My Story goes something like this....

Graduated and moved back to Houston. Poured concrete, spray painted cranes, worked on a lathe in a machine shop, until I decided that "I must be college material". Attended San Jacinto Jr. College outside of Houston then went back to Arkansas for a "real" University. Somewhere in my fourth semester I declared Geology to be my major. Had some good professors and learned a lot about rocks. Enjoyed spelunking, rock hounding, and white water float trips in the Ozarks.

I took my BS to Houston and got a job in the oil patch. I mud logged with the Analysts for two years then got an office job with a little company called Chevron Geosciences. Two years later I was transferred to New Orleans, and I've been here ever since.

I started out punching little holes in cards and moved on to the "glass-keypunch" on an IBM MVS mainframe system. I migrated on to VM/CMS, then to the VAX world, and finally ended up in this wonderful UNIX/Ultrix/sun os2 workstation environment (with a little PC on the side). Now I click virtual buttons on a screen. If I am a computer geek, it is because I grew up at the same time the computer did. It is a good way to make a living, I enjoy working with people and computers.

My job at Chevron is to provide computer support for third party software (Landmark's OpenWorks) which allows geologists and engineers to visualize or model an oil or gas reservoir. I assist with data acquisition, loading, debugging, trail-blazing, upgrading, testing, evaluation, planning bridges between applications, and by being a vocal participant in meetings about the previous topics.
This activity allows the creation of geologic maps, the correlation of well logs, the creation of cross sections and the creation of gridded earth models. These allow us to understand the nature of the reservoir so that the next well will be optimally placed. The results can be used to create a numerical model for reservoir simulation work. We are computing for oil.

I've got a lovely and understanding wife, Janice, a brilliant son, Zachary, and a neurotic Dalmatian, Lucky Lady. We live in scenic Harahan which is nestled in the first bend up-river from New Orleans (The river bend is called 12 mile point 'cause it's 12 miles upriver from the port of New Orleans).

Well, there's more.... Let's see.... I had five brothers and sisters; that's bound to be an influence. I wasn't the oldest, I wasn't the youngest; I was the middlest as you can get with 6. We were all two years apart (with the exception of my little brother; a 3 year gap), and were raised pretty much as a group. We went to church, the zoo, museums, day camp, and swim meets as a unit. We looked alike, same nose, same eyes, same hair, and the same dark skin (we were out in the sun all day at swim pools). We have the same speech patterns, the same abuses of the English language. We have the same love of a pun or a twist of speech, or turn of a phrase. So... is it any coincidence that we now live thousands of miles apart and work in widely differing fields? I think not.

My oldest sister is an Electrical Engineer specializing in electrostatic discharge. My older brother is a mountain guide and explorer. I work on computers for a major oil company. My little brother is a numerical control/quality assurance operator at a company that makes microwave towers. My younger sister is a homemaker and artist. My youngest sister is a book keeper/coordinator for her husband's cryogenics equipment company. That's a mixed bag.

Dad was a swim coach, Mom was a swimming teacher; we were the swim team. In my family we had a choice in sports, well, you could pick your stroke. Mine was breaststroke because I found it intriguing and it has a built in rest and recovery period. Although I attended many swim meets, it was obvious early on that I wasn't going to the Olympics. When I was little it, seemed like a privilege to get up a 4:00 in the morning to go and swim with the big kids for an hour before school. Blurry chlorine eyes for first period. What fun. It turns out that I'd swim for a while, kick-board for a while, and walk on the bottom for a while. Somewhere around Jr. High I decided that maybe I was cut out for band and got out of competitive swimming for good.

There was a bunch of things that influenced my life. In third grade I used to like to lay in the sand or dirt and construct roads, tunnels, and bridges for matchbox cars. I had a good friend, Louis Carillo, and we used to enjoy playing dot-to-dot together.

Also during the 3rd grade my family took a trip to Mexico for 6 weeks. This was good for my education, but bad for my schooling. If you ever see my cursive handwriting you will notice that I missed the part on the last third of the alphabet. It was a big deal when we crossed the Tropic of Cancer and I remember thinking that cancer was a "bad thing". I almost lost my life at a beach in Acapulco called La Candesa (the gun?). My Father was riding on the swells on the other side of 16-foot breakers; I thought I'd run through them and join him. Bad timing, low body mass, lack of forethought etc. anyway, I was tumbled about 90 feet up the gravel beach and came up with a mouth full of rocks and water and pockets full of gravel and a new respect for the forces of nature. I still remember "Carlos Aqui" leaning out the second floor window, plucking monstrous limes from the tree outside and making fresh "limeade" on the spot. We called him Carlos Aqui because every time we said or hollered "Carlos", he'd say "Carlos Aqui".

