all of whom conspired to improve my prose.

... pray you'll never know 
The hell where youth and laughter go.
(Siegfried Sassoon after flunging his ww1 military cross into the see)

Once SEP's best asset were its senior students. They taught informally 
all the junior students needed to know. That is barely the case anymore. 
The senior student's lost their freedom and self-confident. Partially 
that is due to Jon's failure to find more experienced students, partially 
due to a stiffening of informal hierarchy and slacking of formal general 
rules at SEP with Biondo as the second in command. Resistance to new 
ideas. Hard to rebuild that culture and independence. 

No dedication. 
I want to dedicate this thesis to Joel Schroeder. 
Kind of ... 
He deserves the PhD. 
If people like Joel do not finish their PhD's then I feel something is 
wrong with our system. Maybe drive and dedication become a detriment 
where patience and "sitzfleish" (flesh at your butt) become more important 
ingredients. Then there are the ones who believe that a PhD is anyway just 
an exercise in conformism. 

As our world has changed our PhD stayed very much the same. I suggest 
research has to change and so has the PhD. I will demonstrate in this 
thesis how I think computational research should be done (You may think 
computational research is only a tiny part of science: it is not and it 
.name me the scientific research without computers and I show you a 
research dying.). The institution of research has to keep pace with 
the development in the real world. I am a strong believer that team work 
becomes increasingly important (a common place), but I believe that a  
team should consist of experts with individual, excellent expertise, and 
an appreciation for other experts. I do not believe in scientists who 
try to dabble in various fields without ever becoming true experts in 
any (I myself might be guilty of that sin). I think we need group PhD's 
in which a project is worked on by 3 or 4 students under the supervision 
of 3 or 4 professors. The result is a single document covering several 
aspect of the work. Each chapter clearly marked by who contributed what. 
The work should be short and publishable. The PhD candidates should 
receive their degree for that communal work. The project should hold 
real life interests. 

In my research role the writere owes them much, and the debt is gratefully 
acknowledged. In interpreting the material, however, he owes them nothing; 
indeed, many of them will wish to disassociate themselves from some of the 
views in this text. Let it be done here. All responsibility is mine alone. 
(William Manchester, the arms of Krupp)

Support of the computer environment: 
Dave Nichols, Steve Cole, Martin Karrenbach.
Mihai Popovichi. 
Bob Clapp, Sean Crawley, Sergey Fomel.
I hope I paid my debt by doing my share of system work. 
(I had my fair share of removed files and other system mishaps).

Research: 
Jon Claerbout.

Friendship: 
Dave Nichols, Steve Cole, Martin Karrenbach.
Joel Schroeder.

Interesting contact and feed back: 
Bill Harlan, Bill Symes, Spitz, Shuki
Dave Hale, Dean Whitty (sp?), Bill Harlan support for Java as a 
serious computer language. Bill interest in my solvers. 

Meeting with Siamak Hassanzadeh (SUN) and Hank Schiffman (SGI) 
about future of Java. Hank we thank for his wise frankness and 
Siamak for his enthusiasm and support (what support are you talking 
about?). Siamak offered me a internship to write a Java graphics 
library to display seismic data. I could not do it, but I hope 
someone will. 

The rest thanks for their usually collegial help. 

Seminars are crucial educational elements at SEP. But they should 
not turn into inquisitions as they have at times during my stay. 
Bill Harlan once remarked that somehow SEP's old spirit of "us against 
the rest of the world geophysics" has turned into a "us against 
each other". 

SEP is a great place for computational scientific work. However, I 
often found technical inovation (change to PCs, problem with the 
CCCI, C++, Java) extremely hard. Especially, SEP's senior researcher 
have to understand that the creativity of their students will only 
flourish to the degree they do not suppress their inovations. 

Any research organization requires generous measures of the following:
\begin{itemize}
\item Social space for personal initiative and creativity.
\item Time for ideas to grow to maturity.
\item Openness to debate and criticism.
\item Hospitality towards novelty.
\item Respect for specialized expertise.
\end{itemize}
(Zieman, John, 1994, Prometheus Bound: Science in a Dynamic Steady State:
Cambridge University Press.)


David Lumely and Mihai Popovichi taught me important lessons about 
human nature and myself; lessons I may prefer not having learnt. 

Sad to report that early collaboration with Biondo Biondi ended: 
my first report paper was immature and when difficulties arose I 
was left on my own wits by my coauthor. Furthermore, I cannot help 
that Shot continuation (an early work by me) should have been referenced 
if not acknowledged by Biondo. Another friend lost ... 

Let this document be a living warning for everyone who can read: 
do not walk into the mountains unprepared! Know your peak , now your 
path, have your tools, choose your team. 
Otherwise you may reach the peak when your sun sets or 
          you may wander out of the wilderness after years without 
	  having even been close to the lofty goal! 
But worst of all, you might reach the peak and you wonder if it was 
worth it! 
Unfortunately, 
there is much more lonely misery out there then there is warm glory. 



Dimitri Bevec compared PhD to a mountain climb. Having climbed myself a 
bit I tend to agree. However, reflecting on my PhD experience I want to 
warn some who may plan to follow my track. 

Choose your mountain wisely. Best have wondered the valleys before. 
Get your equipment ready (learn your computer language and your basic 
processing), not during the climb but while still being 
in a protective home. Have a clear goal (thesis topic) and stick to 
it. Nothing wrong with lingering at a few meadows and giant rocks at 
times, but do not leave home without a clear set goal. 

Choose your climbing partners wisely. If one of them snores or has an 
egoistic demenor, then that can spill the entire trip. You obviously cannot 
choose your entire party (since some will join while other one's will 
leave) but make sure you trust your leader in choosing the right 
characters. 

Make sure your tent stays clean and your bag dry. But also make sure you 
do not end up to keep the tent and the bag for every one else clean and 
dry. 

Don't think that there is no backing out. Don't become bitter, cynical, or 
lonely. Rather turn around mid-climb. Don't force it! 

I want to thank the guys who carried everyones load: 
Martin, Dave, Steve, Bob, Sean, Mihai: 
we never had enough time to talk Geophysics 
because there was always a computer problem. I regret that. I wonder what 
Hillary felt about his Sherpa (name?). It is even more amazing that you 
carried the load and made it to the top. 

I want to thank Joel who came along and built a mini team when it felt 
as if the rest of the troup moved on without me. 

Jon:
When in a troup of climbers: never mention psychology but never ignore 
it either. 

Jon put up with me and for that I thank him. I was wrong at times and
he was wrong at times. But Mao said it all: Stalin is 75% right. That
is very good!  (get the correct citation). His ususally profound
outlook on things is so fundamentally different from mine (in almost
anything) that he was again and again the most interesting character
to rub shoulders with. 

I came here to have a great, exciting, fun time. 
I dreamt of warm comrade ship, 
of exciting insights, of lofty achievements. 
I seeked 5 years. 
I did not find it. 
I found other things. I learnt a lot. I am wiser. I am more cynical. 
I am at times bitter. Where I expected cheerful skipping along a lofty 
path, I found crouching dragging. But maybe I just grew up. 

A PhD is more a certificate of endured hoops rather then genial 
research accomplishment. Students that adapt fair best. 
Or in Niederhoffer's words (education of a speculator):
"But there is institutional learning also, like Harvard Colleges and 
Lincoln High Schools of Life - the kind that prepares most of us to 
become good soldiers, true believers, and conformists." 
That is not always a bad thing, I guess. 

My biggest mistake: I should have asked for help early on or I should 
have gotten out of here. But I did neither. 

Some insights: 

In the coorporate there is something called a
vulture. He moves into a business or department, exploits what is
there without paying any attention to middle and longterm investments
within the department. He may even turn them into short term
profits. He then exits before the longterm effects are noticeable. He
enjoys the short term success.  Having things collapse after he left,
only enhances his reputation.  Vultures do exist in geophysical
research. 

Science in the 90ties contains a good portion of salesmanship. 
Nothehing worng with salesmanship. Researcher should seek truth. 
Researcher should communicate truth. And maybe Researcher should sell
truth. But there is a difference between a used car salesman and 
a broker at Sotherbies (I hope). We have to encourage Sotherbies 
not used car salesmanship. 

Fear where ever I turn ... 

I got stuck at SEP: a series of senior students had not graduated 
from SEP. they all graduated in my 3rd year which made me the most 
senior student very early on. The also left a highly complicated 
computer system that I and junior students had to maintain. The 
management was for a long time blind with regard to the overwhelming 
task of computer maintenance. 

SEP is set up to kick lazy students in their but. 
Quite a few students need the boot. 
Stoic, stubborn students follow their goals without being irritated by 
SEP's kicks. 
But there is a category of student that is upset by being kicked, that 
don't function when being kicked. 
SEP does not distinguish, however. 

At SEP students and profs have only 2 weapons: 
nibbling and the keule. 
nibbling is talking to each other, complaining, threadening. 
"David is the best and greatest" or "I don't want to be in geophysics 
anymore". The Keule is "I want to leave" or "you are fired". I guess 
SEP hurts always a bit less than the individual, albeit there are 
times when a students continues complains (alas Bob) or his leaving 
(alas Gopal or Hector) can have significant effects. 
It is a bit like the army at Kent State University. 
If there were not the money screw. 

