Subject: status
vasant -
i hope you had a wonderful vacation back home , and are rested and recovered
from the long flight back .
i wanted to give you an update of the eol project , the gas model , and of my
intentions here at enron .
software ( in compiled c on the unix platform ) has been developed and debugged
to listen to the eol trades , process them , book them , and file them away . in
addition , software has been developed and debugged to mark these to market on
a continual basis , and to store the entirety of open positions on eol in a
dynamic matrix facilitating analysis . it has yet to get back with me on how
the software can be informed of those trades ultimately rejected for credit
purposes .
these data files are stored in a format for reading by excel or by sas , for
which i have written the data step program and basic tabulation routines
elucidating the structure of the data .
i am in the process of documenting all of this for you .
with regards the gas model and its slow performance on the compaq , dell has
agreed to loan me one of their competing machines to the compaq , to see if
the performance issue of the lp is related to the compaq . i have been
researching this issue with it here and with compaq and dell . the new machine
will be here any day now ( no financial obligation to anyone ) , and i will be
able to immediately ascertain whether the problem the model is having is
compaq - specific .
i am also in the process of documenting the gas model for you .
i ' ve tried to do my best for you , vasant , but i have been frustrated by not
only the death of my mother but some internal systems in it here . just the
other day , sas could not open a full query of the eol database because there
wasn ' t enough free space on the server ' s hard drive for the workfiles . in
discussing some of these issues with some good friends of mine in power
trading , people whom i have known for over 10 years , they indicated they were
ubiquitous here . the power traders have similar pc ' s to my new one , and they
have complained from day 1 that theirs are slower than their old ones . also ,
there remains a large frustration with the development of data warehouses ;
during my brief tenure here it has gone through two differing proposals as to
how to address this . when i have been told of tools available for real - time
data harvesting , my requests for such have typically been met with " well , we
have it , but we haven ' t really tested it yet . " an example is the weather : we
still do not record to disk the hourly nws observations from the goes
satellite .
my interests here are to help enron to do well , because i will do well only
if enron does well . these aren ' t empty words - my ira is 100 % invested in the
enron stock fund . i believe my best contributions to enron will be in the
areas of systems as well as modeling , and the difficulty working in the
research group , in terms of systems development , is that , frankly , few people
at enron seem to care what a researcher thinks about our systems . we aren ' t
directly generating revenues for enron , and we aren ' t really their customers ,
except in our relatively small deparrtmental infrastructure expenses .
as it happens , power trading posted an opening for a modeling and forecasting
person , and i spoke with them and they asked me to take the job , reporting to
george hopley . it is a wonderful opportunity for me , vasant , as they are
interested in large system modelng of power grids as well as improving their
traders ' access to real - time fundamentals data . i was completely candid with
kevin presto regarding my shortcomings here in research - i told him you were
disgusted with me because i repeatedly failed to meet time deadlines . they
also understand i have yet to be at enron for 1 year , and thus may only bid
on a job with your permission . we agree the move is good for enron ; we all
work for enron , and your acquiescence to the move does not endorse it but
merely permit it . they are comfortable with me - they have known me for years
as a hard worker , honest and unpretensive . they have already ordered a
state - of - the - art unix workstation and server for me , and they have told me
they will commit whatever resources are necessary for me to be successful ,
including hiring an analyst to work for me . and , i have already been able to
teach their analysts improved techniques for data harvesting and analysis i
have learned here .
so , i am requesting your permission to bid for this job opening . it would be
a lateral move in position and salary , and i would commit to you to help you
in any way possible in the future with regards the gas model or the eol
database . i will continue to work on their improvement , and complete their
documentation .
as it happens , i am away on enron business in portland monday and tuesday ,
and will be back wednesday . i had wanted to talk face - to - face instead of by
email , but enron business supercedes - i am on a team designing the data
warehouse for floor trader support .
clayton .