I’ve been spending a lot of time at work lately and in an inspired moment of genius, I decided to buy a massage cushion for my chair. This baby plugs in and has a motorized massager that goes up and down the full length of your back. It even heats up to loosen those muscles.
It’s getting delivered to the studio tomorrow (or today depending when you’re reading this) and I can’t wait to be massaged while I’m doing work.
So I checked my visitor logs today and I noticed someone from London was looking for some content on my blog that he probably won’t find. Those are some “interesting” search terms they used.
Without a doubt, this is the most intense rap battle I have ever listened to.
As with every September 11, I celebrate the day my parents got married. If that joyous day did not happen both my sister and I would not be here. To pay them back for all their support over the years, I try to make their anniversary somewhat special. This weekend, I took them to dinner where my both my parents quite enjoyed their Grand Slam breakfasts.
I didn’t catch the media attention when this first happened but apparently actor Seth Green went on Conan previously and appeared to pick his nose and eat his boogers. The video above shows his return to the show this week where he attempted to vigorously defend himself.
Green steadfastly maintains he did not pick his nose and eat his boogers but I agree with Conan when he says the video evidence does show otherwise in a very convincing manner.
I’ve decided once my contract ends in October I’ll tackle a project that I haven’t done before. A few months ago, I received an unused computer motherboard that had a CPU and some RAM in it. With all this free time coming up, I think it’ll be a fun project to install that mobo into my existing computer setup.
The project will involve removing my existing motherboard and that means disconnecting all the cables, both power and data. I’m also going to get an upgraded power supply too. I’ve never taken out and put in my own power supply before so that will be interesting. Once the new PSU and motherboard is installed in my case, I get to hook up all the cables and wires back together. It shouldn’t take more than a few days to complete but it will be a great learning experience and at the end, I’ll wind up with a faster computer.
As many of you, my loyal readers, know I’m currently on contract, working on Halo: The Master Chief Collection. That contract ends on October 10th and I will be looking forward to some rest after that. This will be the very first time I’ve completed a contract job. The only other time I worked on contract was also with UFG, back in late 2010 / early 2011. That was my ill-fated tenure on True Crime: Hong Kong. A six-month contract barely lasted two months as the game was cancelled by Activision.
So, I’m looking forward to finishing my first contract job to its intended conclusion. I’m blessed with the luxury of not having to work right away. I don’t live paycheque to paycheque and I don’t have a wife and children who require food and shelter. I’m a big fan of doing nothing after an intense amount of work, so I’m envisioning a lot of sleeping in, playing video games, and eating. I might go on an adventure but those plans are just a twinkle in my eye right now.
I have no idea where my next job will be or when that job will come along but I’m ok with that.
When I worked at EA, I participated in the employee stock purchase plan, which is a common way for employees to purchase stock in their company, at a discount. At EA, deductions were made from your pay to fund the purchases, which were made twice a year. It is interesting to note that you were only guaranteed to make a profit from these stock purchases if you sold them immediately. Because the stock price could fluctuate in any direction after you bought them, you ran the risk of being in a money losing situation as soon as the day after. For example, say you bought X number of shares at a discounted price of $10 a share, the market price could have been say $11. If you sold immediately, you’d be guaranteed a profit of $1 per share. If you held onto the shares however, things could get better or they could get worse. What if the shares fell to $5 a share next week and you had held onto your ESPP shares? You’d be out of luck then.
I got caught on the wrong end of the stock market with four separate ESPP opportunities. I bought the shares and held onto them instead of going for the sure thing. The image you see above shows you the four times I bought ESPP shares and didn’t pull the trigger right away. The stock tumbled below $40 a share after the recession hit in 2008. After August of 2008, EA’s stock price has not seen the $40s since. So for more than 6 six years, I’ve sat on these shares, hoping I’d be able to dig myself out again. I swore that I didn’t even want to make a profit on these shares anymore. If I could just break even on these four sets of shares, I’d be happy. Could that happen soon?
The chart you see above is an instant and up to date snapshot of the stock price for EA for the last three months. As you can tell, it’s come close to $40 but it’s fallen short. The 52 week high was $38.64 as of this writing. I need it to go above $40 obviously to offset the $20 commission that will be charged when I sell. For the two sets of shares, it doesn’t need to go too far over $40. The other two sets will need a bit more help.
It’s almost there but I’m afraid that it will retreat back into the lower $30s or worse. I could sell them for a loss to get some capital losses to offset capital gains but I don’t have any other stock to sell! I just have to be patient. It’s been six years now, hopefully it will be only a few more months to go.
Someone over at Gawker ranked all 236 episodes of Friends. If you’re not aware of the show, it was a popular sitcom that ran ten years from 1994 to 2004. Having to explain that kinda makes me feel old and sad. The list even includes YouTube links to the top ten episodes.
I won’t give away the top spot but the video above is from the supposedly second best episode ever, The One Where No One’s Ready.
I was awoken this morning not by my alarm clock nor by a beautiful woman next to me but by a loud and incessant noise from an animal. A crow, for whatever reason, had decided to land in close proximity of my open bedroom window and began cawing noisily.
I tried to ignore the crow even though it had already awoken me. A minute went by as I laid it bed. It did not stop its verbal assault on my ears. I decided to get up to see where it was on my balcony. I carefully peeked outside my blinds. It was right on the railing next to my window. I must have made too much noise because it turned around, saw me, and flew off. Stupid crow. I went back to bed but could not fall back asleep.
I was tired late in the afternoon and I blame that crow.