I can easily say that my fondest memories of MP3.com stem from sharing an office with David and GK. For starters, we decided that rather than have someone sit with their back facing the window, all three of us would set up our desks adjacent to each other so that two of us were sitting perpendicular to the window—just look 90 degrees and you have a view—and the third facing toward the window, forming three sides of a square with the window as the fourth and our jungle arrangement of plants in the center. Next, we brought in musical instruments—GK brought a guitar, bass, and didgeridoo, Dave brought a guitar amp, and I brought my bass amp, and, well, we were wired, instruments hanging from hooks on the wall, just calling out to you anytime you had coder's block and needed a few to get your neurons to fire around the problem instead of slamming your head against the wall.

A completely unintended consequence of this was due to the large number of amazing musicians who worked at MP3.com. I can still remember the first time Rattlesnake Ray Matthews, currently a web designer, walked into our office and, without saying a word, walked past where GK and I were sitting, picked the guitar off the wall, plugged in, and let loose with this amazing blues lick for something like two minutes before unplugging, hanging up the guitar, and leaving. Un. Fucking. Believable. I don't think any of us had even known that he could play before that. This ended up happening probably about twice a month, and it was just a welcome relief and always brought a smile to our faces. (It turns out that Ray had been a session musician for a good long while, even touring as Madonna's guitarist, I believe, and was now working a straight job to—among other things—put his kid through school.)

The dynamic in our office was one that fostered communication—or more specifically, discussion. GK was a philosophy major from Texas A&M turned software engineer, David was a vegan and a Buddhist who had grown up under interesting circumstances in Detroit, and I was, well, the consummate devil's advocate, a jack-of-all-trades, and a person with an interesting take on life. Topics ranged from the nature of addiction to the best Beastie Boys album (Paul's Boutique was groundbreaking, but Check Your Head was funkier and a better overall album with a deeper groove), dissertations on how the mind processed information to our ability to define our own destiny, and assertions from David and GK that "reality" was strictly a function of subjective perception (and therefore non-existent). There was a crazy energy about it all, and a bit of magic in the air with occurrences like a plastic bag floating up in front of our office window, cued by our discussing the symbolism of the plastic bag in the recently released movie American Beauty.

It wasn't all "philosophical discussions on the true nature of the proletariat in American society," either. David and I would regularly check each other's Perl code, or at least provide a second set of eyes and an ear for a sounding board. More often than not, just this process of trying to describe a problem you were coming up against was enough to turn on the light bulb and allow you to solve the problem yourself, but the talking it through was an integral part of the process. The whole dynamic was one that fostered a healthy work environment, where 75% of the time you sat there working in silence—headphones on, or someone choosing the next album without being asked—and the rest of the time you felt OK asking for help should you get stuck … but you waited until you were stuck.

I did feel bad for the folks who reported to GK, though. It seemed like once a week someone would come in and patiently wait for us to finish whatever bizarre tangent we were pursuing, sometimes sitting there for 10 minutes before we finished—or before they left because it really wasn't that important. The odd thing was that it was rare for anyone to jump in and contribute, which always just struck me as a bit weird.

Brian Callahan probably bore the brunt of our tangents, as he was frequently popping by the office for direction. When he finally left MP3.com to seek his own fortunes, he posted a long missive of fond memories and other minutiae to the internal BBS. His tribute to our office was "I dare anyone who considers themselves a realist to drop by David and GK's office" (I had since moved elsewhere), to which David promptly responded:

"You realists can stay the hell out of our office."

'Nuff said.