Silicon Valley Squares

All righty, welcome. Apparently the music didn't kick off, I'm going to have to fire my music producer.

Welcome to yet another episode of Silicon Valley Squares. We're here, we're back, great to have you.

Welcome if you've never seen the show or you're catching a live stream and you're, you know, one of those big fans, glad to have you.

This week is actually a Vetflare takeover so we're being taken over by Vetflare.

I'm dubbing this Operation Orthogonal Thunder so ultimately we're going to answer military questions, we're going to talk with Cloudflare staff that have served in the military and some guests that are going to act as squares for us.

So hopefully we can have a great time. I will be your thrill sergeant and we'll go through some heavy paces here.

So if you're unfamiliar with the show, what we're doing is playing a simple game of tic-tac-toe.

I have two contestants here, Carly and Andrew.

They're trying to get either three across, three diagonal, or three horizontally.

They do that by asking trivia questions of our squares and we have a blast while we do it.

So to kick things off, Carly, welcome to the squares. Would you mind giving a quick introduction?

Sure, thanks so much Dan. I'm Carly Brunner, hailing to you from Brooklyn, New York.

What's up to my mom and dad?

They just told me they're watching from Chicago. Hi Jim and Chris. I've been at Cloudflare for about three months on the learning and development team, people team, and Andrew, our fellow contestant, is my colleague.

So I'm looking forward to beating him.

Awesome, so this is vicious. This is serious. Yes, serious.

All right, and with that, Andrew, would you mind giving a quick introduction?

Not a chance, Carly. There's my introduction. Sure, I'm Andrew Fetch. I'm reporting to you from San Francisco, California, where I'm based out of the San Francisco office at Cloudflare.

I've been at Cloudflare for about three years now and also work in learning and development and especially focused on employee resource group management, empowerment, hopefully roadblock removal, and of course also support in Cloudflare TV segments.

So I have a lot of family members have served in the military from my two grandfathers, my uncle, two of my cousins, so I'm very pleased to be here a part of this today.

Awesome, glad to have both of you. Hopefully you guys can still work together at the end of this.

Yeah, we'll see. That's what we'll be aiming for.

TBD. All right, and with that, I'll bring up the board.

Carly, the board is yours. Who would you like to start with to kick the game off?

I think I'm going to start with Jay. All right, Jay, welcome to the squares.

How did you get roped into this? Well, Trent is my son-in-law, and so he asked me if I would like to do it.

I'm a Vietnam vet, and so I said, well, sure, I'd be glad to.

Awesome, well, we're glad to have you, and thank you for your service, and you know, hopefully you can get us going great here for Operation Orthogonal Thunder.

So your question, how many U.S. presidents have served in the army?

Oh, that's easy, seven. All right, seven, strong answer.

Jay, I'm trying to think here. So I'm saying if I agree or disagree, right, Dan?

Correct. You don't have to know the right answer. Just agree or disagree.

Oh, I don't know. I feel like it's got to be, my hope is it's more than that.

That's my hope. So I'm gonna, I don't know, but now Trent's making a face like I should go with it.

He's kind of like, he doesn't know. I want to, my hope is it's more than that, so I'm gonna say I disagree.

All right, the answer is 31.

So at least 31 of the presidents have served in the army, about 24 during time of war, two have been five -star generals, Washington and Eisenhower, and there's at least been one Medal of Honor winner, Teddy Roosevelt.

So with that, let me bring the squares back up.

Carly gets the square. This is where the production value truly shows that everyone is ultimately just watching a PowerPoint.

There we go.

X gets the square. Thank you for your answer, Jay. And Andrew, where would you like to play next?

I'll take Trent for 200. All right, Trent, this isn't Jeopardy.

What are you doing? Do I have to answer any questions? It's worth it, Trent.

All right, Trent, welcome to the squares. Would you mind giving a quick intro?

Sure. My name is Trent Wooten. I'm a BDR here at, out of San Francisco. I've been with Cloudflare for a little over a year and a half, and I was previously in the Air Force for six years, serving on three various ships.

Dan will probably get into it.

Awesome. Glad to have you. Welcome to Orthogonal Thunder. Your question, what was the original name of Veterans Day?

Armistice Day. I like this.

Everyone's no-nonsense. There's no jokes. So, I generally trust Trent with everything he says.

But let me think about this for a second. Should he be trusted now?

He does have that look on his face, like Carly said. Tough to tell what's going on.

I'm going to go ahead and agree with that. I think it was Armistice Day, the true end of World War I.

All right, that is correct. It was previously known as Armistice Day.

It was honoring World War I veterans. It was renamed in 1926 to become a national holiday.

All right, so O gets the square. I'm out of practice.

I came back from vacation, so it's been a while since I've copied and pasted O's into squares.