At SEP a student is either a genius and earns special protection 
(alas Sergey, David, Christine) or a system administrator (alas 
Bob, Sean, me) or a nothing. Don't go for the sys admin or for the 
nothing: only the specialist is rewarded sufficiently. That is too 
bad for the system administrator. 

why doing a PhD? I don't know anymore ... 
PhD makes for a dull mind and a  squarish butt. 
It trains at jumping hoops. But what is hoop jumping good? 
Let's not diminish it: 
good training for second generation (maintainer) management, 
the reliable, but brainy deed. 
but it is not good for the enterpreneur, the innovator, the 
vice president of revolution (alas Oglivy). Oh well ... 
Keep in mind, time is the only commodity we cannot increase. And 
four years of anybody's life are a long time. 

I am not anymore the man, I once was. 

Bob for lending me his {\em entertainment unit}. 
Sean for his keen sense for fashionable colors. 


Reports: 
73.1.tar.gz geoph dmo  little interest: just arrived, trouble Mihai, David
73.2.tar.gz geoph dmo  little interest: just arrived, trouble Mihai, David
75.1.tar.gz geoph cmpr no interest by SEP: later success by chevron
77.1.tar.gz geoph dmo  strained collaboration Mihai
77.2.tar.gz geoph dmo  shotcontinuation: trouble Mihai, David; later no credit
79          progr clop good collaboration with clop group; interest jon
80          geoph kir  carey bunks idea: weighted kir 
82.1.tar.gz geoph miss good collaboration jon: pef: multiscale: synthetics 
82.2.tar.gz progr hcl  clop turns bad: no support jon: start collaboration rice
84.1.tar.gz syst  cd   mostly jon: cdrom vs web 
84.2.tar.gz geoph miss good collaboration jon: pef: passive: worst case
			additional work only published in Jon's book tdf
89.1.tar.gz syst  make great collaboration with Jon: first secret project 
92.1.tar.gz geoph coh  pef and coherency: loose collaboration with Jon 
92.2.tar.gz syst  make publication attempt: failure hard work Jon and I 
93.1.tar.gz syst  web  docs and soft on the web: fun! no care about response
93.2.tar.gz syst  web  design of web pages: fun! no care about response
93.3.tar.gz syst  linx port to linux: fun despite resistance by Biondo; no care
93.4.tar.gz progr hcl  design decisions: nobody cared but we felt committed
93.5.tar.gz progr hcl  rsf implementation: nobody cared but we felt committed
94.1.tar.gz geoph coh  theory on how to annhiliate plane: independent, success
94.2.tar.gz geoph coh  pef and coherency: failure: loose collaboration Jon
94.3.tar.gz syst  tex  new tex system; detail work by sergey; fun!
94.4.tar.gz progr jag  secret project. fun!! 


> Hector was brooding over that decision for months. He succeeded in
> his proposal but only after all kind of hardship. There was little
> support for someone like him. He finally married and went on a
> honeymoon for several months. When he came back, he hesitated for a
> few days but when Jon added him halfway up the seminar list, he quit.
> He talked to Jon. Jon was disappointed, I believe, but did not admit
> it. Oh well.


I have a hard time working with Mihai as a system administrator.

I suggest you ask former SEP students such as Steve, Martin, Dave
about Mihai's qualifications. 
Additionally, I suggest you ask Bob and David (being sys 
administrators for the HP and IBM) how easy it is for them
to cooperate with Mihai.
Finally, I suggest you ask some younger students, e.g. Christine 
or Hector how they feel about asking Mihai for help or advise.

I do not do much system work anymore in these days (However, 
I still remember when I was in charge of the SUN software and 
Mihai was in charge of the SUN hardware). But just the arrival
of zarand gave me a quick up-date. 

Our new sparc20 arrived and did not get set up for about
2-3 weeks because "a cable was missing". Finally, it is
set-up, Mihai cannot sccsi chain the Liberty disk. He suggests
to me to buy a new disk (this is about 2 weeks before start
of CD production). I (since Mihai gave up) finally succeed 
in setting up the disk after exchanging the sccsi cable.
Mihai formats the zarand disks without asking which partition sizes 
I want. I ask him to reformat the disk. Turns out the disk 
was of double the size Mihai thought it was. Now he reformatted
the disk again without informing me about the additionally 
available space. Consequently, I ask him to repartition them
another time (I was embarrassed to even ask). He suggests, I do
it myself and gives me an explanation how. He forgets to tell
me the saving step and 2 hours later, I am where I was at the 
start. He agrees to format the disks and finally succeeds. 
One of the partitions is named cdrom1, a name which I find 
confusing since the device is a disk not a cdrom device, but 
I did not feel like asking Mihai for another change (no, he did
not ask how I would like to name that third partition before
formatting it). 

Now last week it turned out Mihai could not mount the new 
disks on any of our machines. After 2 days he came up with 
a long explanation about the new machine's ip number being
different etc and that he would have to wait for the EECSN
people to come back to him. Today he discovers that it was 
just a daemon that was not running on zarand. Now, they are
all mounted. Am I happy? Well the disks is mounted within 
the cross platform cdrom mount point, even, again, the devices
are disks and not cdroms. Now Mihai (after I made several 
remarks) reluctantly agreed to mount them under a different
name if I would insist. The irony of the story is 
that I should not care at all where they are mounted (I only 
want the disks mounted), but a caring system administrator 
should want a clear and tidy naming convention for all disks ...

Oh, and do you remember how my machine got the name "zarand" ...
Mihai is not very competent and does not volunteer help. 
Sometimes he is inconsiderate. 

I understand and support your goal to free SEP of as much 
computer work as possible. But Mihai may just be the wrong 
person.


> I don't eat meat any more 

Sounds like Southern California is getting at you ... have 
found yourself dreaming of a surfboard lately? I am just 
kidding ... am I?

The oil price is bad but I hope things will get a little 
better soon. The general recession is suppoed to be over.
I also try not to burn to much energy in anxiety about 
things I probably can influence only marginally (I keep 
my car running day and night if I had one ... big promise!)
Do they actually give you free gas at Chevron station? Are
you gasing exclusively at California's Best in these days?

Thesis ... I told Martin today that he at least has something
to work on, while I feel like sitting in a train moving 
rapidly in any direction but not destination THESIS. Martin's 
comment was to at least enjoy the ride. I wish my work would 
contribute to my thesis ... that motivates. 

But my day will come ... and I will have a terrible headache
foreverafter! 

I will go home and eat and read a little bit. But I will be back!

	Matthias


Re:  newsprint

well, it should not be much work to get newsprint running
on etna and hekla (Jon's machine? I forget the names already).
I will see what I will do about the compiler. I will definitely
install them on the main machines, but I may try convincing
the other sun users to try it on their local machines.

Here at TOTAL they are using some kind of remote shell tool to
compile programms locally on each of their suns. I will inquire
a little bit more. But I am afraid that at our machines the
problem is often that we need to make space on some machines
to accommodtae the new software versions. Well, I will look into
it when I am back.

Until then they will have to take care of themselves.

I got 2(two) invitations to Dave's wedding (England and
California). I will probably attend the one in California,
since I have some problems to get my visa for Russia. They
just have not responded. It seems it is a long and harsh
way from the bureaucracy of Communism to the full automatic
voice mail visa order system! :-0

Are Douglasses on their way to England?

        Matthias




From schwab Wed Sep 29 09:23:28 1993
To: steve@sep.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Re:  hello
Status: RO

hurray ... It's like recovering from a long and serious desease.
It seems like thy may have found the bug in their (total) system.
rechser had two different names - traitser and rechser - and this 
somehow caused confusion. 'They' did not give me any details. 

I heard about "La journee de la CM5" at IPG but I did not go since
I was told everything would be said and done in French... I also 
was quite busy. 

I will give you brief overview about my technical problems:
	- the sep setup basically works (without xconsole but
		standard console window, no xpaste (:-() I tried
		copying missing libraries. I put them in ~/lib
		included that in LD_LIBRARY_PATH but that was 
		probably the wrong path. They never were found.
		I finally gave up.)
		there are also some starnge interaction between
		email and the setup, even I cannot find anything
		in the sep setup which could cause that. However,
		I cannot send message from my local machine, but 
		I have touse rechser when using our setup. With 
		totals everything seems to work fine in all windows.
		That at least was the result of some testing which
		I did yesterday (after they cleaned up their server 
		problems)
	- I have to compile seplib one more time. It seems the default
		/tmp space for plot files is too small. I do not 
		expect any difficulties.
	- What angers me most (besides my too obvious defficiencies
		in French) is that I was not able to mount the CD
		properly. Actually the CD mounting worked (CD4) and
		I have given a little demo to a couple of people. 
		Somebody even extracted some code from Lin's thesis ...
		big success. But I was not able to get the fonts to
		display correctly. I set the font path using xset to
		all kind of things, I tried different setup scripts
		Martin had sent me. Everything in vain. I will try again
		when I have the new CD in my hands. The problem is that
		for trying a different CD I have to bother the very busy
		sys administrator.

Oh, and yes I have done a lot of reading in the last couple of days.
I am convinced I should work in velocity inversion - a practical scheme.
But I still do not have a very clear idea. 

