Saturday afternoon, Tom jumps to his feet at his desk and runs around like a headless chicken for a few seconds. He finishes by running into the wall a couple of times. Scuff marks from his sneakers. He's jumping up and down on the balls of his feet now, his arms flailing with the rubber-jointedness of the rhythmless and unconcerned. He points at his screen, half-shouts, I went to high school with this guy. He IMs us the URL. Armed bank robbery, a tense standoff with the police, and then they realize he's lying about the hostages, everyone got out of the bank okay, they explain this to him on the megaphone and he comes out, yes, literally with his hands up, and whoa, looks like the "armed" part of the "armed bank robbery" was a bit of a misnomer, too. With this I cannot deal, says Tom. I was in the school play with this guy.
Good actor, apparently. Andy has materialzed from out of his cave, uncombed hair falling down into sleepy eyes. Tom misses the joke, well, we were both just in minor parts, I catch Andy's eye and snortle, and Tom continues I used to smoke weed with a man who's facing some pretty serious jail time. Tom's such a perfect straight man. I can't resist. Better hope he doesn't tell the Feds about your carefree high school days, then. Matt pops up, a severed head atop his cubicle wall, Yeah, better watch out for that Federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison, and now Glenn's out in the hallway, the whole server team making prison jokes on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Tom is getting panicky for a moment, it's almost too easy, until he pops the stack a couple levels and remembers the hilarious pathos of the situation. Bet he just left the gun at home. He was so drugged out back then, he was always leaving his shit behind. Glenn notes the assembled server group, declares a state of emergency, and presents it as a moral imperative that we immediately play basketball. Andy tries to beg off, he almost runs back to his desk, but it turns out Debbie from the client team is in also, and we need him for three-on-three. The play is pathetic, there are pros out there who could dust the six of us single-handed, the ball is under-inflated and the court is a furnace, but it feels like a weekend again and even Andy the vampire isn't complaining. Later, we get cheap take-out Thai food and bug-bash the firewall server into something approaching stability. Monday, when I come in again, Andy has Photoshopped up a jpeg of the surrender to replace Tom's classmate's face with Tom's. He's also managed to break the security on the preferences server again, so the doctored photo is now Tom's desktop background, but the photo itself is the real gem.