30 Sep 2007 #0739.html

Will Sing for Retainer

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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.

Monday morning was, once again, the first day of the rest of my life. It was going to be a big week, mostly because the SEG was in San Antonio, and I was going to use this convention as launch for pulling Dynamic Resources out of mothballs, and to get some consulting jobs through Walden 3-D, Inc. I figured it would be a good week when the first e-mail I opened, which arrived at 2:39 AM read:

The fact Jialin had disappeared and would not pick up his phone or otherwise contact us was certainly part of the reason I was laid off. There was also the issue of my not letting Geokinetics keep using my Landmark license for no payment. And, since I am writing this in January and can look back, the big issue was probably how I stuck up for Dave Johnson with the new boss, Dick Miles, the first day after Dave was fired. Oh well! I sent the following note to Jerry Schuster (a University of Utah professor) at 6:33 AM:

On Saturday and Sunday after church I had made new business cards, a new resume, a description of the type of retainer I was seeking, a folder with hand-out material and a presentation of my Colorado County opportunity, and the image to the right:

So I loaded my guitar, my new computer, with the new computer bag Andrea had bought me, all of my marketing materials, my clothes, and my shaving materials into the Prius and headed off into west, attempting to beat the sunrise and to be the early bird that gets the worm. The convention went much as I expected. It was good to see old friends, and it was nice to hear their encouragement and supporting words. I really do have a lot of friends in this industry. I am very well known. My reputation is good. And so there should be nothing to fear in looking to the future. Consider my thoughts about the following 27 names, which represent cards I picked up at the convention on Monday:

