Once upon a time

Random items from my past, present, and future.

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

My Lung Operation

I had a collapsed lung in Vietnam in October 1969. When it happened one evening I knew immediately what it was since I had had several others. I was at the BOQ at the First Field Forces Provisional Artillery Group Headquarters in Dalat. I told my boss. He had a couple people take me to the local U.S. Army clinic in Dalat. It had one doctor and limited facilities. We went by Jeep and we were armed as we were driving through the countryside after dark. The army doctor sent me to the civilian hospital in Dalat for an xray. It took a while to find someone there to run the xray machine. It was after midnight when I got there. It was a Vietnamese doctor who took the xrays. After they were developed, he looked at the xrays and said he couldn't see anything wrong. We drove through town again in the dark back to the army doctor. He put the xray on his light and immediately said I had a collapsed lung and showed me the area where it was. I stayed in the clinic for the rest of the night and then I was sent back to the BOQ to get my things. I was sent to Cam Ranh Bay.

At the Cam Ranh Bay hospital, I had a tube inserted to remove the air leaking from my lung. I spent at least a week there, maybe more. I was sent by a medical flight from Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam Camp Zama Army Hospital in Japan. Since it was a short flight, I was designated as ambulatory and I got to sit in a regular seat instead of riding on a stretcher. I got asked by a doctor at Camp Zama what I always considered the most stupid question I had ever heard, "Did I want to get my lung repaired in Japan and go back to Vietnam, or did I want to go to the States to get my lung fixed?" I chose the States. I can remember getting a haircut at the PX barbershop at the hospital. It was the first time I had ever gotten a haircut from a woman (Japanese woman even). After about three days in Camp Zama, I was sent on a medical flight to Travis Air Force Base in California. While I was at Camp Zama, I bought my first 35mm camera. I think it was a Yashica. I used it until I got a new camera for Christmas in 1984 (a Pentax Super Program which was a gift from Charolette, JJ, and Jeff).

On the way to Travis I was not considered ambulatory, so I was on a stretcher. They were concerned that my lung might collapse again. The stretchers were stacked three high in four rows at the back of the plane. We had several Air Force Nurses checking on us during our flight which took about 10 hours. I was wearing hospital pajamas and a robe. As we prepared for takeoff at Yokota Air Force Base, Japan, we heard a loud bang and the plane, which was taxiing, lurched. One of the tires on the plane had a blowout. The plane stopped right there while the tire was changed. Most of us stood around on the taxiway and talked while we waited. The rest of our trip was mostly uneventful. I remember getting to brush my teeth using a small sponge on a stick that had toothpaste built into it. It was meant to be used without water. It was much better than nothing.

Anyway, Travis was just a stopover point as I was enroute to Brooke General Hospital at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas. I don't think I even spent a whole 24 hours at Travis. I played cards with a lady volunteer who was one of many volunteers that greeted and talked with all the evacuees arriving from Vietnam. I do remember arriving early in the morning and getting to watch a space launch. Since the first Apollo to the moon had happened on July 20th of that year, I'm sure it was another Apollo. The TV camera downrange got locked on the rocket and followed it up for a long time, the longest I ever remember seeing. It was an awesome sight. I can remember thinking that I really wanted to see a launch someday, but that it was probably never going to happen. In checking the internet for history, I had difficulty finding a launch that matches with my memory. Apollo 12 launched on November 14. I thought I was doing this traveling in late October or early November. Maybe I'll figure it out someday.

At Brooke Army Hospital I was scheduled for surgery a few days after I arrived. I remember telling my family to not come down. I know that Charolette and I could not have afforded a motel for her to stay in for a couple weeks. At this point in our lives, we had absolutely no savings other than a couple hundred dollars. Charolette was also working at Montgomery Wards in Bartlesville.

I had the surgery very early one morning. I believe it was called a right anterolateral thoracotomy, with scarification of pleura and oversewing and resection of blebs. I had a nine inch cut on my right side between two ribs, from my armpit to the end of the ribs. One rib was moved on top of another and they used self-dissolving surgerical thread to tie it in place on top of the other rib. This gave the surgeons room to fix up my lung which had now collapsed five times (only two of which the Army knew about). I had one collapse in college during spring break of my senior year. I didn't know what it was, but the inside of my chest felt like it was burning. It went away after a few days. When it happened again, I went to the OSU infirmary. An xray showed that I had a minor lung collapse. It was not serious, so the doctors just let it fix itself. The next time I was stationed at Fort Sill. It was more serious and I had to have surgery to insert tubes to suck out the air that was leaking out of my lungs until the leak healed itself. I was told that if it happened again, I would be given surgery to correct the problem. That's what happened at Brooke.

