| Underwear in the Mail |
| It all started when I got a mysterious package in the mail that contained a pair of underwear with a QR code on them, some stickers and a handwritten note. § Just a little bit strange. At least I wasn't the only one to get such a strange package in the mail. |
| Checking out the QR Codes |
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Since the main "feature" of the underwear is a giant QR code, I guess it means we need to check it out, even if some people detest them. Because it's on fabric, the QR code is very hard to scan. I went through three different programs before I found one that could scan it correctly but none of them can recognize the flickr image. If you want to scan the QR code for yourself, I recreated it for you so that it is scannable.
The QR code decodes to http://delivr.com/1gkki_qr which in turn takes you to http://www.putaqrcodeonit.com/splash.html. Here you get a nice little video telling you to 'Put a QR Code On It' and demonstrates the various things you can put QR codes on, including clocks, pasta and various body parts. The QR code at the end of the video directs you back to http://www.putaqrcodeonit.com/ (which the splash page eventually auto-redirects you to anyway). We are now presented with the start of a QR code trail. You'll notice that part of the QR codes are colored blue. We'll get to that in a bit. The last page (titled 'cyche') presents us with a hexagon that links to six different passworded Vimeo videos (or five videos and a 404 page for the 6th). |
| Passworded Video #1 |
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So someone is hiding something, are they? Makes me wonder who as I'm certainly not hiding anything (unless you count the secret stash of candy I have in my desk, but I don't think that's something to make a QR code web trail out of). I guess it's time to figure out the passwords to the videos.
The QR codes in the trail are the key - at least for the first video. If you stack the codes on top of each other and use just the blue bits, it spells out the password to the first video: zeusomg There is also some sort of funky alien looking blob left over as well. The video is soundless and all the action is behind a frosted window, so it's a bit hard to tell what's going on. You can make out two men who look like they are having an argument. The man on the left raises his hands and there is a weird flash of light that changes all the colors on the video. Then the man on the right collapses and his body is dragged from the room. Did the first guy shoot the second or maybe cast a magic spell on him (hence all the weird colors)? Or did the second guy just happen to have a heart attack and keel over during the argument. I'm guessing if this is about finding out secrets people are hiding that a murder took place rather than a simple medical issue. If only we knew who the two guys were. The zeusomg password doesn't work on the rest of the videos and there doesn't seem to be any more clues available right now to figure out the rest of them (unless you count the little blue alien blob). So it's time to go exploring to see what else we can find. |
| Work With No Pants |
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The video was uploaded by Pantless McGee. Checking out their Vimeo profile, they list their website as WorkWithNoPants.com. Well, at least the package I got now makes a little more sense. Pantless McGee also runs the @WorkWithNoPants twitter account. I'm guessing he probably also runs the Work With No Pants Facebook account.
Work With No Pants is a company for "employees who march to the beat of their own drum, let their freak flag fly and like to work with no pants!" It is headed up by Jud Cohen, former ASS (hehe) of Ty Coin Inc. Jud is a very.... interesting guy. After viewing the videos on the WWNP Youtube channel, you can see that this company suits him to a T. I'm not quite sure how WWNP will be able to make money on the Flood Extinguisher or their Fire Extinguisher, but the products must be good if they are charging $15,000+ for them. For people who don't have quite that much money, there are also stickers and t-shirts for sale. If you want to make money instead of spending it, you can apply for a job as an International Representative of Work With No Pants. It's a real job with a real salary that has absolutely no monetary value! (So maybe the making money part was a lie.) All you need to do is submit a video resume for your chance to work with such a prestigious company. And if you aren't sure you have what it takes to work for Work With No Pants, you can take a survey to find out how you rate. Interestingly, if you view the longer Apply video, you can see the same type of frosted window as in the zeusomg video (at :22 and :42). So did the incident take place at WWNP? Or did Jud film the Apply video at Ty Coin before he went onto bigger and better things? |
| Ty Coin Inc. |
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As there doesn't seem to be anything really nefarious about Work With No Pants, it's time to check out its parent company Ty Coin Inc and see if there is anything shady going on there.
