Month: July 2011

Today, a good friend of mine starts work at Electronic Arts in Burnaby. By my count, this will be his third tour of duty at good old EAC. My buddy and I actually started at EA Canada on the same day. That was our first day of employment with EA, which turned out to be many, many more days of working for them.

I’m not sure if any of my loyal readers have had the pleasure but it’s always weird to leave a workplace and then come back to it again for another employment stint. I’ve had three “first” days at EAC: first job at a tester, second stint as a tester, and then returning to Burnaby with the rest of my skate crew in 2009. I’m not sure how my friend will experience his first day but I can give it a good guess. There will be a lot of familiar faces for him but many others he knew will have left since he was last there. The cafeteria might seem the same to him but they changed the food service provider while he was gone, so some of the menu items will be new to him. What won’t be new is the massive, heart-attack inducing breakfast burrito that will always be part of the breakfast ritual. There might be a new coat of paint here and there but the facilities will be pretty much how he left them. Oh, they might have moved some cubicles around but there’s no getting rid of the football pitch or the beach volleyball court.

Coming back to an old workplace is a very unique feeling. For me, it meant thinking back about the things I enjoyed when I was there last. I also can’t help think about the things I didn’t enjoy, which was probably why I left in the first place. I’ll have to ask my friend how his day went when it’s over. I wonder if he got the burrito for breakfast.

The skate dev team is meeting up tomorrow for our summer shindig. We usually meet as a group twice a year. The last soiree was for St. Patrick’s Day. We don’t know of another game development team that still meets up in great numbers years after the team has been disbanded. It’s a close group of people who obviously enjoyed working with each other.

For those attending, I can’t wait to see everyone there. For those who can’t make it, we will miss you! skate on!

On Saturday evening, I was returning home from a drinking establishment near my home. I had partaken in just one adult beverage and I was looking forward to going home, playing some video games, perhaps masturbating, and then going to bed. I was close enough to home that the walk back would just a few blocks. About a block away from my apartment building I noticed a lone, female figure walking towards me. The sidewalk was devoid of people except myself and her. I could see she was rather plain-looking and well into her 40s. She had a bit of a homeless vibe to her and looked a bit rough around the edges. I thought we were going to pass each other without incident but as she was about to walk by me, she asked me a single question.

Do you want to go on a date?

For those who aren’t well-versed in the street talk, this woman wasn’t asking me if I’d like to go to Starbucks and see what hobbies we have in common. She was propositioning me for an exchange of sex and money. I was rather taken aback and all I could do was smile awkwardly and say, “ah, no thanks”. I continued down the block and as I thought about it more, I involuntarily shivered momentarily. That would have been gross. The last time I was solicited by a streetwalker was when I was 23 years old. I was in Hawaii of all places, walking down the main tourist drag in Honolulu. It was a beautiful summer evening and I was minding my own business, strolling down the sidewalk. A rather attractive blonde appeared next to my side, flashed me a smile, and inquired about my interest in her services. I politely turned her down. Now, I guess I should mention that I was walking with my sister the entire time this was happening. Now, it wasn’t like she was on the other side of the street either. She was right next to me. It was clear as day I was walking with her and talking to her. Yet that pretty little Julia Roberts type had the audacious nature to proposition me next to me sister. You go girl!

Alas, let us return to much less tropical climates. My area of town isn’t well-known for street-walking prostitutes. The surrounding area is frequently patrolled by the police and in fact, the police station is just three blocks from my apartment. I think this was just an isolated case.

So as many of you, my loyal readers, were aware, I was laid off from United Front Games in February after being on the job less than three months. All of it is chronicled in this post. I’ve been receiving little bits of info in the last several weeks that something is brewing over at UFG and it’s not their own beer that the brew pub has downstairs.

I know that they’ve quietly hired back some of the people who were on True Crime. Now I know they’ve been working on another project this entire time but I don’t think all these re-hires can be attributed to that project. I believe something new(?) is going on at UFG. After several months of having a desolate job openings page, there is some activity over there now.

What could it be? What ever it is, I’m glad we’re seeing the local video game biz swing back towards the good times once again.

Thanks to the generosity of some of my loyal readers, I was given a few Google+ invites. I accepted one and quickly was added to the Google+ profile. I would honestly like to say I was impressed and liked what I saw but that would be lying. Honestly, there’s not a whole lot to see nor do on Google+ right now. If you’re not on it right now and itching for an invite, you’re not missing a whole lot.

When I finished signing up, the only thing useful thing I could do on Google+ was to add people. Even that was a bit troublesome. First, there are significantly fewer people on Google+ compared to Facebook. I know I couldn’t find all my Facebook friends. Second, since Google+ is so new, it’s sometimes impossible to figure out which “John Wong” you’re looking for. Everyone’s Google profile is barebones or their privacy levels are cranked up so high, you can’t tell if that’s you’re buddy or not.

