Ugly Shirt Day 2009

Our team has been working really hard lately on redesigning the Dave Ramsey site (which is going to look amazing!  keep an eye out!!!).  The other day, a few of us were discussing the new site when one of the guys complimented another on his choice of attire for the day.  The recipient of the adulation was our very own Jon Wolski.  He is the embodiment of retro chic and that particular day was sporting a fabulous Hawaiian button-up.

In a half-joking, half-serious manner it was suggested that we sponsor a Hawaiian shirt day in honor of those who are “encouraged” to do so regularly by corporate america to support “team spirit.”  The idea bloomed to wearing some silly shirt every Friday for the month of June.

Well, last Friday we had Ugly Shirt Day 2009!  Don’t we look awesome?  So with all this shirt ugliness going around we decided to vote for the worst.

Here are the results!

That cool dude posing in the front, Jim, WON with his “Dream” shirt and Kelly, off to the far right received Runner-Up with his amazing “Three Wolves” shirt.  For the prize Jim received an official “Ug Mug” and ugly bird figurine trophy!  Kelly won an ugly hat.  Congratulations boys for making ugly look easy!  I didn’t do too bad myself, ehhh?!

Cheers to all,

Katie

“An Untamed Spirit” (It’s on my classy Sturgis 2001 shirt)

Have a great week everybody!

P.S. Chris took these radical photos!  Way to go dude!

You know... just being ourselves!

Working without worry.

Well, sitting here working today, I have been challenged with many things running through my mind just like everyone does. Sometimes, it not always business… shhh don’t tell my boss, not like I would be fired, but you really can’t control human nature. We all think about non-work things while we are working. Sometimes these things vary from what’s for dinner, to what character to play on WOW tonight or what game to play with the kiddos. For some people it gets worse, how much am I going to pay the credit card company, how am I going to pay the electric bill or worse, THE RENT!

While I was thinking about the dinner part, I was happy to remember, I BUDGET! Since I came to work here three years ago I started budgeting every single month. I never did that before. Before, I was worrying about some of those other things, never about the rent but sometimes about the credit card. Now that I do a budget, I have the peace of mind that I never worry about money. Not just because of the incredible salary we get working here, but because I plan this every month, like clockwork. It was super hard the first five months, then after a year, it was easier, but I was still tweaking it every other month. Trying to figure out if my spreadsheet, a yellow pad, or the budgeting software on MyTotalMoneyMakeover.com works better for me.

Well now that I have that figured out, getting married really was easy on the ole’ budget. I even budgeted my wedding too! We took a rough cut at what we needed and perfected it as we grew. Budgeting the wedding is one way to make sure your soon-to-be spouse is on board with you financially. When she can’t have that extra thing, or you can’t have the cool new underwater camera because it won’t fit in the budget, well… you do what is most important. When it was time to bring the money together, that was easy too! Just reflecting today on how nice it is to not have to worry about money ever any time – that is a victory in and of itself.

DO YOU BUDGET?

Foam Ball Friday

Imagine this… The end of the workday is almost here. It’s Friday. You’ve had a lot of fun this week working on cutting-edge technologies… But at the same time you’ve been bouncing around between several different projects all week. First off, you had the urgent media event that you need to be ready for, you have half a dozen meetings about an up-and-coming revolutionary project that’s going to turn the way you’ve done things on it’s ear, and of course there’s always the few minor things you do to help your customers or help maintain existing code.

Are They Stress Balls... Or Future Projectiles?

 
Needless to say, you’ve had a great week, but you’re also ready for a weekend off. Then it starts. It begins as a trickle. Slowly it becomes more frequent, and the next thing you know you’re surrounded by flying foam stress balls.
 

Foam Ball Friday has been a web-team tradition for 3 years now. It started off as a promotion. We were giving out foam footballs at events with the slogan “Tackle Debt with MyTotalMoneyMakeover.com.” Then the promotion ended and we were left with the challenge of finding a use for the extra stress balls. It quickly became apparent that you could fling these at other team members without fear of hurting more than someone’s pride. It quickly became a tradition that the programming team has kept alive. It’s an awesome, lighthearted way to cap off a week of tough, dedicated work!

So, if you’re wandering through the office late on Friday afternoon, you’d be well advised to duck first, then grab a handful of stress balls and start throwing!

If you’re looking for a great place to buy a bunch of these things… we’ve used this company before.

Monkey T-Shirt

Why monkeys with lasers?

Monkey with Lasers?

So what’s with all the Monkey and Lasers?

Over the last 5 years our team has grown from 5 to 50 to support the web side of our business. Still, to keep up with the business, we have more and more roles we need to find new team members for. So at an offsite last year, one of our developers suggested we could solve all of our problems with an infinite number of monkeys. To really make an impact on the workload we had in front of us, not just any monkeys would do. So, inspired by Dr. Evil and his request for sharks with laser beams, it was suggested we should strap lasers to their heads.

Dr. Evil never got his sharks and of course we never got our monkeys, but it was a good laugh after a long day of architecting. The phrase stuck and eventually we put it into a sudo-theorem of sorts.

Monkey^∞ + Laser = w!©|<3d ©0d3

If you decide you like it to, you may want to get your hands on one of these.