Month: May 2015

Every year I hope that summer will come early in Vancouver, blessing us with warm temperatures and sunny, blue skies in May. That rarely happens though and this year is no different. Sure, the temperatures are mild right now, so I don’t have any complaints there. The daytime highs hover in the high teens and flirt with the 20s. The sun, however, has yet to make a consistent appearance. I think there was one day last weekend where it was somewhat sunny. It’s been cloudy ever since. It’s will be cloudy tomorrow and the next day with a good chance of showers on both days.

I imagine sometime in June, the sun will come out and stay out but for now, we deal with mild, gray days.

We continue our tribute to David Letterman with another clip from his NBC days at Late Night With David Letterman. Back in the 80s, Letterman was quite fond of getting into suits with odd things adorned on them. His most famous stunt probably involves his suit of velcro, which was shown many times on all his highlight shows.

In the clip above, Dave get into a suit festooned with dozens of dry sponges. He is weighed on a scale before lowered into a huge tank of water. Once sufficiently dunked, he is weighed again to see how much water he has absorbed into the suit. The results may surprise you.

If you enjoyed this clip, just go to YouTube and search for “David Letterman suits” and you’ll find the other times he did this.

I often write on this blog that I immediately lose weight once I stop working (either by choice or through layoffs) and I tend to gain weight once I start employment again. I’ve attributed this to the amount of sleep I get. When I don’t work, I sleep more and for reasons unknown to me at the time, I ate less just because I felt hungrier less. When I work, I get less sleep and I always seem to crave food more.

I just weighed myself this evening and I’m eight pounds heavier compared to when I started this job. I’m obviously eating more. Why? I finally did more research tonight and it comes down to two hormones in your body: leptin and ghrelin. Leptin levels in your body tell your brain if you have enough energy at the moment. The more you sleep the higher levels of leptin are in your body. Higher levels of leptin prevents your brain from telling you that need fuel and to store energy as fat. It is essentially the hormone that tells your body you are satiated.

Ghrelin is the other side to leptin. It can be thought of as the hunger hormone. Ghrelin levels decrease as you sleep because you need less energy when sleeping compared to being awake. The longer you sleep, the less of this hormone is in your body.

Being sleep deprived causes you to have lower levels of leptin and higher levels of ghrelin. Your body thus thinks you need more fuel (you are not satiated) and that you’re hungry more. It also tells your body to start storing more energy as fat. It all makes sense now.

I wish more people would learn that you can lose weight just by sleeping more. Well, now that I know for sure why I’m gaining weight, I should get some more sleep!

For those of you who are curious about what I’m working on while at EA, this story fills in a few details. There is vegetation and the undead involved. The big reveal will happen in June at E3 in Los Angeles.

Continuing with our tribute to David Letterman, the above clip is taken from the 10th anniversary show of Late Night with David Letterman. It was this show that made Letterman famous and where he produced his best (in my opinion) and quirkiest bits of comedy. It was on this show where Letterman was at his edgiest and pushed the boundary of what one might see on a late night talk show.

The rest of this special prime time show can be viewed here.

After work on Friday I came home and checked my mail. To my delight, my new credit card had arrived. As I detailed in a previous post, I was eager to use this new card as its cash back reward system offered much more money back than my previous one. I immediately transferred as many accounts as I could to use this new card, things like Netflix and Amazon. Over the weekend, I went grocery shopping and also took my Mom out for dinner for Mother’s Day. I tried not to spend more than I would usually. Though this card definitely gives me more cash back, just not spending money in the first place puts a lot more money back into your wallet.

I wound up spending about $180 over the weekend but over $70 of that was just for dinner. Nonetheless, that amount already qualifies me for a cash reward of $4.64. Under my old credit card, I would have received $0.90 back. If you must spend your money, you might as well spend it in a smarter way.

Late night legend David Letterman is retiring this month, with his final Late Show with David Letterman scheduled to air on May 20th. Until then, I thought I’d make a series of posts, highlighting some of his work that I think are amongst his best.

The clip above is taken from early on in his tenure at CBS. Dave works the drive-thru at Taco Bell in New Jersey. It’s a chance to showcase his quick wit and his penchant to not give a damn in getting a laugh.

I’ve just completed my first two months of my year-long contract at EA. By my math, which may or may not be that good now, that’s one-sixth of my way through. Despite passing the two-month mark, I have yet to update my Facebook nor my LinkedIn accounts with my new job. The reason for this is purely superstitious. Though there is absolutely no logic behind this, part of me believes that if I update my accounts too soon, I invite bad things upon my employment status. Perhaps this stems from my first stint at UFG, where I was laid off just two months into a six-month contract. Whatever the reason is, I always wait several months before letting everyone know where I work now. If there’s a probationary period, I’ll wait until it passes or I’ll wait until I feel like I’m relatively safe from being fired or laid off.

On Halo, I waited until I realized there was so much work to do and not enough people around to do it before announcing to the social media world I was on that project. For my current job, I’m still not sure when the right time is. No one has mentioned a probationary period to me, so it’s possible I won’t have that milestone to work with. I could also wait until my project is announced publicly, then it’ll be easier to talk about without needing to be vague. Most likely, I will wait until I feel comfortable and secure in my role. I think I’ll need a few more weeks before that happens.

Now if you’re wondering why I’m discussing all of this on my blog without any worry, good for your observational skills. My blog has been with me since 2002. It was social media before I knew what social media was. I feel comfortable writing about anything here. Plus, I like giving you fine people, my loyal readers, the scoop!