Well if you’ve been around Claris at all you know that our culture is a little different than most companies… and we pride ourselves in that.  One of our core values as a company is to “work smart and play hard”; and our Christmas Parties are usually a reflection of that.  Like most companies we view the Christmas party as a time for everyone to hang out and have a good time, and reflect on the past year… that just tends to look a bit different for us than most.

    If you recall from last year’s party, there was a ping-pong tournament involved and a whole lot of hang out time.  This year we decided to expand the ping-pong tournament just a bit… and a change of venue was in order as well.  The event was held at UT’s Down Under and featured, ping-pong, 9 ball, bowling, and foosball tournaments, with some major prizes on the line for the winners… and in the style of Fight Club, if you were there, you had to be in one of the tournaments! Awesomesauce!

    For the Albino Bowler, you may find this hard to believe, but this was actually his first time bowling (with us).  I took full advantage of the situation and got plenty of action photos!

    No good Christmas party would be missing an excellent spread of food, and this one was no different.  The Bonefish Grill on Bearden Hill came out and catered the shindig with lots of their famous dishes and a killer brownie and ice cream dessert.

    I can confidently say that all who came had an excellent time.  I’d personally go out on a limb and call it the best Christmas party… ever.  Fun was had by all, and people’s bellies were full.  I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story!

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–Dan Thompson

    The ping-pong tournament turned out to be a wild success.  It was a single elimination tournament and then the final two played to the best of three games.  Much to Zac’s dismay, the tournament came down to a tale of two Daves… David Stilwill and Dave Sagraves, with Sagraves taking the top title and walking away with the prize money.  Make no mistake though, it was an intense battle all the way to the top; with Jay Norris even breaking out his table tennis alter-ego, Arlandro; complete with headband and sunglasses.

    If you weren’t playing ping-pong or out on the porch, chances are you were engaged in an epic game of RockBand.  This particular video game has been a part of our company’s culture for a while and this is actually the second appearance it has made at a Claris Christmas party.  It seemed that the second go around people were a lot less shy about grabbing the microphone and belting out some lyrics… which always makes the experience more entertaining.

    All in all I think everyone, including the Albino Bowler, had an awesome time at the get together.  The food was awesome, the entertainment was great, and best of all we all got the chance to hangout and goof around for several hours.  Good times indeed. 

Have a Merry Christmas everyone!

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– Dan Thompson

Claris Networks and the Albino Bowler would like to say a special Thank You to our friends Jay Waggoner and Co. over at Veristor for sponsoring our Christmas party.  Thanks guys!

    This year the Claris Christmas party was held at the old Green Hills Grill (which apparently now you can rent for events) and turned out to be a great place to have a shindig.  The event was catered by Horn of Plenty, and as usual, the food was excellent, as was the entertainment (Zac brought Rock Band… which is quickly becoming a staple at Claris events).  All in all it was a great time with some great fellowship… looking forward to next year already!

– Dan Thompson