"It is very different not having Andrea at home. I miss her. Not that we talk as much as she would like. Not that I can't get by without her cooking. Not that I can't do my own laundry or the ironing. Not for those reasons tied to being married. I just miss having her here and the stability and steadiness I feel with her around. I hope each of you find this same type of contentment in your marriages.
Monday I got an unexpected call from Stan Ably, who is now working for SMT. He wanted a reference on a potential person to fill a visualization product manager. The big news for Monday was a major power outage. I was climbing the stairs when it happened. When I got to the 4th floor on the way back up, here come all f these folks from Quantum walking down the stairs. By the time I got to the top floor (27) and back down to 21, someone had gone through the door and my business card had fallen out. However, someone else opened the door and I was able to get out of the stairwell. I later found out that Fred's student Jennie was downstairs for lunch when the power went out, and she attempted to climb to the 21st floor. When she got to about floor 8 she fainted, someone walking down the stairs saw her, called 911, and she was taken to the nearest Emergency Room. She came back the next day, learned I climb the stairs most lunch hours, and has never looked at me the same way since then. It was either this Monday night, or the previous Monday night (0629.html) when I took Rob for a drive in the new Prius. He really enjoyed the monitor in the dash board and the different ways things were organized. One option has the monitor showing the tires moving, and arrows showing if energy is coming from the gasoline engine to the tires or to the battery, or from the battery to the tires. The tires rotate. As we pulled into the driveway, Rob said, "So do the tires move in the opposite direction if you back up?" We had to check it out, and sure enough they reverse rotational direction when you back up. Fascinating and fun.
Tuesday the notes say I had a conversation with Lee Bell about Norm Neidell's processing approach and about Gijs Vermeer. Norm has a way of collecting orders of magnitude less data, and claiming he retains all the resolution. Lee is convinced, as a Stanford geophysics PhD, this just destroys the results. However, my friend Gijs Vermeer (../0450.html) says there is some validity in the approach, and I refuse to just throw the approach out. Lee makes the decisions for GDC, and so it will never be tested at GDC. This is definitely a 'time will tell' concept. It was fun to drive Andrea's new Prius to work each day, since she wasn't home. However, I was having a hard time getting it to start in the mornings. I'd have to go through the process several times and get quite frustrated before the Prius would start up. So during a break, I called the dealership to arrange for them to look at the car. They transferred me to service, I described the problem, and the service manager said, 'Are you putting your foot on the break when you start the car?' Boy did I feel like a fool. At least I had not told him my name. I just politely said, 'Thank you. Operator error.' And hung up the phone. That night I had a meeting with Jeff Jurinack at 7:20. I was so busy working on my projects I forgot all about it. Never did meet with him, because he left on a trip right after that. However, Brother Minor called and asked if I would be a team leader for one of the the Ward's emergency preparedness teams, along with Brent Peterson. Of course I said yes, and Brent and I have since visited all of the families on our list, given them the book the Relief Society put together, and told them about the program.
Wednesday I called Scott Wilson, and talked to him about the Central Iron County Water Conservancy District (CICWCD). About his first words were: 'What is your angle?" I think over the following weeks he came to the conclusion I really do care about the water issues in Cedar Valley, and I really am willing to put in time and effort to help solve these problems. I went to the grocery store on Wednesday. Marc Roulston was over working on the new Linux computer. Harold Burnham called me out of the blue from Calgary, and we talked for quite a while. He is working in the tar sands now. He had had meetings with Ben's new company earlier in the week. I don't know if they ever got together.
Thursday I called Jan Miller about An Open Mind. Her assistant said she was out. They had received the book, and they would get back to me in about four weeks. This was July 20th, and I still haven't talked to Ms. Miller yet. I've been busy getting behind on Thoughtlets, and so there hasn't been time to to do much writhing anyway.
Friday evening there was a Nottingham Country Ward party at Mary Jo Peckham Park in Katy for the 24th of July from 5:30 until 7:30 PM. I went over and enjoyed talking to my friends. There is a new Chinese couple in the ward. They are both geophysicists. He has a PhD and she has an MS. He works for ConocoPhillips, and I'm confused if she works or is at home with their two boys. They are from Beijing, and joined the church at UT Austin. He remembers Melanie very well, as she was in the Institute when he was there. We had an interesting discussion about Christian Singfield's technologies. We have not got together for a follow-up discussion yet, and they bought a house out of the ward and moved to it last week. He substituted for my Primary Class the two Sundays we missed because of our trip to St. Louis and Nauvoo (0648.html). Last Sunday he said he understands I have a lot of rocks, I invited them to come and visit us, and so I'm sure we will have the conversation sometime soon.
Saturday I mowed the lawns, and spent several hours pulling grass out of the hedges by the Dutch Oven pit. Marc was over working on the workstation, and I had to laugh as I thought about the fancy technologies we have, i.e. a hybrid car which gets 40-50 mpg, and a computer with almost as much power as Mobil ESC (Exploration Services Center) had when I went to work for them in 1984, and then I juxtapositioned these facts with the problems with both the Prius and the Linux Workstation."