Hello Sportsfans.  It is with much excitement that I announce ANOTHER stunning dodgeball victory.  Not your run of the mill victory either – a straight sweep.  That’s four games in a row of skull-crushing, (metaphorically speaking; literal skull-crushing is strictly banned by the Denver Athletic Club), white-knuckled dogdebapocalypse (that’s a real word).  It was a tough climb, but it appears as though we have reached a plateau of middle-ground, a place where we can set up a base camp and sleep easily for the next week.  Yet I, ever watchful of our next endeavor, inspect the peak many miles above us.  I wonder if we will make it that high.

Let’s talk a bit about perseverance.  If you’re unaware, the Enterprise Network launched the new site for Turpin Realtorsjust a few days ago.  That final week before a launch always has a unique quality I like to associate with visiting family for the holidays – it starts out exciting and fun, and quickly descends into lots of fighting, crying, death threats that are all accented by that feeling you get on a roller coaster as it crests the top and begins to rocket downhill.  But like every good family get-together, it ends with everyone hugging, apologizing, and thanking each other for everything they’ve done.

I’m probably not the first to tell you that Active Website has an interesting dynamic. As previously stated, I have the privilege of working with a huge array of wildly talented, deeply passionate people, and when it comes down to the deadline, not one of us is willing to give up until we’re willing to back our piece of the product with our very life.  That’s a kind of polite way of saying we’re all just a little bit mentally unstable.

Case in point – Kristal, dodgeball captain and Quality Assurance Extraordinaire, almost killed us on accident as she attempted to make a pot of coffee on our connected desk without looking away from her computer.  About this time, I was wandering the kitchen with our coffee pot, attempting to locate some already brewed coffee, or maybe just some beans and warm tap water. I would make it work.  Unsuccessful, I returned to find a steady stream of boiling hot coffee pooling itself on the warmer, the table, dripping off onto the carpet.

“Ahhh, that smells soooooo good.” Kristal comments, her focus unwavering as our notebooks begin to test their absorbency.

Why we need a coffee maker at our desk remains a mystery.  Seriously, there’s one like twenty feet away in the kitchen, plus an expresso maker in Cody’s office.  What’s probably a better question was why we were brewing coffee at 7 pm, or why, after watching everything on our desk melt into a warm brown puddle, we did not simply shrug and walk out of the office hoping that tomorrow might bring a more favorable outcome.

The answer was a one pixel border.

“Its off.” Kristal says.  “See?  There’s a one pixel space between it and the image.”

“It is not off.” I tell her.  “You are losing your mind.  We have been looking at this too long.  You don’t – oh man it is off.”  I lean in close to her monitor and measure the space with my thumbnail.  “It’s definitely off.”

We make a joint pilgrimage to Tyler’s desk on the dep floor – he is sunk deep in his chair, his hood pulled up as if this renders him invisible.  He has had a day no less taxing than ours and is sipping steadily from a to-go cup of coffee.

“You went on a coffee run without us?”  We are upset and disappointed.  We are at our wits end.  Tyler sees this and offers us a chair.

“What’s the matter bird?”  Tyler asks.

“Kristal tried to kill us.” I tell him.  “And now our desk is wet and there is still no coffee and I am hungry.  I am very hungry Tyler.”

Tyler always laughs in this warm, amiable manner, a way that will make you laugh if you weren’t already in the first place, even at the end of a long day when you’d rather someone be upset along with you than point out how silly we all look. We sat there, huddled around a computer pointing at this digital burr in our sock, this one little border that seems to be defining all programming logic with its nonsensical gap.  It’s days like this that we need that white flag, those matching jerseys, that remind us who’s on our side.

“Do not laugh at us.” Kristal warns.  “I’m not happy with it yet.”

“And well you shouldn’t be.” Tyler agrees.

Tyler is busy.  Tyler is always busy.  But he sets aside what he is doing and delves into this problem so it can get out on the morning push.  And when we come in the next day everything is fine and no one would know that only a few hours ago a group of rogue developers foiled a would-be assassination attempt on the quality we have fought so hard to defend.

Now dodgeballers.  This week we face a double header.  And not long after that, we face a tournament – or at least the first game of a tournament.  It is no stretch to say that our raggedy team has evolved quite quickly from a questionable joke. And I’m sure no one would blame us if we choked at the thought of serious competition and simply lost our first match.  But we are currently ranked 7th in the league.  We have, despite our origin, done well, very well, and have a very real chance of doing even better.  No one is going to make us. In fact, it is every other team’s job to stop us.  But I know us.  We are not ones prone to leaving a job unfinished.

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By Nick Anderson