"Another week and more chess moves: Colby 8, Rob 6, and Roice 5. Even though there is not much interaction with those I love, I do enjoy knowing you are thinking enough about me to make a chess move. It is the simple things which do make a difference.
Monday I went to the POPS (Pioneer Oil Producer's Society) luncheon. Not sure why I enjoy these other than Bob Scott's history lessons, and I do. From 2 to 3:00 PM I worked on a plan for the week, as well as the East Cameron opportunity and Wharton County wells. On the way home Norman Niedell called to see if I could do some simple seismic modeling for him. Told him I do not have the tools. When I got home I moved the rest of red rocks in back yard to remake the rock garden. As I write this I realize my rock garden is the rock garden my Mom always wanted to have. Oh well! Hopefully she is able to visit and see what we have done. Ben sent contact information and apologized for not checking his e-mail very often. Joe Roberts sent an e-mail suggesting I should approach Rob Yorke at 3DGeo about investing in DML. Told him no thanks at this time. The big news was the following e-mail from Melanie:
I responded with:
Tuesday morning, the 17th of March, I sent a note to Jiafeng, attempting to close down the Tarim project (two years after the work was done):
I did not go into Layton's office on Tuesday. I spent the morning moving the geologically interesting rocks back into rock garden. I think it looks pretty nice.
When I came inside there was a note from Randy Bruner regarding East Cameron opportunity. The current owner does not have plans for the block, and the well to the north condemned their prospect ideas. They are not willing to share 3D nor to take time to look at the blocks. Randy's best advice is to wait until their lease with the Federal Government expires, to purchase 3-D seismic over the blocks, and to completely put prospects together. Turns out this is very good advice. While I was working outside Jim McCloud called about NAPE prospects in Jackson and Matagorda Counties.
Andrea and I went to the temple for our 2:00 appointment with Elder Bradford, the Houston Temple President. We were called and set apart as Houston Temple Ordinance Workers. We start on the 19th of March and are assigned to work in the temple each Thursday afternoon thereafter from 12:30 to 6:00 PM. I have always enjoyed the temple, and I am sure there will be many blessings come to us as a result of this service.
When we got home there were a couple of e-mails. Susan Walker sent me the framework for a Provisional Patent Application. There was also a note from Ben about how busy their summer plans are. I'd suggested Ethan come out to Utah when we are out there. Probably too young to travel that far alone. Oh well!
On Wednesday I worked on the Steamboat, Pandera, and Liberty prospects. Hardy Coons called about having lunch with the last practicing Exxon Rover Boy. Never did make contact. Ho well! Wulf pointed out the Central Lease Sale was a month earlier than expected, on 18 March 2009, which was the first of a series of negative pieces of news about Dick Coons' East Cameron opportunities. John Boyce sent a note I like:
John Boyce also sent the movie to the right, titled: "Sorry Bill, I'd rather kiss my new boss!"
Jim Siebert sent a note about one of his friends:
"Roice,
I just had lunch with Richard and Richard from AR Group/Wilkens Weather. Richard Wilkens is the president of the company and Richard Agee is the CFO. The lunch went very well and they would like to sign non-disclosure agreements, and have us give them the full presentation. In our conversation I let them kind of take the lead to see what direction it went and within a few minutes they concluded that in their opinion the best way to move forward would be to find the right company that had some cash reserves and to drill a "test" well ourselves. Then if that was successful, we could grow from there.
They know several different people and companies that they would like to introduce us to ... as potential investors, but first the Richards would like to see our full presentation.
They are available for a meeting next Thursday morning starting at 9:30am and we could give them the presentation in their private conference room. If that time won't work for you, then we'll find another time that will. They would like to sign the non-disclosures before that meeting and then with our permission, they would like to approach a few people without giving the "secret" away.
I think there is great potential here and I look forward to our presentation to them asap. This is just a brief discription of our lunch today...and we'll talk more about it when you have a chance.
Jim"
Turns out the meeting was postponed until Tuesday the 3rd of March (see 0910.html). I prepared confidentiality agreements and forwarded them to Jim.
I sent the following note out to Wulf, Kevin Hird, and a potential investor:
It ended up eating a lot of time the next week and did not go anywhere. Oh well!
Wednesday afternoon about 3:00 Matt Kitterer of the University of Utah stopped by Layton's office to talk to me about funding alumni programs. He is a nice guy and good at what he does. He ended up getting me to commit to pay for a lunch and host several alumni sometime in May. The conversations on this lunch have continued since his visit.
