I decided to again take on a co-worker in a head-to-head eating contest (here’s the first, if you missed it). The playing field this time was breadsticks, and, well, just watch the video:

I got taken to school. Next time it’s slow-and-steady… maybe that’ll help.

Shannon and I had fun goofing around the Colt’s practice football field the other night:

You can see a picture of both of us here.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you “Gluttonfest 2008: Meatball Subs”.

Two co-workers compete to see who can eat a foot-long meatball sub the fastest. Five dollars and their pride are on the line. Who will win… the frantic chomping newcomer or the cool and collected veteran?

Whoever wins I know one thing for certain: my wife is so proud of me right now.

A co-worker and I decided to see who could eat a meatball sub the fastest. There is a video of the entire competition that I will post tonight, but for now you can see the intense quiet before the eating storm:

I hosted a poker night with some work buddies a few days ago and forgot to post pictures (holi-daze).

We played a Texas Hold-Em tournament with a $10 buy-in with a winner-take-all pot (we also gave $5 to the first player out for the half-ass effort). To make sure play did not continue for too long we doubled the blinds every 30-45 minutes. I think a good time was had by all.

This past Saturday my company held an annual event called “Casino Night” where they feed us, give out awards, and then let us gamble the night away. Everyone starts with $3,000 in funny money and, at the end of the night, we buy raffle tickets for real prizes. They hire professional dealers and bring in real casino tables to enhance the experience.

The prizes they raffle off are usually quite nice - this year the grand prize was a trip for 2 to Vegas with $400 in spending money. Other prizes included a Nintendo Wii, Colts ticket packets, and hundreds of dollars in gift certificates.

I snapped the picture in this post using my phone because our dealer deserves some serious props - she kept “accidentally” showing us the next card in Blackjack and had us in stitches throughout the evening. Unfortunately, despite her best efforts to win us lots of money, we didn’t end up winning anything in the raffle. Oh well… there is always next year!

For Halloween I put on a large blue sheet with cotton balls attached in various places. I also carried around a spray bottle. My costume was called “Partly Cloudy with a Chance of Showers.” Vincent also wore a costume to work - he was Mumm-ra the Ever-Living (from Thundercats)!

We looked pretty freakin’ sweet:

Vincent is pretty damn cool (in a geeky way), especially when it comes to costumes. He always makes his own, sewing most of the complicated outfits by hand. I’ve decided to share a collection of his costumes from over the years - MegaMan and Syndrome (from The Incredibles) are my favorites:

Legend has it that one lucky Thursday, several months ago, a few geeks arrived at work wearing red shirts. Recognizing the significance of the coincidence they declared that Thursday would forever be declared “red shirt day”… or, if not forever, then at least until we could convince everyone to participate.

Today I present to you our progress so far: 7.5 happy employees celebrating Red Shirt Thursday (Dave’s shirt, while technically reddish, only counts as 1/2).

One of these people is my co-worker: guess which one

I work in a technical industry, so it’s natural that most of my co-workers are geeks. And I’m not talking about your run-of-the-mill technology geeks, who you might find ogling the latest plasma television or talking endlessly about car engines. These are REAL geeks.

Let me be very clear here: when I say “geek” I mean it in the most flattering sense of the word. Because secretly I am a geek too.

I have a great deal of respect and admiration toward someone who can follow their passions, convention or popular opinion be damned. This picture was taken at a convention, where I’m sure he had a blast hanging out with a few thousand people just like him.

I must admit: I am a little bit sorry that I missed all the geek-i-ness.

I work on a computer for a living: in my current position I code Java, JavaScript, and SQL. The codebase in this project is very large, so many different groups across several different companies are constantly modifying something.

Usually the incoming code we see from these other coders is ok. But occasionally we see some astounding bad code that deserves to be put on a wall of shame.

I give you Exhibit A, a nice little snippet of JavaScript stupidity:
if ((document.Form1.theField.value == " ") ||
(document.Form1.theField.value == " ") ||
(document.Form1.theField.value == " ") ||
(document.Form1.theField.value == " ") ||
(document.Form1.theField.value == " ") ||
(document.Form1.theField.value == " ") ||
(document.Form1.theField.value == " ") ||
(document.Form1.theField.value == " ") ||
.... (continues for 30 more lines!)


Yikes! I sometimes make small mistakes or typos, but this… this is insane.

It’s more than incompetent: the programmer should have their keyboard access permanently revoked. I wouldn’t trust this person to write an e-mail without accidentally formating their hard drive.

Oh, and if you’re wondering, the picture in this post is Bill Gates posing for a teenie magazine spread (back in the day).