Apparently, a few folks here at The Planet have a knack for photography. On Monday, we asked everyone to send in their favorite photos from our dragon boat race last weekend. We assumed a few people would pass along a few snapshots from the event and we could quickly and easily organize the pictures on one blog page …

However, the floodgates opened and immediately, we were up to our ears in JPEGs — over 300 of them. The “problem” we ran into was that all of the pictures were phenomenal. We wanted to include them all, but entering 300 lines of HTML didn’t seem like much fun — especially when the lines of code look like this:

<a href=”Dragon Boat Large Picture URL”><img class=”centered” src=”Dragon Boat Small Picture URL” alt=”Picture Title”/></a>

With the help of a useful Wordpress plugin, we linked the blog to a newly created Flickr account, and we’ve been playing with the newfound functionality ever since. You’ll notice the new photostream widget in our sidebar, and you can click on any of our photos to see other pictures from our Flickr pool in a gallery layout or in a slideshow.

If you’re a Flickr user, come join our group and contribute your favorite pictures: www.flickr.com/groups/theplanet! I’m still getting pictures from last weekend and sifting through them, so keep an eye on our photostream for updates: The Planet’s Flickr

Check out the Dragon Boat Race photo set:

You’ve seen a few glimpses of our company culture in recent blog posts, so it’s only fitting that you hear about a little boating competition last weekend, care of the Texas Dragon Boat Association.

Our CFO Kevin Klausmeyer threw down the gauntlet a couple months ago in a team-wide email: “Let’s pit the managers against the rest of the company, and see who wins in a 250-meter dragon boat race down Buffalo Bayou.” Most of the folks around the office had never heard of dragon boating prior to Kevin’s email, but as soon as the inter-office challenge was put on the table, everyone made a point to find any relevant YouTube videos and Wikipedia articles and start training for what was sure to be an epic showdown.

The Texas Dragon Boat Association’s May Festival course accommodates three 22-person dragon boats at a time — each dragon boat having one “drummer,” twenty paddlers and one steersperson. Each team races at least three times and needs a minimum of 8 females and 8 males in the boat for each race.

Before you write off the athleticism of the event and start humming “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” you should note that these dragon boats can range from 30 to 100 feet long and only a few feet wide (just enough for one paddler on each side), each race is less than two minutes, and it’s a full-body workout. Teamwork and technique are the two most important components in a dragon boat race, so each of our teams had several practices to get everyone on the same page.

The managers chose to race under the name “The Planet Big Dogs,” so it was only fitting that the non-managers entered the competition as “The Planet Underdogs.” The other teams in the event couldn’t help but fear us as they read our team’s description in the program:

The Planet is widely regarded as an industry-leading IT Infrastructure provider. With multiple data centers, an incredible network and stellar support, we provide small- and medium-sized businesses with customized hosting solutions to fit their needs. We also harbor a secret: The Planet’s recent move to the Bayou Place in downtown Houston was not as innocent as it seemed … it was a strategic move to attract the former Olympians currently slated to paddle for us in the dragon boat races. Following a recent trip to the Yangtze River in China where we practiced our craft on the backs of real dragons, The Planet’s teams have consistently averaged 63 mph in nightly training races at a secret underground facility. In the interest of sportsmanship (and because we hate making our opponents cry), we will disguise our teams as a couple of rag-tag groups of first-time dragon boaters for this event. Autographs, training tips and a dragon boat DVD/Blu-Ray lecture series will be available to the losing teams at a nominal fee following the event.

Saturday rolled around, and everyone showed up to our luau-themed tent in their team shirts, and it was finally time to back up all the inter-office smack talk. Immediately prior to the race, the Underdogs were confident, the Big Dogs were creative: Doug came over to let us know “The winning team is accepting a 10% decrease in salary,” and the rest of the managers were quick to remind us that our yearly performance reviews were coming up soon.

Undaunted, the Underdogs took to the boat, and we made our way to the starting line. Apparently, the pride of the victory wasn’t going to be reward enough, so a last-minute wager was placed: the losing team has to buy and serve lunch to the winning team. The race was on: a team from Cafe Express in boat #4, the Underdogs in boat #5, and the Big Dogs in boat #6.

Always bet on the Underdogs.

The Big Dogs were very gracious in defeat, and we had a great time cheering for each other in rest of the day’s races.

In addition to the awards given to the fastest boats of the day, the TDBA gave a special “Spirit of the Dragon” award to the team that showed the most energy, involvement, and excitement. I’ll save you the suspense:

We won!

We had more than 100 participants, family, friends and cheerleaders throughout the day, so we’ve got a LOT of pictures from the event. I’ll be posting them on a dedicated “Dragon Boat Pictures” blog page so you can retroactively participate vicariously.

-Kevin

Your favorite Web Hosting Evangelist and I just returned from a week in San Francisco at the ad:tech 2008 trade show. We returned older, wiser, and I for one learned many truths:

1. The estimated time for set-up and take-down of one’s booth is always two hours longer than your worst-case scenario
2. Booth babes, whether “babey” or not, major traffic at one’s booth and guarantee drool from sales guys
3. It’s probably in my best interest not to go along with any of Hazard’s ideas … and then let him film it

In what could probably be considered a lapse of judgment (I blame the delirium that settled in on the second day of the show), I actually let Hazard convince me to anchor a mock “World News from The Planet” show from our booth. The idea sounded innocently fun at 9:30 in the morning, before I had my coffee.

I put on my best “serious journalist” face (required: squinty eyes and permanent look of concern) and attempted to imbue the most banal statement with great importance (a combo of long pauses and squinty eyes here do the trick).

