Every month we do something fun as a company. But this month we stepped it up a notch and let loose for a couple hours at Pole Position, a high-speed, indoor go-kart racetrack that's nearby. Everyone had tons of fun, but only three people walked away with prizes (beyond the free lunch and go-kart racing, of course).

Everyone getting ready and learning the flags:

Chad shows us the latest in headsock fashion while Travis intimidates his opponents by flexing those rippling guns:

Ryan approves of this racetrack:

"I know I rammed her into the wall, but did you see how slow she was going?!" explains Ethan frantically

And here are the champions! Richard in first place, Matt in second, and Ethan in third:

It's definitely summer here, with the heat index peaking around 110 F this week. But if we can't get out of the heat, we might as well look good in it! Our uber-talented developer / designer Andrew put this shirt together, and his choice of electronic marigold couldn't have had a better reception. The design is fantastic, and we thank Andrew for his hard work. Below are the shirts as seen through the beautiful lens of an iPhone 4. 

The stylish Chad is an instant sensation with this summery shirt set on display. Are those arrows symbolic of Element Fusion's rising success or are they directions to the gun show?

Spring is in the air here at Element Fusion, and the imaginative spirit of our designers is in full bloom. Along with a new season comes a new in-house designer tee. The delicious design by Neill Harmer delicately streaks down the front into a splash of refreshing seafoam. And what better way to celebrate Element Fusion's tenth anniversary than a retro t-shirt designed to remind you of the dark times before our company began. 

Check out the new shirt below.

Celebrating last night's historic OKC Thunder victory over the Lakers, Chad dresses to the nines even on a Friday.

Here's a closer look at the design.

About a year and a half ago, I posted here on our blog about my conversion to standing while working. As a part of that conversion, I invented what I like to call the “iDesk” or a desktop riser made out of an iMac box with a bunch of random wood shelving placed on top. You can see a picture of the original iDesk here.

Well, in recent weeks, a few exciting things have happened in the realm of standing while working here at Element Fusion. First, the ranks of “the standers” have increased by 300%. That’s right, Jessica Larson, Element Fusion’s Client Services Manager, and Ha Bui, one of Element Fusion’s newest Internet consultants have joined the fun. Not only that, but they have both created their own iDesks. Here are some pictures of Jessica and Ha with their new office arrangements.

Second, at Jessica’s request, we got some of those anti-fatigue mats that provide a little cushion under your feet. Personally, having stood on the floor for a year and a half, it took me a little while to get used to the new feel of the mats, but in the end, I think they are a bit of a help to relieve a little of the pressure on the bottom of your feet.

And finally, I’m very excited to announce that I have now graduated to an actual standing-height desk. We found a product called the Geek Desk which offers a full size desktop surface on a metal frame that raises and lowers electronically. To be honest, I don’t use the raising and lowering part much as I stand full time, but having the ability to adjust the height quickly and easily does make the desk more versatile. Not only that, but this was the best value of any kind of standing height desk we could find (the world could use a few more quality, affordable standing-height desk options). The nicest part is having the extra room to spread out at a single height instead of having to make use of multiple height surfaces.

Here’s a picture of the new Geek Desk configuration.

If you haven’t considered standing while working, I highly recommend it. It takes a month or so to fully adjust but once you pass that threshold, there’s nothing to it. You burn 50% more calories than while sitting and a medical study I saw sometime last year even claims standing reduces your risk of death. So stand up and live long, America!

That is all.

Last night, the Element Fusion team, spouses and guests had a grand party to kick off our ten year anniversary celebration. That’s right, Element Fusion has now been in business for ten years, and we’ve got some great things planned in 2010 to celebrate this milestone. Stay tuned for more in the weeks to come.

To get things started in style, we got together in the “Showroom” at Red Prime Steak in downtown Oklahoma City for an evening of food and fun. Great food, live jazz, an EF history trivia contest, Chad’s brilliant emcee efforts, and funny stories from EF’s past all made for a great evening. To cap it off, owners Ryan Whitaker and Justin Cowan shared their thoughts on the past ten years, our present team, and a look ahead to the next ten years and beyond.

I thought we’d share a little taste of last night’s event with you in some pics below. Enjoy!

Chad engages and dazzles the crowd as the evening’s emcee.

Owner, Justin Cowan, goes over some of his favorite Element Fusion memories.

Tim Thompson (bass) and Adam Ray (sax/keys) did a great job filling in as last minute emergency replacements for our scheduled band. Oh, and hey look, it’s me sitting in on keys for this one song.

One of our lovely tables of guests including (left to right) Neill and Amanda Harmer, Vivian Hoang, Matt Sanders, Matt Grimm, and Jordan Romero. For some reason, Matt Sanders is the only one with food.