Good for you for taking a vacation. It's so hard to take vacations these days, I feel.

You gotta try, you know. All right, so we got one X and one O on the board.

Carly, the board is yours. Where would you like to play next?

I'm gonna go with Megan. All right, Megan, welcome. Where are you calling in from today?

From the helicopter?

Oh, you're on mute. Let's see if I can press a button.

Sorry, I lost my entire Zoom screen for a minute there.

I am calling in from Austin. I was never in the military, but I worked for the Navy and Marine Corps for a total of about 14 years.

Awesome, glad to have you. Megan, your question is, in what year did Germany make its final World War I reparation payment?

We made them pay? Like money? Yep. Yeah, that was a problem. Oh gosh, how much did we make them pay?

Can I ask questions to get to my answer? There is no phone a friend on the squares.

I feel like it was sometime fairly recently.

2015, maybe?

I'll go with 2015. All right, 2015 said confidently. Do you agree or disagree?

I think I'm going to disagree. All right, that is a correct choice. I mean, statistically.

It was 2010, so still quite recent. Whoa! So Carly gets the square.

All right, here's the state of the board. We got a smooth game going so far. Andrew, where would you like to play next?

Well, I know my way around a tic-tac-toe board, so I think I'm going to pick on Jennifer.

All right, I think Jennifer... Prepare to be blocked, Carly.

I don't think Jennifer's with us today, but in her stead, we'll be asking Trent her questions.

So hopefully, Trent is prepared for this.

One for one. All right, this should be a softball. What does GI stand for?

Should I slow roll this one, or...? I mean, we got nothing but time, you know? All right, I mean, it's pretty standard, but it's general issue.

Final answer.

All right, general issue. Do you agree or disagree? My phone is right next to me.

I'm tempted to just Google this right now, but I'm not going to because I'm not a cheat.

I'm going to disagree. All right, that's a good choice.

It stands for government issued. Thank goodness. All right, we're starting to get some playback from the squares here.

All right, so Andrew gets the block on Jennifer Square.

And Carly, we're back to you. Where would you like to go next?

Let's see.

Let's see. Let's go to Dan. All right, Dan, welcome to the squares. What brings you here today?

It's actually also Trent. He's a former shipmate of mine in the Navy.

You just go to the Army recruitment, huh? All right, where are you dialing in from today?

Burnsville, Minnesota. Awesome. Well, glad to have you on the squares.

Your question, which president created the USO? Oh, all right.

I'm going to go with Abraham Lincoln and the rest of the Illuminati created the UFO.

Nailed it. Is that your final answer? No. Honestly, I have no idea. We'll go FDR.

Final answer.

All right, FDR, do you agree or disagree? I feel like this is in a musical somewhere.

I don't know what it is. Like, is USO the chorus? Yeah, I don't know.

Maybe I'm confusing it with In the Navy, the village people's song, and I don't know which one it is.

I'm trying to look at Trent's face to see what he thinks.

I don't know. He's not telling me much. I don't think it's FDR. I'm going to say I disagree with Dan.

All right. Well, it was actually FDR. Dan! Yep. So FDR created the USO.

I don't have any detail. I'm going to have to fire my producer. So, O gets the square, and I'll bring up the board.

Here's the state of the board. Pretty competitive so far.

Andrew, where would you like to play next? Troy, please. All right.

Troy, welcome to the squares. Hey. Where are you dialing in from? Could you give a quick introduction for all of your fans?

I am in California, and I was roped in by Trent.

He reached out to me, and I am a software developer now, and I was previously in the military.

I was a chemical operations specialist. I did five years active, two years National Guard, and won 15 months tour.

Awesome. Glad to have you, and thank you for your service.

Your question, who wrote the motto for the Department of Veterans Affairs?

And the motto is, to care for him who shall have borne the battle.

I'm going to say FDR again.

All right. FDR, big wartime president. Could I get a repeat of the question once more?

Who wrote the motto for the Department of Veterans Affairs? Okay.

To care for him who shall have borne the battle. I'm going to disagree.

All right. Disagree is correct. It was Abe Lincoln. The line was from his final paragraph in his second inaugural address delivered in 1865.

All right.

So, Andrew gets the game, if I'm doing my square math right. All right. Let's bring up the board.

Rub it in. Don't rub it in. How about that, Carly? All right.

Let's bring up the board. There's game one. Looks like it's going to Andrew.

Good job, everyone. And game one, yeah, my skills are off. Game one is brought to you by Cloudflare Railgun.

Because it's named after a weapon, and this is Operation Orthogonal Thunder.

Cloudflare Railgun can accelerate your web content and optimize your connection by compressing and removing duplicates and deduping.

Learn more at Cloudflare.com slash Railgun. And with that, we're on to game two.

