After I left the power plant and went to work for Dell on August 20, 2001, I wrote letters back to my friends at the plant letting them know how things were going. This is the sixty second letter I wrote. Keep in mind that at the time when I originally penned this letter I didn’t intend on it being posted online.
12/31/02 – A New Year at Dell
Dear Friends from of Old (Not to be confused with “old” friends, meaning, you guys are old — even though most of you are — like me),
Now that I’ve cleared that up….. It was good to see some of you the Monday before Christmas. It was strange walking into the plant and seeing that hardly anything had changed.
Boy. Things change around here so fast, it seems that every other day, when I walk in the building, I have to stop and look around just to make sure I didn’t show up in the wrong place. I am grateful to Randy Dailey for giving me a bunch of “Be Safe, Work Safe, Cause I Love You Man” hardhat stickers. I now have one on the wall of my cubicle! I’m right proud of it too…
I’ll bet I’m the only guy in this place that has THAT hardhat sticker pinned to his cubicle. — I see people passing by my cubicle green with envy. As well they should be.
There were two people that didn’t appear too happy to see me the other day (I don’t know why). I’ll leave it up to your imagination who they were but there initials are Bill and Jim. I didn’t see Louise, even though she was there.
The shorter of the two “unhappy” ones, was going to walk right by me with a big frown without even saying “hi”, but I stopped him and said, “Hi Bill, How are you doing?” Then the other one was going to make some smart remark about OG&E leasing Compaq computers when Alex showed me that they were using Compaq, until I said that I was glad people are buying Compaq computers.
I said that because Compaq loses money every time they sell one, because they have to sell them for less than it cost them to make it, because they have to compete with Dell. Who, by the way, makes money every time we sell one, unless you buy one the way Linda Shiever did the other day.
I left the plant around 9:30 on Monday and I made it out of Stillwater around 10:30. There was already about 3 inches of snow on the road, and the traffic on HWY 51 was going about 20 miles an hour. It sped up to about 40 miles an hour once I was on I-35, until we were in Oklahoma City.
There, the roads cleared up, and it was smooth sailing the rest of the way home. I almost spent too much time at Sooner Plant. If I had stayed much longer, I might have been stranded in Stillwater for a day or so.
Well. This week there is hardly anyone at work. I’m not sure why, but I suppose it has to do with the fact that everyone had all last week off, and we have a holiday tomorrow, so they all decided to take these two days off also.
Yesterday, my second line manager told us to go home early because there was a big storm coming and she didn’t want us to be stuck here. So I drove home, and just pulled my car in the garage when it started to hail. Whew. That was close.
Then there were tornadoes all around and the wind was blowing, and I felt as if Oklahoma must have blown in from the north. We were all right though. The tornadoes were off to the south and the east of us. — Who ever heard of tornadoes in the middle of winter? This IS the end of December isn’t it?
Today, that same manager told us to go home at noon. So I will. I was supposed to be planning my new project today, but I started doing it yesterday, and since there wasn’t anyone here, I didn’t have to go to any meetings, and I didn’t have to attend any “team-builders”, so I just sat down and not only finished planning the entire project which is supposed to take until February 14th, but I also completely finished it.
I wrote the whole program in about 6 hours of uninterrupted programming ecstasy. Some times I forget how much I enjoy just sitting there programming something, because I don’t actually do that as often as you think. I have to spend time collecting information about the requirements from the business people, and then we have to develop a plan for the project, and then we have to have team-builders, and then we have to have meetings to discuss “issues”, as well as other meetings to discuss all sorts of stuff.
So the time I actually have to sit down and do nothing but program is quite limited. I would do it at night when there aren’t any interruptions, except that I’m usually too busy at home playing on the computer. So I sent the project plan to the Project Manager yesterday afternoon, and told her at the same time that I had already finished it. — She’s gone until after the New Year, so I haven’t heard back from her yet.
I hadn’t heard about Dan Ewy until someone told me at the plant the other day. Hey. Just because I’m down here, it doesn’t mean that I don’t care about you guys. So, “Be Safe, Work Safe, Cause I Love You Man!!!!” And let me know how you guys are doing.
The Programmer from Dell !!!!!,
Kevin James Anthony Breazile
______________________
Kevin J. Breazile
Dell Computer Corporation
(512) 728-1527
Power Plant Men 