Bring your Daughters and Sons to Work day is a busy one in Building 205 at Eastman Business Park. Two years ago, Paxton was a big hit with the kids.

In 2008, I was at Guiding Eyes for the Blind, picking up Nessie.  I was very disappointed to miss the kids, and from what I heard, they were disappointed that there was no dog in my office.

This year, Nessie enjoyed petting and cooing from the kids and learned very quickly that she had to sit nicely or the kids ignored her.  I thought that instead of sharing the standard "dog and kid" pictures (although they were all very cute!) I would take Nessie around to the various stations that were set up to show the kids what their parents do all day at work.  Frankly, some of the teams have waaaay too much fun setting up the stations, and then the kids think mom and dad play all day at work. Some parents take their children to 2 hours meetings to disabuse them of that notion!

Here is the card that I made at the "Make Your Own Greeting Card" station.  This isn't a product but the advanced development team (See? I told you. Too much fun!) put together a web cam and some morphing software on a Kodak Picture Kiosk and a duplex printer so the kids could make Mother's Day or greeting cards with their picture on it.  Since I am always being asked when Nessie is going to grow into her ears, I used the fisheye morph and designed this:

Then it was off to Kodak Entertainment Imaging's "Entertainment Photo Experience" (EPX) station.  This product uses photos taken against a chroma key background (green screen) and then the resulting person (or in this case, dog) is "cut out" and placed seamlessly into another layered picture background. A fun benefit to working near this project is that over the years I have been in movie sets, Seuss scenes, and varied action-adventure situations.

Nessie had to pose properly so that her position in each picture would fit into the selected backgrounds.  The basic down, sit and stay skills that she has learned in preparation for Guiding Eyes was useful in the photo shoot.  First she had to wait in line for her turn in front of the camera.  Then she had to stay in each position for the photos to be shot.  For the first, she needed to lie down with her paws just hanging over the edge of a green box with her face near her paws, so it looks like she is holding the steering wheel.

For the next, she had to sit straight and still at just the right angle.  She fit perfectly into her spacesuit!

Many thanks to everyone who made this a great day for the sons and daughters and one guiding eyes puppy.

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