Who:  Steve Jenkins, Harlyn Jenkins, Me
When: summer 2001
Where: Seattle, Washington. SteveJ’s home office. Locked in.
What:  CheatCodes.com re-opening development and redesign HACK session for 5 days straight.

You know, your garden variety pre-release testing and final touches for your major website; entailing 10-15 hours at a time of working to make the site live.

When we all arrived, we set up our computers and made a “supply run” to the local supermarket. All of us being 20-something’s, our cart was filled with a LOT of the following:

  • Energy drinks
  • Mountain Dew (a LOT of it)
  • Chips (sweet maui onion, Cheetos, Tostitos, sea salt & vinegar, etc.)
  • Beef Jerky
  • More Mountain Dew
  • Cookies (sugar coated animal crackers, nutter butter, oreos, etc.)
  • More Mountain Dew
  • More chips (esp. Sweet Maui Onion.. Mmmmm)
  • More Mountain Dew
  • Chocolate candy bars (many assorted)
  • More Cookies
  • Misc. stuff I don’t remember, but we filled a full grocery cart with sugar and trans-fat.
  • Oh, and did I say Mountain Dew?

And over the course of the week, we went through all of it – just the three of us. And if I remember right, we went back to get more Dew and sugar-coated-animal-crackers (man, those things are good).  We finished the site, opened, and the rest is history.  We had no problems working until 5 in the morning, getting up at 9 and continuing right where we left off.  I fell asleep a couple times on the floor of the office and got up and continued working. We all did.

Day 2 - CheatCodes 2001 Redesign.

Day 2 - CheatCodes 2001 Redesign.

Fast forward 8 years.  October 2009.

SteveJ and I plan 4 days of solid work (I bought Harlyn out of his shares last year). We set everything up in his office and head to the grocery store.  Our cart consisted of:

  • 2 cans of sugar free Red Bull. (yeah, two).
  • 1 can of Whoop Ass (energy drink)
  • A variety of low calorie drinks and flavored water (SJ proclaimed that the Smart Water “Fuji Apple” was “AWESOME”)
  • A small bag (single serving) of Sweet Maui Onion chips
  • Medium bag of baked organic crackers (low fat)

We looked down at the cart and realized how sad things have become…. we were content with our purchase… yikes…

We did work a lot. And we even stayed up until 4am one evening, but the next day we were really tired and had to take a mid-day break (we watched “Old School” in SJ’s theater room).  We decided that, for productivity’s sake, we stop working at midnight or 1 next time.

What a couple of wimps we’ve become.

Although, Janet said I should title this post, “What happens when geeks get old, and their loving/caring wives don’t want them to blimp-out or get high-cholesterol.”