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 eighteenth letter I wrote.
7/6/05 – Things are getting Hot at Dell
Dear friends from Sooner Plant,
Has it really been two whole months since I have written? Wow. That must be a record for me keeping my mouth shut! I did have a vacation during that time and I did go to training, and we did have a couple of holidays and I did forget to write most of the time, even though I think about you guys and the plant about EVERY DAY!!!!
I had this real weird dream where I was at the power plant and it was in the evening when it is kind of dark. I’m not sure what I was doing there, but I was really amazed with this new conveyor system that you guys had.
It ran all over the plant and it moved equipment and barrels around automatically and the way it worked, it could move anything anywhere on the plant grounds where they needed to go, because the entire ground was made up of strips of conveyors that looked like asphalt sidewalks, but they moved along like conveyors.
Then in-between the sidewalks was grass, but the grass moved between the conveyor systems so, for instance in my dream I was watching this barrel go by and it went down this asphalt conveyor and was pushed out into the grass, where the grass carried it over to another conveyor and then to another patch of grass until it hit an asphalt conveyor that was going in the direction where it needed to go and off to the coal yard it went.
So it was like the plant was running all by itself and people didn’t have to move stuff around. They just moved themselves. — It was actually a little creepy.
I heard that your honeymoon with Wendling has already come to an end. — I suppose that’s too bad. I guess he came and did what they wanted him to do, and now that Jim Arnold is gone, he can go do other things. — Maybe that’s why I haven’t felt the urgent need to write to you guys before.
I knew you were all in bliss in your Shangri La Palace at Sooner since you were relieved of a few trouble makers. I hope your new plant manager is acceptable for you guys. I know that the times I had to deal with John Parham they weren’t always the most pleasant. But I can chalk a little of that up to my attitude at the time.
I do know that he insisted one time that the heat energy being lost out of the top of the precipitators at Muskogee equaled only around 4000 watts of power (or so). Which was so ridiculous, I knew there wasn’t any sense in arguing with him… but you know me. I can’t keep my mouth shut.
Anyway. I went to see the Grand Canyon on my vacation and that was a lot of fun. Everything went well. When I got back after being away for over 2 weeks, it took me about a week to read all my e-mails.
Then I had training for another week. I took a week long database course called: Oracle PL/SQL advanced programming and performance tuning. — Now every time I turn around I’m looking for something to tweak to make it better. — I think I’m getting on some of my “cubicle mate’s” nerves. Maybe I should stop making that squeaky “Tweak” noise every time I try to Tweak something.
Well. Let me know how things are going up there. What’s the latest?
Your friendly Dell programmer,
Kevin James Anthony Breazile
Power Plant Men 