Month: August 2015

A few weeks ago I was on the Skytrain, on my way to play some tennis with a friend. I only had to go two stops, so my ride was going to be quite short. I didn’t bother to even sit down, so I stood in the accordion part of the train, where there’s lots of room to stand. A few feet away from me were a group of about four teenagers, I think it was three girls and a boy. They were on the younger side of their teens, probably 13 or 14 years of age.

They were in the middle of conversation when I got on the train. I wasn’t able to pick up exactly what they were discussing. One of the girls was mentioning either a tattoo or a piece of jewelry I think. The boy teenager piped up and asked if it was “Chinese or Japanese” writing. One of the girls responded in a way that made it seem like it was plainly obvious to everyone what the answer was, so she said, “Of course it’s Japanese, duh!” I really wondered what they were talking about. The boy teenager then responded with:

“Well, I don’t know! It’s all ching-chong, bing-bong to me!”

As soon as he finished saying that, I looked over to him, and he must have noticed this because we made eye contact for about a second. In that long, hanging second as we looked at each other, I wondered how I should respond. I wasn’t really that offended by his comment but at the same time, I thought I shouldn’t let this kid fully get away with it. All I could come up with a very dry and sarcastic, “nice buddy”. The boy heard me and he face changed into this combination of shock and embarrassment. I could tell he was flustered now and he stammered out a weak “sorry”. He looked away and it was getting a bit awkward for the three girls he was with. They had all stopped talking and it seemed like they were really embarrassed by what their friend had said. As more long and uncomfortable (for them) seconds ticked by, the boy couldn’t stand it any more and he walked away quickly towards one of the ends of the Skytrain car. One of his lady friends shuffled her feet for a bit and then also quickly walked away.

Now by this time, I was actually pretty amused by the whole thing. Though what he said was probably inappropriate while in the presence of strangers, I admit that I am not without a sense of humour and I’ve made similar comments while joking. Now, there’s a big difference between what he did and I how joke. I make the comments while amongst friends (usually Asian) and everyone knows I’m joking. He said that while in public, surrounded by people who have no idea who you are or what context you’re saying things in.

Anyways, I was pleased that he had reacted in such a sheepish manner after I called him out for the comment and that he blurted out a nervous apology. It appeared to me that he maybe had learned a lesson here. The train was pulling into my destination and while it was doing so, one of the remaining young ladies turned to me and said, “I’m apologize on behalf of my friend, he’s a bit of an idiot.” I thought that was incredibly nice and mature of her. I smiled and told her, “Thanks but don’t worry about it, I was kinda messing with him.”

I’ve seen and heard other teenagers do and say way more terrible things, so in comparison, this was a very minor thing. Overall, these seemed to decent and good kids, especially the one young lady who spoke to me. I just hope that boy learned to be more aware of his surroundings when joking around like that.

I try to bring snacks to work because buying snacks from the cafeteria is not cost efficient. I was at Walmart on the weekend and I saw a bag of corn nuts. I love corn nuts. Now technically I’m no longer eating potato chips but this is ok because corn nuts aren’t made of potatoes. You may scoff at this distinction but remember, I prescribe to the Bill Clinton school of distinctions. Anyways, I had a choice between salted and unsalted generic corn nuts. I went with the unsalted kind because I thought it would be healthier as most people need to cut more sodium out of their diet.

Once I got the bag home, I had to try them, as I said, I love corn nuts. These unsalted corn nuts had all the texture and crispness of regular corn nuts. There was no disappointment there. I must admit though, the salt is half the taste, if not more. Let’s face it, salt tastes great. It’s why we add it to so many of our foods. As crunchy and crisp as a corn nut can be, it’s not the same if there’s no salt.

I’ll probably soldier on and finish the bag, or might even just dump a whole bunch of salt into it. Well, I tried to be healthy.

I borrowed the Interstellar Blu-ray from the EA library today. Because I played tennis after work and had to eat dinner as well, I knew I really didn’t have the time to watch the whole movie. I foolishly told myself I could watch an hour of it before I had to get ready for bed. Of course the first hour went by quickly and I was far too engrossed in the story to stop there. The combination of space travel, time dilation, and a strong family plot device was impossible to resist. I watched almost two hours more until the end.

Now it’s late and I know I’m going to feel terrible in the morning. I should have just left it for another night. Ugh.

Do you eat canned soup? I do but only Campbell’s Chunky, it’s one of the few types of canned soup that I find hearty enough. Years ago, I tried a can of tomato soup. I don’t know what I expected, it was basically watered down tomato paste. So yeah, I stick to Chunky soup now. For years, the soup came in a heavy can with a pull top lid. Heating up soup was dead simple, you didn’t even need a can opener.

