It’s time to play the music
It’s time to light the lights
It’s time to meet the Muppets on the Velsoft Muppet Show tonight…

I wasn’t sure what to write about this week until I was checking my Twitter feed and saw a post by Frank Oz, the puppeteer who performed the Muppet characters of Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Animal, and Sam Eagle in The Muppet Show, and Cookie Monster, Bert, and Grover in Sesame Street. (He’s also the puppeteer and voice of Yoda in the Star Wars films.)

Oz said he didn’t have a favorite Muppet because each of the ones he worked with represented part of his personality. This got me to thinking, if the Velsoft Palatial Head Office crew were Muppets, who would they be, based on their personality traits? Well, here’s what I came up with:

  • Animal (Crazed)………… Nathan (Systems Programmer)
  • Beauregard (Loves life) …………  Carol (Senior Editor)
  • Bert (Serious and studious) ………… Jordan (Software Programmer)
  • Clifford (Team player) ………… Keith (Production Lead)
  • Ernie (Practical Joker) ………… Marty (Account Manager)
  • Fozzie (Friendly loving sensitive) …………  Sydney (eLearning Developer)
  • Gonzo (Fun-loving) ………… Ian S. (Researcher)
  • Grover (Pure) ………… Dylan (Audio/Video Marketing)
  • Kermit (Dreamer) ………… Jim (CEO)
  • Piggy (Doesn’t take guff off anybody) ………… Sandra (Office Manager)
  • Pig in Space (Courage, intelligence) ………… Brandon (Software Programmer)
  • Rizzo (Powers on) ………… Scott (Account Manager)
  • Robin (Sees good in others) ………… Cindy (Account Manager)
  • Rowlf (Peacekeeper) ………… Rachael (Project Manager)
  • Scooter (Soft spoken genius) ………… Ian T (Manager IT)
  • Statler and Waldorf (Veiled jokers) ………… Dave (Account Manager) and Michael (Chief Happiness Officer)
  • Dr. Teeth (Loyalty wisdom) ………… Jan (eLearning Programmer) 
  • Walter (Do-Gooder) ………… Ben (Junior Happiness Officer)

What’s in the Pipeline:

  • Carol and Kevin are still learning all about marketing and editing March releases.
  • Ian S. is doing research.
  • Jan is creating eLearning for our February releases and applying our new course templates.
  • Keith is working on February and March CA course releases.
  • Sydney is working on custom projects.

 Tech topics:

  • Fixed issue that could cause a user’s language to be reset to English.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause SCORM courses not to load.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause certificates to print blank.
  • Added user custom fields to the user directory profile pages.

Course Count:

Courses released this month:

Here is the official count of courses for both courseware and eLearning, broken down by Computer and SoftSkills.

Computer SoftSkills Total Courses
Courseware 285 165 450
eLearning 879 164 1043

Did you know:

  • The original Kermit puppet was made from an old coat that belonged to creator Jim Henson’s mother, and the eyes were made from ping-pong balls.
  • Snarl the Cigar Box Frackle had his name changed to … Gonzo the Great!
  • There is no cute back story for the name Muppets. Jim Henson just liked the word (It did not come from “marionette” and “puppet.” He made that up to appease an interviewer).
  • Miss Piggy has appeared on the cover of six magazines.
  • The Muppet Show ran for six years and no celebrity guest appeared more than once.
  • Thog is the largest Muppet at nine-and-a-half feet tall and four feet wide.
  • Almost all of the Muppets are left handed.
  • Jim Henson created more than 2,000 Muppets.