• Susan Morgan: We had worked together at Landmark in marketing. When she learned I was available, she promised me Paradigm Geophysical had an opening for me, and they would be very interested in my Knowledge Backbone^SM. Nothing came of attempting to set up a lunch, and yet the discussions right off the bat on the convention floor were wonderful, and set the tone for my week.
• Jeff Harwell: After I came to GDC, Jeff had John Gillooley's job before he left to work for a processing company from Denver. He was at John and Susan Walker's wedding (0721.html), and raved about my guitar playing. It was fun to watch his reaction to my sign on the back page of the notebook I was carrying with me, and which is replicated to the right. I was sorry to hear from John Walker several weeks later that Jeff was laid off by the group he left to join. Oh well!
• David Kessler: I think most of you know David, especially the six of you who accepted David as an older sibling who stayed with us every summer for several years. David was very concerned for me, and said I could help him on his visit to Exxon in a few weeks. It didn't happen. His concern was consoling.
• Satinder Chopra: Satinder interviewed me for the CSEG Recorder when we went to Calgary last summer (0727.html). He was busy, and yet when I told him I had left Geokinetics, he responded he expected I would, and told me I will have no problem finding something else to do. It was nice the way he responded.
• Jeff Johnson: As a key technologist at Amoco Research, Jeff and I had done several things together when I was working at the Seismic Acoustics Laboratory (SAL) at the University of Houston. He now teaches courses for Schlumberger. He asked me to send him my resume, and said there were lots of opportunities for me to work with him on stuff he is doing. I have problems working for Schlumberger, and so I have yet to follow his advice. His encouragement was nice.
• Sam Mentemeier: Sam is a key player at Anadarko, whom I had done a joint paper at the SpotFire conference with (see ../0504.html, ../0506.html, ../0509.html, and ../0534.html). We had nice discussions, and after the SEG he helped me find out Anadarko's position in Block 10 offshore Angola.
• Doug Harless: Doug and I have done a lot of things together since I first met him (../9749.html), when we worked together at MuSE (../9830.html, and with all of his work with Linux clusters (../0649.html. He is still working with Linux Clusters, and introduced me to two marketing ladies he is working with: Kim Wellman and Bobbi Hazard. There were promises of consulting work, and yet when I sent a follow-up e-mail, they did not respond. Oh well!
• Mike Forrest: A friend of Roger Anderson's who has become involved in many of our projects. A highlight of our friendship was when he let Andrea, Matt, Rachel, and myself stay at his castle beach house on Galveston Island (../0033.html). Mike said there might be an opportunity to have me present some of my ideas about geopressure pods to the Rose Consortium. I've been busy enough I have not followed up on this, and it is nice to have in my back pocket.
• Tom Morgan: One of Fred Hilterman's Ph.D. candidates when I went to work at SAL, Tom and I have always enjoyed catching up with each other. He has started an oil company, and is working in the Central Basin Platform of West Texas and New Mexico. Interesting. I expect there will be opportunities to collaborate.
• Norm Neidell: A fan and a friend for years, Norm was very excited to learn I am available on the job market. He wants me to market his migration algorithms. Lee Bell says there is no way Norm's stuff can work from a mathematical standpoint. I talked to Enders Robinson, and he confirmed there is something to the approach. Enders was one of the initial GAG (Geophysical Analysis Group) at MIT that invented digital signal processing. Others were Sven Tritel and Anne Simpson, when she was Steve Simpson. Norm ended up dominating a lot of time and introducing me to a lot of people. I have not followed up on this, because I am not a salesman, even though this is what many folks see me as because of my proselytizing of Landmark Graphics technologies.
• Andy Cutter: Works with GGS was one of the folks Norm introduced me to. Andy told me Kjell Finstadt has started an oil company named Fox for doing exploration in Texas. Interesting. Maybe I will end up working with Kjell, the guy who "fired" me from Continuum Resources.
• Dennis O'Niel: We met for the first time in the SAIC booth. SAIC was formerly a branch of the CIA and are still involved in a lot of black operations around the world. They are giant now, and have made great inroads into the oil and gas industry since I left Landmark. Dennis was quite interested in what I told him about the Knowledge Backbone^SM. However, he did not respond to an e-mail, and the initial conversation has not gone anywhere since the SEG.
• John Suydam: Formerly from Mobil, John and I worked quite closely when I was at SAL and he was at Superior Oil. One of the nicest seismic acquisition experiments I did in the SAL physical modeling tank was with John (see Figure 6-9 on page 144 of my book New Technologies in Exploration Geophysics). John is working with an exploration company doing shear-wave seismic exploration now. I ended up spending a lot of time with these folks at the SEG. They are pretty arrogant, and so it did not go anywhere. It is always good to catch up with John.
• Fred Amazadah: The new president of the SEG, and the President of dGB, the Holland Open dTect seismic interpretation software company started by Paul de Groot, said there would be several things I could do for his company. Again, I've been sufficiently busy, I have not followed up on this opportunity yet.
• Paul de Groot: Has implemented some very nice sequence stratigraphy code in their software, and he is working with Tracy Stark on Tracy's geochronostratigraphic reconstruction software. Paul expressed interest in having me work with them. I really want to do exploration and use tools, instead of build tools, and so again I have yet to follow up on this.
• Tracy Stark: I met Tracy when I gave a lecture at UT and he was getting his Ph.D. We have done a lot of things together since then. We went to Walden Pond together in the winter when there was a SEG Research Committee Meeting at Schlumberger Research in Connecticut. Tracy divorced and remarried. When he finally left Exxon, I helped him work at the VETL so he could claim IP before going to work for ARCO Research. They had a baby the same time Ethan was born, and we all got together at Ben and Sarah's house when they lived in Plano. Tracy let me use his booth as a place to leave my computer and walk the floor of the convention. We met for dinner later on Monday evening.
• Jinming Zhou: President of Sino Geokinetics came by while I was talking to Tracy. I was promised by his partner, Tom Kirkwood, there would be consulting opportunities for me with their company. We had good discussions. Hard to believe this was a continuation of my walking unannounced into their offices in Beijing (../0616.html). They have not responded to my SEG follow-up e-mail. Oh well!
• Xuri Huang: A Stanford Ph.D. who has returned to China to start his own business. He is quite, and was introduced to me originally by Wei He.
• Steve Carlson: We worked together at Chroma Energy. He has taken the software out of Chroma Energy and has his own company using the software as a service. I expect we will end up working a lot together.
• Bill Abriel: One of the intellectuals at Chevron, he used to get in the way of Dick Cole and myself at Chevron. Bill has been a distinguished lecturer for the SEG, and is a very good geophysicist.
• Bill Barkhouse: One of the young bosses at Mobil when I was there, Bill was an aggressive SEG President, and now he works for dGB. He stated a strong desire to work with me.
• Wulf and Georgeanne Massell tracked me down while Tracy Stark and I were having dinner. They joined us, and we had a wonderful evening trading stories and catching up.
• Dan & Anna Shaughnessy: A former Mobil employee who became a consultant when I was working with Bob Sneider, Dan was very involved in building the Knowledge Backbone^SM of the Ideal Oil & Gas Company. Dan and his wife Anna were seated at the table next to us, and we ended up having extended discussions. I found out at the convention Dan has been attempting to sell the process model work we did to some other groups. Guess that says the work is as good as I think it is.
• Reg Beardsley: After dinner I got my guitar from the concierge, and we all went to room 3032 in the Manger Hotel, where Peter Duncan was hosting a guitar jam session. Reg was there, and played a wild harmonica with us. It was a fun evening. Reg is moving back to Arkansas to take care of ailing parents. He has been doing a lot of geopressure work, and will be an ideal person to bring in on the geopressure pod exploration opportunities.
• Larry Walters: A good friend of Wulf Massell, we have got together at conventions every few years. Very bright, there is a lot to learn from him. He works for Geospace, with Dennis McMullin.
• Kathy Duncan: Turns out Peter and Kathy's son is having an afternoon concert on Saturday afternoon, December 1^st. It was in these notes, and I forgot about it. Oh well!