A few days ago, though, I noticed something different about the cans. I bought three cans of the soup from Walmart. All of them had old-fashioned lids, the ones that required a can opener. I probably hadn’t seen these type of lids on a can of Chunky’s in about ten years, probably more. What gives? This particular food product is now more difficult to use. Most manufacturers try to make their food products easier to consume but not in this case. The Campbell’s web site, however, still shows the old cans with the pull top. Is this a temporary change? I don’t know. I could theorize that this change was done to lower costs. That’s only a theory though as I don’t know how much it costs to manufacture cans with different types of lids.

How does this affect my life? It’s only a minor inconvenience as I own a pretty damn good can opener that is easy to use. Do I prefer the pull top lids? You bet I do as it saves me about five seconds per can. Maybe the social media team over at Campbell’s Canada can help me solve this mystery. I will keep you posted.

This evening I randomly wondered if there was a ten-hour long video Pong being played. As with most things these days, I had my answer within seconds thanks to the Internet.

I try to respect people’s privacy, I really do. Sometimes though, it’s difficult not to see something during a casual glance, like on public transportation. I was on Skytrain last week on my way home. I was standing even though there were plenty of empty seats because I sit for too long at work. From where I was standing, I was right next to two seated women who were facing away from me. I looked down at them casually and saw one woman was on her iPhone, texting someone.

I really wasn’t planning on spying on her conversation but you know how these things happen. Whoever was texting her had said they just got a data plan on their phone and was using it to keep connected to friends and family. The lady then text her friend back with:

“Don’t overdue it!”

As I read that, I recoiled in silent horror. First, because of the spelling mistake and second, at myself for having such a bad reaction to a simple spelling mistake. She seemed like a pleasant and nice woman. We all mistakes and I know I sure as hell do. Grammar and spelling though, for some reason, I’m a particular stickler for. I have often said that proper spelling and grammar are one of the things that separates us from being basic animals.

Oh well, I’m not sure where I was going with this. Oh man, it’s Monday, that sucks. Enjoy your week everyone.

In a recent post, I lamented the drop in stock price for shares in Electronic Arts. It dropped to almost under $70 for the first time in months and I was yelling the sky was falling and hoping that a strong holiday season might raise the stock price again. Well, it only took until Wednesday for things to improve. For reasons still unknown to me, the stock jumped up over $3 that day. The markets were relatively flat that day, so it wasn’t like the stock rode a rising tide that raise all boats. EA itself did not make any announcements. They had just disclosed financials earlier last week. Even though everyone in industry was at Gamescom on Wednesday, EA didn’t reveal any new games at the convention. There was nothing to concrete out there that would have accounted for the 5% jump in stock price.

Perhaps this is another lesson that the stock market cannot be predicted nor trusted. Now, did I sell when I saw it go above $75? No, I did not. I still think after the holidays is the right time to sell.

I recently finished reading the fantastic book The Martian by Andy Weir. The novel tells the story of an astronaut who is stranded on Mars, who struggles to survive while others, both back on Earth and in space attempt to rescue him. Though unfortunately the book is still science fiction, Weir took an amazing effort to tell his tale from the most scientifically accurate way possible. There are no warp drives or food replicators in this yarn. All the equipment and technology he describes is within the grasp of humanity. Possibly in fifty years, this book might not be science fiction anymore. I highly recommend it as a good read.

The Martian will also be movie come October. Ridley Scott is directing, while Matt Damon plays the unfortunate astronaut stranded on the red planet. Once I saw that the movie was coming out, I really wanted to see who they got to play all the characters from the book. Weir did a fantastic job in portraying a realistic and modern version of NASA and the JPL. Gone are the days of white men in short-sleeved white shirts with brush cuts. In the book, one of the main characters is of Indian descent. A female character named Mindy Park, who has a Master’s in mechanical engineering is given one of the most important tasks throughout the novel. Now her ethnicity is never stated in the novel but come on, how many people do you know with the last name Park who wasn’t Korean? Lastly, the character Bruce Ng is the director of the JPL. Tell me that ain’t a Chinese-American.

