Blizzard visit

Last week I visited my brother Tom at his new job at Blizzard.


Standing with the statue in the courtyard.

Later I referred to the "ogre statue", and Tom indignantly banged his fork against the table. "It's an orc, not an ogre!" he said.

I waited ten minutes, and then said on purpose to provoke him, "So the ogre statue..."

"It's an orc!" Tom shouted. "You're just like an Ent!"

"What?"

"The Ents captured Merry and Pippin, and said, 'Oh, these are goblins, we'd better squish them!' Merry and Pippin said, 'No, we're hobbits! We're hobbits!' But the Ents said, 'Goblins can be tricky! Better squish them just in case!'"


The best little brother in the world! (That's Tom.)


This would be a cool Halloween costume.


Dusty shelf stuffed with award after award.

Google has cases of these too in the lobby, but I was more impressed by the Blizzard shelf for some reason.


That one Starcraft character who got turned into a Zerg.


Their building map is designed to look like a map in World of Warcraft. Cute!

Tom was not allowed to bring visitors to his area, due to confidentiality. He showed me the door leading into his area. It had a custom-made sign that read "NO VISITORS". However, the space between the two words was too small, and I was momentarily confused.

I explained my bafflement to Tom. He said, "Oh, you thought it was NOVISITORS, like a Spanish word? All right, we'll change it to an Ñ to confuse people even more."