Ty Coin Inc. seems to be a nanoceutical company that was founded in 2015 by Ty Cohen Sr. So that is how Jud can charge so much for water/fire extinguishers: future inflation. Ty Coin produced the world's first neural hard drive implant, followed by "Mortalalis™, a designer nanobotic steroid that unleashed the untapped human potential for prowess in both psychic and physical abilities". Psychic abilities? Maybe that flash in the zeusomg video really was a form of "magic". Sadly for Ty Coin, tragedy struck earlier this year when Ty Cohen Sr. suffered an untimely death. Maybe an untimely death by psychic magic? The company is now headed by Ty Cohen Jr. He is joined by D.O.A and C.F.O. Allen Keys, Executive Assistant Midge Frost and Chief Officer of Loss Prevention Heather Ray (not to mention the A.S.S. Jud Cohen who is Ty Cohen Jr.'s brother). I do have to admit though, I'm not quite sure what the D.O.A. stands for in Allen Keys' title beyond it's normal usage. But if he was 'Dead on Arrival' it would be awfully hard for him to be the Chief Financial Officer at the same time, wouldn't it? Also at the corporate office, located in "Toronto the Good", is the world's fastest computer - Cyche. Does that mean we're interfacing with Cyche when we get to the end of the QR code trail? Or maybe Cyche has become self aware and is the one who created the page in the first place. Either way, I think it's safe to say that the mystery lies in Ty Coin rather than in Work With No Pants. |
| Ty Coin News |
| The Ty Coin news archives gives us a bit of information about what has been happening the last few months. It seems like there has been quite a bit of power shifting after the death of Ty Senior in a car accident. It's interesting that Jud didn't seem to have a place in Ty Coin until after his father's death. I'm not saying Senior had good reason to keeping Jud out of the family business, but I'm not quite sure that Jud has the business acumen that Junior does. Which is why it's a bit surprising that Junior is giving Jud so much responsibility. Quotes like "I expect my brother Jud will perform exactly as we intend him to in this responsibility." makes me think that either Junior has no idea what he's doing or that he knows exactly what he's doing and he needs Jud to screw things up for some reason. § |
| Mortalalis Nanoceuticals |
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Ty Coin's main product is something called Mortalalis. It's a line of 15 different nanoceuticals that are designed to give you godlike power or beauty. The names of the different drugs comes from Greek (or in the case of Mercury - Roman) mythology. Oddly, there is no product called Zeus. Maybe Zeus is a super secret nanoceutical that allows you to shoot rainbows out of your fingertips to kill people.
Sadly, none of the other drug names works as a password to Video 2. Or at least I think none of them do. I tried them all at least but I suppose it's always possible I spelled something wrong. Or didn't capitalize properly (I used all lower case when I was trying). I even added 'omg' to all of the names but that didn't get me anywhere either. I hope Vimeo doesn't have a limit as to how many times you can try to get into a passworded video. There are a couple of odd things in the product list we should probably take note of. Mercury is the only Roman name on the list - all the others are Greek. Artemis is the only one with a definite uppercase Greek letter (Gamma) as its symbol. Hercules (Theta), Apollo (Kappa), and Dionysus (Omicron) could also be uppercase as the two symbols are fairly similar. Artemis and Aphrodite both use Gamma except that Artemis uses uppercase and Aphrodite uses lowercase. Hera and Cassandra both use the same lowercase Zeta. Athena is the only one without a Greek letter symbol (although that's possibly because it's pending FDA approval). § |
| Xclusion |
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Xclusion is the exclusive Employee Network of Ty Coin Inc. Think Facebook but without all the stupid game spam coming from your friends. Luckily, there aren't very many people working for Ty Coin so you can go through the archive fairly easily. It also helps that everything was wiped after a virus (a malware programed named GE) infected the system and they had to start over from basically scratch.