The surgery lasted four or five hours. I can vaguely remember getting a telephone call from Charolette and my Dad while I was in the recovery room. I started throwing up while Dad was on the phone. I spent about three days with two tubes coming out of my chest hooked to a machine to suck out the air that was leaking from my lungs. I spent about 10 days altogether in the hospital after my surgery. Then I was released on 30 days convalescent leave to go visit Charolette in Bartlesville. The Army bought me airline tickets. I flew from San Antonio to Austin to Dallas to Oklahoma City to Tulsa. I'm pretty sure I changed planes once, but I'm not sure where. I got served a Coke on every leg, which I thought was great. I was a real Coke fanatic back then.

At Brooke, I was in a surgery ward. It was a big room with about 25 beds, most of which were empty, but other patients came and went. I spent a lot of time before my operation with a sargeant who was waiting for throat surgery. We went together to the cafeteria to eat. We talked a lot. The night before my surgery, I read a whole book, M*A*S*H. I thought it was hilarous.

I came back to Brooke on January 1, 1970 (30 days after I left). I know I changed planes at Love Field which was the major Dallas airport back then. As we took off, I could look down and see the players on the field for the Cotton Bowl. That's the only bowl game I've ever seen in person.

I had to spend a few days at Brooke while the Army arranged for my next assignment. I rented a car and went to downtown San Antonio to see the Alamo and the zoo.

I got assigned to the U.S. Army Field Artillery Board at Fort Sill. I went back to Bartlesville to get Charolette and go to Fort Sill to look for a house to rent.

posted by Joe Hank # 10:41 PM 0 comments

Sunday, May 13, 2007

My Jobs At Phillips Petroleum Company

I got hired by Phillips on Thursday, July 21, 1977 to start work on Monday, July 25. I interviewed with Gary Blancett and others. Gary offered me the job as I was leaving the interviews. I was very surprised, and I took the job immediately. My only other prospect at the time was a programming job at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. It was not definite, but they were going to interview me.

I started work on July 25, sitting in the Adams Building. I was hired as a commercial programmer (primarily to do COBOL programs). The first thing Phillips did for new programmers was an eight to twelve week training program. Since the spring college graduates started in early May, they were mostly through training. There were just a few of us in different places in the schedule. Lowell Walters and I both started within a few days of each other and did all our training together.

Phillips is a company that keeps employees paid up-to-date. I got my first paycheck on July 29, to cover my first week of work. Phillips paid on the last workday before the 17th of the month (nominally the 16th) and the last workday of the month. Since July 30 & 31 were weekend days, I got my paycheck on Friday. This was great. Charolette and I left the kids with Mother and went out and bought me another suit. For the first 20+ years I worked for Phillips, I had to wear a coat and tie everyday to work. That was the main thing about my job I didn't like.

I finished the training program around the middle of September. I always did well at programming, so I did not have any problems with the training. I had been programming for the six previous years in Maryland, using FORTRAN. The training program at Phillips was run by Connie Benbrook at that time.

I was assigned to a programming unit (unit S4K) that maintained mostly accounting programs. I worked primarily on an account receivables system called AR2. My clients were in the Treasury Department and included Ron Hall and Charlie Driskell. Initially I had a supervisor named Rusty Elston who turned out to be a real jerk. His primary claim to fame was that he had married the daughter of a high manager in Exploration and Production. Rusty didn't like me and in December of 1977, he appointed a 23-year lady as the leader of the programming team I was on. Her name was Kathy Voss. She was nice enough, but she was a recent graduate of OU with limited experience. She spent most of her time getting ready for her upcoming wedding to a guy getting ready to graduate from dental school. A few years later, she got a job with Cities Service in Tulsa and left Phillips. Her husband was working in Tulsa. Anyway, I found my initial experience at Phillips to be less than good, and I was getting ready to prepare and send out my resumes when Rusty got an opportunity to take the job as the head of Information Technology for Phillips Uranium Company in Albuquerque. We were certain that his father-in-law got him the job. Phillips Uranium was shut down after a couple years. Rusty had gotten a divorce and left the company. Rusty left and Jerry Moore, my partner in the noon-time domino game at the Men's Club, became my supervisor. Jerry did away with the teams that Rusty had set up, and I reported to Jerry. Things were much better after that.