Check it out for yourself below as I give an “insightful” report on what you should look for in a data center, with a special bonus interview with The Planet’s Jeff Reinis. Meanwhile, I’ll be huddled in my cube, cringing from embarrassment … while Kevin cackles with evil glee on the other side of the partition.

Bayou Place, that is. Home of The Planet’s corporate headquarters.

Warning: This blog will contain strange language that those outside of Louisiana might not understand. I’ll provide definitions and maybe someday I’ll do a video blog so you can hear how these words should be pronounced. If you know what a Cajun accent sounds like, you should read this blog in that voice. Cuz Sha, it sounds a whole lot betta dat way.

Being a native of Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, (or a “transplant” as we so often get called) I love me some crawfish. In fact, I’m pretty sure it was one of the first grown-up foods that I ever ate as a child. I can still remember my momma peeling a bunch of tails for me at family crawfish boils. She’d make a little sandwich with some dip made with ketchup, mayonnaise and Tabasco sauce. Yes, Tabasco. I was probably around 2 or 3 years old. I don’t ever remember not eating them.

You see, Breaux Bridge happens to be the crawfish capital of the world and my family raises them. It’s my heritage and in my blood. So imagine my glee when I was asked to create an invite and flyer to pass around the office for the crawfish boil we were having. I did a little dance to Wayne Toups in my head.

So we sat out on the patio downstairs grubbin’ on crawfish on a breezy spring afternoon in downtown Houston. For those of you who have never had them, you are seriously missing out. They are boiled with spicy seasoning and usually have potatoes, corn and sausage thrown in. They are messy little suckers so don’t wear your Sunday best while eating them. You’ll probably even need a bib and lot of wet naps. It takes some patience and work to fully enjoy crawfish. It’s an art, really. Best consumed with an icy cold beer, but we were at work so we had to make do with iced tea and lemonade. I could go into the graphic detail of eating them (sucking the heads and all that) but maybe I’ll save that for an instructional video the next time we have one.

See? Messy.

We mixed and mingled, and everyone enjoyed themselves. I’m sure we were a sight as the cars drove by; a bunch of people eating crawfish on the sidewalk/patio outside of a downtown office building at lunch. I can’t imagine the myriad of banks, accounting firms and oil companies that surround us doing the same thing. But this is The Planet and that’s how we roll.

Some folks here aren’t really crawfish kind of people. (I don’t really understand that but I pretend to.) So we had hotdogs and Frito pie for those who weren’t, along with chocolate cake and carrot cake for desert. To really add to the atmosphere, we ate to the sounds of Zydeco music. We almost had a fais do-do going on here. I wanted to get my Cajun two-step on, but I didn’t have a dance partner. Maybe next time I’ll teach someone in advance.

Also, as a bit of lagniappe, CEO Doug Erwin announced the beginning of Hawaiian shirt weather. We had a few people eager to participate.

A beautiful day, good people and good food. What a fantastic way to kick off spring. As we say in Louisiana, laissez les bons temps rouler (let the good times roll)!

-Ali

April 1^st can be a crazy time around any office. The street smart crowd knows to be wary of “Free Donut” signs; thinks twice before borrowing a pen from a coworker; and answers every phone call with a veil of disbelief. It’s a conspiracy: everyone else on the planet is entitled to be crazy for the day.

Apparently, someone noticed the fear of impending doom in the eyes of a group of coworkers and decided to help them prepare for April Fools’ Day by providing an age-old tool from a conspiracy theorist’s toolbox … The tin foil hat. Apparently, the pranksters helpers ran into a problem: they didn’t have hat sizes for everyone. All hope was not lost, though. A communal hat was created over eight full cubes (with a perimeter of about 125′) to protect the inhabitants from the crazy lurking outside.

Todd and I have been accused of pranking helping from the moment we walked into the office this morning.

For good reason:

P.S. Irene has yet to retroactively grant her permission to us.

And boy do we know how to throw a party! Well, at least our customers do. New Year’s Eve Nation, a new startup company out of New York, plans for one event 364 days out of the year: a national New Year’s Eve party spanning four time zones and eight cities. That’s one hell of a party.

Ex Spin City producer-turned-entrepreneur Jann Yogman has been throwing New Year’s Eve bashes in Manhattan since 1997 and is the genius behind the event. Last year, he decided to go national with his soirée and did just that using live feeds via the internet. Yogman connected five cities and allowed party goers to interact with each other via text messaging and video — all of which is broadcast on plasma screens at each location.

Last year, there were five cities. This year, it was bumped to eight, including New York, Los Angeles, Denver, Dallas, Seattle, Philadelphia, Boston and Detroit. 8,000 people attended the party billed as “8 Cities. 4 Timezones. 1 Outrageous Party.”

So what hosting company with world-class datacenters and the most reliable network powered the event?

That’s right.

Not only did this party welcome in 2008 with a serious bang, it also gives back by donating 10% of the net profits to Micheal J. Fox’s Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.

You can read more about the event and the goals for the future on CNN.com or the New Year’s Eve Nation website.

Happy New Year, Y’all!

-Ali

Folgers says “The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup.” I say it’s Starbucks.

Five minutes after I walked into the office today, my phone was ringing (not usually a good thing).

ME: Hello, this is Ali.
KH: Hey, it’s Kevin.
ME: Hi.
KH: I’m at Starbucks. Would you and Katie like something?
ME: YEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

Not only did Kevin bring us Starbucks, he got our ridiculous orders right (Grande Nonfat Sugar-Free Cinnamon Dolce Latte and Venti Non-fat Latte with 5 Splendas), he put tape on the top so they wouldn’t spill. AND he didn’t just buy for us; he bought for other people, too.

Kevin, you win at Starbucks and for that, we thank you. Rock on!

It’s gonna’ be a good day.