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 one hundred and tenth letter I wrote.
11/12/04 – Fall at a Rising Dell
Dear Sooner Plantians and Friends less Fortunate (not to be working at Sooner),
Well, it’s Friday afternoon, and it’s getting late, so I thought this would be a good way to ensure that I don’t ramble too much, because I’m in a hurry to go home. It’s 51 degrees outside right now, and that’s pretty cold for “these here parts” I think it dipped down almost to the upper 40s this morning. I got out my winter light jacket this morning, so I’m equipped. I suppose you guys are done with Overhaul up there by now. I haven’t heard the latest.
Well. Dell had their Quarterly report come out yesterday and we made 12.5 Billion dollars in the last quarter. That makes an annual revenue of $50 Billion. I have been here for a little over 3 years, and when I came here our annual revenue was $30 Billion, so we’ve moved up the ladder quite a bit.
All the ol’ timers that have been here for 10 years are more were all of the sudden hopping around because our stock finally went up above $40 a share today (it was $20 when I started here), making their stock options look a little better, so they were all of the sudden talking about retiring and stuff.
I’m afraid I missed out on the years when the stock split a whole bunch of times in a couple of years, so it will probably take a while longer before I become a “Dellionaire” (as they call them down here).
I heard Stick is retiring. This makes me kinda sad. I know that when I ever get to make it back out to the plant that there won’t be a lot of people around that I recognize. Actually, a lot of you guys might still be there, I just won’t recognize you. You know how you get forgetful over the years. You saw how well I remembered Eldon Waugh and Bill Moler when I left.
I think I was writing a letter to Scott, or Ray about a month ago, and I couldn’t remember the last name of Bob. The Bob that worked in Instrument and Controls, that all of the sudden one day Super Equipment Support Supervisor decided he didn’t want around anymore. You know. The guy that worked his tail off all the time.
Well, I couldn’t remember his last name for the longest time. It was weeks later when we were driving in the car to go out and eat or something, and all of the sudden, I yelled out “Blubaugh!!!” Well. You can imagine the strange look my kids gave me. My son Anthony asked me, “What’s a Blubaugh? I don’t see it!” My daughter just rolled her eyes, because she’s used to me blurting out seemingly meaningless phrases, especially since I’ve been getting older and I’ve been writing programs more. I think a couple of months ago without warning I stood up from the kitchen table and said, “That’s it!!!
SELECT
C.CLNT AS DEVICE,
CASE WHEN (SUM(1) = 1) THEN 0 ELSE SUM(1) END AS PUNCHCOUNT
FROM
TKCSOWNER.DATASOURCE D, CLIENTCONTEXT C, (SELECT DATASOURCEID FROM PUNCHEVENT WHERE PUNCHDTM > SYSDATE – 30) P
WHERE
(C.CLNT LIKE ‘TENN%’
OR
C.CLNT LIKE ‘TEX%’)
AND
C.CLIENTCONTEXTID = D.CLIENTCONTEXTID
AND
D.DATASOURCEID = P.DATASOURCEID (+)
GROUP BY
C.CLNT,
D.DATASOURCEID
Of course, you could imagine the feeling of euphoria that was spreading over me when I realized that this was what I was looking for. It was so simple. I think I saw tears come to Kelly’s eyes, but then again, we were eating Spaghetti, and it did have a lot of onions in it and she was choking on her food. Well. Not to make this too rambling of a letter, I think I’ll wrap it up here.
Keep writing and letting me know “Watt’s Happenin’ at OG&E” — Do you guys remember that? Wasn’t that the name of a Newsletter or something that we used to get? No. Wait. It was the videos that we would watch during the Safety Meeting about things that were happening around the company. Are they still showing those?
I ought to come up with one for Dell, like “Where in the ~ell are we at Dell?” — Well. Maybe I need to work on that one a little bit. We’re a very ethical company and that one wouldn’t pass the test. — That’s one thing about this place. It’s a real nice working environment. Everyone is pretty “Ethical”. It took a while to get used to it, but now I’m fitting right in.
I’ll write later,
Your friend from Dell,
Kevin James Anthony Breazile
______________________
Kevin J. Breazile
Global Financial Systems I/T
Dell Inc.
(512) 728-1527
Power Plant Men 