The Nerd Olympics

The Nerd Olympics
Last night we had a special event after work: The Propeller-Head Games! We got divided into six teams and we competed in three rounds of events. In the first, we had like five minutes to fashion an outfit for someone out of two rolls of toilet paper and ten paper clips. My team (mostly Asian engineering guys) and myself quickly set to work festooning Cheney with TP. I contributed two long braided TP pigtails, which he put to good use during the fashion show. In the second round, we had fifteen minutes to build a structure out of popsicle sticks, straws, and sticky tape. Points were awarded based on design and weight-bearing ability. They’d actually sent out the details of this one ten minutes before the games, so I had time to do some quick Googling. (And email the Snook, who responded: “TRUSS! Triangles, in general, equals good.”) My team immediately created a blueprint and set to building triangles and joining them together into side truss panels. Our resulting structure actually looked a fair bit like the Iron Cove Bridge. (Two of the other designs were decorative rather than structural, and the others were simply giant wads of tape and sticks.) Our bridge held up 4.5 reams of paper, which was more than anyone else’s. The third round involved writing and performing a song about the country. We went patriotic by changing the words to “Waltzing Matilda” and our performance featured the amazing Cheney as the text-messaging Swagman. The results were tallied… and we came in second! The funny thing is, that’s actually what we were aiming for! First prize was iTunes gift cards, but second prize was on-site massages next week. That’s gonna rock. I also won a $10 iTunes card courtesy of my team, who voted me “Most Enthusiastic.” (I think that means: “Biggest Nerd.”) A bunch of people took pictures, so I’m really hoping on Monday I can get a good one of our amazing bridge…