The night the first snow fell, back on the 19th of December, we Lizards had our annual holiday party at McCormick and Schmick’s on First Avenue, right around the corner from our building. The food was great, and a greater percentage of us were able to make it than in the past few years.

We used to have karaoke at our holiday shindigs, but we went through a corporate phase of imagining that we were more dignified than to stand up in somebody’s restaurant and bellow like water buffalo in the ears of the dining public. We grew out of it, though, and this year we said “we’re bringing noisy back.” We rented a machine, and for a monitor, Pooya managed to wrangle a TV the size of a small hotel into his Forenza.

It’s surprising the number of Lizards who were willing to sing on a full stomach. I was going to post the little movie I took of Skiff’s startling rendition of Michael Jackson’s “Billy Jean”, but a horsehead showed up on my chair at work recently, which I took to mean that I should reconsider.

The world will have to wait.

As part of National Geography Week we at LizardTech have been asking ourselves what GIS and geography mean to us personally. What usually comes to mind for me (aside from work) is images from space on Google Maps. I like to scout places before I go, and perhaps show where I’ve been afterwards via GPS tracks like the ones displayed in Google Maps using this KML file.

It’s also cool to stumble on places I’ve been in the past. For instance I found the cheap hotel we stayed at in Jamaica in the mid-80s before this technology was available to the public. Here’s a link.

It was easy to spot because it is the only one up the road from the airport with a pool. It was one of the few Montego Bay hotels that would allow native Jamaican’s to stay (most were exclusively for tourists).

Lots of fun!

Last Tuesday evening, LizardTech hosted a party at GameWorks in conjunction with our participation in the GITA conference. I couldn’t attend the party, but several of my fellow Lizards did and the report is that a good time was had by all. Thanks to all who stopped by.

Here is one of our favorite photos from the evening. As editor of Geospatial Solutions Online, Cyrena Respini-Irwin is an old friend of LizardTech. She has reviewed a number or our product releases in recent years. Here she is blasting away at indiscriminate evil alongside our own marketing coordinator, David Calabro.

We’ve always known her aim is true.

To celebrate the release of GeoExpress 7 - the strongest and best received version ever of our flagship product - the Engineering team took a snow day.

A few weeks ago, we had been all set to execute our original plan - an overnight at Scottish Lakes in the North Cascades - but the passes had closed the morning of the Big Day.

Disappointed (and better educated about avalanches) but not deterred, we decided to reschedule. It was difficult to find two days and a night that would work for all eleven of us the first time, and for our second “assault”, we had to settle for a day trip and even then, only nine of us made it into the caravan.

So last Friday we set out with two GPS units, three cars and enough walkie-talkies that each of us got at LEAST one.

At Snoqualmie Summit we split up for skiing, snowboarding and snowshoeing. Look at us (see photo above), all full of energy and confidence, unsuspecting of the horrors that lay ahead.

Actually, it was sunny and warm the whole day. The torrential downpour that soaked Seattle for most of the day only arrived after we had loaded up and were heading down the hill for a sumptuous repast at Thai Ginger in Factoria.

A good time was had by all and there were no injuries - which was good, because “return with no broken limbs” was called out in the spec for this project.

Top photo courtesy of Jeffrey Salazar.