Q3'04 MPV Quarterly

There's a tradition at Intel of once each quarter taking the team somewhere outside of work and (spending as little money as possible) having some kind of team-building event.

On this occasion we rented a pavilion at Rood Bridge Park. It was an unusually large group, and also unusual in that the event was held in the middle of the quarter instead of at the end (or, sadly, into the next quarter.) There was food and fun and the place was teeming with validation engineers. And since I have a first-hand appreciation for how bizarre we are, and some culpability for exacerbating such things, I brought a camera.

The good thing about having the camera is being the person taking embarrassing pictures, instead of the person in the embarrassing pictures. Let's begin.

Loren and Sarah

Obviously, they weren't prepared for this picture. Loren hadn't finished getting his smile on yet, and Sarah was chewing. I love you guys, I know you'd never do anything to hurt me.

Emma

Here's Emma (yes, that one) talking to someone instead of watching out for the guy taking pictures. Always watch out for the guy taking pictures, or you'll end up on the Internet.

Some part of me is convinced that by leveraging my mischief for didactic purposes, it's justified. That works, right?

Paul

Paul had the right idea, but he overdid it a little — by being determined to watch me, he left an eye exposed to the camera. A comedic picture is the all-too-predictable result. Lovely smile, Paul!

Zubin

Zubin alone knew the proper response to my provocation. Escalation!

Now I'm on video, almost certainly doing something embarrassing, ruining my changes of ever attaining political office. Thank you, Zubin.

Jennifer

Oh la la, mon cherie! <indistinct muttering in French…>

Jennifer hates getting her picture taken. I got lots of blurry ones of her running away and hiding before she accepted the inevitable and submitted to modeling for me.

She doesn't think she's photogenic. She is. I know it. You know it. But she doesn't. It's easy to tell a pretty girl that she's pretty — but getting her to believe it is a Sisyphean task.

(Why didn't I post an embarrassing picture instead of that lovely one? Because she asked me not to. I deleted those. Why? Because she asked me to. Am I easy to manipulate or what?)

Zubin the Goalie

Many people played soccer. Due to the distance and speed of the action I wasn't able to get many good pictures. I captured one nice video, but it's too large to post.

There were lots of other things to do, too — frisbee, volleyball, walking around the park, eating, and poker.

Poker was my fault. The weather forecast indicated rain, so I brought poker stuff in case we were all stuck under the pavilion. It didn't more than sprinkle, but we played poker anyway. We played Hold 'Em and I had the best luck in my hole cards that I've ever had. I had pocket aces, kings, and queens that afternoon. We didn't play nearly enough hands for me to expect to see all three.

It didn't rain, but it was windy, and we had a little trouble with cards and felt blowing around. But that wasn't the worst of it:

Jennifer blowing in A Mighty Wind

Powerful wind, isn't it?

(Siva in the background is reaching for a volleyball, I think.)

As the afternoon went on, Jennifer got a lot less reluctant about having her picture taken. She even picked a fight with Paul (poor Paul!) as an excuse for being in a picture:

Jennifer kicking Paul

Paul! She's unarmed! Use your water bottle as a weapon! …or you could do … whatever that is that you're doing. Which doesn't look so effective.

Way to go Paul, you're an inspiration to us all.

Jennifer's attitude changed because she ate too many brownies and was on a sugar high. I never learned who brought the brownies, but whoever it was, I am in your debt.

Oh, yes, I should mention the food. There was food. Lots of people brought supplies. Jennifer brought whipped cream. Way, way too much — we had 4 unopened containers left at the end. She said something about covering me with the extra, which was either a joke or I'm the dumbest man on the face of the earth.

… hmm, I should follow up on that. Given the tradeoff, that's a title I could live with.