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 fifteenth letter I wrote.
2/18/05 – Cruisin’ at Dell
Dear Sooner Plantians and other friends,
Ok. It has been a whole week and not one of you replied back to me to tell me that neither Dell nor OG&E have 5 characters in their names. Gee. I would have thought I would have gotten a rise out of at least one of you.
It struck me suddenly the other morning when I was in the shower, (where I usually have my great revelations), that Dell and OG&E both only had only 4 letters in them instead of 5, and I had made such a big deal about it in my last letter to you guys.
So after I was finished with my shower, I went and put a band-aid on my forehead so no one would see the bruise that was developing after I had banged my head several times against the shiny tiles in the shower. Anyway. It’s much better now and so am I.
Well. This has been a fairly good week. The weather has been all right and the traffic hasn’t been too bad (for Austin anyway). It has been a quiet week as far as my projects have gone.
Monday was a little hectic as we put all the people from India into the Timekeeping application. That all went well, so I got “Atta Boys” for that. But I will always remember the phrase that I learned while working at Sooner Plant; “One ‘uh oh’ erases all the ‘atta boys’, so I don’t get too excited when something goes well, because I know that there is always another hour after that one where everything can go to pieces.
I talked with my manager yesterday and told him that one of my goals this year was to become a First Responder. They have classes here that I can take, and then they give me a red flag to put up on my cubicle so that people can look around real quickly in case they are having a heart attack or something and I can grab my “Elvis Wand” and run to the rescue.
I’m already a “Starpoint Responder”, which means I can zap people with the Defibrilator and do CPR and first aid and that sort of stuff. So I immediately knew what to do the other day after my revelation in the shower. So I have a purple flag on my cubicle and an Orange Vest.
What I do is when we have a fire drill or a real fire for that matter, I put on my orange vest (so I look like a crossing guard) and I walk around all the cubicles in my area and make sure that everyone is out of the area before I leave. They call me a floor sweeper when I do that. So you see, I haven’t really gone that far since the days when I was a janitor sweeping up the Turbine Room Floor.
I think that one of 4 things is happening here. One thing could have been that you guys never read these letters and so none of you noticed that I had said 5 letters when there was only 4.
Or maybe it is the case that last week there was 5 letters in these names and now there are only 4. Or maybe you saw that there were 4 letters and you knew that I was so hard-headed that if you told me that there was 4 letters instead of 5 you realized that I wouldn’t believe it anyway.
Or maybe now you are reading this and wondering why am I giving you 5 things now that is happening here when I said that there was one of 4 things is happening here.
Just for that, I figure that I should end this letter with 5 paragraphs instead of 4. Maybe next time I will just write a letter to myself because it has been so long since I have heard from some of you that I wonder if you are getting my e-mails at all.
I haven’t heard from my old “Roomie”, and I haven’t heard from my “Foster Father”, I have heard from my friend that always calls me “Little Buddy”. It has been so long since I’ve heard from Doug Black that I figure he might be Doug Gray now for all I know.
I haven’t heard from my “Bucket Buddy”. I haven’t heard from my “Carpool Buddies” or even from my “Pigeon Training Partner”. — Oh. All right. I’ll quit my whinin’. It hasn’t really been that bad. — I hope all is going well with you guys. Maybe no news is good news. — I’ll write later.
Your Friendly Dell Programmer,
Kevin James Anthony Breazile
______________________
Kevin J. Breazile
Global Financial Services I/T
Dell Inc.
(512) 728-1527
Power Plant Men 