Except that remnants of the virus are still lingering. A strange image of an old Greek/Roman guy keeps appearing no matter how many times the Admin removes it. (Beware when clicking the imagevenue.com link in the blog post as it can have some questionable pop-ups.) I'm willing to bet that the image will have something to do with the passworded videos, but unfortunately I have no idea who the guy is. Neither Tineye nor Google Image Search recognizes the picture, so without more information, the picture is a dead end. One of the bigger bits of information in the Xclusion blog archives though is that Midge Frost was going to leave the company. A week before the fatal car accident, Senior writes a blog post saying that he is giving Midge seed money to start her own company. He also talks about how he thinks of her as his own daughter (and Junior seems to be harboring some resentment). Could it be that giving Midge money for her own company caused someone to make sure that Senior's car crashed? Why did Midge decide to stay with Ty Coin after all? Did the offer of money get rescinded due to Senior's death? And does Junior's mysterious union vote on April 5th tie into any of this at all? Another odd storyline in the Xclusion stream is that of Heather Ray. She is unexpectedly promoted to Chief Loss Prevention Officer much to the surprise of her coworkers. Could her promotion be tied to Junior suddenly spending a whole bunch of money and then promising to be a good boy right before Heather's promotion? But if she was blackmailing him, why is she fired on April 27th? And what does she do that not only gets her re-hired on May 10, but promoted to CEO of Here & After? It's all very strange. |
| Here & After |
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The final Ty Coin subsidiary company is Here & After. They are a digital management company that specializes in maintaining the digital face for its clients - both alive and dead. They are able to make sure that you keep all your digital communications to your mistresses straight as well as talk to people you find boring yet are unable to unfriend. And when you are dead, they will be able to maintain your interaction with your friends and family so they will never miss you!
With the level of sophistication that Here & After seems to provide, it's surprising that Work With No Pants is going to be the ones overseeing the digital face management. If I didn't know any better, I would think that Junior didn't want the business to succeed. But that idea just seems as silly as the thought that Junior had his parents killed to gain his inheritance. |
| The Kilt War |
| During the ramp-up to choosing who would be the International Representative of Work With No Pants, a comment was made on Twitter that "as long as you have the freedom to let your junk swing, we consider you pantsless regardless of attire #unlessitsakilt". Being a kilt-loving girl, I took great offense at comments like "To clarify: only pantslessness is required for either gender @rowan72 UNLESS you are in a kilt and then we INSIST on pants!" and made my argument that kilts are so much better than pants. Happily, Jud finally listened to reason and reversed the no-kilt policy and also allowed breezy, non-restrictive skirts. Hooray! |
| The International Representative |
| The competition was fierce, but Jud was able to choose the new International Representative of Work With No Pants out of the pool of (from what I can tell) one video submitted. And that winner is ME! Woohoo! It's nice to know that the 5 minutes I spent on my video was time well spent. I now get a huge salary of zero monetary value, a Work With No Pants t-shirt and access to Xclusion! I totally can't wait to get to work. |
| Assignment 1: Steampunked Tissues |
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The first employee task is to design a steampunk tissue. Jud has seen everything else steampunked, but not tissues. So he wants be the first sell steampunked tissues so that he can corner the market.
And as a bonus assignment, you can film yourself counting how many tissues are actually in a box of tissues so that Work With No Pants can know just how many tissues they will need to produce. |
| Winner of Assignment #1 |
| The winner of the very first Work With No Pants assignment (Steampunk Tissues) is Austin! He decorated his tissue with nuts and bolts and wrenches. It's for the "Guy That Has Everything" since not only is it steampunk, you can steampunk other things with the tissues. How awesome is that? Jud even went so far as to quality test one of the submitted designs. You can see just how well they are going to work for the general public. |
| Assignment 2: Drink Holder for Smartphones |
| The second Work With No Pants assignment is to design a drink holder that will allow you to use your smartphone at the same time. This was inspired by Jud not being able to keep up with all of his messages while at a party and he (and presumably other busy high tech guys) need a way to be able to drink and text at the same time. |
| Prize Package Received |
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My t-shirt for becoming the International Representative of Work With No Pants finally came in the mail. Except, when I pulled it out of its package, I noticed something fall to the ground. It was a origami paper tiger with Junior's face pasted on it. On the inside was written the phrase "inimicus animo" which is Latin for "enemy of the spirit". What the hell? I was hoping that it would be a password to one of the QR code videos, but alas, still nothing.