I continued maintaining AR2 which in addition to a lot of batch COBOL programs, had a major online system using an IBM product called CICS. Most of our customers entered their new data into the system using online mainframe terminals. In the spring of 1978, we moved into the IC Building (Information Center). I also got to be the lead programmer for a new system being developed, call the consolidated debt system or something similar. Ernie Berg, who I knew from Cordell Hall at OSU, was the project leader. I spent about nine months programming the system. It was somewhat simplistic, but the old method was primarily a paper and pencil system where payments and stuff were calculated manually. I guess I was doing a reasonably good job, because after one year with Phillips I was promoted to what was then called a grade 23 (August 1978). People fresh out of college were hired as grades 21. About half of the programmers I knew got as high as grade 24 and retired at that grade. In today's ConocoPhillips grading system, a grade 23 is now called a grade 13. Everything got renumbered after the merger. At the end of my second year (August 1979) I was promoted to grade 24 (now grade 14). In December 1979 I got the opportunity for a temporary assignment with the training group to train the 30 new college hires coming to work in January 1980. Connie Benbrook was over the training program, but Steve Huston ran the new hire part. Steve had been an computing professor at Emporia State College in Kansas, until Phillips hired him to do this. I worked on this assignment through March 1980. Just as the training was wrapping up, I got called in to speak to Bob Jones, Connie's manager. Bob asked me to take over the whole training department for commercial programming plus maintenance of several programming systems called Internal Systems (Connie's job). Connie was getting a new job. I took over the Training and Internal Systems unit which included a promotion to grade 25 effective May 1, 1980, only nine months after my last promotion.

H.J. Reed was assigned to Internal Systems. I also used him to do training. There were around 10 people altogether in the unit. We trained 30 more new college hires starting in May. I spent a lot of my time involved with the programmers and customers of the Internal Systems part of the unit. One system was the PMC (Project Management and Control) system which was the system where all programmers and analysts in commercial systems reporting their time each week. No one liked it, but time had to be tracked so customers could be billed. I seemed to do reasonably well. In May 1981, Phillips gave good raises under a short-lived program called Premier Employer. I got a 25% raise, which was exceptionally good.

I did this until about July 1981, when I was put in charge of the technical support staff who supported commercial programmers. I was also responsible for college recruiting of commercial programmers. Dave Walton was one of the people involved in technical support. So were Bob Rowe, Tina Gordon, Lee Unterreiner, and H.J. Reed (who came with me to this job). I had to lead an intensive one-week effort at the Shangr-La Resort on Grand Lake to write a lead programmer manual in August. My boss, Gary Blancett, seemed to be happy with what we did. By December 1981 I had finished writing up the job description for this job and it had been evaluated by HR and I was promoted to grade 26, with another raise. This turned out to be my last promotion until 1996. By 1985, Phillips began a series of lay-offs that eliminated two-thirds of the work force in Bartlesville over the next 12 years. Getting promotions was a little tough because there were so many surplus high-grade people around. I was reasonably satisfied to just have a job without a cut in pay. Some people I know got cuts in pay.

In March of 1982 there was the first of many reorganizations I experienced. H.J. and I were temporarily assigned to special duties. H.J. reported to me and I reported to Bob Jones. During this time, I accomplished what I consider one of the best things I ever got done for Phillips. I finally succeeded in convincing I.T. management that every programmer needed his own terminal on his own desk. Up until now, the terminals were in pools in common areas, and a programmer had to leave his desk and go there to use a terminal. H.J. and I made the case for individual terminals. We got management to sign off. We immediately led a project to acquire the terminals and get them installed on everyone's desk.

