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!

    I don’t know who came up with it, or when and where it started… but fellow employee Jay Norris introduced the office to NoSHAVEmber (you may have heard it called “No Shave November”) this year; and being the bunch of nerds that we are… it caught like wildfire.  The idea is simple: you don’t shave for the entire month of November.  Now several people took this a little further than others.  Some, like Zac, didn’t touch a razor to their face nor scissors to their hair all month long.  Others, like Jay, decided it was acceptable to shave your neck… just

not your entire face.  It was actually a pretty amusing little experiment.  We found that some people, like Samat, still can’t grow a beard… and we’re quite sure that Jeff is actually Santa Claus (we think it all turns white closer to Christmas).  I, on the other hand, could not last the entire month.  I made it 8 days and had to give up.  I came to the realization that having a beard and being completely bald looks quite ridiculous… and is quite itchy to boot.  All in all we apparently generated enough buzz about the whole thing that local radio personality Kim Hansard from Star 102.1 wrote a commercial about it for

a local business that does laser hair removal (listen to it below)!  Now THAT is pretty funny stuff in my book.

   Do you know someone who participated in NoSHAVEmber?  Post up in the comments section and link to a picture!  We’ll all enjoy a good laugh I’m sure.

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– Dan Thompson

    Aaron and I met up at the office and made the relatively short drive over to the stadium in Nashville.  I had heard for years that the pro football games lacked the intensity of college football, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that there wasn’t any shortage of excitement around the stadium… the fans were out BIG TIME.

After walking around for a couple of minutes, we caught up with our friends and headed inside.  Now, Aaron had actually been to a couple Titans games before, so I think he had an idea of what we were in for when they said “VIP treatment”, I on the other hand had no clue.  After having had the “VIP treatment” though, I can tell you with all certainty that if you’re going to go to a pro football game… this is how you do it!  We were setup with an executive suite to watch the game from; complete with all the food you can eat, all the drinks you drink, and of course, a pretty darn good view of the action on the field.  Oh… and if you happened to miss something (like the tons of bad calls the refs were throwing down), there were a couple of big screen TVs to catch the replays on.  Now THIS is sweet!

    At the end of the day the Titans barely lost to the Houston Texans, 34 to 31, but there was no shortage of entertainment.  I’m also pretty comfortable saying that there was just as much intensity and passion with these football fans as any I’ve run into at the college games in Neyland Stadium here in Knoxville.  I don’t think they could have gotten any louder (and thankfully so because you would probably be well served with some ear plugs as is!).  Aaron and I had a great time and it was definitely a fun experience!  Thanks again Jay and Ashby for the invite!!

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– Dan Thompson

– Dan Thompson

    We are staying at Bucks T4 Lodge. We have no idea why it’s called T4 or what the heck T4 means and no one else seems to know either. We got settled and Paul and Jay woke me up to go get a beer before turning in for the night. The place was crazy with all kinds of locals partying. Since Paul and Jay are old they didn’t even want to consider hanging, so they turned in for the night and so did I.

    The day started at 5:30AM Mountain time when I heard Paul rustling around. Actually he got up like three (3) times to take a potty break. He drank like 50 gallons of water on the trip – so as you can imagine I didn’t get a lot of peaceful sleep. Regardless, we went to breakfast – which was a lovely continental breakfast provided free by Bucks – and then back to the room to get ready. These guys are P90x fiends so guess what; they did StretchX to get things rolling. It was kind of funny watching two grown men roll around, stand, squat, stretch, etc all while watching it on a 4” screen in Paul’s iPod touch. Oh I laughed a lot watching these two clowns.

I rode with Paul, tucked inside the front pocket of his nice down vest jacket. Honestly this was a comfortable spot – warm and out of harms way. My first shots came not too long after they got on the mountain as you can see me here with Paul. I got to actually ride the lift too, which was a bit – well FREAKY. I mean this thing is a long way off the ground and I don’t exactly weigh too much and the thing has no way to strap me in.  So, Paul had to put his hand behind me to make sure I was safe. Anyhow, it was a neat day. I got out again when they had lunch and talked to the waitress. She was pretty cool, hardcore snowboarded from South Africa via Oregon.  Those pictures are on Facebook too. It never got above 13 degrees today and it snowed about six (6) inches, but I managed to stay

warm in the jacket and really just took at easy while these guys tried to figure the mountain out. The place is almost 4000 acres and has a lot of variety so they spent most of the day checking out every lift and run they could get access to. This way they will have a game plan for the mountain.     When we got back they were dying to get in the hot tub, but I wanted to try and make a snow angel. I tried, it was

OK, but with my arm the way it is and the fact that I am a plastic action figure it was challenging. So, rather than freeze I hung out on the side and actually got in the water as well. It was really toasty, which was nice. I didn’t go all the way in, just got my feet in the water. So, all in all it was a cool day. I was pretty whipped too so when they went to dinner I asked if I could just hang at the hotel and watch football. They forgot to turn the TV on though, so no football for me.     When they got back they started working on their snowboards, catching up on emails and they also dove into a study on Worldliness. These guys are pretty cool in that they try to tie in their

faith with these trips. They tell me it’s a chance to not just go have fun with a hobby, but appreciate God’s creation and have intentional time to focus on God’s word so that they can grow as a part of their trip. Pretty cool – I learned a lot of stuff I didn’t know. If you want to check out more then check out their blog at http://brightonboys.wordpress.com.    That’s it for today, day one. I hear tomorrow they are going to get me out and hit kickers with me. I have no idea what that means but apparently it will require them to hold me in their hands while they try to jump off something and the other guy will take a picture. I guess we’ll see how that turns out. I will tell you this, Montana is a beautiful place and I can’t wait to see more of it tomorrow.

– Paul Sponcia

   Myself and the rest of the Albino Bowler team anxiously await what 2009 has in store.  The glue was barely dry on his arm before he was on the road again.  This time he’s off to Big Sky, Montana to do some

snowboarding with Paul Sponcia and Jay Norris.  It’s the Bowler’s first time traveling with them, so it should be interesting to see what they come up with (pictures are already showing up on Facebook).  Since he’s going to be involved in some extreme sports, we went ahead and gave his shoulder a good wrap so hopefully there won’t be any arm malfunctions on this trip.  As for the rest of the year?  Well… who knows.  Hopefully he’ll add another continent to the travelog (how about a trip to Asia, Africa…. Antarctica anyone???), or maybe a country or two that he has hasn’t visited yet.  Whatever happens though, I’m sure it’ll be entertaining.  The web site has also gotten a slight upgrade with the addition of a photo album.  Several readers suggested it, so we made it happen.  It’s quick and dirty for now, but watch for this to become more organized here in the future.  We’ll keep the most recent pictures first though for easy viewing.

   From all of us, to all of you, have an AWESOME 2009… and happy travels!

– Dan Thompson

– Dan Thompson

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    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