Well, it’s that time of year. Time for office holiday parties. This year at EF, we stayed up at the office for some great food, great fun, and a little dirty santa. No, not that kind of dirty santa, the kind also known as a white elephant gift exchange.

The food was great as always, but what really set this year’s celebration apart from all previous years, was the addition of Chad’s Christmas rap. For four years now, Chad has read a very special Christmas poem at each EF holiday gathering. It’s his own creation, though modeled quite heavily after “’Twas the Night Before Christmas.” But this year, as a suprise to most of us, Chad presented a fully-produced recording of the Christmas poem in rap form, featuring himself as the rapper (with production assistance from our own Matt Grimm). Naturally, we’d like for you to be able to share in this fun, so we’re including a free download of this audio treasure at the link below:

Download or play Chad’s EF Christmas Rap

And, in case that’s not enough to satisfy your curiosity about how EF celebrates Christmas, I’ve included a few more pics of the festivities below.

From all of us here at Element Fusion, we thank you for your continued support, and we wish you a very Merry Christmas and a happy new year!

Here’s a look at the dirty santa gifts brought by everyone. All wrapped up and ready for fun.

Natalie is opening her gift as everyone else looks on, curious to know what lies within.

While some of the gifts given were quite popular and susceptible to being stolen away throughout the game, others including Ben’s “basket of yarn” received little interest.

Every quarter, one of the designers on our team creates an original design for a new Element Fusion t-shirt. Our Winter 2009 edition was released today at our company Christmas lunch. Designed by Matt Grimm, this EF shirt is themed for the holidays. As always, our own Chad Jaggers models the t-shirt spendidly below.

Chad demonstrates how giving gifts is even more thought provoking and serious than ever in the new Element Fusion shirt.

Here’s a look at the design up close.

Today, we had some pre-Halloween celebrations up here at the Element Fusion offices. First, we continued the Element Fusion chili cook-off tradition. Sure, it's been almost two years since our last cook off, but nonetheless, it's still somewhat of a tradition. Also, we held our quasi-annual pumpkin decorating contest. Even though we didn't bring back the costume contest from last year, we still had lots of fun and lots of winners. 

Here's a look at the festivities and the winning entries in pictures, below.

A look at the pumpkins awaiting their judgement.

This giant pumpkin, created by Natalie, took first prize for its creativity and the enormous effort of just bringing it up to the office.

Matt Grimm's tribute to the LightCMS logo took second place with it's meticulous detail.

Neill Harmer's painted superhero pumpkins came in third.

Here's a look at the first place chili winner, created by Joseph Donley.

The second place chili above is by Deanna Carter, who won the hearts of judges by including bacon.

The third prize for Chili went to this vegetarian offering from Amine Ouahidi.

Here's a look at owner and judge, Ryan Whitaker, deeply considering his voting decisions.

Every month we either bring in lunch or go out of the office and do something fun.  We thinly disguise this fun as "celebrating birthdays."  It works though. This month we chose to go to Incredible Pizza because you can stuff yourself with a ton of pizza and then go play arcade games.  I decided to photograph almost everyone doing these fun activities I spoke of earlier.  The pictures below were taken with my iPhone 3G, so please excuse the lighting and lack of the extra megapixel the iPhone 3G S has.  I'm not bitter.

Top score today was 101.  If we would have gotten 102 we would have won 1746 tickets.

The Matt's are having an intense game of air hockey.  I saw sweat on their brow.

I know, I thought the same thing.  Windows XP embedded? 

Recently engaged Travis McLovins enjoying the shooting of bad guys.

Neill lost for the 3rd time at air hockey.  Look for excuses in the comments and on Twitter shortly.

This was when we were all friends before the competitive gaming began.

We had a great time at Incredible Pizza today.  Some of us left as winners and some left as losers.  If you are a software engineer come and enjoy the fun with us.

Today, the EF team took advantage of the beautiful, mild weather and had lunch together at Louie's on the Lake. The sports grill, located on the shores of Lake Hefner here in Oklahoma City, was kind enough to accommodate our team on the patio for some very nice, alfresco dining.

For your enjoyment, I've posted a photo below. Please note that Chad, our t-shirt model, is absent because he's the one taking the picture on his iphone.

It's been a great week and big things are brewing for the weeks ahead. Have a great weekend and stay tuned.

Today is a beautiful day here at Element Fusion headquarters. We had our monthly company lunch together. On the menu was barbeque from the Rib Crib. Evidently, this is the restaurant "where bold began." Anyway, it included sausage, hot links, chicken, turkey, chopped beef, beans, potato salad, and an assortment of fine beverages provided by Element Fusion's Coke Day.

