Some of these stories are second hand or third hand. If you saw them first hand, please help us get the story straight.

Company picnic

At a company picnic they had a contest to see who would come dressed in the most outlandish Hawaiian shirt. Jos came dressed in a Muu-muu (floor-length Hawaiian dress).

"Why in God's name would I wear a dress to work?!?!?!!? What do you think I am - light in the loafers?"

At Customer Care

His irreverent internal web site: The Duncan song project (parrot). The Jos-O-Matic. Unmentionable.   Mr. T. versus the P-Team.

Men's room

For posting the Weekly World News in the men's room.

Resignation letter

Once in great consternation, Jos resigned from WebTV. Then it seems that one of the founders had Jos rehired at double the pay.

Jail house girls

In Jos's later days as manager of the developer web site he became businesslike, writing unsigned corporate-looking articles that stuck to technical issues. In his earlier days he was more flamboyant: He wrote signed articles that would often connect web technicalities to topics of the day such as movies or humorous web sites.

In one of these articles (which can no longer be traced) he gave a link to a place known as "jail house girls". This place was for real. There were ladies in jail who were looking for pen pals. They had lists and tables of their vital statistics, including why they were in jail and how much time they had left, as well as photos. Being Jos's father, I sometimes went back to look at his older articles, to look for bugs, to suggest a change here and there. One day I got quite a shock. Jail house girls had changed. Their front page let it all hang out(!) I advised Jos to take another look, to see if he still wanted to preserve his link from the company web site to jail-house girls.   He didn't.

In writing this story I tried to go back to the jail house girls pen-pal site. I couldn't find them. I'm afraid the dear ladies must have run afoul of officialdom.

You should have looked at http://www.jailbabes.com/.

A web site for OUR prostitute

Rosemary writes, "I was just reading the latest edition of the Mountain View Voice, and noticed a prostitution arrest this week. It was at the usual location of the one prostitute in Mountain View. Jos was delighted when I explained to him that Mountain View had only one prostitute and on a car ride up El Camino one day (where were we going?) pointed out her usual business location at the bus stop outside the Cost Plus. He thought this was very cool and described plans for a website to publicize/commemorate Mountain View's only prostitute."

Girliecakes

He didn't really call me "Girliecakes." He knows the Mayor's office holds a certain formality and respect.

You're the lady with the nicest cubes!

A space reshuffle moved Jos away from the engineers to a building with marketing and finance people. This disturbed him (he told his parents). He purchased a HUGE bouquet of roses for the lady in charge. "You're the lady with the nicest cubes..." It worked. He got space where he wanted. He actually got two cubes (at a time of great cube shortage). [The bill, dated 8/13/99, from Thistledown Flowers was for $82.81.]

Migrant worker

On his business card he gave himself the title of migrant worker. After that, contract employees were no longer allowed to choose their title on their business cards.

Send a message to EVERYBODY at WebTV

Jos once sent a message to everybody at WebTV about the cafeteria food. That set off a bomb. Hundreds of people replied (to everybody). After that, nobody was allowed to send a message to everybody. We haven't seen the original message. He didn't have much to say to his folks about this event (either that or they put it out of their minds as quickly as he did)     ;-)     We heard this story from Jet.

Teasing the company Human Resources director

The company chief of Human Resources, "Frinkster" (Sharon Frinks) writes:

When I first met Jos, he immediately nicknamed me "Frinkster". But after we went as a company to see the new Star Wars movie, he surprised me by suddenly naming me "Jar Jar Frinks" based on the digitally animated character Jar Jar Binks in the movie. Most people would not have been bold enough to tease me in such a way (not that I don't have a sense of humor but that I can sometimes seem too busy to be approached). Only Jos would have reached out in such a silly way to make me feel "one of the gang". And only Jos could have gotten away with it!

Beth

I actually do have a story but it would embarass somebody else. [Hint: View-->source-->developer.]