CE QUI?

J’ai pris un comprimé somnifère qui m’a incité trop somnolent pour faire un poteau logique. Plutôt qu’essai pour écrire quelque chose de plein d’esprit, je serai juste honnête. Le clavier semble étrange pour quelque raison.

PET PEEVE #89

It’s been a while since I’ve developed a new pet peeve but here I am with a new entry. This new one has been in the works for months as I’ve been reading video gaming messages, sifting for posts about skate.

A huge majority of the gaming public refers to a software defect in a game as a “glitch”. I guess since I’m getting older now, this irks me to no end. At least to me, the proper term for a software defect is a “bug“. In the nearly two years I was a games tester, I never heard the term “glitch” used once on a project. Without fail, the term “bug” was used universally. We had bug reports, bug counts, the bug database, showstopper bugs, rendering bugs, audio bugs and I could go on.

Even now as a software engineer nothing has changed. Developers call defects bugs and this has been my experience at two different companies. As soon as someone says or writes the word “glitch” I instantly classify that person a civilian, some dude who doesn’t work in the industry.

So please, do me a favour and don’t call them glitches, they’re bugs. Even if you have to change:

“Erwin, you worked on a glitchy piece of crap”

to

“Erwin, you worked on a buggy piece of crap”

That’s ok with me. At least it’s the proper terminology.

BOO-URNS AGAIN

Last week, I had a chance to purchase Rock Band at a discounted price and nearly a month before it arrives in Canada. The studio managed to get twenty sets of the special edition. Knowing that there would be a huge demand, the right to purchase one of the twenty was done by a draw. I was not chosen in the draw. Several people on my team did, however, get selected.

Today the Rock Band boxes were made available to the lucky twenty. The designer sitting next to me picked his up and brought it down to his desk. There were five people around him almost immediately. He was adamant about not opening the box until he got home. Despite the peer pressure, he stuck to his guns and people went away disappointed.

Later in the day, he said it would be interesting carrying the big box down Seymour to his apartment. I’m sure he was fine but there is a big demand for this title. In the meantime, I’ll have to make do with Cowbell Hero until next month.

A SCARF

I bought very first scarf today. Yeah, it took me a while but I finally committed to a purchase. I’ve never been a big scarf fan. I agree that yes, my neck area gets cold once in a while but a scarf seemed like too big of a hassle to wear.

I think I’m mature enough to wear one now. I hope I’ve gotten over the whole “hassle” thing. I was prepared to buy a 100% cashmere one because believe me, I’m not buying another scarf for a few years. I was in hurry though while on my lunch break, so I wound up buying a mostly wool one.

I’m hoping this means I can just wear a t-shirt underneath my jacket because the scarf will keep me warm where it counts.

I’d love to hear everyone’s scarf stories.

BLOG FROM THE PAST

I’ve often thought about how my blog would read if there had been blogs back when I was younger. Actually, I was blogging before I even it knew what it was. When I first got hosting for my site, I’d write a little something on the main page of my site and then put an interesting picture up. I’d try to put something new up about once a week. Because I didn’t use a publishing system, there was no such thing as archives. I just overwrote what I had before.

Anyways, it’s a shame there were no blogs back when I was in undergrad. I was very, very stressed out for the first three years I was at UBC. Yes, I also managed to have a bit of fun but I was extremely high strung back then. I was probably certifiably mentally unstable back then.

There’s also the question if I would even have time to write back then. When I was eighteen to twenty-one, I was more sleep-deprived than any other period of my life. I imagine I’d blog about naps a lot. Some of the most pleasurable things about undergrad were my naps, no joke here. I’d love coming back to my dorm room and letting the exhaustion take me over, if only for just half an hour before I had to go to another class.

One time in my first year, I had about two hours in between my classes. After I returned from the cafe for lunch, I was just exhausted, so I was looking forward to a nap. When I got back into my room, there was thunderous roar coming from outside my window. A mini-bulldozer was digging up the ground right at my ground-floor window. I shut my window but it was no good, it sounded like the machine was right next to my bed, which it actually was since it couldn’t have been more than five feet from the wall.

As noisy as it was, I decided to just lay down anyways, not convinced I was going to fall asleep. I was wrong. I was so tired I fell asleep in less than five minutes, as the bulldozer continued to dig up dirt at the base of my window. When I woke up later, it was the first time that I realized university was kicking my ass bad.

I’ll have more later.

WHAT?

This happens fairly often but this is the first time I’ve written about it. Often, as I sit to write a post, I get fairly conflicted on what I’m about to write. Sometimes I have several ideas but then I start figuring out those ideas won’t work for a post. One idea might take an hour to write out properly. Another might be just lame.

Tonight, I can’t decide if I want to write about:

1. The fact I’m undecided about what to wear for this year’s James Bond themed EA Holiday Party.

2. Lately, after trying to limit my sugar consumption, I have sudden strong cravings for sugar.

3. Why some people on the Internets were so wrong about something, even though we all know most people on the Internets are complete idiots.

Maybe I’ll have something better for tomorrow.

A GAMING NOTE

In the last few days, I’ve been asked the same questions so I thought I’d just make a post out of the answers.

In just over the year I’ve been working at EA Black Box, I’ve made available to many of you some great EA games. I can do this because any internally developed EA title only costs me $20 or in some cases is free if I use my points (but I usually leave those for myself). For example, I’ve given away many copies of skate.

There’s a part of EA that most gamers don’t know about. EA Partners works hard to secure publishing/distribution deals with external developers. The external developers can leverage the publishing infrastructure that EA has in place to get the game on store shelves. Usually, the IP remains property of the developer, so it’s not like EA “owns” the game. As such, EA sees less revenue on these titles compared to internally developed games.

Long story short, while the EA store does offer these EAP games and the EA logo is on the box, I receive no discount for these titles. They are full retail price, even for me. As a sign of how good EAP has been doing, they signed deals to distribute titles like Orange Box, Crysis, and Rock Band.

All of these games have been highly rated and in high demand. Unfortunately, these games are at full retail price for me, so you’re just better off buying these at Future Shop yourself. Sorry.

A special note has to be made about Mass Effect. While yes, Bioware is now an internal EA studio, I’ve been told that the formal ownership transaction does not take place until January. Even then, I’m not sure if Mass Effect will be in the EA store. If you want it before the holidays, you’ll have to buy it elsewhere.