Another cute incident that happened in the third grade (what a year). It seems that we had a new teacher in February and she was trying real hard and she had made some cut out silhouettes of several dead presidents and tacked them to the bulletin board real nicely. I had just learned about the spit wad (chewed up paper that can be thrown or shot with the right instrument), and decided to apply my new skill to President Lincoln's head. When the teacher came back into the room and saw what had happened to the prez (again), she left crying. I felt real bad. I also earned my first "D" in third grade ("dragging the family name through the mud"), but never wondered if the two events were related until now. Enough...

Kennedy was shot when I was in the 4th grade. I was by the water fountain in the Administration building when I heard the news...

I took a trip with my older brother and my grandparents to New Mexico and Arizona in the 5th grade. We went to the Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde, Carlsbad Caverns, and other sites. This probably contributed to my interest in geology. I remember bashing rocks together in a riverbed outside of Phoenix with my bro, looking for geode crystals. We didn't find any, but my brother made me aware that they existed. I have since found some.

It was also discovered on this trip that my vision was "less than standard". We were playing the alphabet game where you collect letters off of signs and license plates and my brother kept getting every letter before I could see them. The grandfolks noticed. I've had the blessing, and the curse, of glasses ever since.

Sixth, seventh, and eighth grade blur together now but I remember them as a time of character development. I remember getting punched in the nose for the first time. Some guy "cut" in line at the snack bar during lunch. I told him to get to the back of the line. He hauled back and slugged me. I saw "stars" for the first time and learned a new appreciation for right and wrong (or right verses might).
I learned a little chemistry and the power of a vigorous exothermic reaction when a friend told me about mixing chlorine and Cox airplane fuel in a tightly closed container.
I also remember thinking about this time that there was something different, or special, about girls. I found out what it was in the eighth grade. Ah yes.

Ninth grade... Late sixties... There was music, drugs, and a war going on. I went easily with the counter-culture of the time. I still think that war is bad and music is good and drugs are still illegal. Some things change and some remain the same.
Somehow "we" were against authority, the pigs, the establishment. There was a revolution going on. This position did not make my progression through the system easy. Sometimes even today I bang my head against things just to bang my head against things. I am learning that it hurts, and I try to do it less often.

Tenth grade, another major milestone. I was in the Boy Scouts and had a friend in my patrol that we called Munchkin. He showed me a trick that could be done with the powder from 1,000 firecrackers and a short length of pipe. I was taking machine shop so I helped by drilling the fuse hole in the pipe cap during 3rd period. I also helped assemble, locate, and detonate the device. We did them (a total of 3) at school at the end of lunch period. We put them in an isolated, sheltered, location so no one would get hurt, and then headed to homeroom. They made a loud BOOM.
We did get caught, or rather turned in, by Leslie Bratten. (I still hate him and I hear that he went on to be a Nark.) This resulted in a 12 weeks suspension from good old Memorial High. This of course changed my schedule.
I attended summer school for the next two summers. Because the courses I needed were not offered in the Spring Branch Independent School District I had to ride by bicycle 18 miles a day, rain or shine, up hill both ways, to the Houston Independent School District to attend Lamar High (and we were too). I managed to graduate "on time" with my class, but at a different high school (Rogers Ark. 1973). Another valuable lesson was learned. I haven't been interested by pyrotechnics since.

Another cute thing about high school was that they didn't like long hair; we did. Someone took the school district to court and it was ruled that they could control our looks during school but couldn't after school. This resulted in the great wig compromise. Yes, I wore a wig to school. It was not just any wig however. It was the cheapest wig I could find and it was made out of 100% Kanekalon (whatever that is). I took this waist length wig to the principles office and asked him how short he would like it, borrowed his scissors, went to the bathroom across the hall and gave that wig a hair cut. I might mention that I am not a professional hair stylist. I kept my wig in my back pocket on the way to school. When we put them on, it was fashionable to let your pony tail hang out the back in a coon skin cap effect. I had my wig in my lap during one of our morning "pep rallies", and I burned a hole about the size of a silver dollar in my wig. The damn thing nearly caught on fire before we noticed it smoldering. If you put these last three thoughts together you might be able to imagine what this thing looked like and why we called them RAT-TOPS. The administration thought that this was less distracting than long hair in the classroom. We showed them.