On Thursday 19th Jeff Jurinak sent a note asking if I'd like to present DML material to ConocoPhillips. This became a big deal (see 0910.html). Wulf sent the following good questions from a contact about the East Cameron opportunity Dick came up with, and a coverletter he later forwarded:
At 9:30 in the morning I had a meeting with Jeff Johnson and Mark Bashforth. They are both excited about the Energy Technology Exchange. We agreed to a follow-up meeting on Friday the 27th (see 0909.html). Then I went down to the Sushi place on Westheimer next to the shoe shop and had lunch John Gillooley and Rick Drake of Geokinetics. Turns out they had left Geokinetics an hour early, John forgot his cell phone, they went to the wrong place first, and were waiting for me when I arrived. The shoe place was closed. I have never paid him the $300 down payment for my new cowboy boots, and feel bad about not being able to proceed with this right now. Oh well. From here I went into the office, where I captured an interesting quote from Dan Layton as a possible stanza for Prime Words:
I worked for Layton from 1:30-5:30. Randy was sick and I was to take his place in reviewing a prospect at Choice Energy. However, I thought they were coming to our office, so I was working on the Wharton County opportunities, when they called and asked where I was. I was about an hour late by the time it all worked out. I liked the Prospects, and they wanted to meet with Dan when Randy was out of town on his annual golf trip the next week. I got Dan to go over there, and he does not like partners, and did not like the business terms so nothing happened. This is certainly a good place to learn about what I have wanted to do for all of these years. There is no question about my weaknesses in doing the things necessary to build up an oil company (other than the technical exploration work).
When I got home there was a note from Lac Nguyen asking for a status on Robonaut. I responded with:
"Lac,
I continue to work at the opportunity. I prepared some web pages for an investor (see http://www.walden3d.com/Robonaut). I took two Investors to NASA last week for a tour and demonstration. They consider Robonaut to immature to invest in a manufacturing facility.
Bob Savely has prepared a Space Act Agreement. It is expensive. They want $12 million over 2 1/2 years to create two AquaRobonauts, one for them and one for us. They also want us to hire 7 professionals to work with their team for the 2 1/2 years. This requires a total investment of $25 million to get up and running. I have a couple of other folks I will be talking to this about over the next six weeks.
I have not contacted you because I did not have anything specific and positive to report. I'm hoping to tie something together so we can get started in the next 4 months. If I can't, I expect NASA will withdraw their support. Look forward to your comments.
Best Regards,
Roice"
On Friday morning there was a note from Jeff Jurinak who was coming to Houston for meetings and wanted to introduce me to Ken Tubman. I sent him a confidentiality agreement. Wulf sent me specifics regarding the design of a 3D survey Layton is talking about shooting in Jim Hogg County, Texas. I corresponded with my sister about visiting Jeff Hafen in the hospital. There were e-mails back and forth to Melanie about her buying a house. I told her it would be nice if they could move into Hergenrotter's old house. No question I am still a dreamer. Paul sent a nice note. He has been in Huntsville, Alabama with NASA and Kate is coming down to Salt Lake for Rachel's wedding shower. Jiafeng sent a note saying he was willing to work with closing the project down for 20% of the outstanding money. I would think so. There was correspondence with Maureen about Geokinetics not having a copy of the contract with Geo. Maybe it is not all my fault they have not been paid.
I did not do my exercises, but I mixed 10 bags of manure with 10 bags of sand and spread it across the three front lawns. Andrea is totally stressed out about the wedding and going to Salt Lake for the wedding shower and to meet Garret's parents. We started to head for the airport and I realized I needed to go back for shaving kit and toothbrush and map to Rachel's house because Andrea had switched to the larger suitcase and did not empty one of the zipper compartments. We made it to the airport in plenty of time and got on the plane, but our large bag didn't make it. This was also frustrating. We went to Rachel's house and met Peggy. Her husband Mike had been called to work on the railroad and was not able to make the dinner, which was the reason I needed to be in Salt Lake for the shower. It was a very nice dinner, and I enjoyed meeting and getting to know Peg and also spending time with Rachel and Garrett. It was worth the trip and the hassle of not getting our bag until about 4:00 AM Saturday morning. I was asleep when it came anyway.
Saturday morning Richard Nehring called and set up a meeting Tuesday the 27SM at Layton's office (see 0909.html). We went to Joshua and Audrey's house for the shower and helped get ready. I took a few photos and Andrea was not able to take photos because the camera went into giggle mode. The photos I took are at http://www.walden3d.com/photos/Family/09_GarrettRachel/090221_Rachels_Shower I met Peg's Mom, then Kate, Sara, and Des's Mom arrived and I got to talk to each of them. Garrett called and asked if I wanted to go have lunch with him, his brother Mitch, and his Grandpa. We had a nice lunch and it was good to get to know these new family members a little bit. They drove me down past the new Draper Temple, which has an extra high roof celestial room and I took a couple of photos (see http://www.walden3d.com/photos/Temples/090221_Draper_Temple_1.jpg). Then we went back to Joshua and Audrey's. Sometime during the day I took some photos of Sophie, which are at http://www.walden3d.com/photos/Family/06_JoshuaAudrey/090220_Sophie. Andrea left with Rachel to help with Bridal photos and I was to go to where my sister was staying and take her downtown to meet Andrea and Rachel. They were finished with the first set of photos when we met up, thanks to the cell phone connection. It was fun to stand behind the other Joshua as he set up photos and to take photos, as well as photos of him taking photos. Rachel is gorgeous in her wedding dress. You can judge for youself by going to http://www.walden3d.com/photos/Family/09_GarrettRachel/090221_Rachels_Bridal_Photos. After the photos Andrea went with Rachel to help her get changed and then to have dinner at Peg Olson's house. I stayed downtown with Sara to meet Des and his Mom and to have dinner at The Olive Garden on West Temple.
