October 16, 2003
Jeff Kain's birthday party
That evening, Debbie Schilling very kindly arranged for a special birthday party for Jeff Kain (her boss at Orchard Software and an all-around great guy).
Many developers came by throughout the evening to wish Jeff well on his special day, including Alexander Heintz, Rich Gay, John Steele, Steven Horst, Anthony Taylor, Kent Morris, Michael Giannini, Tom Bundy (Debbie's persistently bemuséd husband), Tom Dillon, Peter Hay, David Adams, Charles Albrecht, and Christian Cypert (among many others).
Clockwise from left: Tom Bundy, Debbie Schilling, Tom Dillon, Peter Hay, the Birthday Boy Jeff Kain (contemplating his nth beer), Yours Truly Bryan Green, David Adams, Charles Albrecht, Michael Giannini, Alexander Heintz, and Christian Cypert.
The party was held in the lobby of the El Dorado Hotel, and was liberally lubricated with enough alcohol to make what must have been a monstrous bar tab. Debbie kept the party going with several interesting gifts of a challenging nature for Jeff. The first was a book of trivia that served as a source of amusement the rest of the night. The questions had a wide range, and included such base items as "Name the husbands of Elizabeth Taylor" (which, oddly, Rich Gay knew quite well) and such arcane items as "Name the seven wonders of the ancient world" (which no one really knew). The geekiest trivia moment of the night came when Charles Albrecht and Yours Truly raced each other to see who could recite the phonetic alphabet the quickest — Yours Truly did win, and was gracious about it despite what Charles may say.
Another challenging gift for Jeff was the Fortune Teller Miracle Fish. This little device is supposed to tell you how romantically adept you are, and, judging from the reactions of those who tried it, it's fairly accurate — in a way that makes sense when you've had three or more drinks, anyway!
Debbie also gave party favors to the guests — starting with the Orchard Software Squishy Pear! The Squishy Pear is a marketing chachka meant to elicit thoughts of fruit, or at least really great Laboratory Information Systems.
The Orchard Software Squishy Pear in its vestigial state.
Now, to fully understand the impact of the Squishy Pear, one must simply contemplate its natural God-given shape: lovely pear-shaped simulated fruit flesh topped by a facsimile of a stem — and then realize that (to put it conservatively) it took all of 5 seconds before Tom Dillon and Peter Hay had transformed a set of Squishy Pears each into a more salacious example of blossoming and budding.
Tom Dillon and Peter Hay show their home-made Pear Blossoms
There were further experiments in anatomical synthesis using the Squishy Pears, but I choose to spare the reader from the photographic evidence — which does exist, and you never know at what moment's notice it may appear!
The evening took a better turn when Michael Giannini arranged for a special duet with the musician playing in the hotel lobby that evening. It turns out that Michael sang Happy Birthday quite nicely!
Michael Giannini sings a Happy Birthday duet with the local talent
Happy Birthday, Jeff!
Posted by bryan at October 16, 2003 11:35 PM