I have seven people in all my “circles” so far. It took about a day or two before my “news feed” had any content. So far, my news feed is completely dominated by this one guy in my “circles” who seems to have jumped on-board the Google+ boat with great enthusiasm. Again, to be honest, I didn’t sign up to Google+ to see this dude just spam my entire news feed with his posts. It’s literally just dozens upon dozens of his posts with no one else’s content. I don’t want to block his posts because I might as well remove him from list of friends.

I understand it’s very early in the  Google+ maturity process and there are many kinks to be worked out. I also know there will be improvements. For now though, Google+ is far from the Facebook-killer that many want it to be. I won’t delete my account of course but it’s certainly not the first social network I check on each morning.

I just signed up for the “Colonel’s Club” on the KFC web site. The majority of you, my loyal readers, know that I’m a big fan of KFC and fried chicken in general. By being part of the “Colonel’s Club”, I will get special deals e-mailed to me. I’ll probably get a bit of spam from them but it’s all worth it for some chicken discounts. I also used a junk e-mail address, so no worries there. Beyond the deals via e-mail though, I’ll be getting a membership card! This card signifies that I’m serious about fried chicken and not so serious about cholesterol and fat intake. Having the card means I can go to any KFC location and use the card to get special deals without having to remember to clip out coupons. I’m sure everyone has received fast food coupons in the mail. Very few people have the time and patience to clip a coupon in advance of going for a meal. Sometimes, you can’t guess where you’ll be eating that day. The membership card eliminates all that hassle.

Beyond KFC, I was thinking tonight how tasty fried chicken is. I began to wonder about the first time someone dipped chicken into some batter and then decided to cook it in hot oil. If they ever are able to make a time machine, I’d like to go back into time and see that moment. I’d love to see the reaction of the first person to ever eat fried chicken. I can’t even imagine what time period that might have been. I could Google it but I’m ok with not knowing right now. Did that person instantly know the glorious food they had in their mouth was going to change the world? I’m going to assume fried chicken was first made in Shakespearean times and the person probably would have said something like, “thine chicken experiment is a success! Hasten more of such delights into a bucket!” Yes, that’s how it most likely went down.

As some of you maybe aware, Google launched their new social network this week with Google+. This is a direct competitor to Facebook and it marks the first real struggle between the two Internet giants. Google+ is not available to everyone just yet. They’ve been opening up the application to people via invites only. Google says this is to keep the numbers at a reasonable level so that they can work out the kinks. That very well maybe true but it also has the nice side effect making Google+ seem exclusive and desirable.

I currently do not have access to Google+. I could have begged people for an invite but I am fine with being patient and waiting for Google to improve things before they open it up to everyone. A lot of people seem quite excited about Google+ and I have even read and heard predictions about how people will flee Facebook en masse. Though that could be a possibility, I don’t think it will happen overnight and Google will have to be nearly flawless in its execution of Google+. There are already hundreds of millions of people on Facebook. A social network is pretty useful when it has almost everybody in the world on it. People like knowing they’ll probably find the person they were looking for on Facebook. People also have invested a lot of time and effort into Facebook. They’ve uploaded hundreds of pictures and videos. They’ve built up their farms and mafia empires on Facebook. It will take a monumental effort to get everyone to abandon Facebook for Google+. Though we are talking about Google here and they have a few smart people working for them.

When Google+ is open to everyone, I will sign up to see what the fuss is about. Will you already be on Google+? That might just determine if I stay there or not.

I’m about to do some upgrades to some of my hosting software. If you are reading this, it means you caught me in the middle of the upgrade or that it went really wrong and I haven’t been able to delete this post.

With the warm weather finally arriving in Vancouver, I was able to leave my abode without pants on the long weekend. It didn’t take me long for me to get taken advantage of. I vaguely remember seeing some sort of insect on the inside of my left ankle. I brushed it off and didn’t think much of it since I didn’t feel like it bit me. I was wrong. Later that evening my ankle started get itchy. Whatever that mofo bug was, it bit me.

I thought it was a mosquito as the bite area was itchy and slightly swollen, which is usually how I react to mosquito bites. It’s been over two days now and I think it might have been something else. For starters, the wound area hasn’t completely healed over yet. Maybe it’s because I keep scratching at it. Or, it might be because whatever bit me must have had some giant insectoid mouth that resembled something close to a blood donor needle. The bite wound also keeps “weeping” or at least I think that’s the proper term. The wound hasn’t and isn’t bleeding. Instead, a clear and slightly orange-yellow fluid seems to be emitting from the wound. It then hardens. It’s not like torrential river or anything but there was a significant amount that had accumulated. Like an idiot of course, I pried it off the wound. It look liked amber though I’m certain we couldn’t make dinosaurs from it.

I’m hoping it heals completely in the next few days and it stops leaking raptor DNA. Oh man, what if baby insects start crawling out of my ankle at the end of the week? Shades of wang flies!