Mostly Harmless

Now that the company IT picnic _and_ highlight video are done deals I may lift the veil of secrecy.

<insert sound of secrecy veil lifting here>

A few weeks ago our department got tapped to help out with the IT picnic. Thinking quickly, our esteemed leader, who, coincidentally, reads this weblog, signed us up for the easy stuff — meaning name tags and photos. But somehow we got roped into coming up with some events to let five IT executives compete against one another, and, if at all possible, embarrass themselves.

We kept the executives in the dark (skipping easy joke here…) and let them worry about what might happen to them for a couple of weeks. They were plenty concerned, believe you me, but the events weren’t too terribly degrading (for fear of our lives).

We had a batch of IT themed events planned out but an unsavory (non-geek) element had its say and polluted the mix. In the end we had seven events, a freakin heptathalon!

There were three races: “wacky” foot race, tiny (kids) bike race, and the ever popular(?) pushing a tennis ball with your nose race; three “throwing things” events: CD-ROM toss, hard drive shot put and PC hammer throw; and, erm, “Pin the Tie on Dilbert.”

I turns out that at least two of those events are not spectator sports. Something to consider for your own IT Picnic & Executive Olympics. Also keep in mind that simple is better; the shot put and hammer throw were very easy to stage (”Here, throw this as far as you can.”) More importantly, they look great when you run them backwards in slow motion in sync with “Also Sprach Zarathustra.” There is _nothing_ funnier than watching a hard drive tumbling across the grass (in slow motion, in time with the music) and then leaping into the air to be caught perfectly right when the big note hits! (We actually had four of these back to back in sync with “Also Sprach …” and it is so freakin cool that you’ll laugh til you cry.)

Unfortunately I can’t post the video here because I would get lynched by the VPs, and the smallest file size, with acceptable quality, is about 30 megs — that’s with that newfangled MPEG-4.

I edited the video with iMovie in a couple of afternoons, starting with no experience with iMovie and no manual. iMovie doesn’t even have a manual, as far as I know. iMovie is cool, and free. (FinalCut Pro is $1000 cooler, I assume.)

In the five minute video I managed to use bits of: two Rocky themes, “Gonna Fly Now” and “Eye of the Tiger” (which was _actually_ Weird Al’s “Theme from Rocky XIII”); “Ride of the Valkyries”; Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” (that clip I may get punched for… not all the Veeps have seen it yet); the “Chariots of Fire” title theme; “Also Sprach Zarathustra”; and Eric Idle’s “Always Look on the Bright Side.”

The video has gone over big with everyone who’s seen it so far, but that doesn’t include four of the five VPs. They will see it tomorrow; at that time we will find out if they have a sense of humor and/or a vindictive streak.
Last year there was a dunk tank (where I ruled!) but nary a good picture of any of the actual “dunks.” This year we were in charge of photography and we provided a few dozen nice pictures (cropped with iPhoto), and a highlight video set to music; we kicked the collective asses of whoever was doing photos last year, which is just further proof that we’re the best IT department — not that we need more proof.