Anyway, the above list gives a little bit of a feel for how the SEG Convention went for a guitar player who will sing for a retainer. And these contacts and feelings were only part of what happened on Monday. They were only the part I made notes about. For instance, I think Jerry Schuester's consortium meeting was at noon on Monday, and I went to that. That is where I sat by Peter and was invited to his jam session. I stayed at a Marriott Hotel several blocks from the convention center. However, the trolley came right by the hotel, and so it worked out just fine. It was about midnight when I left the Mangor Hotel and headed back. A cute young girl who looked like she was on drugs came up to me and asked me for help. I asked her why she wasn't home with her family, and she just looked down. It broke my heart. Oh well! I made it back to the Marriott on the trolley safely.

Tuesday was another exciting day. I did not take near as many notes. There were a lot more serious discussions. I enjoyed catching up with Sharon Crawford of Marathon and Roger Turpening who is now at Michigan Tech. This was the day of the University of Utah luncheon. It was nice to catch up with friends there. When it was time to go and get my guitar I went and sat by the trolley stop. Turns out I was sitting under a sign for "The Comedy Club" when Dr. Tom Davis from Colorado School of Mines walked by. He laughed at me sitting under the sign, and then said "That's a compliment." He also invited me to come to his consortium meeting and attend the Board of Advisor's meeting. I was not able to go to Golden, and he has already invited me to the next meeting. We'll see.

In the evening I went back to Peter's guitar party. This time I had a copy of my sign saying I will sing for a retainer, and ended up putting it in Leon Thompson's cowboy hat on the table. He even threw $10 in the hat. There were probably 30 people in the room, and there was a lot of laughter and joking about it. Then Lee and Susan Bell walked into the room. Lee looked at the sign, laughed, and said, "What is this all about Roice?" I smiled and said, "I expect you know." I had brought copies of the Nottingham Country Ward sing along songs with me, and we ended up going through most of them. Then we migrated to Peter Duncan's favorite songs, with Lee Bell looking up the words on his cell phone and singing at the top of his voice. It was a fun evening. Again I left about midnight, and took the trolley back to the Marriott.

Wednesday morning I went to listen to Les present our paper on creating SEG-Y volumes from geophysical rock properties. I thought he did a good job. Some of the folks there told me how it could have been improved. Guess that always happens when one will sing for a retainer. I think I drove back to Houston on Wednesday evening. It was a good convention.

There was definitely a surprise waiting for me when I got home. Andrea and Marc had pulled everything out of the office, set up the computers in the hallway, and there was a new beautiful tile floor in the office. Needless to say, for the next several weeks the office was a mess, while Andrea did all of the cabinetts and cupboards, re-wallpapered, and turned the office into a wonderful work environment (../0802.html).

From my notes and e-mails I know that on Thursday at 1:46 PM I received the following from Mike Dunn:

I responded with:

And he replied:

Remembering I am writing this several weeks after the fact, Mike and I had lunch last week (../0803.html), and we are still discussing his helping me raise money for my exploration activities. I do not expect anything to happen. My notes also say that on Thursday I installed AVG virus protection software on my PC.

On Friday at 12:27 AM the following note arrive, which was because Doug Harless talked to him:

Sent this response at 6:09 AM:

Dick Coons called me. He called from Devon, where he has been consulting for several months. Guess he heard about my exploits at the SEG. He is still interested in pursuing opportunities in Cabinda. So am I. I went over to Merril Littlewood's office and had a meeting about the $1.3 million tax loss carry forward from HyperMedia Corporation, as well as to catch him up on the things I am doing. He asked me if Roice has ever run across Ian Mouton in the Austin software development world. I keep forgetting to ask.

On Saturday I sent the following to Sara Ellyn:

Link

Saturday was busy. I sent an e-mail requesting a meeting with Greg Link next Thursday or Friday (he never responded), sent the edited CSEG interview to Satinder Chopra and Penny Colton in Calgary, sent a copy and a note about employment changes to Roger Anderson, Albert Boulanger, and Steve Joseph, and sent a similar note to Christian Singfield. And I did this with the computer in the hall.

Sunday, 30 September 2007,was Fast and Testimony Meeting because of General Conference the next week. From Bishop Vaughn Camp's testimony I wrote the following possible stanza for Prime Words:

From Rachel Williams' testimony I wrote another possible stanza:

We practiced Primary Program during Primary, and so there was no lesson. Good thing as I have been a bit busy. Also, the next week there was no lesson next week because of General Conference, and because we will be at Andrea's missionary reunion (0740.html. And there was no lesson the week after that because of another Primary Program practice. The program will be the week after that. I play guitar while my class sings:

The practice reminded me that I will sing for a retainer."

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).

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Copyright © 2007 H. Roice Nelson, Jr.