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 eighty second letter I wrote.
8/22/03 — More Training at Dell
Dear Sooner Plant Friends,
I have a few minutes while a database job is running to stop and write to you guys. It has been a couple of weeks since I wrote, and I thought I would let you know how things are going. “Thanks” for those of you who told me about Diana Brien’s accident.
I trust that she has recuperated, and is back at work lugging her tool bucket around repairing all the electrical equipment with lightning speed. That was a close one. I’ve been in on a few of those, and when I think about those times, I still get the shivers. (well. I get this tingly feeling that runs up and down my spine anyway).
Note to Reader: To read about times when I have had things explode in my face, read the post: Prolonged Power Plant Pause Before the Panic.
Next week I have to go to Kansas City to go to school. I leave on Monday morning and get back late Thursday night. So that about takes up the whole week. I’m going to be trained in our timekeeping software. It’s called Kronos (So this guy in a cubicle catty-corner from me has been calling me “Mr. Kronos”, because he wanted to go to all the training I’m going to, and now he’s sore about it).
I’ll still have access to e-mail and stuff in the evenings. Actually, the way we work here, all we need is a telephone or a cable modem in a hotel room, and we are hooked up to Dell! It’s pretty neat.
They have been working on a “Flex Plan” where I can work from home 20 hours a week. Or work 4 -10s if we want (so I could work 2 days from home and 2 days in my cubicle). When I have some spare time, I’m going to look into this a little closer. Some days I work from home anyway, since I can hook up to my cable modem and it’s just like being connected at work.
Anyway. The week after next I have to go to school in Dallas for 3 days. Wednesday through Friday. That’s Labor Day week, so I will only be in the office on Tuesday.
That reminds me. I have this pager that they gave me about 8 months ago. They asked me to wear it so people can page me when they want to find me. The only time it goes off is when someone is looking for me so that we can go out and eat lunch or something like that (or to find out what room the meeting is in).
The pager only works when I am in the Austin area, so it won’t work while I’m on vacation…… Oh, I mean “Training”. But if you guys would like to send me a text page you can go to http://www.arch.com/message/ and then enter my id which is 5129070340 (which happens to be the phone number for the pager) and you guys can send me a page whenever you want.
I keep it on “silent mode” all the time, because I’m always in meetings or something and I don’t want my pager going off just when my VP is telling me how he hates it when he’s in a meeting and pagers are going off the whole time. — Which you know will happen the minute I turn the beeper on, on the pager.
Anyway. I’m telling you about my pager because no one ever pages me, and when I’m sitting in a meeting and my pager goes off I can quietly whip it out and look at it to see what you are saying, and get a look on my face like something is really important, but it can wait until the “very important meeting” that I am in now is over.
Oh look!!! My database job has finished running. I guess I can go look at the data now and see if it looks like I want it to look, or fix it and run it again. Anyway. You guys keep in touch. It was good to hear from many of you the last couple of weeks.
Talk to you later,
Your friend from Dell,
Kevin James Anthony Breazile
______________________
Kevin J. Breazile
Programmer/Analyst III
Dell Inc.
(512) 728-1527
Power Plant Men 