I gave up pretty much on following the C++ project: Total exclusively uses
gcc for C++. It also would add even more technical problems. So I will 
think up a grand new scheme and program it in C. Once I am back at SEP
I hope I can transfer that scheme quickly to C++. I sure want to do C++
and inversion!! The emphasis is on 'want'. 

PARIS ... shouldn't they actually spell it PARI ... 
It's grand and I like it. It smells really bad at most places and at 
night you do not have to watch your back, but what you are stepping at.
Last week, I found a dead like woman in Franklin D. Roosevelt Metro 
station. But that is a rather long story. Beggars are everywhere and 
from my observations I conclude that public toilettes which charge a 
franc are considered too expensive by most Frenchmen. I also have a hard 
time to see how you could save money by visiting museums: They are 
charging a leg and an arm for entry. The Louvre is 50fr, the La Villette 
charges even 65fr, etc... But what you get to see is quite fantastic. 
I made some friends here with Total's younger interns. It's fun to see
Paris from their point of view. Anyway, if I keep sight seeing as I did
in the last months I will come back to the Bay being 3cm shorter. (from
all the walking, I will rubb down 3cm of my length). Anyway, I miss you
all quite a bit. It would have been fun to do the internship with a 
second SEP student. That would have eased some of the boring technical 
stuff. But now I am all set and look forward to do some serious geophysics.

At this point you probably think that in my infinite self-centeredness
(what a word creation!) have forgotten your defense. If I remember 
correctly it was supposed to be at the 21st. I am absolutely sure it went
fantastic and therefore I offer you my congratulations. It seems to be an
appropiate moment to thank you for your help and friendship in the past 
years. I hope we will keep up this friendship (I hope I will be able to 
'fly' without help in the future (?)) independently what we will do and
where we will go. In other words: Do not work for companies which do not 
provide good email services.... I really regret that I am not around to 
celebrate your success with you. 

Now I better do something for increasing the French GNP. I will write 
you again soon.

	Matthias




From schwab Wed Dec 15 10:46:16 1993
To: scole@chevron.com
Subject: hallo steve
Status: RO


How are you doing??
How is your job? 
How is life at the beach?

I hope you are enjoying your time more than I do...
right now I have a hole bunch of great ideas about 
inversion, but I am stuck in a project which Carey
"convinced" me to do ... He wants to weight the 
Kirchhoff impulse response by the local timedip of
the event.
Such a local dip analysis is hard to code, especially
since he wants to use the spectral analysis method by
Capon. I am not getting very good results since I have
to make my window relatively small in order not to 
average the weight over several events. I actually think
a local slant or beam stack would work better, but it
probably still would be only very few sample to work on...
well, maybe I am just a little bit to pessimistic since
I actually would try out some inversion ideas. 

Carey is supposed to leave for Scotland in the middle of 
January. I hope I will have some time to work on some of
my own stuff then... 

Paris is fun ...

	Oh and I hope you have a grat Xmas preseason ...
	I will send you a special Xmas mail later.

	Matthias



Hi Steve:

The experiment is on its way. I am right now recreating sep86.

Here I summarize my results from my pre-examionation:

I sent you mail about:

	beamwin.??.v.save may be accidently a NR figure
	there is a cakefile in one of the Fig directories

	(please check my earlier mail ... I just list them
	here for completeness)

Additionally:

	you have a figure call \plot{scater} in the paper.tex 
	of corr. Figstat does not know about that macro (should
	we support it?) and FIGLIST is missing the figure
	(I probably left it out when rewriting the cakefile ...
	I based the FIGLIST pretty much on Figstat).

 	I guess we have to add scater to the FIGLIST in corr.
	Make a rule for it. Test the rule by remaking the figure.
	Do you want to make it an activeplot? Good thing that I 
	left all the other old Fig dirs in the document. Should
	be easy to reconstruct things.

	All other figures show in the document. 

As I said: I am right now burning and rebuilding all figures. 
If that works out we are pretty much done. I will let you know 
about its results as soon as it is finished.

Let me know what you think about the 3 items above. 

	Matt


From: Biondo Biondi <biondo@spur.Stanford.EDU>
To: matt@spur.Stanford.EDU
Subject: RE: Video-camera reviews
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 16:55:52 -0800 (PST)

>  Jon, Biondo: 
>  
>  I never got a tape to watch. The recorder did not work when I spoke.
>  I got Andrew's review though. However, I do personally not enjoy these
>  "mea culpa" statements (remind me of letters Stalin forced his
>  generals and officials to write to himself, before publically
>  denouncing them) so please don't be disappointed if I do not work very
>  hard on these statements:

This should not be a mea culpa, and is not public.
You will be surprised to see how it helped (forced) people to think
about their public speaking skills.
>  
>  I was unprepared.
>  I was agressive to the audience.
>  My voice cracked a bit after I worked all night. 
>  (I also betrayed the worker's revolution by indulging in bourgeois 
>  soda drinks for lunch  ...) 

Thanks.

>  
>  Well, I guess a second C cannot damage my former 4.0 GPA any further. 
>  Have fun ... I sure try to! 
>  
>  	Matthias
>  
>  
>  Biondo Biondi writes:
>   > This is a reminder to all the students that are enrolled for credit 
>   > in SEP seminar that they must send me three sentences commenting on their
>   > own seminar tape by this Friday.
>   > 
>   > Until now I received reviews from:
>   > 
>   > Danielle
>   > Yalei
>   > Christine
>   > Sergey
>   > Curt
>   > 

End of letter. 

From: bob (Robert G. Clapp)
To: sean@sep.Stanford.EDU, matt@sep.Stanford.EDU, arnaud@sep.Stanford.EDU
Cc: bob@sep.Stanford.EDU
Subject: what do you think
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 1995 21:37:58 +0530

I am seriously considering sending this to Biondo, I know it's long but
I am truly pissed of and want to know what I should cut and where I have
gone to far over the edge.


Biondo:

        I don't want to be any part on making the responsibility list.  The
SEG convention and the last few weeks have taught me several things:

1) Doing work for the group is not beneficial.

 a) If anything it detracts from the sponsor's opinion of you
 b) It takes away your time from doing research
 c) You are not adequately compensated either monetarily or otherwise
 d) You spend a larger portion of your time  answering questions, because you
     actually know what is going on.
 e) Any decission you attempt/change you propose for the group  is either:
  i) ignored
  ii) is met with "look into" and then ignored
  iii) leeds to considerable complaining from people who complained about the
         previous situation

2) There is no way that the responsibility list will be done fairly.  No
  mechanism exists to check that jobs are done, and a number of people will
   simply ignore there responsibility as in the past.

3) What seems most important in the group is your ability to "sell yourself":
   a) your ability to "hob-knob" with the sponsors
   b) the taping of a practice talk
   c) the department seminar fiasco which will:
    i) Make SEP look even more "unusual" compared to the rest of the Geophysics
        Department, being the only group that embaress it's student's by making
        the give a talk
    ii) Guarantee that I and probably Sean (and maybe others)
         will NEVER again attend department seminar again out of embarassment.

I NEVER will be good at selling myself, one of the reasons I came to SEP was
that I knew I never would be good at it, I don't really appreciate what I feel
has been an attempt in the last few weeks to degrade me during seminar on
my lack of ability.  It might be that this has not been to upset me, the
tone of
the0 seminar has led me and others to come up with the other interpretation.

I assume one of the goals of this exercise is to further inter-group
communication.  That is not going to happen until:

a) people like Simon quit making jokes at our expense like he did in the
   class several of us took (and if new students listen to us, the last time
   any one in SEP takes that class)
b) comments like Gary Mavco last Thursday at the munchies stop
c) we start seeing anyone from another group have the slightest interest in
   what we do.  I see a lot of SEPers taking Rockphysics, I don't see a lot
   of rock physics people taking Jon's class.
d) we have more time. If we went to department seminar it would make four
   seminars a week + computer jobs + classes + the numerous little projects
   that are assigned. I am prety sure that other groups students don't work
   as much as most people at SEP.  I really don't want to take an hour away
   from my limited time and spend it a seminar which on the most part bores
   me.

4) I can easily make myself unaffected (as the last couple months have shown
    because of the lack of an updated responsibility list by jobs not being
    done. I can run the HP's as a completely autonomous system.
    And can easily take enough disk space over to do to what ever I want.



I am tired of trying to do what I think will help the group.  I am either
misguided in my ideas (eventhough most people seem to agree with them) or
am not suppose to offer any input.  Whatever the case might be I will follow
the approach that I should have taken long ago:

        a) do only the minimal amount of computer work,which means as long as
           the computers are running I have done my job.  No implementing of
           the little fixes such as system upgrade, vi problem, etc.
        b) refuse to answer any of the new students questions or at least
            emulate the rude brush offs I got as a first year student.
        c) not answer any of the older students questions on things like SEP90
            because as the SEP meeting showed there is absolutely no benefit
            in doing so.
        d) starting hiding programs and not telling people about them (the
            copying on my tvtwmrc almost verbatim into the general setup
            proves that this hapens), because
            sharing will again help them in comparison, and be time drain for
            you showing how they work and my experiece has shown you rarely
            get recognition for anthing you contribute.
        e) abandon computer/graphics projects (AVS, Java, etc.) because the
            sponsors don't care, the rest of the department doesn't care
            (Mavco at the last Thursday snacks), and the rest of the earth
            science department doesn't care (the guy from petroleum engineering
            comment at the SGI super computer demo).  I have heard through other
            peole that both Joe Dellinger and Rick Ottilini have said that doing
            the graphics work was not beneficial to them in the long term (in
            addition I am sick with dealling with comments like David at my
            last AVS seminar on how worthless it is.)




