Goolllllld

Tonight our ATCO Electric/ATCO Power trivia team earned 77 points to earn gold medals at the 2016 Corporate Challenge Team Trivia event. I don't think I've won a medal since...grade 9, maybe? If not earlier. 

I was lucky enough to be on a team with a broad knowledge base. If it had been up to me to answer the sports and leisure questions, we would have been in big trouble, for example. But I pulled my weight in the pop culture, science and Western categories. 

Cowboy Brain Freeze

Despite earning just 4 out of 20 points in the opening Sports & Leisure round, Maegan, Kristen, Arlene and I did well enough in successive rounds to score a cumulative 60 out of 100 points, good enough for 17th place out of 80 teams. 

Rejected Corporate Challenge Team Trivia Names

For the third time I'll be participating in the Edmonton Corporate Challenge Brain Freeze event. Since this year Corporate Challenge takes on a Western theme, I suggested several team names to my ATCO teammates:

The Magnificent Four
A Fistful of Trivia
A Team Called Horse
Little Big Team
Rio Saskatchewan
Electric Stagecoach
The Mild Bunch
Sober Noon
False Grit
The Team That Shot Liberty Valence
They Lost With Their Boots On

...and the winner...

The Good, the Bad, and the Trivial.

"The Game of Thrones"

One of my colleagues at work hand-crafted an Iron Throne for Corporate Challenge. I knew immediately it was just the right scale for Captain Picard. One bad pun later, and we have an homage to one of the cheesiest episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation as well as A Song of Ice and Fire. 

Corporate Challenge Trivia 2015

ATCO Electric Transmission tied for sixth place with 75 points, a very respectable score but not quite enough to earn Corporate Challenge points due to our narrow loss in the tiebreaker. First place was a mere 81 points; we second-guessed ourselves at least four times, and could have come in second or third if not for that. Ah well...still a pretty good run, and I was surprised to see Iain Getty on my team, who of course lived in the Main K Dungeon during our years at Lister Hall. Talk about a blast from the past! 

Brain Freeze Redux

Brain Freeze 2015

Fifth place with 78 points! Not as good as last year's third-place finish, but not bad at all. Our team, "Totco" (so named because of the two Totman brothers, Paul and Mike, and two ATCO employees, Jeff and myself) did quite well on the Literature, Sports & Leisure and Potpourri rounds; not quite as well on the Cold Stuff round. Thanks for inviting us, Mike! 

My Brain Freezeth Over

Tonight I participated in the Corporate Challenge Brain Freeze again, this time with my team from ATCO Electric, the Mutant Masterminds. Sadly, we proved more mutant than mastermind - the questions tonight were far, far tougher than Monday. I'd be surprised if we scored 25 out of 100; I'll find out tomorrow. However, I think we won on style - we were the only team with personalized costumes and our own living brain in a jar. 

Brains, Brawn and Bronze

Peter Harris has organized an Intuit trivia team for Corporate Challenge for several years. This year, Dustin couldn't make it and Pete asked me to substitute for Dustin. But today Pete got sick, so Mike's brother Paul was reigned in at the last possible second. Changing things up worked out pretty well; we wound up with 72 out of 100 possible points, enough to earn third place. (The winning teams had 74 and 78 points.)

I'm ashamed that I couldn't remember Major Don West from Lost in Space and that I put Chariots of Fire in 1980 instead of 1981. (To be fair, I did a lot of "ARGH! Was it 1980 or 1981?" Should have second-guessed myself.)

Thanks for inviting me out, guys!