When I came out of Dish Dash after failing to find the group, Harout was there at the door waiting for me. Nice kid, most handsome and with a cheerful personality. He's just transferred to DTS, and who knows, perhaps someday he'd get to take over my messy code and drive DTS to web 3. He loves to script (Mr Scriptor) and will go somewhere in life. It was always pleasant to run into him.
It was another jolt of energy to see the gang again, all sitting around the long table. And then the gifts started coming. Don brought each a box of See's Candies for Lisa and me. We kidnapped his CatBert (hm, now that Lisa cleaned up her desk, where the heck did she hide CatBert?) and demanded chocolate for his safe return. And Don delivered but I'm not so sure now he would get CatBert back! Then we each got a fleece NASA jacket from the group. Oh boy, I went to a shopping spree at the NASA souvenir shop on Tuesday before my discount expired, and I got myself exactly the same jacket! On a last thought, I also grabbed the Shuttle model which I'm planning on displaying on my desk on the new job. Then there were more gifts. Ryan made each one of us an organic cotton T-shirt with the DTS logo (Apple logo with NASA on top). I had wanted one of these T-shirts for a long time and been nagging him to make me one. Now it was a most pleasant surprise to finally get one! But Lisa and I had our own little surprise for everyone.
So we ate and chatted and laughed and insulted each other as usual. Then Lisa brought out the penguins. We spent an entire weekend making Linux penguins with the Apple logo and letters DTS on it, for everyone. That's 15 of them! We wanted something special to remember us by and thought a DTS mascot would be perfect. We donwloaded the pattern from somewhere, and I cut the fabric and she sewed them. Herbert thought we were crazy and Vil just laughed without making any comments. Each penguin came out slightly different which was kinda nice and unique if you ask me. Or you can blame on Hippo's cutting abilities! At one point I've asked Lisa if she could make one that resembled a hippo! Intelligently, she ignored my request! And now the whole gang just burst out laughing at our ingenious idea but really they loved it. I, who is the tiniest and skinniest of all, from all people ended up with a chubby one (my penguin needs to go on a diet!). Next came the name of the DTS mascot. Ryan thought we should use Borg designations: 3 of 12 of DTS of NAS. Yeah, just think of Cath barking: 5 of 12, get over here! Heather said we should use icelandic names like Bjorn and I said Knut sounded more techie. But we should come up with something linux+apple+nas, and since Tux is the Linux penguin, so maybe it should be Tax? Nax? Linax? So we held up our penguins and took a group photograph.
When we departed, there was again another round of hugs (and some wont let go!). I'll sure miss this group like no other.
Come Monday, a new life, new people, new work, new place ... and distant memories ...
"wishing I knew when ...
we'll never have to say goodbye again ..."
Hippo's Linux Penguin
