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 eleventh letter I wrote.
10/26/01 – 7 Degrees at Dell
Dear Pals at Sooner,
If you go to www.Mapquest.com on the internet and look at Austin Texas, you will discover something shockingly familiar. If you zoom into downtown Austin, you will see a roadmap that you have seen somewhere before. It seems that the same people that engineered the City of Austin also designed the plan for Sooner Plant. Now the truth can come out.
We all know who built Sooner Plant right? Brown & Root. We all know who owned Brown & Root right? Lady Bird Johnson. Yes. And we all know what town Lady Bird Johnson ruled right? Austin TX. So is it merely a coincidence that Sooner Plant wasn’t built facing north and south (or east and west) like every place else in the civilized state of Oklahoma? Is it a coincidence that both Austin and Sooner Plant are exactly 7 degrees off of true north? Or is there a conspiracy afoot?
Note to Reader: To learn more about how Brown and Root built Sooner Plant, see this post Indian Curse or Brown and Root Blunder.
From a Lady Bird’s eye view, Sooner Plant looks very similar to Austin. — The Intake even resembles the river that runs through town.
I think while Brown & Root was building Sooner Plant that Lady Bird was envisioning her own secret Shangra La resort. That must be the reason for all the land and the wildlife preserve. You think I’m kidding? Just look at this website: www.wildflower.org Guess where that is? Right in the middle of Austin. And guess who founded it. That’s right. Just west of the capitol (Which by the way, with the tall tower on the Texas University campus looks just like two smoke stacks). — So you thought all along that the big field just west of the boilers was to build more plants. — Think again. — I think Lady Bird was planning on causing OG&E to go bankrupt when they had to overpay for the plant. I don’t think she thought the Corporation Commission would raise the electric rates high enough and we would be forced to abandon the plant. — Then Her plan would have went into effect. She would have taken the T-G building and turned it into a Hotel. She would have turned the Maintenance shop into an inside tennis court with a couple of fancy restaurants. Belts 10 and 11 would of course been turned into the world’s largest water slide. — This plan seems so obvious. Especially after seeing Austin from a Lady Bird’s Eye View.
What do you think? I have already heard plans from you guys about making a Cappuccino machine from the turbine steam down in the Maintenance shop. This only goes to show that the place was literally designed as a resort. That’s why you always feel like you are on vacation from reality whenever you are at work!!!! Now you know.
After all these years, I finally have an answer as to why someone would build a plant 7 degrees off of true north. It just seems so obvious now.
Always thinkin’ at Dell,
Kevin
______________________
Kevin J. Breazile
Programmer Analyst II
Dell Computer Corporation
(512) 728-1527
Power Plant Men 