Since it was about an hour before we were suppose to meet Des and his Mom we walked over to Sam Weller's bookstore. One of Mom's addictions was purchasing books here. It was one of the more enlightening hours of my life. Tony Weller, Sam's son, was there and he was the one that let me into look at the rare books. He asked interesting questions and I ended up buying two books: "The Genesis Code" by one of the Professors at the "U" when I was there, William Lee Stokes, and "The Joyous Journey of LeRoy R. and Ann W. Hafen, an autobiography," by the author of "The Hafen's of Utah." During the course of our conversation I described how I had attempted to get Sam interested in putting all of his books on-line back in about 1992 (well before Amazon.com), and how the guy doing the programming of their in-house program killed the idea. Tony had no idea about these conversations. I told him I enjoyed his performance art at the Salt Palace, and what I remembered was his flouting a beer as a statement against the establishment. He responded, "That was a long time ago." The book business is being hit really hard by the current financial downturn. They are shutting down a large portion of their store and are planning to sublease the space. They are having a hard time making ends meet. Our conversation led me to mention my indexing schemes, and to describe the universality of the approach. Tony at least faked interest. The insight which came to me was the fact his bookstore is the ideal place to build a general Knowledge BackboneSM covering all the activities of humanity. Imagine the immediate context from going on-line and searching for a book discussing location ig2657 or activity a3222 or time t423727 or data type d5Feiii1 or combinations of the above indices versus the results from a Google web search for something as iniquitous as a "stripper well." Imagine the value of the index which can provide this kind of context. I truly believe this is world changing stuff, and world changing in the most positive sense possible. I introduced Sara to Tony and we talked about all of the books Mom had bought. One of his assistants defended Mom, saying it is the most positive of addictions. I enjoyed the time a lot, and even though our budget is tight right now, I was very glad to pay for the two books Tony found for me. Tony would be receptive to me putting a team of software developers and indexers in his store building the interface and critical mass of indexed books to establish this type of a business. Now if I can just get a good well drilled which I have sufficient return on I can fund some of my out-of-the-box ideas.
After leaving Sam Weller's, Sara and Olive Garden and put our name on the waiting list. Then we walked a couple of blocks to see what was playing at the place they do musical performances downtown Salt Lake City. Looked like Sara wanted to go see the performance that was playing after dinner. We went back to The Olive Garden and were seated. Des and his Mom were waiting for us out front when Sara gave up waiting and went out front and found them. I enjoy Mrs. Penny a lot, and it has been a long time since we have had an opportunity to have a discussion like we did over dinner. It is fun to watch her reactions to the amount and quality of food provided. The funniest story I recall from the evening was her description of one of her sons learning about confession. He did not really know what a sin was, and so he just went down a list he found and confessed to that sin. One of the first sins on his alphabetical list was adultery. The priest did not quite know what to do with this 12 year old. Probably because I was still high from my conversation with Tony Weller I ended up telling Des and Sara and Mrs. Penny about what we are doing at Dynamic Measurement. Des was very interested and came up with ideas about testing the viability of our approach. This conversation has continued, and it will be interesting to see where it goes. I told them about going down past the Draper Temple and that the open house was still going on. Des expressed interest in taking a tour of the temple. I don't know if they did or not. It was a nice evening.
After I left them I drove up to Peg Olson's house and participated in the festivities there for a while. Then it was time to drive back to Randy and Kathryn's in Provo. It was late when we got to bed and very early when we got up to drive to the airport for a 6:00 AM flight back to Houston. We did not make it back in time for church. Oh well! I had President Steward substitute for me in my Sunday School class.
I had purchased a book in the Houston airport on the way to Salt Lake called "The Bible of Clay." During the travel, when there were breaks, and on the way home I read this book. I took a break Sunday evening to go Home Teaching with John Boyce. As a result of part of our conversation driving between houses I sent him a link to my work on condensation (see http://www.walden3d.com/cedarcity/CedarValleyWater/), which he grabbed hold of and designed a prototype solution. But that is a story for another time, as this Thoughtlet is getting way too long. When I got back home I kept reading "The Bible of Clay." I finished it up later in the week. It was a "Di Vinci Code" type of thriller based in Iraq just before the second Iraq war. It was about a Nazi war criminal, Tannenburg, who thrived by stealing archaeological artifacts and selling them to the west through three of his former SS associates. The idea was that Abraham had befriended a young scribe, and this young scribe wrote his description of the creation of the world on cuneiform tablets, which Tannenburg had found evidence of, killed the archaeologists who made the find, and kept before the war. He charged his granddaughter with telling the world, and getting an international team of archaeologists to come into Iraq before the war started to find the rest of the tablets. The author, Julia Navarro, is Spanish, hates George Bush, and made all kinds of fabricated accusations. The story held together well, and was fun to read. It was especially interesting to read about the significance of an actual account by Abraham of the creation (see The Book of Abraham in The Pearl of Great Price), which predated Moses' account of the creation in Genesis (see The Book of Moses in The Pearl of Great Price) as a newly called Houston temple ordinance worker."