Not only that, but the weather here in Oklahoma City is just about perfect. It's blue skies with sunshine and climbing toward about 70 degrees. That's right. We're all stuffed now and staring longingly out our windows. It's been a great week and the weekend is almost here. We hope you'll enjoy yours as much as we are looking forward to enjoying ours!

Here are some pics so that you can share in the joy of the day:

Hungry Element Fusion employees eagerly fill their plates. As always, the age-old computer monitor stands guard over the buffet line.

Two somewhat-less-hungry web developers enjoy their meal in the game room.

Here's the view out my window of the beautiful weather featuring the lovely Lake Stella.

It's that time again. Coke Day is such an event around here I just feel compelled to post about it whenever it happens. Plus, this time we had our first ever Coke Day incident, so I just had to share. See below.

Here's Ben, Amine and Chad doing a great job of unloading the truck and carrying things to the elevator. All was going great, until ...

Uh-oh. The first ever Coke Day spill rendered a good number of Diet Dr. Peppers and Diet Coke's unusable. Who could have caused this disaster? Well, we're not releasing his name but here he is cleaning up his mess.

Though we work on web development most of the time, we occasionally like to eat as well. And we have several people here at Element Fusion who are big fans of Chipotle Mexican Grill. Personally, I've been a fan for a long time, ever since I ate at one of their restaurants in Dallas in January of 2002. Since that time, I've looked forward to the day that Chipotle would open up somewhere close to either where I live or where I work. That day has finally arrived.

A good number of our crew headed out today to attend the grand opening of their first Oklahoma City location, which is so close to the office it would be walkable if it weren't freezing and icy outside. We were there right as they opened and Ryan had the distinct honor of being this location's very first customer. We got some free Chipotle magnets and Chipotle "lip guac" (lip balm), but unfortunately we didn't get any T-shirts which are evidently being saved to hand out later in the day.

The food was good as always and I thought the service was good as well, given it was the first day. Everyone seemed to know what they were doing better than the last time we attended a Chipotle opening for the Edmond location (about 20 minutes away) last January. Bravo to the crew for being prepared.

The thing I like most about this new restaurant (besides it's ultra-convenient location for me) is its indoor "patio." It's a glassed-in room inside the restaurant that has its own separate exterior entrance as well as an entrance from the main restaurant. The room has large, pivoting shutters that can be opened to the outside air in warm weather to provide an outdoor-esque experience. This will be great in the spring and summer, as it will provide open-air dining but with shade and protection from the Oklahoma wind.

In case you want to share in the excitement of today's activities, I've included a picture of us below. Though he was there, Chad cannot be seen in the picture because he took it with his iPhone (thanks, Chad).

I always think it's fun to check out Google's year-end zeitgeist at the conclusion of each year. This publication documents the most popular searches and search trends of the previous year in an effort to communicate the "spirit of the times" through search data. So, if you haven't already, take a look at Google Zeitgeist 2008 for a fun and quick way to discover what the world was searching for last year. To take it to another level, you can visit the year-end Zeitgeist archives and do a little comparing to see what's changed over the years.

I'm no professional analyst, but I must say I found it interesting that "how to kiss" (number one in the how-to category for 2007) was outpaced by "how to draw" (previously number two) in 2008.

Of course, there may be more helpful and substantial conclusions to be discovered in the Zeitgeist. If you uncover something of note, please let us know in the comments.

Christmas decor is everywhere and EF headquarters is no exception. Our fantastic office manager, Deanna, has been busy getting things all arranged in our reception area and I thought we'd share a few pics for everyone to enjoy.

First off, the faux presents. What office would be complete without faux presents, and ours are outstanding. I was impressed to learn that Deanna scrounged around her house for empty boxes and wrapped each of these with the same care and detail one might give to boxes that actually have something in them. There's one for each of us, and they look great under our lit and decorated faux, non-evergreen tree. As Deanna says, "Mary and Joseph made do with a stable, so we can make do with our tree." Amen. Take a look:

Next, it must have snowed in here because the EF sign is looking quite wintry. Chad assures us this will not catch on fire.

And finally, what Christmas decor would be complete without a beautiful poinsettia. This one is real and quite lovely as well.

We had a treat up at the office today as Ryan Parrott, a local chef who is starting his own catering company, brought lunch up for all of us to enjoy. Ryan is a friend of Element Fusion's own Lynn Bloomer, as well as myself. He's head chef at the Iguana Mexican Grill here in town, and his new catering venture, Seasons, is now open as well. We thought we'd give him a little plug since he was so kind as to provide us with a great lunch. You can see pictures of the meal below (thanks, Chad, for the beautiful iPhone pics).

If you'd like to get ahold of Ryan, you can email him, or connect with him on Twitter (@chefrp).

Please note: the antiquated computer monitor is not a part of Ryan's normal catering spread, but is simply a regular fixture atop the abandoned desk we tend to use as a buffet line.