                        Bob

-------------------------------------------------------------------
*    Robert G. Clapp            Stanford Exploration Project      *
* Home(a): (415) 254-0658         Work(a):(415) 723-0253          *
*   comp : (415) 254-0659            Fax :(415) 723-0683          *
*                email:bob@sep.stanford.edu                       *
*             http://sepwww.stanford.edu/sep/bob/                 *
-------------------------------------------------------------------

End of letter


To: arnaud@sep.Stanford.EDU, sean@sep.Stanford.EDU
Cc: matt@sep.stanford.edu
Subject: Top 10 rules on how to get ahead at SEP.....
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 1995 23:05:22 +0530


10) Show no creativity with your computer jobs or initiave to trying to
reogranize
SEP to work more fairly/efficiently.

9) Go to lunch with Jon and Biondo everyday

8) Ignore your computer job until Jon asks you to do it for the second time.
When you do the job, do the minimal amount of work so someone else will do
it the next time.

7) Brown nose, brown nose, brown nose

6) Do little computer jobs (such as adding little utilities to the Mac) and
post your momentous efforts to msgs@sep

5) Get involved in every discussion that you are cc

4) Never answer another student's question, be as rude as possible when
refusing to answer

3) PRETEND interest in what ever Jon is currently excited in

2) Take credit for other people's work

1) Make negative comments about everyone else's research during seminar





In the future please try to follow these guidelines.




                                        The Management

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
------

P.S.  As this message indicates i am NOT in a good mood

PPS   In the future I think I will try to follow these basic guidlines

PPPS.  Shouldn't something like this be

   a) Sent anonomously to the whole group?
   b) Posted in the seminar room?

-------------------------------------------------------------------
*    Robert G. Clapp            Stanford Exploration Project      *
* Home(a): (415) 254-0658         Work(a):(415) 723-0253          *
*   comp : (415) 254-0659            Fax :(415) 723-0683          *
*                email:bob@sep.stanford.edu                       *
*             http://sepwww.stanford.edu/sep/bob/                 *
-------------------------------------------------------------------

End of letter


From: nichols@gatwick.Geco-Prakla.slb.com
To: Matthias Schwab <matt@sep.stanford.edu>
Subject: new paycheck ....
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 95 11:07:33 BST


Jon can be a strange man sometimes. I got a mail from him yesterday
that said "Matt is doing great". Then he goes and does something that
ignores his own words. I guess one consolation is that at least some
part of his brain appreciates what you do, unfortunately it doesn't
seem to be the part that deals with money.

Dave


From: nichols@gatwick.Geco-Prakla.slb.com
To: Matthias Schwab <matt@sep.stanford.edu>
Subject: Denver and Thanksgiving ...
Date: Sun, 10 Nov 96 17:42:08 GMT


HI matt,

I'm sorry to hear we will miss you at thanksgiving (I won't be at SEG).

It sounds like taking a month out is a good idea. It is really
difficult to get the time to yourself to finish a thesis, espcially when
everybody has got used to treating you as a resource. 

A month without you should get them working for themselves. The main
thing to ensure is that they don't save up their problems for you when
you get back (maybe you need to make sure that jon appreciates that).

I had similar problems in my 4 & 5th year, all my time was spent working on
seplib and xtex and xtpanel. My way out was to go and live in San
Francisco and only be on campus 2-3 days a week.

Have fun in the National parks,

Love from us both, Dave & Claire




From: gopal@houston.Geco-Prakla.slb.com (Gopal Palacharla)
To: matt@sep.stanford.edu
Subject: RE: hello
Date: Tue, 6 Feb 96 09:03:11 CST

Hello Mathias,
              nice to hear from you. I sure would like to meet you, when
you come down to Houston. Give me a call and we will try to meet. 

I am working in the imaging group here, our group mostly does large
3-D post stack and prestack depth imaging for the oil companies.
There is Marta  Woodward from SEP in the Houston office, she is
in a different group though, and lots of SEP alumni in the Gatwick
office. Oz Yilmaz is our boss for the entir group worldwide, I recently
met him. Bob Godfrey is in-charge for europe and asia and is based in Gatwick.
So lot of SEP people in this organization - Dave Nichols, Shuki Ronen,
Clement Kostov.

How is everything with you, I see that jon is having videotaped talks for
proposal and thesis advocacy. How is Mr. Nizar doing, has he changed his 
ways ? ( or somethings are not changeable :-))
I see that Dave Hale is doing some smart things by playing with data structures.
How were his talks, last time. 

Good luck for your seminar,
keep in touch
and do give me a call when you are in Houston,
bye
Gopal
531-0156(home) and 596-6155(office)



From: gopal@houston.Geco-Prakla.slb.com (Gopal Palacharla)
To: matt@sep.stanford.edu
Subject: Re:  Biondo is looking for your Geco mail address ...
Date: Fri, 8 Mar 96 08:53:14 CST

Hello Matt,
          how are you doing..Biondo got my email from someone. He 
wanted me to send him a photo and brief bio, since our paper has
been accepted by Geophysics. it is the paper on common-azimuth
migration.

        I am sorry to hear about Arnaud. It really surprised me, I didnt
expect it at all. I no longer am sure, what SEP is expecting from a phd
student these days. Is arnaud planning to continue with another group
or is he trying to find a job.

How is everything with you . How is Pascale doing.
I am enjoying my work. I am going home in the last week of
 May , to attend my sister's wedding. How is your brother
doing, has he already graduated. My brother in wisconsin, is
now in palo alto working for DEC for a few months as part
of his phd research.

talk to you later,
cheers
Gopal


From: jon@sep.stanford.edu
To: Matthias Schwab <matt@sep.stanford.edu>
Subject: Re: talk today ... 
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 96 07:37:43 -0800


> 
> Today's talk came as quite a surprise to me. I thought I had a thesis
	I was surprised and amazed too,
	that after your explosive exit
	you want to continue doing the same thing.

> topic, maybe a lousy one, but one that I considered manageable.
> 
> I had given up my ambitions to surprise the world with an Earth
> shaking thesis (after you had warned me about exaggerated expectations
> and pointed out that other theses before were not always outrageous).
> I also had accepted not necessarily to work in Geophysical research
> after graduation (I sometimes doubt that Pascale would let me).  A
> year ago, you urged me to pursue coherency calculations, very much the
> way you now suggest to switch back to interpolation. Back then you
> mentioned that even a failure (which we seem to have encountered)
> might be "good research".
	There are two kinds of failures
	that need to be distinguished.
	The good kind is where you analyze a departure
	of theory from practice.
	The bad kind is where you walk away from frustration.
	I would not have agreed to you skipping the
	SEG coherency talks had I realized you
	still wanted to make that a thesis.

> 
> I talked to Pascale and she suggested that I should not pressure
> myself additionally and forget about graduating soon. On the other
> hand, I feel I have been at SEP for a long time (as you
> clearly described in a father son metaphor). After
> having talked to you this afternoon, I unfortunately don't see an end
> to my stay.
> 
> So what options do I have: 
> 
> I convince you to let me work on coherency attributes. Maybe compare
> various coherency measures (PEF, principal components, scanning).
> Maybe come up with an improvement of the PEF approach (constrain
> filter to the annihilation of the single major dip). Anyway, we have a
> well defined problem, at least 2 very good data sets (from Geco-Amoco
> and from Conoco). The logistics of the problem are manageable. The goal
> is clearly defined and the work results in nice images.
> 
> Obviously we are missing a tool that will solve the problem. And maybe
> the best tool has been already found by someone else. Oh, well,
> usually several people working on a geophysical problem hardly find
> the same answer and, as you pointed out, Dave Hale did not invent DMO:
> he just did it differently. However, I hesitate to pursue coherency
> research without your support and interest.
> 
> I could work on Interpolation and the Madagascar data, as you
> suggest. We have a few unproven, maybe promising ideas and concepts,
> especially multi-scale.  Multi-scale had failed us on some simple
> synthetics of seismic data.  It may work on the Madagascar data set
> and still fail on the seismic data. The reason may be related to our
> problems in the coherency problem: the filter shape and size versus
> the filter's degrees of freedom.
> 
> Interpolation is intellectually a fine problem (superior to the
> coherency attribute problem) but I am convinced that interpolation of
> seismic data needs to be done in the highest dimensional space that is
> available: the 3-D prestack domain. Such Prestack interpolation
> presents big "technical issues" which I feel ill-equipped to address: 
> Java is slow, F77 is dying, I would need to learn F90
> and sep90, maybe even Promax or Focus. Such a prestack problem would
> push me right into the center of many computational and equipment
> problems we have at SEP.  I have no seismic data set. I doubt I could
> write a thesis within even a calendar year. I had expected to get back
> to the interpolation problem after graduation (as you had suggested
> when convincing me to work on coherency attributes).
> 
> As you probably guess, all this depresses and frustrates me very much. 
> I can't help feeling that after this SEG meeting everybody at SEP has
> lost confidence in me. You and Biondo feel that you have to give me detailed
> advice on what I need to do, even down to my time schedule (A schedule
> that Biondo even finds to "lenient") while I try to recover my joy in
> geophysical and computational work. 
> 
> Ironically I had concluded about 4 weeks ago, that I would continue to
> listen to advice but that if in doubt I would follow my own convictions.
> If I end up in a mess, I would know for sure that it was my sole fault. 
> Or as a famous actor put it: "Hell, who is running my life ...". 
> 

	My view is that I pay you to develop a PhD thesis
	of your choosing, and you are choosing not to do it.