So, open board. Andrew, you can kick us off this game, and feel free to pick your favorite square.

Oh, gosh. Favorite, that's really, really difficult. I know all these people, and I care for them deeply.

So, I'm not going to say favorite, but one that wasn't picked on last time was Eddie.

So, let's start with Eddie.

He's also one of my favorites, by the way. All right. Eddie, one of the Square's alumni.

Welcome back. Me. Good to have you. Give a quick intro to your adoring Cloudflare TV fans.

Adoring, yeah. I'm Ed Palmer. I'm on the IT team, and I'm an army brat.

I wasn't in the military, but just about everybody in my family has been in the military in every war, at least since World War I.

So, somebody's always coming home on leave every holiday.

Wow. Glad to have your family helping out. Yeah.

It makes interesting stories. Your question. In what state is the United States Naval Academy?

What state? I'm going to say Maryland. All right.

Maryland. Andrew, do you agree or disagree? I thought the state's name was Annapolis, but yeah, let's assume Annapolis is in Maryland.

I agree. All righty.

It is Maryland, and also Annapolis, if you want to get specific. There was a brief moment where I was like, is Maryland a city or a state?

So, lucky there's still fifth graders here.

All righty. Carly, here's the state of the board.

Where would you like to play next? Let's go to Trent. All right. Trent, center square.

You got the last one wrong. I don't want to answer this one. Wrong, right.

As long as you win, right? No. Win, lose. They're all in this for fun. There's no competition here.

All right. That's my mentality, but I'm the host. I get paid regardless who wins.

All right. Trent, your question. What flower is the symbol of Veterans Day?

See, we like to teach here on the squares.

Wow. This is super trivia. I don't know.

I thought it was an olive branch, but apparently not. I know this one.

Let's go with the daisy. Call a square. What was your answer? Daisy. The daisy.

All right. Dan, blink twice if you agree. Oh, no. I've given an answer away, and I got in trouble for it, so I can't do that anymore.

No, not you, Dan. Other Dan. Dan Hunter.

I can't tell if he's blinking or winking. I don't know what that is. That might be a seizure.

Are you okay? That's my poker face. Okay.

You said a daisy. I disagree. All right. Disagree is correct. It is the poppy.

So apparently based off of a famous poem called In Flanders Fields, written in 1915, that mentions poppies.

And so they were brought in based off that poem and became the symbol for Armistice Day.

All right. So Carly gets the center square, and we're off to a solid game, too.

So let me bring up the board. All right. And Andrew, where would you like to play next?

Ron, please.

All right. Ron. I think Ron is also missing in action. MIA during a orthogonal thunder.

So this question once again returns to Trent. I should have studied for this.

Nope. We just throw you in. All right. Your question. Sergeant Major is the highest enlisted rank for this branch of the U.S.

military. Oh. It's going to be Army or Marines.

Anyone got Jeopardy music?

Let's go Marines. Final answer. And a quick repeat of the question, too.

Sergeant Major is the highest enlisted rank for this branch of the U.S.

military. Answer given was Marines. This is really tricky.

I'm going to disagree. All right. It was Army. 50-50 shot.

I mean, it might also be the Marines. I don't know. I was Googling all this.

So I'm by no means the expert. Marines is Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps.

All right. It's both. It's both? Yes. All right. So should I still give Andrew?

Do you want to give me an X, Andrew? No. I'm fine with it. I mean, technically, disagree was both.

So I'll give you the square for now. Okay. Take it away if you need to.

Yeah. We'll go from there. Well, if Carly really wants to file a complaint with my managers, we can figure it out.

I'll file it with HR. Yep. Carly, the board is yours.

Where would you like to play next? All right, Megan. Let's knock this out here.

Here we go. Megan for the block. All right.

Your question. The United States Air Force created Project Blue Book to study what phenomena?

Um, so Air Force, I'm going to throw some shade at you.

But it's probably everyone in the Air Force was feeling a little blue because all the other branches made fun of them.

So hurt feelings. No, that's not my real answer. I just had to say it. Okay, what you said they did it for UFOs?

Yes. UFOs. All right. Do you agree or disagree? I kind of like I just want to agree because I want to learn more about it.

So I'm going to agree.

All right. It is UFOs. Unfortunately, I don't have more detail to that answer.

I just put UFOs. Not to be confused with USOs. Correct. That would be a really weird, you know, comedy tour.

Which is annoying. All right, so Carly gets the square for the block and we've got a competitive game.

I mean, if anything, now I want to do research on what Project Blue Book was UFOs, but I'd probably get taken down by, you know, not the Department of Defense, but the other one, the CIA.

All right.

Andrew, where would you like to play next? Dan Hunter, please. Uh-oh. Dan Hunter, are you ready for this?

