Month: February 2012

About a year ago, I lamented my timing as I managed to catch a cold exactly one day before starting a new job. At the time, I thought having a cold on your first day of work was probably the worst timing for a cold, at least when we’re talking about employment related things. I have discovered this was wrong, there is a worse time to get a cold. How about getting a cold while you’re actually doing job interviews? Yes, that’s right. I’ve been free from employment since December and I haven’t really been sick the entire time. I make the decision to start my job search last week and guess what happens? I come down with a nasty cold. I’ve had four job interviews since last Wednesday. The first two I escaped fine but by Thursday evening, I was feeling pretty ill. That made my Friday morning interview a challenge. I felt like crap the entire time but I tried my best to not look like I was gonna keel over. I had more one interview today and I think I must have looked pretty pale to everyone.

I now realize it doesn’t really matter if you’re sick on the first day of work. You already have the job, the decisions have already been made, so who cares if you show up and look like death on the first day? It’s being sick while doing the interviews that sucks worse. Maybe the interviewer asks you a question that you can normally answer fine but since now your sinuses are all clogged up and your head aches, you can’t even figure out how magnets work. Yes, I’ve learned my lesson, they are indeed worse times to be sick.

As many of you know, I’m not a very sophisticated person, especially when it comes to humour. I giggle at the most jokes at the junior high level and I just remembered an example of this. When I was still working downtown at Black Box, I once went upstairs to the 19th floor to go talk to a friend of mine. I got to his desk and sat down next to him. I noticed he had a few energy bars next to his keyboard. They were labeled “Protein Blast“. I grabbed one of them and then placed the bar on my cheek and said, “Look, I got your Protein Blast all over my face.” I thought it was a hilarious joke… still do.

Before I went to San Diego, I was staying up until some crazy hours of the morning, usually not going to bed until 5 or 6 in the AM. I’d wind up awaking around 1 or 2 in the afternoon. I tried to break this habit but it just seemed to be what my body wanted to do. I knew if I continued this behaviour on my trip I’d be in some real trouble. Considering that most attractions close at 5pm, just waking up in the hotel at 2pm would leave no time to see anything in San Diego. Since the sun still sets around 5pm there as well, I’d get very little of the thing I wanted to experience so badly.

Thankfully, through whatever weird process your mind goes through when you travel, I was able to adjust my body clock quite quickly once I was down there. On my first night, I went to bed around 1am and got up a little past 8am the next morning. That left me plenty of time to start my adventures. Throughout the entire week I was able to get to bed much earlier than before and awoke early enough to experience a whole day’s worth of sights in San Diego.

Sadly, it took basically no time for my body to revert back to its old ways once I returned to Vancouver. I’ve made a bit of progress as I seem to want to sleep around 4am now as opposed to 6am but I am certainly back to being a night owl.

In a previous post I mentioned how I’m trying to buy a new black suit for a wedding I’m going to in March. Given that the flight to NYC won’t be cheap, I still have to buy a wedding gift, the hotel, and I am currently unemployed, I am trying to find the cheapest black suit possible. Tonight, I was able to find a black suit for $68. At Walmart, they sell a line of clothes called “George“. To my surprise, that line of clothing includes a suit jacket and dress pants. You can buy the jacket and pants separately. You even get a choice of grey or black. Unfortunately, the jackets only come in predefined sizes of small, medium, large, and extra large. I found a small jacket but that was just a bit too tight on my body. A medium seemed too loose on me though. It was a terrible fit. The pants were a weird fit. I tried a pair with a 32″ waist and I couldn’t even get the thing buttoned up. I usually wear jeans in 32″, so in Walmart sizing I must be a 34″ or a 36”. Of course, both the pants and the jacket are made of polyester.

To be fair, while the whole thing looked terrible on me, it didn’t look like a $68 suit, it looked like an $80 suit. The search continues. Maybe Indochino is indeed the way to go.

Before I left for San Diego, I went and bought a new pair of shoes. I knew I’d be doing a lot of walking on my trip and a quick look at my shoe collection instantly revealed I didn’t own a pair that would be up to the challenge. For the last few years, my shoes have skewed heavily towards the more casual side, with skate shoes being the largest contingent. I think I own four or five pairs of skate shoes, all of which came to me free. These are the perks of working on three skateboarding games. Despite being generally comfy, you do not want to walk for long distances in skate shoes. They’re not designed to support your feet while walking and there are other types of shoes that do a much better job of treating your feet right.

I first learned the importance of good shoes when I went to New York City for the first time in 1997. With a pair of Nike ACGs on my feet, it made traversing the long blocks of Manhattan that much easier. I was able to walk and stand for long periods of time without it affecting my feet. For some reason, I forgot or chose to ignore the lessons I learned when I went to Washington, DC in 2010. For whatever reason, I brought a pair of Adidas skate shoes with me as my main “walking around” shoes. What a dumb decision. It didn’t take long for the National Mall to take its toll on my feet. I remember my feet hurting more than I’d ever felt them hurt from walking. I’d make my way from one exhibit to the next within a museum and then having to find a seat to rest my feet. Boy, were my dogs barking on that trip.

