The Planet Blog

Since Halloween falls on a Saturday this year, The Planet’s annual Boo Bash is happening today. As you can see from our archives, there are a lot of creative people around here, and when a costume contest challenge is issued, you’re bound to get some interesting results. I’ve already seen a fully costumed Ghostbuster, a bumble bee, and about 45 people – including our CEO and CFO – dressed as Todd Mitchell. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so Todd must feel VERY flattered.

We will post our costumed competitors on The Planet Flickr for all to see, and you can post a comment here to vote for your favorites. Click the picture of “Todd” below to go directly to the Boo Bash 2009 album.

To let you share in today’s costuming, we’ve got a present for you. As a part of our fundraising efforts to support the American Heart Association, we printed shirts for employees who donate. The shirt design has been so popular internally that I made it into a few wallpapers that you can use:

Versions Available:
Dual-Monitor Setup (2560 x 1024)
Single Monitor – Server Only (1280 x 1024)
Single Monitor – “You Got Served” Only (1280 x 1024)

After you get your desktop suited up in its new costume, remember to vote for your favorite Boo Bash 2009 entrant in the comment section below.

Trick or Treat!

-Kevin

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.

Sometimes inspiration can come from the strangest of places. Thoreau found his muse on Walden Pond in Concord, MA. Rosa Parks helped spark the civil rights movement on a crowded bus in Montgomery, AL. The catalyst for this post was far more ordinary: the vending machine area in our Houston headquarters.

We wanted to host a series of interviews on the blog to let you meet some of the people behind the scenes here at The Planet, but we needed a hook … A subject that was both intriguing enough to capture interest and fun enough to make the series worth watching. Our first interviewee, Todd Mitchell, came up with the idea of “This Month in Vending” after I adventurously chose a florescent-colored Blue Cream Soda from our vending machines and subsequently shared the product’s ridiculousness with all of my coworkers. Upon further investigation, we found several questionable products that were begging for taste-tests. So, we plunked down some coin for a package of Riblets, and the rest is history:

-Kevin

The YouTube link: This Week in Vending: Todd Mitchell