15 Years at Liferay: Chapter 1 - Nerf Wars, The Scary Guy, and a Good Nap
At age 22, I was a college drop out working as a flower delivery guy. In school, I studied history, biblical studies, and had seriously considered becoming a philosophy major. I was moderately happy with the job I had at the time. The flower shop owners attended my church, were effectively secondary parents to me, my coworkers were kind, and the driving afforded me lots of time to think and listen to podcasts. I did, however, have a growing anxiety about what the future held for me – I had no master plan or roadmap for my life, and I knew that delivery wages would only go so far.
Existential quarter-life crisis or not, I was grateful to have good friends to goof off with. Specifically this guy:
Fully verifiable badasses.
Nerf Wars and The Scary Guy
Saechang, myself, and another friend would often hang out at Gateway Friends Church. Our mutual friend, Travis, was a groundskeeper for the church and the location was a convenient midpoint from where we all lived at the time to meet up and hang out. Most of the time when we hung out at the church we would have these Counter-Strike inspired nerf wars at night in the church offices. Other nights we would hang out in the church’s loft and play games on the PCs that were set up there. The gaming and revelry often went deep into the night.
One Saturday night, we were in the church loft playing some Warcraft III custom map, when someone burst into the room. I had never seen this person before, but I could tell he was visibly upset with us. I should note that it was after 11pm PST. The upset person then very intensely reprimanded us for being up so late on a Saturday night playing video games. He said that if we were not able to be fully present at church the following day, he would have it on his conscience, and that he would later check the logs on all of the PCs to make sure that we complied with his demand. He went further: If we did not comply, he would lock down the PCs and that no one would be able to use them again. And, as quickly as he came and unleashed his reprimand, he was gone. We looked around the room at each other in a bit of a daze.
And that was my very first interaction with Brian Chan. AKA: The Scary Guy.
“What a jerk!” I thought.
After that night, we continued to hang out at the church, have Nerf Wars, and play PC games – and I resolved to avoid and try to never interact with The Scary Guy again.
I had no idea what was coming next.
A Good Nap
Another night – months, maybe a year later? – Saechang, Travis, and I were again hanging out at the Gateway Friends Church. We might have just finished a dungeon in World of Warcraft, when I decided I needed a break and crashed on a sofa in one of the offices.
It must have been a great nap because my sleep was deep. Which made being roused by someone asking me questions particularly jarring and disorienting. As I groggily came to, I realized that it was Brian Chan who was waking me up. Fight or flight kicked in and, in the corner of my eye, I saw Saechang stealthily slip out of the room through a side door. I was trapped. I braced myself for another rebuke.
“Do you know computers?” he said.
“Uh. Kind of?” I responded.
“Do you play StarCraft?” he pressed.
“Sort of?”
My discomfort grew, as did my awareness that this was not the reprimand that I was bracing myself for. Brian went on to tell me that he was interviewing me. He explained that he owned a software company and that him, his wife, and a few others had been praying that night in the sanctuary asking God to provide him people to hire for his company. He noted that he had heard my name from Craig Kaneko. Fifteen minutes later and after the worst half-awake interview that has even been given in the history of the world, I was offered a job. The job was to function as a moderator for the Liferay message boards, and that I could start in as soon as 2 weeks. I have no recollection of what the actual job title was. There might not have been one.
At this point, Saechang came back into the room. Whether it was morbid curiosity of what had occurred, or something else, I do not know. But as soon as Brian saw him, he repeated the same rapid fire questions that he had asked me, to Saechang. Moments later, he too had a job offer for the same job as me.
Even after Brian left, I questioned whether or not the events that had just transpired were in fact, real. (They were.)
Several weeks later, Saechang and I showed up for our first day on the job. But that’s another story for another day.
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