Determined to not repeat that mistake again, I did my research and looked for good walking shoes. When I got to the store, I found a pair of Nike walking shoes that I’d read about online. Despite feeling quite comfortable, they looked very plain. As I saw them on my feet, I thought that this was where I turned into a senior citizen and started buying old people stuff. I refused to let that moment happen so I kept looking for another pair. I finally settled on a pair of Nike Air Pegasus 28s. Technically these were running shoes but they felt just as good as those grandpa walking shoes. In fact, they were the most comfortable shoes I’ve ever had on. There was a tremendous amount of cushioning both in the heel and the mid-sole. I actually felt like I was walking on a firm mattress with each step.

I probably walked for miles and miles while I was in San Diego last week and my feet were never a problem. When you are traveling it’s incredibly important to have the right gear and the right shoes are certainly something you shouldn’t overlook.

Welcome to another edition of “Did You Know!!!!?1!?”

Did you know that since the 1970s, there has been a colony of feral chickens that has been living near the Hollywood Freeway in Los Angeles? Known as the “Hollywood Freeway chickens“, their origins have not been definitively proven but they have lived near the highway for years. Nature always finds a way for life to thrive.

Well, I have arrived home from my little adventure in San Diego. I am quite pleased with my trip and had a great time. I also managed to bring home a healthy haul of hotel moisturizer, soaps, shampoo, and conditioner. I’m off to get some sleep!

As many of you know, I worked for Black Box for many years, the only EA studio in Vancouver that didn’t develop sports games. Once I left Black Box, I kept my eye on the studio as many of my good friends and former co-workers still worked there.

Here’s an interesting fact about Black Box, as a studio, they have laid off a large number of people after every single game they’ve released since 2008. You should also know that EA loves laying people off around the time they announce their financial quarter results.

So, I’ve been somewhat nervous lately because of two things. First, Black Box released their latest game Need For Speed: The Run last November. It was not received warmly by the critics. EA tries to generally target for an 80 average critics score. The Run didn’t even come close to that. The second thing that made me nervous was that February meant the end of the latest financial quarter. Those two things sure pointed towards some layoffs. A whole team that didn’t make a home run hit and didn’t have a new tangible project to work on.

Well today, what had been anticipated for weeks finally happened. I don’t know all the details because I’m still in San Diego but I do know several people have been told they will no longer work for Black Box. Some have been given the opportunity to work with other EA teams, most likely in Montreal, where the industry is much stronger than in Vancouver. I know some people will choose to stay in Vancouver so they’ll take EA’s severance package and move on from EA.

If I could be selfish for a moment, this is not good news for me. Obviously, I don’t like seeing people losing their jobs but also keep in mind I’m also unemployed right now. This development means the pool of unemployed developers in Vancouver is now larger. I already had to compete with the people from the closure of Ubisoft Vancouver but now there is more.

The one question I still have, is there a Black Box anymore? I have a feeling they are not working on a new game right now. So what are the remaining employees doing?

I hope to find more out when I come back home.

I went to the world-famous San Diego Zoo today. It was the most impressive zoo that I’ve ever seen, though admittedly, I don’t frequent zoos that often.

The first thing I had to see were the pandas. Pandas are such rare animals that you’d be hard pressed to see them in the wild and only a handful of zoos worldwide can host them. Those reasons made them a must-see today. Though it was almost midday by the time I got to the pandas, there was surprisingly very few people at the exhibit. There was no lineup and no waiting, I basically walked up to a railing and stood just a few feet away from one of the most interesting creatures on the planet.

There were two pandas out and about today. One was in a tree, being lazy. This panda was a mom, who has had several cubs in captivity. The second panda was in another area. This panda was one of the mom’s sons. He was also being lazy and lying on the ground.

I watched them for a few precious minutes and then moved on. These animals, while on display, are not here to entertain us in the sense of a show. Pandas, like many animals, do just lie around in the sun for hours a day. The zoo wants them to act as if they are in their natural habitat.

For some of the other animals, I felt kinda sorry for them. I wished they were not enclosed and the freedom to move where ever they wanted. The pandas on the other hand, I think they need some external help at this point. It’s perhaps a good thing that humans are helping them breed.

Last but not least, a bottle of water is $4 at the zoo.

You shouldn’t really go on vacation to watch TV but it’s something I’ve had difficulty in avoiding before I go to bed. At home, I have a pretty crappy TV package so I don’t get a lot of channels. At hotels, including my current one, they have some pretty extensive cable packages so I wind up seeing a lot of shows I don’t normally do.

For some reason, I got fascinated with the A&E channel. I watched several episodes of Hoarders which I’ve seen before but these were new episodes. Then I got caught in Storage Wars marathon. Who knew watching people bid on abandoned storage units would be so entertaining? I also liked watching Shipping Wars where people drive stuff across the US.

Let’s hope I don’t have to say the following to the desk clerk upon check-out:

“I was told the name of movie would not appear on the bill.”