Picture of the Day | Jason Kills a Gong

It's Friday the 13th today, and for those not huddling under their blankets in fear suffering from triskaidekaphobia, it's been a tpical day. My workplace usually does something special, such as hosting a murder mystery. Today there were no pretend slaughters in the office, but the sales department made a figurative killing.

Our executive producer always bangs a gong whenever a job is officially sold, which typically means a contract is signed and a deposit is made. The frequency of gong rings is usually 1 per week, occasionally more, sometimes fewer, but today we had 3 gongs in a minute.

I've asked about the reason for his gonging on a sale, and we ended up discussing the binary nature of such things. In my line of work (special effects and graphics) you often do a lot of test and proof of concept work as part of the effort to land a project in the first place. One day you might find yourself animating space ships blowing up, and the next simulating twirling bubbles from a dancing woman, and the next project that actually lands ends up being some boring tracking or matchmoving job. So a lot of potential projects come and go, and some are more desirable than others, either in the subject matter or in the problems that need to be tackled to pull them off. After a while, you learn to not really get excited over anything... that is, until you hear the gong. Then it's official.

In memorandum of today's record breaking, 3-gong-minute on Friday the 13th I present the picture of the day: