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 ninety ninth letter I wrote.
5/18/04 – Working at the Speed of Dell
Dear Soonerites and beyond,
I can’t believe that it has been over a month since I have written to you guys! It seems like a century!!! I think the last letter I wrote was about “The Boiler Ghost” story I wrote for Bob Lillibridge. I have been working on so many projects all at the same time that only now do I have about 15 minutes to write to you.
We like abbreviations here at Dell, and the projects that I’m working on now have names like: CART, STAR T-DiRT, VIP, ISM, and I’m doing an enhancement to the Kronos Application that I worked on for so long last year. I am also going to be working on an application called “Oracle Financials”. I’m supposed to be their “Subject Matter Expert” (SME) on that some time in the future. So I have been royally tied up lately.
There is some light at the end of one of the tunnels I am travelling through. I am going to go to Europe on vacation next week for two weeks. So I will leave behind all of my computers in my cubicle and let someone else deal with all this stuff for a couple of weeks. I am looking forward to a vacation.
I am going to change teams in a week or so, so I worked out my vacation during the transition since my new manager won’t be expecting me, and my old manager will be glad to see me go (on my vacation, I mean. — He really likes me. Believe it or not).
Actually, the manager that I am leaving is very sad that I am going over to the “other” team, because he enjoyed all those tricks I kept playing on him (no. Honest. He really did). I think that’s why he insisted (actually, I think the word is “encouraged”) that I go to this other team so that I can gain all sorts of valuable experience learning new applications like Oracle Financials.
Note to Reader: To read about jokes being played on others see the post Power Plant Humor and Joking with Gene Day.
Oracle Financials is like the Finance Module of SAP. So you guys sort of know what I am learning. This is like learning SAP all over again, except I am dealing with things like The General Ledger, and Accounts Payable, and stuff like that instead of Task Lists, and Bill of Materials and Work Orders like you guys use in the Maintenance Module of SAP. Oh Boy!!!
I hope everything is going well with you guys. I haven’t heard the latest news about how Sooner Plant is doing. I suppose the Dumper is all reassembled, and dumping coal trains at a record pace. During that downtime did they have the foresight to install PLCs to control it, or are they still using all those relays?
I had this weird dream a couple of weeks ago where I was standing in the Maintenance shop and there was this Maintenance Supervisor who worked at Sooner when Marlin McDaniel was the only A foreman, and he was telling me why he thought that every kid when he graduated from High School should spend two years in the military, and I was standing there trying to remember his name.
I’m sure all of you remember who I’m talking about. The guy that went to Mustang Plant before he retired. I kept thinking in my dream that his first name began with an “O”, but I couldn’t come up with a name that sounded right. I thought it might be “Oscar”, but that didn’t seem to be it.
So in my dream I went through the entire alphabet in my head trying to come up with this guys name. — I know. You guys are all jumping out of your seats yelling his name to me, but I finally came up with his first name. “Orville”.
So then I tried to remember his last name, and I immediately thought that it was “Ferguson”, but somehow I thought that Orville Ferguson was a different guy that worked in the Coal Yard, who had the daughter that worked for Brown and Root doing construction building the plant.
So I kept going through the alphabet trying to remember his last name. Finally I realized that the guy in the Coal Yard’s first name wasn’t Orville, it was Gerald.
Note to Reader: To read more about Gerald Ferguson see the post A Power Plant Man Becomes and Unlikely Saint.
So, it was Orville Ferguson all along. — I just thought I would pass that experience on to you guys, because I’m sure the same thing happens to you all the time just like it does me. — Remember. A few months ago I was so busy I couldn’t even remember my own name. — Honest. I sat there for about 5 or so seconds trying to remember what my name was so I could log into my computer.
Well……..
Ok. Have a good day. Talk to you later,
Your Friend,
Kevin James Anthony Breazile
______________________
Kevin J. Breazile
Global Financial Systems I/T
Dell Inc.
(512) 728-1527
Power Plant Men 