"I started this week off convinced this was going to be the week we would reach the end of our financial tunnel. I had sent a note with a Thoughtlet to Melanie and Paul which stated:
'Looks like next week is the end of the tunnel, at least as far as Thoughtlets go. Here is #0652.
One more for 2006 (there were 53 Sundays in 2006), and three more for 2007, and I'm caught
up. At least you won't have to skim so many words.'Thinking about reaching the end of our financial tunnel, I got wondering how long the tunnel really is. Then my mind jumped to the explanation for Figure 1 of Facsimile No. 2 from the Book of Abraham, where it states:
'The measurement according to celestial time, which celestial time signifies one day to a cubit.
One day in Kolob is equal to a thousand years according to the measurement of this earth,
which is called by the Egyptians Jah-oh-eh.'
Now in the Bible Dictionary it defines 1 cubit as 17 1/2 inches in
the 8th century B.C., and 1 cubit as being 21 1/2 inches
at the time of Christ. We know people got bigger from the time of
David until the time of Christ, and if there is a direct relationship
between time and space, and if people have continued to get bigger
since the time of Christ, linear mathematics imply a cubit is 26 1/2
inches today. I guess this fits as th length of the arm from the
elbow to the tip of the fingers of today's basketball players. So,
being conservative, i.e. using the longest definition of a cubit,
i.e. 26 1/2 inches, I calculated the
following length of some of the tunnels of my life:
|
Tunnel from (date): |
Event (description): |
Time (months): |
Distance (inches): |
|
Nov 2003 |
38 months |
0.087" |
|
|
Apr 2002 |
When I wrote the Thoughtlet about ../0214.html |
56 months |
0.128" |
|
Jan 2000 |
The beginning of the millennium |
84 months |
0.192" |
|
May 1999 |
My marriage to Andrea |
91 months |
0.207" |
|
Sep 1993 |
The failure of HyperMedia Corporation |
160 months |
0.365" |
|
Nov 1949 |
My Birth |
868 months |
1.564" |
My point is that if any of these are real financial tunnels (i.e. if the tunnel is more than fears in my mind), they are not really very long, at least in celestial time. After all, my entire life is the natural distance my thumb and forefinger float between each other. So whenever you get feeling like you can not make it through the day, just put your hand in front of your face, look at the distance between the end of your forefinger and the end of your thumb, and think:
"That inch and a half is Dad's lifetime from his birth until he was 57 years old. I can make it through my tunnel, which is a fraction of this distance."
Sunday was nice. I attended my first Primary In-Service Training for Primary Teachers. Sister Tana Holmes taught the class, and did an excellent job. I probably liked it because she made fun of me, at one point referring to my teaching in Primary, and saying 'Brother Nelson has been teaching in Primary since it was started, in fact, he invented Primary.' Yup, me and Al Gore (who 'invented' the Internet!). Then at another point I brought up how much the kids seemed to enjoy the post cards I send them when I am not here to teach. Sister Conners brought up how much Shannon enjoyed her Post Cards. Brother Keller was in attendance, and he talked about his son Eric liking the cards. Then Tiffany Feil, our Primary President, said that her husband Matt still has post cards that I sent to him. I seriously considered calling this Thoughtlet 'Post Cards.' Then Brother Ben Spureill said how much he appreciated that when he was asked to substitute for me there was a packet with all that he needed to teach the class in it. I guess all of these kudos was one of the reasons I thought Sunday was so nice.
Brother Thor Larsen and I left the two hour in-service 10 minutes early to go to our class and to practice for our Sharing Time, which we were responsible for doing next week. Sister Larsen was substituting while we were in in-service, and she was our practice audience. I went through actions I thought each of the kids could do when we sang their verse of 'Our Class' (0701.html), then we practiced 'Our Class,' and 'The Prophets.' We were about 10 minutes over when we finished practicing.
In the evening I home taught the Schmidts and Brother Miner and Scott. Sister Miner and Hope were with the daughter who lives in town and who is expecting a baby this week. Brother Miner's Mom died earlier in the day. Scott, Hope, and Brother Miner plan to go to the funeral on Friday, and Sister Miner plans to be with the daughter scheduled to be induced on Friday. Our lives are not the only ones busy. I got home just in time to leave with Andrea for a special missionary sponsored fireside on genealogy. Alan Peterson spoke, and did a wonderful job. Brother John Taylor was there, and I mentioned to him he has not introduced me to his fiancée yet, nor asked for permission to get married again, yet. I was probably feeling full of myself because of the complements about the Post Cards earlier in the day. He said, 'Well, can I?' We both laughed. Brother Bancroft was also there. He mentioned how much Morgan liked the Post Cards I have sent her this last year. I explained she was no longer in my class, and repeated for him the comments from earlier in the day. Andrea and I stayed until everyone had left, then moved out the folding chairs, set up the tables and other chairs, and had help getting the room ready for her seminary class. We came home and I worked on Thoughtlets, wondering if this effort to show the 10 of you how much I love you, would ever be seen anything more than an exercise in self-aggrandizement by most of you.
