Singing Engineers

My brother Don works for an Infamous Megamultinational Corporation, as he puts it. If he thinks it discreet not to identify it on his blog, neither shall I, though what he designs very likely has a lot to do with the computer you're using to see this.

But if megamulti it is, heartless it is not. They like to do a lot to help people -- they sure have the money -- and one project to promote a United Way fund drive was an in-house talent show competition at the facility where he works, near Sacramento. Actually, it may have been company-wide, for all I know, and maybe that's why it was videotaped. Looks like it was fun but -- believe me, I know -- the line in these cases between fun and terror can be a thin one indeed. Don put it succintly:

Risk-taking is one of the Corporate Values by which we are exhorted to live our work lives. Given that when it comes to public musical performance, the less the talent, the greater the risk, some of the performers truly took that particular value to heart.

He did good though. He and a few friends had been having a lot of fun in the last few years working up barbershop-quartet-style numbers, and they did a few for the show. Not bad for a bunch of engineers.



Did they win big? Don doesn't say, so I suspect not. He is, by the way, second from the right. You will notice that he employs by far the most extravagant and theatrical hand gestures of anyone in the group. So yeah, he's straight, but obviously we do share SOME genes.