Whiteboard Jungle: The Offer

Last week at work, I masqueraded as an event planner, making arrangements for the local presence of the corporate hacking event. Dammit, Jim, I'm an engineer, not an event planner! And, because I had misread the on-call calendar, I was also on-call. Oh, and my damn work Mac didn't shut down gracefully one night, so when I got a page at 7AM the next morning, it refused to configure the network properly because something had gotten corrupted, so I couldn't use the VPN system and had to get it reimaged. Oh, and I forgot my RSA token the next night. I was also pretty sleep deprived by the end of the week, and generally less warm'n'fuzzy than normal. Yeah, who would have thought that possible?

Saturday, I sent this email to my group:

In appreciation of putting up with me in the chaos of event prep stuff, I am making the following offer: I will make each of you a Star Trek finger puppet of your choice. Please note the following:

1. You can choose any character from Star Trek (The Original Series only). If you ask for Jean-Luc Picard, I will take that as an opt-out. If you ask for the Zoe Saldana version of Uhura, I will take that as an opt-out. If you ask for Princess Leia in the metal bikini, I will pretend you don't even exist. (The anonymous Red Shirt is a valid option.) If you're not sure if it's a ST:TOS valid character, check imdb.com or ask someone you trust with your shameful secret.

2. You will get your finger puppet when you get it. Unless [my manager] is going to give me a week where my only Sprint task is knitting them, they'll have to jostle for time along with everything else. Asking if your puppet is done yet will get it moved to the bottom of the list. Asking more than once will be considered, you guessed it, an opt-out.

Request #2: Geordi LaForge. face->palm