Monday through Wednesday noon was an off-site annual review meeting for all of the divisions of Geokinetics. Dave, Lee, Mike, and others were all gone to this, making it pretty quiet at the office. Les came down and told me the Nigerians had sent a note saying they were going to be paying their bill. No money had arrived by the end of the week. Oh well! There was a big news event from the coast of England between Devon and Cornwall, where a ship had hit the rocks, and a bunch of containers full of cars and motorcycles and other things had dropped off into the sea. CNN was showing all of these people on the beach scavenging material washing up on the beach, including a fancy motor bike. Les told me a bit of history from about 150 years ago at this same site. There was a church overlooking he sea, and the Pastor was preaching to his congregation. Shortly after he started preaching he took off his cloak, kept preaching, walked to the back of the congregation, still preaching, then yelled "There's a ship on the rocks," and took off running to get first dubs at what came ashore. People and cultures change slowly, if at all. Including me. I wrote the following e-mail to Dave Johnson and Lee Bell on Monday morning (0705.html):
'Dave and Lee,
I postponed my lunch with Alf Klaviness, originally scheduled for tomorrow, so one or both of
you or someone you assign can participate. Alf is available for lunch Wednesday Thursday,
or Friday this this week.
I confirmed Alf is interested in selling the rights to the ~8,000 miles of spec seismic data
he has between Alaska and the Russian Border. He has the field tapes and some processing.
He has also done some interpretation on the data and there is a large structure he finds
interesting. If Geokinetics wants to get into the spec seismic data business, I think
this is a good way to do it, where it can be negotiated to pay his estate a percentage of
sales (remember Alf is about 95), thus minimize upfront costs, and create a self-funding division.
Let me know if someone is interested in joining us for lunch and negotiating this
opportunity, and if so when and where you would like me to set it up for.
Best Regards,
Roice'It took all week and many e-mails to get an answer. Jim White, Lee, and I will take Alf to lunch on Thursday, 01 February 2007 (0705.html). On Monday night I got completely caught up with posting Thoughtlets, getting to the end of this tunnel. However, I did not mail nor e-mail the last three until Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I also built a birthday card for Andrea (front and inside).
Tuesday morning I had the card on the bathroom sink when Andrea came in to get ready for seminary after doing her exercises. She liked it, and said it will go in her book of remembrance. Then she said, 'You need to beware: I'm 52 now, and playing with a full deck!' I laughed about this all day, telling several people of my dilemma. There was a note from Carolina Cruez-Niera:
'Roice, Jim, Mary: I am contacting you to ask your opinion about the NAPE conference. It is happening next week in Houston. Would it make sense for any of us to be there? There are so many Oil & Gas conferences that we do not know which ones may be the right ones. Any insight you may have on NAPE will be helpful. Carolina
I responded with:
'Carolina,
NAPE is for the real explorers. It is too late for a booth. However, it is a very good
networking convention, and you can meet a lot of people by going from booth to booth.
If you decide to pursue working for an Override, as we discussed in New Orleans,
this is THE convention to attend.
Based on my new responsibilities at Geokinetics, I will not be attending. If someone attends,
they need to be able to sell the value of using LITE for packaging and selling oil and gas
deals in Lafayette.
