,
and he had always promised himself he would purchase a pinball machine
if he ever started a successful software company.It started out innocently enough, as a private obsession of Fenestra's President, Rick Rogers.
Rick played a lot -- probably too much -- of pinball while attending
Carleton College,
and he had always promised himself he would purchase a pinball machine
if he ever started a successful software company.
In early 1999, Rick's great friend and fellow Fenestra staff member,
Michael Klein, encouraged Rick
to follow through on this plan. So in the summer Rick purchased a pinball
machine -- one of the very models he played at Carleton -- from eBay.
The pinball machine, called Cyclone, was manufactured by Williams in 1988, and features a hilarious portrait of Ronald and Nancy Reagan on the backglass (the former first couple are in the front row of the Cyclone roller-coaster). Cyclone, with its dual ramps and large jackpot skill-shot, is considered one of the classic pinball machines of all time. See photos of Cyclone.
Ever since then, what had been Rick's private obsession has become, well, a corporate obsession. Fenestra's staff takes Cyclone breaks instead of coffee breaks (though we often drink coffee while playing Cyclone). You will frequently find our software developers hashing out architectural design ideas over a friendly game of pin. Certain catch-phrases from the game -- such as "We have a winner!!!" -- have become inside jokes.
We had worried that our clients might think a pinball machine in our office was irresponsible, but we have found they all understand that software development is grueling and intense, and that a little diversion now and then helps refocus the mind. Plus our clients like playing a game when they stop in for meetings, and even our accountant and our attorney have tried their hands at Cyclone.
Being mostly engineering geeks, we have really taken to the high maintenance required by pinball machines. We have replaced a blown electrical coil, tested integrated circuits and diodes on the motherboard, and rebuilt a flipper. If the software/web development market ever cools off, Fenestra can always take up the pinball repair business.
Within the office, there is some suspicion that Rick started getting all the high scores immediately after the Cyclone shop manual arrived -- but Rick avers that he gets the high scores only because he plays a lot when he is in working on weekends. Until we install a Fenestra Cyclone web-cam, we will probably never know the truth.