What's even stranger about the origami is the paper it's folded on. It's very stiff and I was afraid of unfolding it for a while in case I couldn't fold it back up, but eventually I did unfold it and was rewarded by a series of surveillance photos. The photos show a guy in a white sweatshirt and a dark hat meeting another guy in a blue jacket in an alley (possibly somewhere in China/Koreatown). Unfortunately, it's hard to make out exact details between the printing on the paper and all of the creases from the folding. And because the paper was so thick, it was impossible to flatten out so the scanner made things look even worse. What isn't in question though is that the knowledge of this origami tiger did not go over well at Xclusion. Junior was very upset that I received the origami. In fact, I got a message from him stating that the paper tiger was his personal property and that I should burn it without opening it. He then removed all of the pictures I had posted of the origami from Xclusion. As I didn't wish to jeopardize my position as the International Representative of Work With No Pants, I decided not to argue with him on Xclusion. But I did make a personal post on my blog detailing what had happened and my annoyance over the fact that I was being censored on Xclusion. Unfortunately, the whole incident raises more questions than it answers. Who are the men in the photo? What were they doing? When were the pictures taken? Who was taking the pictures? Why was it sent to me? |
| Bad Day for Jud |
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The fallout over the origami tiger continues. Apparently Junior is really, really pissed about it. He called Jud on the phone and threatened to shut down Work With No Pants and to fire everyone. Amazing, Jud held his ground and refused to fire anyone, but he did have to make some concessions to his brother (although he doesn't tell us what those concessions were). Jud however doesn't understand what the fuss is all about, especially considering that 'Paper Ty Junior' is Junior's nickname.
Poor Jud. If I knew he was going to get yelled at for me posting some pictures on Xclusion, I never would have done it. Or at least not under my own name. I would have sent the images to Junior anonymously and tried to get the story out of him that way. |
| Winner of Assignment #2 |
| The winner for the second assignment is A TIE! Austin and I both won the task for this week. Our reward is that for each of the cups that are sold in the Work With No Pants store, we will get a cut of the revenues! At a selling price of $1,500, we stand to make quite a tidy profit. So make sure you go out and buy one for all of your friends. Sadly, because Junior is still pissed off at whoever is manning the mailroom, we won't get anything in the mail. But I'm sure the profits from the cups will more than make up for it. |
| Assignment 3: Paper Helicopter |
| Once again Jud is thinking outside the box. From seeing a book on paper airplanes, he has decided to step it up a notch and wants to be the go to company for Paper Helicopters! With ideas like this, it's no wonder he's a CEO of his own company. |
| Vacation Request |
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Austin's prize package for winning Assignment #1 finally arrived and it included a bonus: a vacation request for Allen Keys. It was dated June 4, 2012 and although the requested amount of days was indefinite, it was only approved for 14 days. Unfortunately, although Austin said he was going to take pictures, he changed his mind when he was told not to for everyone's sake. So if there is anymore information on the vacation request, it's unknown.
But the date is quite interesting. It's well after the date of when his original vacation was supposed to end (May 29) and when Junior granted an extension. So why does Allen need yet another vacation request. Where the hell is he? He's only been with the company for 3.5 months and half of that has been spent on vacation. I think I'm going to request to be CFO. I might not have the qualifications, but I would at least show up and pretend to work. |
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Continue to Page 2 >>
See the Intro page for a list of all the websites, plus brief information about this guide and the game.
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