Best Regards,
RoiceI was still picking velocities for the second iteration of the depth migration project I am working on. In the background, I turned on KUHF Public Radio. It 7:45 AM on 23 January 2007, they had Sherwin Newland, a Yale University Physician and Author of 'Biology of the Human Spirit,' on a program called speakingoffaith.org. I wrote two possible Thoughtlets (a) for Prime words based on his comments:
'Be kind, for everyone
You meet carries
Great burdens,
Fighting a great battle' (a)
'It is my spiritual self
That makes me human
The transcendent part of my body
Allowing me to love and harm' (a)Then later in the day, listening to the December Audio-Tech Business Book Summary, "The Innovation Killer" by Cynthia Barton Rube, I wrote two more possible stanzas (b):
'Discipline yourself By responding To every new idea With two positive comments' (b) 'Group-Think is Like gravity, and Expert-Think is Like a black-hole' (b)
Tuesday evening I received an e-mail from Leon Thomsen, President of the SEG:
'Royce, Thanks for volunteering to represent the SEG on the DoE Advisory Committee on Unconventional Resources Technology. I have received many expressions of interest; from these, I want to nominate two candidates, including you. Please help me out by refining your resume, following closely the format specified by the DoE Announcement: http://www.fe.doe.gov/programs/oilgas/advisorycommittees/UnconventionalResources.html, and tailoring it precisely to the context of the receiving office, i.e. not practicing geophysicists. I expect they will receive several hundred applications, and that the SEG endorsement will not necessarily carry much weight. So, your tailored resume has to present its own compact impact. Their deadline is February 2; make sure that you have your response in to me by Feb. 1. Leon Thomsen SEG President 2006-07'
I was pleased. I told Lee Bell about it Wednesday when he came into my office. He had no comment. I think he wondered why I am so interested in this. There was also an e-mail from Bowen Loftin's assistant:
'Mr. Nelson, I am sorry for the delay in getting back with you. If the date is still open on your schedule, I put you on Dr. Loftin's calendar for Friday, March 2 arriving between 9:30 and 10:00 a.m. An itinerary and directions to Galveston and the campus will be forthcoming. If you have any questions please let me know. I will alert Karin that your wife will be joining you. If you don't mind, may I ask what her name is? Thank you, Cherie'
Lastly, there was an e-mail from Rick Hawthorne:
'Hello Roice, Just a note to keep in touch, and to see how you and family are doing so far this new year. Pat and I are enjoying our 'empty nest' and at he same time, enjoying family visits when they occur. Especially having Ryon home every 6 weeks or so. I wanted to mention to you that 2-weeks ago, I was conducting our HP group meeting, a Brother Green had earlier, introduced his clan visiting us in a shuttle bus vehicle with a U-haul trailer attached. He said he was from Cedar City. I asked him if he remembered way back when, the Nelson meat plant and he said yes, that one of his clan was relative. A Ryan Nelson was in the group and said I think, that his grandfather (or great-grandfather) was maybe the brother of your father? Not sure about the exact relationship there, but he said that he really didn't know you, but knew of you. Small world. Not much else to report: We now have 5-grand children! The fifth being born in December to Tracie, up in Michigan. Best Regards, Rick'
This started an interesting series of e-mails with Rick, which I will save for another time, or which will be in my files for whomever has interest in digging through them. Andrea was at a Japanese Teacher's activity all evening. I spent Tuesday catching up several months of not moving my swallows counts to the spread-sheet. Got to the end of that tunnel before Andrea got home.
Wednesday there was an e-mail from John Gillooley about the Tarim report, which I did not like and which seemed to be a CYA memo copied to too many people. I told him so in a response, and we had a good discussion about it when he got back from the off-site meeting. Wednesday evening I worked on catching up from my reading in the Old Testament, and my counts of the number of times God, Christ, and The Holy Ghost are referenced in the scriptures. It took me until Saturday evening to get up through the end of Leviticus, and to get to the end of this tunnel (see images/070127_God_in_Scriptures.png for a summary of the results of my counting for the first three books of the Old Testament). Part of the reason I did not finish on Wednesday evening was because I re-did the application for the DoE Committee (see http://www.walden3d.com/DOE). Also, on Wednesday evening Paul called and told us that his company, UGS, was sold to Siemens, and he now works for one of the largest companies in the world, a German company. Also there was a message from Bowen Loftin:
'Roice:
