15th Work Anniversary Swag Day

I reached 15 years at my company last month (adjusted slightly for the 11 months I spent in the zany world of software startups) and was awarded with several thousand "points" to spend on an online Awards website. The website was clearly from the Web 2.0 years since its primary interface was Flash-based and the "mobile" version consisted of HTML tables showing 6 pieces of swag at a time. This was actually a huge limitation since there were multiple categories of prizes and way too many pieces of diamond jewelry to wade through.

Several thousand points was actually very generous of my company -- even after signing up for the big ticket items, I still had over half of my points left over. It got to the point where I was just buying extra things to use up points:

• A Weber Genesis II E310 LP Gas Grill ($800)
• Another Oculus Rift + Touch VR System for regifting ($400)
• Samsung Galaxy S8 64 GB ($390)
• Canon PowerShot SX620 HS ($230)
• Samsung Soundbar+ ($170)
• Traveler's Club 3 Piece Luggage Set ($35)
• Black and Decker 16" Electric Hedge Trimmer ($30)

Packages arrived like clockwork for the next several days. Other than the built-in annoyances of transitioning from old technologies to new ones (assembling the grill took equally as long as transferring my phone number to a new unlocked phone), it's nice to be a little more modernized without spending any of my own money!