	I prefer to discuss items above
	instead of sending email essays.


--
    o    ~  
  _-'\_   ~  Jon Claerbout: FREE BOOKS http://sepwww.stanford.edu/sep/prof
 (*)<(*)   ~ jon@sep.stanford.edu      http://sepwww.stanford.edu/sep/jon


Hello Jon

Sorry for answering your mail that late, but I was quite 
busy in the last days. It is also not simple to summarize
6 months of research at TOTAL in a few words.

My Research:

The most important first: I did not disappoint TOTAL. After 
I gave my final presentation, Jacques Pion, Phillip Juilien,
and Mr Duval asked me to contact them when I finish up my 
studies at SEP. (Actually, Mr Duval wanted me to talk to 
the personal resource people right away :-)

My studies went overall well. I worked on implementing 
Capon's method for optimal local spectral analysis (I am
sure you are somehow familiar with that kind of work :-)
I improved a Kirchhoff scheme by taking the local 
wavefront slope in account. Carey Bunks suggested the 
project. 

I also attended (infrequently) Dr Tarantola's (infrequent) 
weekly seminar. That was a lot of fun even I am afraid I hardly
met with Dr Tarantola and Peter Mora. 

Overall, I came across many interesting ideas and perspectives.
That was the real benefit! I have a entire ship load of idea and 
problems to look into.



The research department:

Here is some background information on the department and its
staff:

Mr Duval is the head of exploration. He is a former geophysicist
	who was for some time the contact person to SEP.

Mr Jacques Pion is the boss of research, acquisition, and methods.
	He is an expert in  acquisition and a very experienced 
	field geophysicist. He was brought into TOTAL from Shell
	just about 2 years ago to foster 3-D work.

Mr Patrick Frechu, Jacques Pion's precess-or, has been transferred to 
	Alma Mater (Kazakhstan).

Mr Carey Bunks has a degree in EE from MIT. I collaborated with him
	on the Kirchhoff paper. Before, he worked on some shot 
	inversion stuff (very similar to Bill Seyme's work). He also
	had an interesting paper on using multigrid for velocity 
	inversion (SEG 1993). He has been transferred to Aberdeen 
	(Scotland). 

Mr Sotoris Kapotas is working on a industrial tomography project 
	called "sistre". He is involved in parallel processing.

Mr Frederic Lefeuvre works in AVO and attributes. He may be a good person 
	talk about your three dimensional filtering to. He is 
	working with Mr Tanner on developing attribute estimates.

Mr Tom Armstrong is a very interesting person to talk to. He is 
	not in the research department, but in the method group. 
	He showed me many practical problems which he encountered 
	in dealing with real data.

Mr Jean-Paul Lefevre is scientific programmer at TOTAL. He is the local 
	C++ wizzard.

And last but not least:

Mr Patrick Blondel has taken over Carey Bunk's job. He continues his
	research projects, but he also looks at 3-D DMO.



Unfortunately, the research department was restructured while I was there.
The restructuring was a very sad and depressing experience. Some of the
personal where transfered abroad, research lost half of its office space, 
and the spirits in the department were very low. Most of the co-students
were looking for jobs outside of TOTAL. There was no regular seminar, and
very little interaction between different researchers. Overall, the 
experience was not very encouraging as a future career opportunity.

It was very hard to establish a close contact to any researcher 
there. For most of my stay, Jacques Pion was sick or abroad. Carey
Bunks had a month of vacation and was later transferred. Patrick
did not arrive until February. Sotoris did not seem to be to 
interested in geophysical research (He was rather managing the
tomography project). I had to go out of my way to find 
people to talk to. Additionally, TOTAL was very protective
about their data. Fatimetou Saleck (another intern) asked us
for a shot gather to use it as illustration in her otherwise 
purely "synthetic" thesis. 

I of course enjoyed life in Paris. I ate and drank as much as 
I could afford (TOTAL payed me about $2000 what is not much consider-
ing the living expenses in Paris ... and living I did!). I 
walked all over that place (If you get lost in Paris, just
give me a call). My French improved rapidly (at the end people
even started talking back!). I made quiet a few friends, mostly 
fellow interns. And hey I got engaged ... no not with a charming
Parisian lady, but my girlfriend from Texas (BTW you and Diane are 
invited to the wedding which will take place in Houston at the 4th 
of April).

Overall, I feel that my intern ship was not a roaring success, but 
quite beneficial. I hope, this summary answers the question you asked.
("How did your stay at total work out?"). I hope you will enjoy your
trip to Paris and I am looking forward to seeing you soon! Please, say
hello to Diane.

	Matthias

PS: You will be happy to hear that I just finished producing a disc 
    image of sepcd7 all by myself... I know I have to work harder on
    my scientific contributions ... 

	

Jon:

it just is no fun. 
I doubt that I will be able to have anything 
resembling a thesis by November. 


I am tired of listening to David's "great suggestions" and 
	all the things he already has thought off and all 
	the people he knows and what other things I could 
	try.

I am tired of answering Yalei's questions working on a 
	project as if his dear life depends on it and you
	and Biondo not even considering the project of 
	enough importance to study it yourself.

I am tired of working on a project that is not my idea and
	that does not go anywhere. 

I am tired of looking up to Christine as our model of 
	scientific researcher.

I am tired of Biondo's play of half information. 

I am tired of up-to 6 meetings per week. 

I am tired of not getting a single good feedback on my
	research ever. 

I am tired of training my speaking abilities without
	having anything to say. 

I am tired of being here for 5 years and feeling that
	I wasted 2-3 of them. 




Dear Jon:

I would like to leave SEP. I am willing to stay and train 
another student in producing SEP CD-ROMs. 

My academic success here at SEP has been meager by comparison
to fellow students (as you are probably well aware after reading
the articles) as well as in absolute terms (even after my third 
year I am not closer to a successful thesis than two years ago).

Additionally, I seem to have grown disenchanted with geophysics: I 
have to discipline myself to read geophysical journals or books.
I lack motivation to take any of the Earth Science classes and 
if I do I usually do not enjoy them. 

I have lost my vision of a career in Earth Sciences. I am not
fascinated by the prospect of working for an oil company's research
lab or a contractor's technical division. My chances to gain a 
academic position vanish as I fail to develop a publication record.
I even doubt if such a position is as desirable as I had thought
considering the extensive funding our research demands.

Last fall we talked about my problems to successfully work within 
SEP. As I had promised then I have worked hard to improve my 
research and to enjoy my stay. I failed on both accounts.
My research can hardly be called independent anymore. The successful
parts were based on your suggestions. The failures, such as the 
C++ project, the Make translation, or my multi-grid idea, were all
my attempt to do more "independent" research. 

It is again time for a report and presentation to the sponsors, time
for SEG abstracts, and time to review progress made. Again I 
find myself disappointed by my performance. I feel humilated and 
extremely depressed. A state which not only affects me but also 
my wife and family. 

Why did I stay? It is the second time in my life that I have been 
challenged and that I fail to achieve my goals. I did not 
earn my degree from Rice. My stay here was to prove to myself and
the rest of the world that the first failure was a consequence of 
ill-fate: my advisor changing school and falling sick, and me 
picking a topic which proved too hard to solve.
My goal when joining SEP has never been to just "somehow" graduate: 
I intended to do excellent research. 

I am almost thirty now, an age when you yourself had published a wealth of 
research and were already a professor of geophysics here at Stanford. 
It is time for me to accept defeat and to move on. I am 
uncertain about what I am going to do next but I do not seem to be 
able to decide on an alternative career while working here at SEP.

Finally, I want to emphasize that my decision to leave SEP was not a 
failure of SEP. I am fully aware what a great environment this must
be for any aspiring geophysicist. 
Additionally, I thoroughly enjoyed what I perceived as your and Diane's 
friendship and I am sorry if my decision to leave disappoints you.

	matthias


    >> PS: we talk already about computer science chores ... hey, and
    >> he has not even arrived yet ;*)

    jon> worth doing only if easy, for example from my dumps.

Sounds like a good idea. I suggested earlier that we should make
someone responsible for the tadpole. It is a fine machine and it
is a shame to have it fall apart because nobody keeps it together. 

I feel we need someone who likes to help others when they go on a 
trip ... someone the traveller is not afraid to ask to help him to
set things up ...

Mihai would be the obvious choice from a technical point of view.