Around October 1982 I was made a Section Supervisor with four programming units reporting to me. Each unit had a supervisor and 3 to 10 programmers. About 35 people worked for me, including Ron Maxwell, Avis Snyder, Ron Denton, Priscilla Denton, and of course, H.J. Reed. I reported to Bob Jones. Around early 1985, Bob Jones was transferred to Data Processing Operations and Bob Benson replaced him.

In September 1985 I was transferred to Data Processing Operations work for Bob Jones. I led a project to develop a system to track online datasets which were growing by leaps and bounds and always overflowing the amount of disk storage which Phillips had. Disk Storage (usually called DASD for Direct Access Storage Device) was getting popular and replacing tape storage because a job needing data didn't have to wait while an operator retrieved and mounted the tape with the data. However, DASD was extremely expensive back then. Anyway, I led a project with three programmers (Kathy Brown, Teri Hughes, and Terry Earnheart) to develop the system. We finished it in June 1986. I believe that system was used until the early 2000's.

In the summer of 1986 I was put in charge of customer communications for all of Data Processing Operations, working for R.E. Crow. Two things came out of this. I produced, for two years, the annual booklet summarizing services and contacts for Operations, and I developed the slide show and tour of the entire computing center, to include the up-to-now super-secret basement of the IC building. We gave this tour about 100 times in the next year to over 1,200 Phillips employees. We were trying to improve the internal corporate image of Data Processing Operations.

In January 1988 I was appointed the dayshift supervisor for Operations. This included the tape library, the mainframe printer operations, production control (who ran thousands of batch jobs every night), and miscellaneous support operations. I had about 30 people reporting to me plus I had responsibility to coordinate with the other two shifts and to take the lead in setting policies and procedures for all three shifts. I was working for Bob Jones again. I did this job for almost three full years, the longest job I ever had for Phillips. The last year I worked for Max Moser as Bob Jones had been assigned to another job. One of the major accomplishments during this job was moving the tape library (over 100,000 tapes) and the tape drives and supporting equipment from the 2nd floor to the 3rd floor without stopping operations. This happened just after Gene Batchelder became Bob Jones boss while Bob while still my boss.

In September 1990, I was unexpectedly and, on short notice, moved to take over PC and terminal support, once again working for Bob Jones. This group support the thousands of leased mainframe terminals in Bartlesville and the hundreds of PCs in Bartlesville. We did hardware support. I had this job for about one year. Then in the fall of 1991, I was moved to take over the support for the wide area network. Nate Rider worked for me here. Shortly after I got this job, Phillips went through one of its most painful layoffs, which was called AVA (Activity Value Analysis). We had to document everything we did and why we did it. Other people evaluated whether it was needed or not. Five percent of the staff was laid off at the start of AVA and then another 10 to 15 percent were laid off when it was done. It was brutal. I spent two months documenting everything done in computer operations so that IBM could make a bid on outsourcing the whole thing. This was an especially scary time to be working in Operations when it looked like everything might be outsourced. Anyway, the bid IBM made, based on my document, turned out to be much more expensive than what it cost to run Operations, so we didn't do the outsourcing.

I spent a year or so in charge of the wide area network, which was the job I knew the least about of all the jobs I had at Phillips. I did manage to double the number of Cisco routers in the network while I was there because I was successful in getting a large capital budget and getting it spent before they froze spending again.

In the spring of 1993 I was put in charge of the Voice Unit, which handled telephones company wide in the United States. This is when I started travelling a lot. I made at least one business trip a month (and sometimes more) starting now for about the next 10 years. Warren King and Charlie Johnson worked for me. I got our group moved to the building on the corner of Frank Phillips and Park Avenue, next to Saddoris Textiles. That building is now owned by and occupied by Saddoris. At the time, the radio group under Bob Lummis was in half of the building. Gary Gompf worked for Bob. My group occupied the other half of the building. This was the only time in my career that I was not seated in one of the main downtown buildings.

In the spring of 1994 I was put in charge of the Help Desk and Command Center. The Help Desk was the main help desk for the United States. The Command Center kept the main computers up and running and monitored the worldwide network. The Command Center was staffed 24/7. I had six people to do that with. Working with Kay Sallee, I put together a proposal to increase the responsibilities of the help desk to actually solve more of the problems instead of just taking the customer calls and assigning the problems to other groups. The proposal was implemented after I moved on, and the help desk to this day is very robust.

