the flying squirrel

Interesting day. I got no work done.

Well, maybe a little. I changed maybe two lines in my feature spec document. That's about it, though.

The story of my day starts yesterday. Actually, no, it starts before that. It starts with another story.

About a year ago, one of the guys on my team (his name is John; no relation) went out to a conference. Now John was working on a Mercury TestDirector integration at the time. He went to see the Mercury booth for laughs. He came back with an action figure. The action figure's name was Captain Mercury. He came in a box and everything, emblazoned with the slogan, "This Is No Time to Fly at Half Speed!" and offered a website you could visit for a free load test. This was all lots of fun. We started calling John Captain Mercury.

A month or so ago, another team member went to a different conference. John asked if he could bring back a couple more Captain Mercurys. Unfortunately, the lady at the booth told Adam that the campaign had been discontinued. "It wasn't professional enough."

"Oh, that's too bad," said Adam. "We've got a guy in the office who works with Test Director and he really liked it. We called him Captain Mercury and everything. I was kind of hoping we could get some more for other people in the office." Down-hearted, Adam was about to walk away.

"I'll tell you what," said the Mercury lady. "We've got thousands of the things just taking up space in a warehouse. It's costing us money to have them sit there. Here's my card. Send me an email and tell me how many you want, and I'll have them shipped to you. Any you don't use, you can just give to charity."

At hearing this, Adam was overjoyed, and a plan began to form itself in his mind.

When he got back, he told John that they'd discontinued Captain Mercury and they didn't have the action figures anymore. Sad news indeed, but quickly forgotten.

Last night, coming up on 6:00, I was still at work. Adam approached my desk and said, "I need your help."

"Whatever for?" I inquired.

"I have boxes of Captain Mercurys and I need help setting them up in John's cube."

"I'm in."

After some wings at Morty's, a quick stop at the dollar store for Captain Mercury-sized motorcycles, horses, giant beetles and prom dresses, a good hour of solid work, and 54 Captain Mercurys later, our masterpiece was completed.

John came into work this morning and was overjoyed, as were we all. A good day.

After that, we had our picture taken for an internal communication thing, went out for an early lunch at the Classic Indian buffet and had to sit through a good two to three hours of marathon meetings, and otherwise got nothing done. But it was good. Now everybody has a Captain Mercury.