us too long to get back to Katy. And I was still feeling a bit down, despite all of the positive parts of the evening.
There was a message Jeff Jurinak called while we were gone. Wednesday morning I answered one of the two e-mails he sent requesting a Home Teaching report. At work Dave Johnson came and visited me. I spent some time talking to him about creating a Geokinetics mission statement that everyone in the company could buy into. He said he wants the company to be bigger than Western Geophysical. I told him it was adolescent to want to have the biggest. He came back with wanting to be the next Western Geophysical. I told him these words have no meaning to most of his employees. I told him the company mission statement needs to be the equivalent of BP's "Beyond Oil." The next week he told me the BP vision was baloney. No one understood it, and BP would never provide energy of significant value other than oil and gas. But I get ahead of myself. Lee came in while we were talking and wanted me to show Dave the work I had done with Seisnetics. I told Dave about Lee's comments about shooting down my ideas. They Lee repeated something Dave has said to me several times: "Someday Roice you are going to have another idea which is going to completely change the industry." It was interesting to hear Dave's words come from Lee, and to see this example of leadership. By the end of the conversation, I committed to create a stratigraphy strategy, which the company could consider using. I got started on this the following Monday, and finished it up on Thursday. But I am getting ahead of my running on the flywheel in my hamster cage. When I got home on Wednesday evening I sent a note to Lyle Rowbury about making a site visit to the Deerwood property on Saturday. He responded he would be busy. Oh well!
Thursday Melanie sent the following from Colorado:
Friday I finished "Beyond Oil, The View from Hubbert's Peak" by Kenneth S. Deffeyes, which I bought at the airport in San Francisco on the way back from Beijing with Des and Justin (0725.html). I thoroughly enjoyed it. Before any of you complain about high gasoline prices I hope you will borrow the book and read it. There will be significant issues related to energy over the next few years and decades. This is a nice documentation of concerns I have had for years. In addition, the author has an extremely dry and funny sense of humor. For instance, at the end of the book he is talking about population control, and says: "If you teach calculas to teenage girls, they go on to have far fewer babies. Calculus is the contraceptive of the future. It doesn't work for boys." On a friend level, he was talking about oil shale, and how there is more oil derived from oil shale in Estonia than anyplace else on earth, then he gives an example of modeling the extraction of oil from oil shale and writes: "Kennecott Copper was having trouble optimizing large heap-leach operations for recovering copper. Larry Cathles [who with Roger Anderson and myself formed the Global Basin Research Network], then on the Kennecott research staff and now at Cornell, worked out a computer routine to model the flow of air, water, and heat, and the chemical action of bacteria within the heap. The process became more effective, not so much because the computer program was of uncanny accuracy but because computer simulation told you what to avoid. My recommendation would be to start by hiring Larry Cathles and one Estonian." You kids and your kids, are going to go through serious trials because of limitations in the availability of hydrocarbons. Get ready! Friday night I watched the premier show of a new Science Fiction Channel series: "Flash Gordon." I loved it. Dad always read the comics, and I'm sure this is where I picked up my habit of reading the comics. My favorite comic growing up was Flash Gordon. And then there were the Saturday serial movies. Flash Gordon and Gene Audrey were the best. I remember the futuristic cities in Mongol and under the ground in the desert respectively. I expect these movies had something to do with my obsession regarding building a new type of city.
Saturday Andrea had seminary training down by Clear Lake someplace. I got up and mowed the front lawn before tile workers arrived. I spent several hours working on the Deerwood model, which I have not explained, and won't bother to explain until it is completed in a few weeks. Then I mowed the side and back lawns. Worked more on the Deerwood model, filled the rest of the empty plastic containers in the garage, and worked more on the Deerwood model. I had a nice Google typing chat with Roice. Too short, and he had to get back to work. Learned they are selling their house and moving, and they will be gone for weekend. The brief conversation let me know how out of loop I am in regards to several of your lives. Oh well! When a hamster is running as fast as he can on the flywheel in his hamster cage, it is easy to get out of the loop. The workers were finishing up when Andrea got home about 4:30 PM. I took off as soon as she got home and went down to the Deerwood property to measure the heights of trees and to look at the property from different sides. The Creekstone Apartments are much nicer than they look for the Goolgle hybrid map / air photo display. It was hot, and I got very sweaty. The I-10 Freeway was closed, and so I ended up taking Memorial back. I got home just in time to take Andrea to see the movie "Stardust." I enjoyed this "adult fairytale." There is a little blood, and some scary witches, and I still think this movie is appropriate for kids as young as 5 or 6. Certainly better than the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies. It was a nice end to the week.
Sunday was OK. I gave my last yellow Chinese tie to Antonio Martinez' Dad. I think he liked it. Sacrament meeting was a two possible stanza's for Prime Words meeting:
The primary kids were wild. Particularly Antonio and Brandon. Oh well! When we got home I spent the rest of the day working on my Deerwood Project, running around the flywheel like in a hamster cage."