Another high school incident (oh no, there's more?) was the great riot. Well, the best I can say is that we didn't start it. It seems that the administration had decided that Pep Rally attendance (45 minutes, first thing Friday mornings) was rather light. Many of us viewed school spirit as optional and either came to school late or held our own pep rally in the woods across the street from the school. To combat this attendance problem the pep rally was moved from first to 3rd period one day. When time for the Pep Rally came students streamed from the school to the parking lots, to go to jack-in-the-box, to go have a smoke etc. Teachers, Coaches, and various faculty members were stationed in a ring around the school perimeter. They were taking down names, and they herded all the students into a mass near the snack bar. Yep, you guessed it; they had unwittingly formed a mob. Well it seems that I had recently seen the movie Woodstock and had paid particularly close attention to Country Joe and the Fish's act so I knew how to spell a certain word a certain way. I whipped the crowd up into a frenzy with my skillful rendition of the fish cheer, "Give me an F, Give me a U,..." This act also contributed to my 12 week suspension from the tenth grade. Another valuable lesson learned, don't help large groups of people spell their thoughts.

I told you I went to Lamar High to make up for this lost time. Well, there was a guy there named Larry Graham that I'll always remember. He was tall, with long blonde hair, and had the physique of a speed freak. We called him Armadillo because he could draw a fair caricature of a 'diller and because he said that when he rode his ten-speed bike across rail road tracks it made the same sound an armadillo makes, sorta aggaddy, aggaddy. We had some fine lunches at Lamar; a small circle of friends, sitting in the grass in the shade of an oak tree, a bottle of Boone's Farm ©apple wine to pass around and more... The HISD wasn't really a punishment, looking back I know I enjoyed those times.

Around this same tumultuous time my parent's marriage was crumbling and by the end of 11th grade the divorce was pretty much finalized, Mom got and sold the house, we moved into an apartment. When school got out we moved to Northwest Arkansas. One of the reasons we moved there was to "get away from the evil influences of the big city". No one had told my Mother about the "evil influences of the small city", but we found them and had a great old time.
When we moved to Arkansas, my sister stayed in Houston attending school, my older brother took off for life on the road, searching for that one little bit of wilderness (and I don't think he's found it yet.), this made me the oldest child in the house but I don't think I noticed at the time. I helped the family move to Rogers and took off with a friend (Barry Thompson) of mine we'd brought from Houston to hitch hike to visit another friend (Jimmy Winzler) in Colorado. We hitched from there to Houston, then I hitched back to Arkansas to start 12th grade at Rogers High.

At Rogers High, they didn't care if you had long hair, they didn't care if you smoked (there was a smoking area), they didn't care if you had holes in your blue jeans; they were happy that you decided to attend school. Considering the repressive system I'd come from this was paradise. Rogers was a growing area so there were freaks folks from Indiana, Wisconsin, and other far flung points, so it was a mixing of elements from these places and the locals that made for an interesting time. Two weeks after we'd been there three girls came to the house, rang the door bell and said they were the "Welcome Wagon", would me and my brother like to go to a party? This ended up being the first of many trips to the abandoned Monte Ne hotel. There was this world class resort (at the time) that was located where the Corps of Engineers were going to put a lake (Scenic Beaver Lake), the hotel was supposed to be under water so it was demolished. Well, mostly. The walls of the main structure were made of hard concrete about two feet thick. They tried wrecking balls and dynamite but couldn't phase it. When the lake came in it didn't cover the hotel so it made an excellent location to go to. We'd make a large fire in the fire place, crank up some music, drink some refreshing beverages, cozy up with the girls, swap tales, socialize, etc.

I grew real close to my little brother Dave, during these times. We lived together, walked or rode bikes to school together, partied together, hung-out, socialized. We knew the same folks and went to the same places. This might have seemed weird but there were several other groups of brothers in our peer group (specifically the Waynemiers, and the Kesslers). This must be another lesson learned, something about small town social structures.
Arkansas was great for another reason. It had four seasons per year; yes Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter, count 'em. Because I'd lived most of my life in Houston this almost startled me. It is good to be able to change activities, locations, and predilections based on some planetary cycle. It helps you grow or makes you realize that you are moving through time. Just when you think cabin fever will get the best of you, spring bursts out and its time to go camping or on a float trip.