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 fifty ninth letter I wrote.
12/02/02 – Thanksgiving at Dell
Dear Sooner friends (that are still there),
I realize it has been a couple of weeks since I have written, and I know you all must be wondering if I have forgotten all my friends from the frozen tundra of North Central Oklahoma. Well. I haven’t. Actually, I went through Stillwater on my way to Alabama for the Thanksgiving holiday.
On my way back through town, Mike Vogle actually met me at Braum’s. I thought that was a nice gesture to come all the way from Morrison to Braum’s just to visit. I think I talked him into buying something while he was there, so he didn’t have to make the trip for nothing. — Actually, I just ran into him in line, and I said “Hi”, but I can pretend that he came there just to meet me. That way, I feel like you guys haven’t forgotten about me stuck down here in “team-builder” land.
I have been put on another project, sort of part time between the time I’m at work, and the time I’m on vacation, and the time I’m not involved in some sort of team-building activity. It is working with the Data Warehouse much like the project that I had earlier this fall.
After talking to my mom over Thanksgiving Break, maybe I should explain what a “Data Warehouse” is. It is a database that holds all the data that the company generates. It is huge and business people are always wanting data from it in one form or another, so there are applications that are made that use the data in the data warehouse.
I’m working on projects that take the Data warehouse and change it from running on Oracle to put it into Teradata, which is another kind of database. — Anyway, the reason I’m telling you this is because when I told my mom that I was going to start another project with the Data Warehouse next Monday, she said, “Oh No!!! They are going to make you work in the factory again??!!!!”
When I asked her what she was talking about, she said, “They are going to make you go work in the warehouse again? Why do they do that to you?” — I tried to explain to her that the Data Warehouse was not actually a warehouse. It was just a big Database that is on a bunch of computers, and that I could actually sit in her house and dial up the Data Warehouse on my laptop and work on it while I was sitting in a lounge chair in the living room.
She said, “Well, Ok. As long as you don’t have to work in a factory again. After all that work you did to get out of that Power Plant.” — So I thought I would explain to you guys what a “Data Warehouse” is, just in case you think I’m having to barcode stuff and count inventory. — Anyway. That’s the way my mom is. — The funniest part about telling my mom a joke is watching her try to figure out why we think It’s funny.
Well. Since I’m on a new Data Warehouse team temporarily. I’ve had to learn a new set of team member names. You may recall that on my last DDW team (DDW stands for Dell Data Warehouse), I had to learn all these interesting names like: Azeem, Radha, Murthy, Venu, Sohan, Jichuan, Srinivasa, 2 guys named Ravi, Ragini, Liming, Devika, Mahesh, Kotamraju, Nanda and Venkat. Well, the new team has the following new names to learn:
Sev Mattupalli, Subba Kondubhatla, Linh Liang, Galen Marumoto, Nagavalli Medicharla, Thuy Nguyen, Hemanth Rajashekhar, Radhakumari Srimattirumala, Sandeep Waghchoure, Arnoud Balat and Xu Weiqing. — I am not making any of these names up.
Anyway. This reminds me that I better get back to work. I need to work on memorizing these names, so that when I’m in a meeting with them I don’t mispronounce anyone’s name. I would hate to call “Subba” “Bubba” instead, and I don’t think “Arnoud” would be too happy if I accidentally called him “Arnold”.
I especially don’t want to call “Xu” “Zoo” (Even if they do sound alike). I have already made the blunder of calling “Radhakumari Srimattirumala” “Srinivasa Pokula” (who you may remember, I worked with on my last project). — Well, they both had the same accent — I’m sure you would have made the same mistake. — Geesh. Ok. — I think it would have been easier if one of them had been named “supercalifredulousexpialidotious” At least I would have known how to pronounce it the first time.
Well. I hope everything is going well with you guys and I hope you enjoyed the holidays. Next week I will be gone. I am going to Disney World for a week. — Yes. I need a vacation. I need to take a break from the old grind.
Just think. For a whole week, I won’t have to think about the Data Warehouse. I won’t have to think about “Team-building”. I won’t have to think about playing on my computer in my cubicle. I will just immerse myself in the fantasy world of Disney World, and not think one bit about writing programs. — That is, if I don’t bring my laptop with me.
Elizabeth, my daughter, wants to make a video game. So she’s been after me to write one for her. — So I may take this opportunity to get some of that done for her. — Oh well. A computer programmer’s job is never done………
I will be in Stillwater the weekend before Christmas. Maybe I will be able to stop by and visit the plant on Monday the 23rd if I’m still in town. I’ll try to get around to visit. Down here, they give the entire I/T department the whole week of Christmas off. So I don’t have to use vacation for that week. I hope to see you guys then.
Your friendly Dell Programmer,
Kevin James Anthony Breazile
______________________
Kevin J. Breazile
CIA: Customer Experience, Integrated Services Model, and Ariba
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Power Plant Men 