In March of 1996, I was promoted again and became the Director of Data Processing Acquisitions (the head procurement guy for computer-related things). I moved to the Plaza Office Building. I was made a grade 31. (In the new ConocoPhillips grade scale, many of the Phillips grade 31's became grade 17's. A few of us, including me, were lucky enough to be made grade 18's, which received much larger bonuses than the grade 17's.) I had five procurement professionals working for me plus a support staff of four. We negotiated every major I.T. contract for Phillips. I personally did the negotiations for the SAP contract which at that time was the largest I.T. contract ever.

After two years running IT procurement, in 1998, I did a tour on a special procurement team renegotiating the worldwide corporate contract for PC procurement, valued at tens of millions of dollars back then. I also wound up working part-time on the Year 2000 project. By the end of 1998, Phillips was undergoing another layoff. I ended up full-time on the Year 2000 project. In mid-1999, I was again put in charge of Data Processing Acquisitions while retaining the lead of two of the five major subprojects of the Year 2000 project. Gene Batchelder had arrived as the new CIO and vice president of services, which included information technology services. One month before the end of 1999, while still retaining the lead of two of the Year 2000 subprojects, I was put in charge of Corporate Documents and Records Management. I got about 10 days notice of this change because it was going to happen while I was gone to Big Bend National Park on vacation. My job change was announced while I was gone. I was working for Marshall McGraw. My new people didn't get to meet me and talk to me for several days since I was out of town.

Fortunately the Year 2000 project wrapped up about 15 days into the year 2000. Our project had been very successful. One thing I did was run the Year 2000 Command Center for 24 hours while the year change went around the globe. I was also in charge of making sure contingency plans had been developed at every Phillips installation around the world. I was also in charge of making sure all Phillips organizations had contacted any third parties that were critical to their business to verify that the third parties were properly preparing for the Year 2000. We had to document that the contacts had taken place. All of this was a far cry from what I envisioned as a career when I got my math degree.

I spent two years in charge of Documents and Records Management. I had an office in the corner of the 11th floor of the Phillips Building. I had now worked in every major downtown building. I had a warehouse with over 100,000 boxes of stored records, not to mention a forklift and a big truck to move boxes with. I had an area with 20 contract employees that converted documents from paper to microfiche. I had an area with five Phillips employees and 15 contract employees that converted documents from paper to online documents. I had an area with five Phillips employees that produced all the many hundreds of boxes of copies of documents that we had to produce for lawsuits. I was over the library for the research center. I also had the staff that defined the policies for corporate records management. Counting contractors, about 60 people worked for me, including five supervisors who handled most of the day-to-day stuff. The first thing I had to do was to meet with Gene Batchelder and tell him that my area was going to go $500,000 over budget because my predecessor and my boss had made some bad assumptions about what could be done during the year. It was a scary start, but everything came out well.

In November 2001 I suddenly found myself back in computing. I was responsible for coordinating network projects around the world. I moved back to the Information Center. I spent a lot of time on the phone talking to people all over the world. I ended up going to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait City, Kuwait in January 2002. I really didn't like this job.

In May 2002, the proposed merger between Conoco and Phillips was gearing up. I was assigned to work for Brit Parker in the Program Management Office. The PMO would run all Information Technology projects required for the merger (about $200,000,000 worth). My job was to help coordinate the people available for the projects and to provide office space, office equipment, and housing for everyone temporarily located in Bartlesville. At first we were in the Plaza Office Building and then we moved to the Adams Building. I started my career in the Adams Building and I ended it in the Adams Building. At one point I had over 125 apartments being rented and was responsible for about 15% of the office space in downtown Bartlesville. Connie Lawrence worked for me. Some of the transient project people were also assigned to me, including Connie Benbrook and Marvin Neuschafer.

I had told my boss that I was very interested in taking advantage of the layoff plan in effect during the merger. In early June 2003, he was able to let me take advantage of it. I quit working about the 10th of June although I was on the payroll through August 2nd.