I am looking forward to your visit. A good place to check out some of the things
I want to talk about is http://www.tamug.edu/CTBS/
You might also want to visit the Houston Advanced Research Center's site at
http://www.harc.edu/
Bowen
R. Bowen Loftin, Ph.D.
Vice President and Chief Executive Officer
Professor of Maritime Systems Engineering (TAMUG)
Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering (TAMU)
Texas A&M University at GalvestonThursday morning, in the local paper, there were more articles on the Baker Mosque and the pig races (../0649.html). Later in the day I received a copy of Leon Tomsen's nomination:
'Dear Sirs, On Jan 9, 2007, Mr. William Hochheiser invited the Society of Exploration Geophysicists to nominate qualified individuals to the Unconventional Resources Technology Advisory Committee. As the principal professional organization of exploration geophysicists, we are uniquely positioned to provide you with the best nominations to represent on URTAC this important aspect of the unconventional resources technology issue. Accordingly, as SEG President, I solicited self-nominations from our American membership and selected, from among the many I received, three outstanding applications. I take pleasure in presenting one of these to you in this present email, and the others in separate emails. Feel free to contact me if you have questions concerning any of these. Leon Thomsen SEG President 2006-07'
This certainly made my day. I spent the day picking velocities and wondering when I was going to receive word about An Open Mind, or funding for my Colorado County project, or payment by the Nigerians, or some other means of reaching the end of the tunnel regarding being financially strapped. In the evening I was a member of a Scout Board-of-Review for advancing Scott Miner and Conner Bancroft to the rank of First Class. Then I worked on my rapidly becoming giant spread-sheet on the number of times God, Christ, and The Holy Ghost are referenced in the scriptures.
Friday morning Fred Hilterman and I had a long talk about the future of Geokinetics Processing & Interpretation, from our limited perspective. In the afternoon I had a similar discussion with Mike Dunn. Other than that it was a day of picking velocities. I'm settling into my new job, and not worrying about the lack of a future as much as I was when Lee first reassigned me. None of the money I was expecting materialized, and since we have zero extra money until the end of February without something happening, we did not go t o a movie or anyplace else Friday evening. I started working on my Galveston project to get ready for the meeting on March 2nd, and Andrea was practicing with her new toys which allow her to do machine quilting. There were a couple of old movies on TCM, which we watched while doing these things.
Saturday morning it was raining. So I kept working on my Galveston project. This will become a pretty big project. Maybe this time there will be some return for all of my efforts. However, I doubt if it will lead to the end of the tunnel of our financial woes.
The first Katy Home Show was held this weekend at the Merrill Center. Andrea wanted to go and so I went with her. There were several interesting things, and I will admit here that I enjoyed it. Since Andrea doesn't read these, I don't need to admit it to her. I really do not care to go shopping. This was different. You could talk to vendors about their products and services, and there was no pressure, except maybe to get contact information. There were a lot of people there, and I told Andrea I expect this will happen once a quarter based on the response they got from the community.
We came home and I worked on my spread-sheet, finishing up my summary just in time to print a copy to take to dinner with Tony and Jana McClain. We went to a place new to us on Mason Road, and I had a Gyro. Very good. Jana is good with people, and she got me to tell about the founding of Landmark Graphics. Normally I just sit there like a bump on the log. Andrea said she learned new parts of the story. I wonder if I will ever pick back up the project I started years ago to document all of this. It was called 'Success Has Many Parents,' with the second part about HyperMedia being 'Failure has one Parent.' Time will tell. Andrea and Jana were going to a quilting group activity where they are getting material from servicemen who have been killed in Iraq and are going to make quilts from these materials. The goal was to get me to go, and I stuck to my guns and said I wanted to get home and work on my project. ON the way home there was a big accident at Highland Knowles and Mason with a car upside down in the intersection. Andrea called to make sure it wasn't me.
Then I got a call from Pat Heany, "Roice, can you help me. I broke a pipe in the Master bathroom and I can not get it to stop." I was up from my computer, in the bedroom, changed from my Christmas slippers to my shoes, and running to the Heaney's before Pat finished describing what the problem was. We could not find a shutoff valve next to the house. However, I was able to find the main input to the house. It was full of fire ants, and I cleaned it out, ran home and got a water wrench, and was back and had the water turned off, all within about 5 minutes of the phone call. It felt really good to have someone think of me when they needed help, and to be able to help. However, both of my arms and my right leg are covered with fire ant bites today, and so it is not so much fun today. Another tunnel. At least fire ant bites heal in just a couple of days, so in celestial time, these tunnels are very, very, very, very small.
Sunday morning was our Primary Class Sharing Time. I thought it went well. Andrea used my little camera to capture a video of the event, so those interested can judge for yourselves (see mov08086.mpg, mov08087.mpg, mov08088.mpg, and mov08089.mpg for "Our Class" and mov08090.mpg, mov08091.mpg, mov08092.mpg, and mov08093.mpg for "The Prophets.").
And what did I learn from this week? I learned that even though I got to the end of several tunnels (back Thoughtlets, documenting swallows, documenting my new scripture study project, etc.), as far as finances go, we have not reached the end of the tunnel."