Saturday, September 19, 2009

Once in a Career Opportunity

Ok, so it's not as momentous as it sounds, but my company is now implementing new badges for all of its employees. Along with these badges are new pictures too. So, who cares?

Well, if you look at the badges of employees who have been there for 5, 10, 15, 20+ years, in every case you will see a picture of them that was taken on their first day of employment. Even through previous badge transitions, the same original picture was used. It's usually humorous to see them too, way back in the day of a full head of hair, a mustache, or with 75 lbs less weight on their frame.

Because of that, it seems likely that this opportunity will only present itself just one time in the entire time that I work there. So the question that I am trying to answer is this - what do I want that picture to look like? The one I currently have is mostly normal - I had a goatee, a standard short length haircut, and a smile. I'm mostly photogenic (except for last year's family pictures), so it looks decent.

Current picture.

But a couple of fellow co-workers gave me the idea of making this new one silly and memorable. I already did it with my drivers license picture (a crooked semi-smile and one eyebrow raised), so why not now?

One argument is that since others will have access to this picture on the work online directory then they could see the picture and get a crummy first impression of me before I even start on a new project. But that's pretty unlikely, and I would think meeting the real me would erase any damage a silly picture would do.

Any ideas for poses, hair dos, etc? One requirement is that we are not allowed to smile.

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Gentlemen Bandits

I was working on my car late last Thursday night with the intention of driving it to work on Friday morning. I ended up staying up until 2:30am to get it road worthy. But road worthy it is once again.

At about midnight though, I heard some strange scraping noises coming from the open door to the side yard. I thought maybe it was my neighbors, but why would they be awake and outside that late though, especially since they're elderly? I stepped out to looked, but didn't see anything so I went back to work.

A few minutes later the scraping sounds were actually on the wall of our house -what the heck?! I stepped out of the door to see several shadowy shapes moving along our fence. It was dark and hard to see, but I could just barely tell that they were multiple raccoons.

They stayed there just long enough to pose for this picture, then scurried away.

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