As I looked through the cast of the movie on IMDB, I was immediately disappointed. The Indian character is played by an English-African actor. I suppose in Hollywood, as long as the skin is dark, they think that will placate the dumb masses. The role of Mindy Park was given to a Caucasian actress by the name of Mackenzie Davis. Ms. Davis does not look Asian… because she is not Asian. I have nothing against her, a gig is a gig and plus she grew up in Vancouver too. I do have a problem, however, with Ridley Scott and people who cast the role of Mindy Park. They had a chance to accurately portray what NASA looks like in the modern world. A world where a female Korean-American could easily have a graduate degree in orbital mechanics and work at NASA. Ridley Scott dropped the ball though, much like he did with Prometheus. He had a chance to do something right and he screwed it up. And the character Bruce Ng? He’s not even listed in the cast as a character. I suppose they decided they couldn’t make the public believe a Caucasian actor could pull off a “Bruce Ng”, so they just eliminated the character completely.

I do want to see the movie but I’ll probably download it illegally though. Go buy the book though!

The current CEO and President of Electronic Arts is Andrew Wilson, who took the top job in September of 2013. Wilson is the first person to lead EA who comes from a modern game development background. Though EA founder Trip Hawkins dabbled in some game programming, he never did release a game that EA published and he basically worked by himself, which is a far cry from today’s hundred+ development teams. Wilson had several roles on the FIFA development team in the last decade, including executive producer.

Wilson spent about five years at EA Canada and if you ask him, he’ll be the first to admit he learned a ton about game development and the business behind it while in Burnaby. In my opinion, it’s very cool that out of all the EA studios around the world, EAC was the one that helped shaped the first “home-grown” CEO of the company. Now I’m not saying that just because he worked out of Burnaby, he became CEO material. There’s no doubt that leaders of billion dollar companies have talent and gifts that would be recognized anywhere. Since Wilson worked at EAC for a decent amount of time, there are still many people on the FIFA team who remember him as a co-worker or at least one of the people on the team. I’m friends with a few FIFA folks, so recently I had lunch with one of them. One of the topics that came up was Wilson’s time in Canada.

My friend told me that Wilson was and still is incredibly driven and focused on attaining goals; goals for himself, his team, and the company. He also said that Wilson was a charismatic and effective communicator, great at presentations and convincing you of anything he said. Here he is at this year’s E3 press conference. This probably isn’t a shocking revelation as these are traits held by many business leaders. My friend then relayed a story which illustrated some of these traits. At least once a year, most major EA studios will get a visit from some executives who fly in from HQ at Redwood Shores. They want to see how things are proceeding and how your game is looking. Usually, a small group of higher-ups on a development team will make a presentation to the execs. In a large studios, the execs might see several presentations during the day as many teams take their turn showing off their latest. My friend mentioned that when it came to the FIFA presentations, Wilson insisted on having the first slot of the day. He didn’t want to present before lunch when the execs would be hungry and he didn’t want the slot at the end of the day when the execs would tired and wanting to go home. His goal was to make his presentation the most effective and memorable, and at the end of the day, the execs would be thinking about FIFA and nothing else. He left nothing to chance and gave himself every opportunity to succeed.

That’s a small anecdote of course but it shows you some of the little things that people do to be successful. I will end this with my own Andrew Wilson anecdote. On my first week back at EAC in March, I almost ran into Wilson in the cafeteria. He and many other EA execs were visiting the studio. I was walking back to my desk with my plate of food and I think he might have been getting some more napkins. We both stopped in our tracks for a moment, made eye contact and we stepped around each other. I know, cool story bro.

Hey, did you know that Windows 10 is out now? Did you also know that if you are currently running Windows 7 or 8, you get a free upgrade to Windows 10?

Most of the details of the free upgrade are on this web site. Essentially, if you install all the various current updates on your computer through “Windows Update”, you’ll eventually see a small Windows icon on your task bar. Clicking on that icon will give you a few options, one of which is to reserve your copy of Windows 10. Once you sign up, Microsoft will let you know when it’s your turn to upgrade.

Both my desktop and laptop have the tempting icon but I’m not going to upgrade for another six months. Despite most people agreeing that Windows 10 is way better than Windows 8, I think it’s somewhat foolish to be an early adopter for a new Windows operating system if you’re currently happy with your existing OS.

I’m fine with Windows 7 and I’ll let six months go by so other people can discover problems for me and they’ll be fixed by the time I finally upgrade. Who knows how many hardware drivers are still unavailable for Windows 10? Maybe that weird sex toy you bought in Japan that runs over USB won’t work if you upgrade right now. Better wait a few months.

I’m ok with waiting as historically, I basically skip over one Windows OS. I started with Windows 3.1, never owned 95, went to 98/SE, skipped over Windows ME, had Windows XP for what seemed like a decade, bought Vista but could not get myself to actually install it, happily moved onto Windows 7, avoid Windows 8, and here I am getting ready for Windows 10 in a few months.

Should be an interesting start to the new year, at least on the computer side.