Glug…Glug…Glug… Part 6 (final)

Part 6 is actually the epilogue of the story. In 2002, Ed Janeczek announced that he was leaving. Mike Discavage decided to revive Glug…Glug…Glug… one last time to update the story up to 2002. Nothing had been written since 1995 on IPO day so there was quite a bit of material to cover. Mike did a great job keeping it in the same style as well as capturing the most relevant news.

At the end of this epilogue, Mike says that there are only four original members left. As of 2007, there is only one original team member left who is Brad Pedersen.

Here is the epilogue:

Epilogue: Jan. 17, 2002

Over the years since our original story, the Citr!x boat has been
modified and enhanced many times and has even gone through several
name changes. The most successful version has been the MetaFrame.
This model was originally not even planned for, but was the result of
a collision between the good ship WinFrame and the Microsoft boat, in
a race in early 1997. As a result of this collision, many of the
inner workings of the WinFrame boat came loose and fell into the
Microsoft boat. Although the Microsoft boat was obviously at fault in
the collision, it took much negotiating until it was finally agreed
that Microsoft would pay for, and get to keep, those parts that fell
into its boat. As a result, the WinFrame boat became lighter and
supposedly faster, and was re-christened the MetaFrame.

There were concerns however that this boat would not be a success in
the long term, since it had what was at first thought to be a severe
limitation; it could not be entered into any race solely on its own.
It could only be entered into races where the Microsoft boat was also
entered. However these concerns proved unfounded. It turned out that
the races that the Microsoft boat entered were the biggest and most
rewarding races, and really the only races worth entering anyway.

Even so, to counter the limitation of the original MetaFrame boat, a
new but much smaller and cheaper boat was built, the MetaFrame for
Unix. But this boat turned out to be too small to be competitive.
And there were only a limited number of races it could be entered
into. (This boat was at least able to sail under its own power
though, which is more than can be said of the later disaster, the
VideoFrame. This boat was never officially christened and required
considerably less than an iceberg to sink it.)

As time went on, the success of the earlier WinFrame boat, and later
the MetaFrame, attracted many new rowers and even more captains to the
Citr!x team. Several foreign rowing teams were even signed up,
including teams from as far away as the UK and Australia. Closer to
home but still considered foreign because of their distance from
Citr!x HQ, teams from Salt Lake City and more recently from Columbia,
Maryland joined the Citr!x family.

Eventually, it was decided that because of the age of the MetaFrame
boat, it was in need of a major overhaul. Because of the amount of
work to be done, many different rowing teams, even some of the foreign
teams, were assigned to complete the work.

In some cases though, the local captains had trouble managing the
foreign rowing teams. In one particular case, the foreign rowers were
found to be completely unreliable. In fact, one local rower in his
spare time was able to completely replace most of the work of the
entire foreign rowing team! After a second failed attempt at
redeeming themselves, this particular foreign rowing team was then
relegated to working on nothing but the most mundane and useless
trimmings and fittings (for a new boat currently under development)
with the fancy name of Completely Discardable Appurtenances (CDA’s!).

Finally, the newly overhauled boat was completed. Even though it
looked the same from all outward appearances, it was an entirely
redesigned boat on the inside. But to take advantage of the familiar
as well as successful MetaFrame name, the new boat was christened
MetaFrame XP. So far, like its predecessors, this boat has met with
much success.

Because of this success over the years, most of the original captains,
sub-captains, and even the original rowers have been able to sell many
of their stocks on the Wall and Street at a great profit. Thus have
they been able to purchase their own boats, and in some cases even
afford their own personal rowers! Because of this some of the
original crew left in the few years after the IPO, in order to ride in
the comfort and leisure of their own boat.

Other members of the original crew stayed on board a little longer.
Some of these were eventually promoted from rower, to chief rower, to
sub-captain, and even to captain. One of the not-quite-but-close-to-
original captains (known for his exotic car collection) was promoted
from being captain of the ticket sellers to become top-captain.

And one of the original crew who started as a lowly rower moved up and
up the company ladder and even endeavored to become top-captain
himself, but alas this was not to be. He eventually jumped ship when
the top-captain (with the exotic car collection), who had been demoted
to co-captain, was again promoted to top-captain.

Finally, a few of the original crew were content to remain as lowly
rowers for their entire journey.

But little by little, more of the original crew began to drift away.
The original top-captain, known as two hats, eventually gave up first
one of his hats and then the other. He is still a top-captain, but
now on a much smaller and little known boat.

And another of the original rowers, who eventually became the captain
of worrying, also eventually moved on. He couldn’t get anyone else to
worry with him and the number of things he had to worry about all by
himself just became too much.

As time went on and the Citr!x crew grew larger and larger, some of
the older crew members started to fear that the Citr!x boat had become
dangerously overloaded. Others feared that the number of captains to
number of rowers was approaching that of the infamous TitanIBMic. In
addition, the speed of the races had become faster and more stressful.
As such, a few more of the older crew members have left recently. The
latest includes a very seasoned and respected, although some would say
gruff, crew member who is more than semi-literate and who was the
Humble Narrator for our original story. Like those before him, he may
just be moving to a smaller boat. Or possibly he is getting off the
boat altogether to spend some quiet time on the beach.

As this update to our story comes to an end, there are only four crew
members left aboard out of the original seventeen who first started
work on the 1.0 boat. You can find all seventeen in the original
Citr!x team photo, which was taken almost 12 years ago this very day.
However, some of the crew members may be barely recognizable due to
less hair (facial or other) or other signs of age. Of the four
remaining holdouts, two of these are now captains (although each
currently has no real crew of his own), and two are still rowers
(although mostly independent, semi-part-time, some would say volunteer
rowers). One of these, your humble epilogist, has been the
top-captain of the CFFL these past 10 years, but is content with his
lowly rowing position on the Citr!x crew. In any case, how long these
final four will remain on board is anyone’s guess.

Just one more thing. Will the last one to go ashore please remove the
gangplank?

About Jeff Muir

Live near Brisbane, Australia. Software developer currently focused on iOS and Android. Avid Google Local Guide