Here are my 5 cents worth. I wanted to mention this since quite some
time but I would like to keep it between me and you. 

    jon> by the way, we are letting the hardware maintenance lapse.

That may be true. However I think CAST is giving the hardware people
a boost. I am more worried about the software side of SEP:

Despite the CAST contract and Mihai being hired, hardly any of the
hardware ppl shifted into software. At the same time, the thinning 
of expertise was not compensated at all on the software side ... 

The GNU stuff is now in the hand of a novice, Sean, supported
by Christine, who never "loved" that job in the first place. Ghostview 
has not reared its ugly head since Martin and Steve left but we are 
running with 2 different versions on our different platforms. Perl is 
broken on the HPs. I wrote a long message of problems in SEPLib to Ray Hector is leaving for France and Ray is graduating. Nobody is trained to 
take over SEPlib from them. I still get library version warnings when 
doing things on my local machine (Mihai thought he had fixed it, I pointed 
out to him that it had not .. I have not heard back from him yet).
I do not know who wants to work on the "portable tex" problem. Again,
our local experts are Sean and Christine. 
I had hoped we would get the SEPHELP document into shape this summer
(I suggest to make a person responsible for a software piece and its
documentation in SEPHELP ... the document's papers are often inconsistent,
and out-of-date and they are not reproducible. 
(At least the paper's talking about reproducibility should be).)

If I would continue to think about it, I could come up with more problems
*smile*. But I don't want to. My wife says that complaining breeds terrible
sickness ... and it is not my job to distribute and check jobs. I do not
even want to discuss this topic in public (so please do not forward this
mail to all my colleagues). 

I have to point out that Bob does a great job in helping
co-students with computer problems, hector seems to have taken a deep
attachment to seplib (nevertheless he will be gone for 6 months), Sean 
does not seem to be afraid to try his hands on anything, and Christine
keeps her spirits up despite her "dislike" of hacker things. I am 
not sure what Nizar and Arnaud do. Is Zhifang going to have a computer
job?

All I want to say is that I believe the hardware situation is not our
Achilles heel:
Machines become more reliable, vendor software is easier to install,
and we have outside help (Has anyone started looking into taking over
the IBM?) I have installed all the SUN software for 2 years (and we
are stilling running the same openwindow system, the same printer 
software, and on the IPC unfortunately the same compiler versions as
I had installed) and that job was easy compared to the GNU maintenance.

It is the software situation such as GNU stuff, cdrom production, and
tex maintenance which are really hard. These jobs are very unpopular
and currently staffed by quite a few junior SEPers.
The loss in "hacker-types" (Martin, Dave, Steve) is felt most in that 
area, I believe.

	Matt

PS: Please, do not misinterpret this mail. I think everyone is trying
	hard to make things work and people have just different interests
	and abilities. I only wanted to point out where I see future
	problems. 

PPS: The tadpole setup problem is again rather a software than a hardware
	problem. We need to write some shells ... 




Dear Jon, SEP:

According to the new rules of payment (reflecting an underlying
appreciation) I will have to restrict my time
spend on "SEP" projects severly. I would appreciate if
everybody would only approach me on Friday afternoons with
problems and questions of non-scientific nature.

Beyond that I will continue to make CD-ROM's as they are
needed but I would appreciate if I could start to
introduce a young student as a back-up person. I also want
to emphasize that I will not give CD-ROM production the
priority I gave them in the past. Graduating students will
have to take into account my own personal schedule.

I plan to continue the Linux project until we have a working
laptop for presentation and working away from Stanford. 
Additionally, I plan to finish my write-up of the gmake rules.
I am not planning to maintain the gmake rules in the future.
(If we want to return to "cake" than this maybe a good time
to do so ...).  

I sense that a lot of volunteer technical work at SEP is 
not rewarded as it used to be ... I am sorry that I did not
sense this change before I spent the last few months on some
rather time consuming SEP projects, such as:

    improved CD-ROM testing
    gmake rules
    Steve Cole's thesis CD-ROM
    Jon's Venezuela CD-ROM 
    Linux

The reason to continue on the Linux project is for pure personal
reason and I am happy to this in my spare time. 


biondo,harlan

Jon: 

I received notification about my new pay. I also 
happen to hear about what other Student's at SEP earn.

I understand that you designed to favor students who
do geophysical work. However, your decision thoroughly
embarassed me since some students obviously knew about
individual pay increases even before I myself did. 

In the past, I always considered our pay an expression
of appreciation by SEP's management. 
I have not always felt happy here at SEP but I always 
considered your support, appreciation, and friendship
as crucial. I cannot help feeling disappointed. 

I want you to know that I will consequently do 2 things:

	I will reduce drastically my involvment in 
	any technical SEP project except the ones I
	have a strong personal interest in (Linux 
	*smile*)

	I will actively search for alternatives to a 
	PhD here at Stanford just in case that we cannot
        agree on a solution to this problem

	Matt

PS: I will continue on the linux project. And I will
    continue the CLOP experiment. I may take you up on 
    your offer to go on a long sabatical, should I decide 
    to finish my PhD. I will drastically curtail my time 
    spend in ANY other project: this includes the gmake
    project and the interactive book project. Additionally,
    I would appreciate if you and Biondo could decide on 
    a back-up person for the cdrom.

    If you feel that my contributions
    to SEP are insufficient, I am more than happy to discuss
    these matters with you. I also will accept any decrease
    in pay or even being fired as a consequence of my 
    decreased involvment. But I will not tolerate an 
    embarassing pay increase while toiling hard. 




I think I have a solution for your "banner" problem 
(the problem that it is propietry software) .... 

I think I have a solution to your linktree-class
problem ....

I think I have a solution (implemented in my setup 
directory) for the long machine listing ...

I think I have the documentation for gmake finished 
... 

I would like to help SEPers to learn how to use 
gmake ... 

I would like to continue to negotiate about a clean
rule with Stallman ...

I would like to help David and Jun to graduate as fast
as possible ... instead of turning into victims of a 
changing SEP environment ... 



	Let's talk ... 

	Matt *smiles* 


Jon:

Here is a citation from Andy Grove (CEO of Intel) in an interview with
Wall Street Journal:

blabla ...

Q: With fewer middle managers and more teams, how do employees
	get noticed so they get that next good thing?

A: One position says you ought to put some effort into making 
	sure that people know what you do. The opposite is, look,
	you'll never get 100% credit, so just do your stuff. 
	Advertising your achievements will probably make you 
	look like a jerk anyway. I lean toward the second view.



Hmmm ... I guess I lean to the second view too *smiles* ...

	Matt




Stew leaves letter of Chinese student on copy machine: accident. 
Jon sends mail to everyone asking Chinese student to remove his 
paper from our report and that he won't be paid anymore (student 
other department). David Lumely sends mail everyone asking Li to 
remove him as coauthor the night before the report. Jon says 
something "you only produce shit" to Mihai. 



I do not know exactly the problem which triggered the ongoing exchange 
about the seminar.
However, the underlying problem seems to be: why the heck does anybody 
feel like skipping seminar? 

Well, it seems that some students feel embarassed and frustrated when 
giving seminar. 

I hope that students enjoy their seminar.
Seminar is a great way of showing work in progress and getting a early 
feedback on your research. 
It is probably the most important institutional factor for the success 
of sep. So why should anybody try to avoid it?

So what does that mean in regard to the seminar: 
I hope that students enjoy their seminar. It is a place 
to show work in progress and to find help and advice. it is also 
important for practise future presentations. A student should give his
best when his turn is up and there is little excuse for avoiding a 
seminar. 

the audience on the other hand should try not to turn a weak seminar 
into hell for the speaker. it happened to all of us before. we are all
quiet competetive but we should try to be constructive. we should avoid
burrying the speaker with suggestions of what he should have done. rather
wait until he speaks about what he is going to do next. do not burry him
with possibly related readings. interrupt him when something is truely 
unclear. but give him a chance to deliver his talk (there is a fine line
between disturbing a talk and asking clarifying questions) give the author
the feedback he needs because he put a lot of effort into it. Certain (in
depth) feedback is given more efficiently in a private exchange after 
seminar (I did that this evening with Biondo) since it may be to time 
consuming or to detailed for the plenum. 

I believe that we are all here because we are very gifted in the work 
we do. we are or will be very valuable members of this group and nobody 
could run this place without the support of the rest of sep. it is 
important that we do our best to improve sep as a great place to do 
research. It is also important that we keep in mind that we are in for 
this for the fun: otherwise we probably would be SUN salesreps or patent 
lawyers.

We are all in one boat and keep in mind try to make some friends here 
around ... you may need them when the oil price drops below $10. 

And by the way, if somebody feel the need to crack the wip then this should 
happen privately between the students involved and jon respectively stew. 
I prefer not to know about it. 

So come on: we have a meeting coming up and a reputation to live up to!

Matthias

PS: for the reputation, I am counting heavily on you, guys. 





From: Matthias Schwab <matt@sep.stanford.edu>
To: matt@spur.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Re: Security Message to Earth Science Folks
Date: Mon, 29 Jul 1996 12:38:06 -0700

Your previous message (included below) does not make much sense to me,
since I do not know what mysterious event your mail is refering to.

