You work in IT......Resistance is Futile

I love summertime for a variety of reasons, one of which is that the workplace seems to lighten up a bit. People start dressing more casually and in general, having more fun. Fortunately, I happen to work for places that also like to do fun activities in the summer.

At my present job, we recently got an email saying that our entire department (roughly 200 people) would be treated to a movie of our choice at the posh Browning Theater here on campus. We could vote on 1 of 4 movies:

• Men in Black
• Mission Impossible
• Holes
• Star Trek: First Contact

As soon as I got the email I went to the online voting and cast my vote for Men in Black. And even as I did that, I knew that my film would not win. Why?

Because I work in Information Technology (IT). And all those IT basement dwellers like Star Trek. (By the way, I too am a basement dweller - but not by choice)

As it turns out, about 66 people cast their vote (pathetic!) and 43 votes were for Star Trek.

Go figure.

So, over lunch last week my two colleagues and I decided we'd have a little fun at the movie. Maybe I coerced them.

But whatever - it was good for everyone this time.

I am happy to admit that I saw the movie "Star Trek: First Contact" when it came out in theaters in 1996. Yes, I have watched a little Star Trek in my day and I kinda like it. But I am not above making fun of it.

The plan was to come up with a costume the 3 of us would wear to the movie. But the costume could not involve:

• a body-hugging jump suit
• face paint
• require special hand dexterity.

Clearly, dressing as Vulcans was out of the question.

Instead, our costumes required that I tear apart our broken DVD player, use my sharpie markers and a glue gun to turn my 2 colleagues and myself into Borg. For those of you not familiar with Star Trek, the Borg are a menacing species.

They are know for the following statement:

"We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile."

The Borg are sort of a hive-like species that operate with many drone bodies sharing a collective mind. Hey! It's kind of like working in IT!
This is a pretty good shot of the Borg Crew. You think that's creepy? You should watch the in action.

The good news is that even if you ARE assimilated into the Borg, you may, through gallant rescue, be returned to your former self. Well kind of. Here is "Seven of Nine" who was assimilated into the Borg but then later rescued. It's a serious case of "before....and after."
People used to comment to me that "You can take the girl out of Montana, but you can't take Montana out of the girl." With the Borg the saying is literal.

Note the metallic objects still embedded on Seven of Nine's head in the photo on the righ. But I digress.

Our posse decided to wear all black and to sport some head gear to give us the appearance of being in the Borg collective. Here are the props in my costume shop. Most of these came from our broken DVD player.
The black portion on the left was done with a sharpie marker. It was hard to get in between some of the circuits. But I did it eventually.

This particular piece made me nervous because of that bright yellow battery-like object in the center. I colored around this one VERY carefully.
This piece also got colored black, and made an excellent addition to the arm-band pieces we wore.
One of the arm pieces midway through assembly.
To see photos of us in costume, you'll need to visit the link below. You'll see us as the 3 Borg looking menacing and then a few action shots as we made several advances toward assimilating other coworkers.

The last photo is where we assimilated our manager. Like I said...resistance is futile.
http://picasaweb.google.com/lisaweinberg0/StarTrek72008?authkey=y4apfyGw128