I will probably write more detail about some of my jobs. This was just a summary of the various ones I had in 26 years working for Phillips

posted by Joe Hank # 4:14 PM 0 comments

Sunday, May 06, 2007

444 1/2 South Lowell

Sometime after my parents divorced, Mother, Anne, and I lived in an apartment in Casper with an address of 444-1/2 South Lowell. Right across the street were several small log cabins that were rented as apartments. We met the people in one of the log cabins. We used to go over and play games with them (monopoly, etc.). I can remember our apartment complex had a small fenced, grassy playground area with a sandbox.

I was in the 5th grade, so this was 1954. Mother was soon going to be marrying Mel Chism. They were buying a house in a new addition in Casper, so Anne and I started our school year going to the school (McKinley) where we would go after we moved into the new house. That was a long ways from where we were living. We would go down to the corner about half a block from our apartment complex to catch a city bus. A radiator repair shop was on that corner. I would talk to the guys who worked there while we were waiting on the bus. Then we would catch the bus. I gave the driver one dime for each of us to ride. We would ride to near our school, get off the bus, and go to school. During lunch break, I would take Anne to a drug store in a strip mall near the school. The drug store had a lunch counter. We would order and eat lunch there. Then we went back to school. After school, we would walk about five blocks to the house of a friend of Mother's. I think her name was Margaret. She had a nice house with a large fenced yard (metal fence). We stayed there until Mother got off work and picked us up. Once while walking to Margaret's someone gave us a kitten. Later, when Mother and Mel picked us up, we had to go give back the kitten since Mel was allergic to cats.

When Mother got married to Mel, I can remember telling my teacher that I might not do so well at school since my Mother was getting married. I don't think I liked the idea of her doing that. My teacher was sympathetic. Her name was Mrs. Phelps. She was about my favorite teacher ever. I seemed to be a whiz in her class. I knew all the state capitals. I could work math problems on the board faster than everyone else. Mrs. Phelps had a lot of contests in class to see who would be the last person left (you were eliminated when you missed a question). I recall winning most of the time. I was also a crossing guard. I wore a white belt with a piece that came across my chest at an angle. I would man the street crossing at the school to assist the younger kids across the street. I think I was the teacher's pet.

Anyway, after Mother and Mel got married, we moved into the new house at 1547 Kearney Street in Casper. Anne and I would stay at home by ourselves in the morning until it was time to leave for school. Then we would walk what seemed like a long way to school. I just measured it on Google Maps and it is right at one mile. Mother and Mel picked us up and took us home for lunch. Then they dropped us back at school. After school, we walked home. I can remember listening to two radio shows while we were home for lunch. One was Paul Harvey News. The other was the Eddy Arnold Show. Eddy started by singing his theme song, Cattle Call. I really enjoyed both shows.

My best friend lived up the street. His name was Robert Stratton. During the summer after my 5th grade year, I got a dog named Shep for a pet. He was a German Shepherd mix, somewhat smaller than a German Shepherd. There were several other kids in the neighborhood that I played with, but I don't remember their names. I do remember that Shep and I roamed all over the neighborhood together.

One time Shep and another dog cornered a cat by some one's fence, a wooden fence at least five feet high. I went between the dogs and picked up the cat, holding it in one hand over my head. The dogs were jumping up on me to get the cat. The cat was scratching my arm. I threw the cat over the fence so the dogs couldn't get it. I wasn't too fond of cats after.

I tried to find the apartment complex when we visited Casper in 1982. It turned out to be in the middle of a four block square area that had been torn down and turned into a park and sports complex. McKinley had been a three story school. It appears to have been torn down and replaced by a one story school building.

My step-brother, David Chism, attended McKinley later. He had Mrs. Phelps. David told me that Mrs. Phelps still talked about me and how good a student I was. I guess I peaked in the fifth grade. I think David was about four years younger than me.

One of the worst experiences I can remember happened to me in the fifth grade while Anne and I were walking to school one day. The wind was blowing very strong. The next day, the newspaper said it had been blowing 60 miles per hour. Anne and I were struggling to move. I had my school notebook which had a collection of homework papers we were supposed to be saving. The wind blew it out of my hands and the papers flew off at 60 miles per hour. I never got any of them back. I was so devastated that I just took Anne back home. We didn't go to school that day. I can't remember how I explained it to Mother. I guess it wasn't too traumatic or I would have remembered it.

posted by Joe Hank # 7:40 PM 0 comments