By the way, your rules are all very nice, but I need some additional
clarification on how to implement them in practise: am I supposed to
know every occupant of Mitchell, or should I challenge every stranger
I meet after "regular business hours"? Maybe we could have
identification cards?  How about citizen arrest to prevent the flight
of a suspicious intruder?  What can I tell the police when calling
911: "Here is a man in Mitchell who I do not know"? Should I report
students who prop the door open downstairs? How about some bounty?
Maybe we could organize patrol at night? 

	Matt

PS: Yes, I have dutifully chased a couple of 12 year-old rollerblade
	enthusiasts when they were trying their acrobatics on the 
	railing of Green building. 

Earth Sciences Folks,

I would like to relay a "strong" message regarding the Mitchell
incident last week.

PLEASE DO NOT HESITATE TO PHONE 9-911 WHEN YOU SEE OR WITNESS
SOMETHING OUT OF THE ORDINARY IN AND AROUND OUR BUILDINGS.

There are police on campus at all hours of the night and they will
respond immediately to reports such as the incident that took place
last week.

Other than the occupants, NO ONE has any business in Mitchell, Green
or Geology Corner after regular business hours.  Green and Mitchell
are locked up at 5pm Monday - Friday during the summer months and
Geology is locked up by 6pm.  All three buildings are locked during
the weekend.

Please use the "buddy" system when exiting the building after hours
whenever possible.  I suggest leaving your office door closed and
locked if you are working late at night.

Do not hesitate to phone 9-911 if you do not feel safe.

Thanks,
Julie



From matt Wed Jun  9 14:45:28 1993
To: jon
Subject: seg abstracts
Status: RO


Remember the library having problems acquiring the SEG abstracts.
Well, you asked me to formulate a brief note describing the 
problem and suggesting a solution. Here is the suggestion I have 
worked out with the library! Who are we going to send it too? Do 
want to send a  similiar note refering to the EAEG Abstracts?



Society of Exploration Geophysicists
PO. Box 702740
Tulsa, OK 74170-2740


Dear Sir,

In the past years, the library here at Stanford's Geophysics 
Department had problems acquiring the 'Expanded Abstracts' of 
your Annual International Meeting and Exposition. It was not 
possible to assure that there was a copy still available when 
the order went out.


These Abstracts are extremely valuable to our research. Therefore,
we would like you to send us a copy of these abstracts and a bill 
each year automatically. Would such a distribution be feasible for 
you?

Sincerely,

Jon Claerbout

From matt Thu Jul  1 16:29:45 1993
To: jon
Subject: data storage system is a mess ...
Status: RO



From schwab Wed Nov 10 10:18:03 1993
To: arnaud@sep.Stanford.EDU
Status: RO


Hallo arnaud;

I enjoyed reading your mail .... 
But I have to inform you that I actually like Paris:
Its history, its tales, its old houses, and even some 
of the newer ones. There are many fun things to do (when
the weather and the metro strike permits it). The food is
excellent, the women beautiful (many at least!) and charming.
I do enjoy Paris, even I am sorry for the rest of the country 
because Paris seems to get all the attention form visitors and
the governmant ... 

I actually visiting Tarantola's seminar which is intellectually 
very stimulating! 

In respect of photography I still feel not entirely familiar with
the object Paris, but when evere the continous rain stops, I will
take some snapshots. I probably won't start photo reproduction 
right now since I am very busy studying French and doing some 
Geophysics! 

Fatimetou read your last message over my shoulder. She is very jealous
about your excellent English... 

At armistice day, I have decided and I will go and see if they have 
parade down the Champs Ellysee. If they do I will drink a cup of
cofee and watch soldiers walking through the rain. If somebody asks
I will claim to be Swiss ;-)

I hope you have a good time in Stanford... Congratulations to your 
driver license. I think you will have to take a ride on the wild 
side along the Big Sur coast. Believe me it is fantastic. 
I am glad to hear that you had a blast at the costume fete at Castro.
I have to admit that I have a hard time imaging you three: 2 prostitutes
and a witch... I am still wondering what a "bad prostitute" distinguishes
from a "standard" prostitute... Arnaud, do you know something, I do not
... (about this topic!) 

Take care... 
and don't worry Paris isn't that bad if the metro works 
and they keep the strrets clean!

Matthias

(Monsieur Schwab as they say)


From schwab Tue Nov 30 12:33:15 1993
To: jclaer@mahi.UCSD.EDU
Subject: Re:  hello
Status: RO

Hallo Jon!

Good to hear from you! 
I am enjoying Paris thoroughly... perhaps 
even a little bit to much. My French has 
improved. 

Geophysics: I have installed a new version of 
SEPLIB here at TOTAL. I also have set up my own 
environment. 

Carey Bunks "convinced" me to start a small project
on Kirchhof migration (Measuring the local ray parameter
p in a time section, we weight the Kirchhof migration 
impulse by the probability that the event came from that
direction). This project is almost (?) concluded.

I also started attending Albert Tarantola's seminar. It
is across town, but I hope I will be able to attend it 
regularly, since there is very little exchange of ideas 
here at Total. I also read Tarantola's book.

At this point, I have some ideas for trying out inversion 
on the Kjartansson data set. I found the results using 
multigrid (last SEG paper by Saleck and Bunks) very promising.
There may also be a way of combing it with wavelet decomposition.

It surprised me how much research here at Total is concerned
about classic signal processing as it is described in FGDP. 
I actually ended up participating a little bit in a deconvolution
project. Turham Taner (?) gave a very interesting talk just a
few days ago.

Have you pursued the ideas about tomographical inversion by
using the crosscorrelation function? 

Jon: my problem right now does not seem to be a lack of ideas 
or enthusiasm, but a lack of time to try it all out! I will 
have to concentrate more.

C++: Total has a big tomography project which is coded in C++.
They are also involved in developing the C++ version of Gocad.
But this work is not a topic of research. Actually, the research
is done in Fortran (since this is what the local geophysicists know)
but it is later implemented in C++ by a couple of professional 
programers. 

Anyhow, I did some more reading and talked to several people: 
Quite frequently, people told me that C++ is a inferior object oriented
language by comparsion. The same people consistently suggested 
"Eiffel" as an alternative. It interfaces with C by function calls,
but is otherwise a fully object oriented language. 
"Eiffel" is supposed to increase readability of code and its inheritance
concept is supposingly clearer. The Eiffel compiler creates C code 
(portability!) which is then compiled by the C compiler. 
(Here are some citations:
 "Eiffel: an Introduction" Robert Schweitzer.
 "Object-oriented Software Construction" Bertrand Meyer
 "Eiffel: The language" Bertrand Meyer
 all published by Prentice Hall
 "C++?? A critique of C++" by Ian Joyner - I have a copy of a copy
 of the article and nobody seems to remember where it was published.
 I can fax a copy, if you are interested) 

However, everybody agrees: C++ is the standard object oriented language
for now!

How are you doing? Are you enjoying your sabbatical? How is Diane?
Please greet her from me.

	matt




Matthias Schwab
Herrnstr. 5 
63065 Offenbach

To whom it may concern!

While being a student at Stanford, 
I received an "Ida and Cecil Green Scholarship" from the 
Geophysics Department. I received the scholarship from January
1993 until June 1993.. The amount of the scholarship was $8,780.00.
The grant covers my housing and living expenses as a student at
Stanford University. According to the German tax treaty article IV 
the scholarship is exempt from federal tax. 

Sincerely,

Matthias Schwab




From schwab Tue Jan 25 09:53:00 1994
To: klemp@pangea.stanford.edu
Subject: Re: Tibet '94; participation possible?
Status: RO

Hallo Simon;

These are great news! But before I can make any final commitment
I want to talk to my fiancee and Jon Claerbout. I will get back to 
you in a few days. Is that okay? 

	A bientot,
	Matthias


From schwab Tue Feb  1 18:59:57 1994
To: gopal@sep.Stanford.EDU
Subject: here are some secret ;-) suggestions ...
Status: RO



From schwab Wed Feb  9 14:14:17 1994
To: klemp@pangea.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Tibet 
Cc: pmouawad@thesis1.med.uth.tmc.edu
Status: RO


Hallo Simon;

Well, it just did not go as I wanted it to go.
Pascale and I have planned our wedding for the
4th of June. At the start of July she has to 
start school at Stanford and she does not seem 
to be too happy about me leaving her just then 
for three months. 

Anyway, I would love to go to Tibet. But under
these circumstances I am not able to go for three 
months. I can imagine, that your fixed costs 
like air ticket etc do not make a shorter trip
feasible. However, if you want me to come for 
August&September or April&May& maybe half of June,
please let me know. 

Thank you very much for the offer anyway. 
Perhaps another time ... 


	Good luck!
	Matthias


From matt Fri Jul  2 11:50:20 1993
To: bruce@pangea.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Re: Mendocino Triple Junction seismic experiment
Status: RO


Sounds great and I would love to come, but this year I have lined up
a 6 months internship at TOTAL in Paris starting 1st of September.
I plan to leave middle of August. It seems there will be no overlap.

I would love to do field work again, so please keep me in mind for 
future experiments. I have worked with Refteks and SGRs. I also have 
some experience in loading of boreholes and lakes. I worked in Alaska
Kenya and all over Europe, but hey I never worked in Californnia. 