I'm excited and nervous. Okay, Dan, your question.

Boat themed, so it might work out. A Coast Guard refers to vessels over 65 feet long as what?

I believe the technical term for it that they use is ginormous.

That feels like a military term.

Uh, no, I think it is cutter. Final answer. Cutter. Do you agree or disagree?

So it's a boat over 65 feet, so all boats over 65 feet are cutters.

Shoot for the Coast Guard. This is tricky, but I'll go ahead and agree.

All right, cutter is correct. Thank goodness. All right, I know that this, you know, some team, team cred is on the line.

Exactly. Carly, the board is yours. Where would you like to play next?

Let's see, let's see, um, Jay.

Let's go back to Jay. All right. Actually, no, wait, I should, Troy's not here, right?

No, he's here. Oh, no, Troy, you're here. I should be Troy then.

Because I saw the zeros. I mean, I don't want to interfere with every kind of like 5D tic-tac-toe you're playing, but.

Well, I also just felt like we haven't heard from Jay in a while.

I was just trying to be, you know, involved with everyone.

Um, so let's, I'm going with Jay. Listen, let's go. Going with Jay.

All right, Jay, your question. What does MASH stand for? M-A-S-H. Well, there's a famous TV series called MASH.

And it stands for, if anybody remembers that TV series, and it's a medical ambulance hospital.

I'm sorry.

It's a medical ambulance surgical hospital. It's a medical ambulance.

It's a MASH unit. And they're very prevalent, mainly in Korea at the time.

And that's when it was really created. Meatball medicine out in the field.

MASH units. They're very mobile. So they had to set up tents and army helicopters came in, dropped people off.

And, uh, but they were surgical hospitals. Jay, was Jamie Farr on that show?

Yes. Jamie Farr always wanted to leave the show because he always dressed up as you.

Always dressed up as a girl. Okay. I was like, what?

He always dressed as, he always wore women's clothes because he wanted to get out.

But they would never let him out because they knew that he was just kidding.

My aunt works and lives in Toledo, Ohio, and used to work for the Jamie Farr golf tournament.

So that's how I know about MASH. So do you know what it stands for?

Do you want to agree or disagree with that answer? Jay's answer was great.

I'm going to agree. All right. Well, unfortunately, it's Mobile Army Surgical Hospital.

That was very good. Yeah. That was one of the best like fake outs.

To be fair, I was so convinced I wanted to double check my answer. That's how bad it was or how good it was.

They were all army doctors. So, very nice fake out by Jay.

Andrew gets the J-square. And here's the state of the board. You've got a two-win situation for game two.

Andrew, how would you like to wrap us up? Shailene.

All right. Shailene, again, is MIA during orthogonal thunder. So this question goes to Trent.

Oh, so much pressure. It is. It is. I'm also really nervous.

All right. Which war saw the first use of a submarine? I mean, probably World War II?

Hold on.

How old is that technology? Let's go with the end of World War I. World War I.

World War I is Trent's answer. Do you agree or disagree? I'm sorry to say I disagree.

And I disagree because I think it was actually the Civil War. All right. Well, disagree is correct.

It was actually the Revolutionary War. The U.S. Revolutionary War on September 7th, 1776.

The American submersible craft called Turtle attempted to attach a bomb to a hull of the Richard Howe's flagship Eagle in the New York Harbor.

It was the first use of a submersible in war. But Dan, since he guessed the Civil War, we should take it away from him, right?

I think so. You guys don't have to get the right answer.

You guys, I think, are just trying to show off when you're like, well, the answer is probably this.

So we'll give him that win.

And let me bring up the board. So that will bring us to the end of time. We got Andrew with the clear win across the top three.

Game two. If you're a big fan of the show, you guys should know what's coming up.

Game two was brought to you by the Cloudflare Partner Network.

Why? Because I work on the partner team and I put this show together.

So if you'd like to learn more about becoming a partner, feel free to check out portal .Cloudflarepartners.com.

And with that, I'll put a wrap on the show.

I want to thank everyone that watched, whether you're catching the live version or one of the recordings.

Once again, we were taken over by Operation Orthogonal Thunder, where we want to call out, you know, happy Veterans Day to all of the men and women who have served.

With that, any puppies to spay or neuter?

Any cats? Any shout outs? Now would be the time.

You guys have a few minutes. You have a minute. Shout out to Trent for putting together a great VetFlare week.

He did some great stuff this week.

So good job, Trent. Thank you. And there was a lot of mention of the USO in this.

Stay tuned. We're actually talking to the USO this afternoon. Awesome.

Plug to the next show. And with that, everyone have a wonderful afternoon, morning, or evening.

Thanks. Thank you. Thanks, everyone, for joining. That was fun.

Good seeing you all again. Thank you.