Posted By Paul Kafasis on February 7th, 2014

Last year, we celebrated Jeff Johnson’s five year anniversary with Rogue Amoeba. At the beginning of 2014, we were able to celebrate another milestone, as Lee Falin hit his own five year anniversary. While these two celebrations came close to one another, such longevity with a company is relatively rare, and decidedly worthy of note.

We shared a private celebration with Lee and the team already, but we also like to publicly acknowledge these important anniversaries. Lee began his work with us back in 2009 as a support technician, and many of you may have been helped by him. While working support, he improved our processes, which is still benefiting folks now. However, he eventually moved on to taking over development of Airfoil for Windows in 2010, where he’s helped develop a steady stream of updates. In one way or another, Lee has helped tens of thousands of our users, and we thank him for it. We’ve been thrilled to have him, and look forward to the future.

A Real Virtual Gift

Each time an employee reaches the five year mark with us, we present them with a personal gift. Rather than a pin, or plaque, or paperweight, we try to find something that will be meaningful to the individual. For Lee’s gift, though, we went with something incredibly cool. It’s something just about all geeks lust for, yet something that’s not quite practical for most to purchase.

That gift is the Oculus Rift, a next-generation virtual reality headset. If you know the Oculus Rift, you may already be jealous. The rest of our team certainly was (including the founders!). But you don’t have to take our word for it, because even 90-year-old grandmothers enjoy the Oculus Rift!

Caution: Contents May Be Fun!

Lee received the Oculus Rift development kit, as pictured, which will enable him to hack and play around. When the first consumer version ships, he’ll receive one of those as well, which should include some fun games. For now though, Lee’s just started fiddling with the dev kit:

“It is definitely an interesting experience, and more than once I jerked my head backwards to avoid a wall, or felt my stomach lurch if I tried to move to quickly. I haven’t had much time to do anything other than plug it in and try the demo, but I look forward to using it for a secret About box in Airfoil for Windows.”

If you look at the image above, you might notice the card featuring Ammo scaling Big Ben on the card. Our designer Christa made that, because Lee and his family have been living in England recently. As well, you can see that Lee also received a 5 Year Challenge Coin. The aforementioned Mr. Johnson was the first employee to receive one of those, but now Lee has joined this exclusive club as well.

Thank You!

Thanks for all your work over the past five years, Lee. Here’s to many more great years to come!