I will be back and available next spring and summer. 

	Have fun!!!

	Matthias

From: scole@chevron.com (Stephen P. Cole)
To: matt@sep.stanford.edu
Subject: Re:  builder.xtpanel
Date: Tue, 26 Sep 95 13:14:04 PDT

Hi Matt,
Sorry I have not been in touch more. I intended to say in
some better way how very, very much I want to thank you
for all your help this summer (and before). I'm not sure
I could have done it without you. You are a wonderful
person. I'll say it that way for now since I haven't 
gotten around to doing anything else.
I didn't do anything with builder.xtpanel beyond making the
copy which I left in my home directory. I guess you copied
it to /usr/local/lib/X11/xtpanel, and you are wondering what
happened in our/interact/chooser. I don't know. Someone's
changed it this morning, but I didn't do it. Sorry I am
so clueless. Let me know if I can be of some help in
straightening it out.
-Steve



From: scole@chevron.com (Stephen P. Cole)
To: dave@sep.stanford.edu, martin@sep.stanford.edu, matt@sep.stanford.edu,
        steve@sep.stanford.edu
Subject: Re:  new paycheck ....
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 95 10:42:32 PDT

That is really disappointing news, Matt. 
Jon's sending inconsistent messages here if his point is
to tell you to do more geophysics. Because I've seen that
he's also telling you, essentially, to spend about 80
hours/week on non-geophysical stuff like the CD's.
He can't have it both ways.

This might be a good opportunity to go to him and say that
you are absolutely swamped with the non-geophysical stuff,
and need help NOW. You might even keep track of your hours
for a week, what projects you work on, and use that to show
him that you aren't being given time for geophysics. You
might also point out that some people in the group, despite
appearances, do _nothing_ for the common good.

I know Jon likes you and values you probably more than anyone
else in the group. He's playing games with the salaries to
send you a message, now he needs to actually do something to
make it possible for you to do what he wants. I know it's not
easy, but I'd lay this all out for him and tell him you're
not happy about it. I think he will respond if you do this
right. I'll be happy to help if I can.



From: scole@chevron.com (Stephen P. Cole)
To: matt@sep.stanford.edu
Subject: Re:  new paycheck ....
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 95 13:24:46 PDT

You should feel hurt. I would feel hurt in the same situation. 
Priorities aside, you give (in my opinion) your all to SEP, 
and many (most) of the other students do not.
In the "old days" everyone was like you, and that was a lot
of fun. I think this is what you're missing.

>But somehow the entire situation has changed. Jon seems to withdraw
>from the daily rat race. We have some students which are not exactly
>an inspiration to their colleagues. It just is not as much fun anymore
>as it used to be at SEP 

It bothers me to hear that. I wish it would change. But I
don't see it happening.

I am surprised the pay structure is so flat. I would have expected
you to say something like $1200-2000. I would expect you to be
near the high end, and Christine to be in the middle. 

I know it's not easy, but I think Jon would like to hear about
your concerns. Maybe try writing down what you would say to him. 

From: scole@chevron.com (Stephen P. Cole)
To: matt@sep.stanford.edu
Subject: Re:  xtpen: allocated new colormap
Date: Wed, 24 Jan 96 10:58:55 PST

I'm sorry you're frustrated. Sounds like other people not
doing their jobs, business as usual. You should come visit
me instead, except not in the next couple of weeks, the
parents are coming. 
I think I'll just hold off on linux for a month or two until
support for my scsi controller makes its way into the
standard kernel.
Did David get signed off? I am too chicken to ask him.
I imagine he did.
I sent Martin some mail a couple times but haven't heard
anything in several weeks at least.



hallo gopal


it sounds like you are interested in doing some research.

I think you had a very good start at SEP by cutting directly
to the heart of the matter: 3D. The rest of us is still working
on 2D stuff. But here at TOTAL nobody is interested in that!

I think it is a good idea that you want to stick to something
you have already started with: Keep in mind that the proposal 
is not a verdict for life - you are only to present yourself
as "researcher"; what ever that may be!

Since you are looking at new ground to cover: What about doing 
it right? Look at the implicite FD equation for 3D: It is band-
diagonal with 5 diagonals (some people have a weird name for it
like "quintagonal"), and it is assymetric, as far as I remember. 

There have been several trials to solve it by different people.
There was e.g. a paper by some Cray people at the fall SEG (there
scheme seemed to be very involved!) There is the PSI consortia 
which is working on it, but with little effect yet.
Francis once mentioned that he thinks it is time that somebody 
looks into that problem at SEP. So here is already the first 
person to talk too. 

Now what ideas do I have: Well it is just another Matrix problem,
but a huge one! Gradient methods have been tried ... 
Here are some alternative ideas: 
What about finding a smart starting solution for the gradient method:
Use the the 2-pass 3D solution of the problem as a starting point for
a gradient algorithm computing the next depth step. 
Multigrid on the matrix: We first solve the problem for a smaller 
Matrix by applying a gradient method to it. The smaller matrix is an
smoothed version of the true problem. We use the result of the small
matrix as a starting point for the next solution.
Preconditioning: Can we think of a smart preconditioner for a gradient
method... as I remember correctly preconditioner are some approximation 
to (I + G^t G)^(-1) where G is the linear operator which is to be inverted.
Notice that we do not need to invert G but something like G^t G: This is 
easy if G^t G tends to I or anything diagonal, as it is the case in many
examples. How can we estimate G^t G? Good question!
As a next step I would try to write down the Matrix equation exactly. The
let us have a look in some stupid books like "Numerical receipes" and 
"Luenberger" or "Golub". Let's try out "something". I am sure we can do 
better than the rest of the geophysicists. Especially since we should get 
all kind of expertise at Stanford! Finding a good solution to the 3D FD 
problem can make us the kings of the next generation of research 
geophysicists... and nobody can complain that we would work on resolved 
problems!

	Matthias

PS: I plan to return to Stanford at the end of March. I would be very 
    interested in a "joint" effort. I would hate to do the work all by
    myself!
PS: it would already be interesting to work out why (mathematically & 
    physically) 3D is sooo much harder! This formulation may give us a 
    hint how to solve it!

From: scole@chevron.com (Stephen P. Cole)
To: matt@sep.stanford.edu
Subject: Arnaud
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 96 10:34:16 PST

Hi Matt,
I heard from Rick that Arnaud had either failed his orals or
otherwise been told he couldn't continue, and I wanted to ask
you for some details. Did this get handled any better than
Gopal? I feel badly for Arnaud, he's a nice guy. Has he talked
about what he will do next? I am thinking of telling the gocad
people here that he might be available if they are looking
for someone.
It seems likely I will come to the meeting, which will be
nice. I am going to Boston this weekend for my parents' 50th
anniversary. I will visit a co-worker who is at MIT for
a couple of days. The week after I have to go to Austin to
visit IBM. I would really rather just stay home.
-Steve



From: scole@chevron.com (Stephen P. Cole)
To: matt@sep.stanford.edu
Subject: RE: Arnaud
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 96 16:46:39 PST

Wow, what a typist. I'm sorry I occupied your afternoon
typing that reply :-)

Well from what I know and have seen your analysis makes
sense. I don't think I should recommend him to the GOCAD
people. His plan makes sense. He does need to find something
he can be passioniate about. Come to think of it, so do I :-)
Just kidding, mostly.

It all comes down to Jon's lack of communication with his
students. As you say, he shouldn't tell people what to do,
but he should encourage things that are promising and
help nurture good ideas. I'd hoped Biondo would fill in
the gaps a little, and I imagine he does, though he is
selective. With this lack of involvement it seems the only
ones who survive are those are really good promoters,
really good team players, or really driven. He wasn't
any of those, but I can't help feel that some shy and
quiet people like Arnaud and Gopal could be one of those
with just the smallest amount of support and nurturing. 
It is a shame to see it not happen, a wasted opportunity.

Now that I've typed for a few paragraphs I can't remember
what else was in your message. Ah, now I have refreshed
my memory. The staying around for a quarter at half pay
is a VERY BAD idea. Full pay or leave immediately. I would
let people finish out the academic year at full pay if
I were like Jon and left people hanging until the exam.
Better would be to have let him know back in January that
it wasn't going to happen, and he should make plans for the
summer. Half pay is demoralizing on top of an already
demoralizing situation.

I can't agree, I hate traveling now that there is someone
waiting at home for me. Hmmm, I probably didn't tell you
about that. Suffice it to say that things are going
pretty well in that department. 

Interesting analysis about Martin. How sad I did not remember
his birthday. When is yours, by the way? It is hard to
understand whether we have an opening here or not. But if
we have one Martin is exactly the right person for it.
I'll have to do some investigating. 

Scott and Margaret are coming back in August. There is
talk of me helping to find them a place to rent or buy
since their house has sold. If their real estate agent
finds something good, it could be that I will have
to make a trip up that way sometime. They think
they may want to live in Portola Valley (who wouldn't?).
The kids are accepted for a private school, so there
is no more constraint of needing to live in Palo Alto.
Tomorrow a Chili's opens in Cambridge, Scott and
Margaret are very happy and plan to be there. Those
Americans.


