THIS WEEK’S ESCALADE UPDATE

The white Escalade from last week continues to be parked in the same spot at the start of this week. The dude in the driver’s seat wasn’t there this morning though. He seems to be now out and about more often. Last week, I saw him standing on the little grassy area next the parking lot. I wasn’t sure what he was doing. It looked like he was on the phone but it appeared he was trying to hide himself somewhat behind some trees. It was damn weird.

I will post more updates as warranted.

HOT

The temperature reached a high of 27 degrees Celsius today in my area. That’s really hot for the middle of May. Am I complaining? No, because just last month I was bemoaning the wet and cold weather for April. The sun is great and so is the warm temperatures. It is, however, not normal for it to be this hot so soon. You’d expect such temperatures for mid-June and later but not while we’re in mid-May.

To balance it out, I’m fully expecting it to return to rain and cooler temperatures before June arrives and that would be ok.

ESCALADE UPDATE

So I have an update for my previous post regarding the mystery Escalade parked in the motion capture parking lot with the guy sitting in it all day. Through the studio Slack channel I got information that there are currently no shoots happening in mo cap, so the Escalade guy isn’t a driver for any talent. In fact, some of the mo cap staff called security because they noticed the guy too. Security told them not to worry about the guy but they also refused to say anything more. Weird! This is even more mysterious!

I’ll try to dig up more info but this is definitely out of the ordinary.

ESCALADE GUY

For the last several days I’ve noticed the same car parked in one of the lots near the entrance I use to go into the studio in the morning. This lot is used for two purposes: as a car2go lot and for employee parking for the motion capture studio. The car in question is a white Escalade SUV and there’s always the same middle-aged guy in it. I’m not sure why he’s there. He’s parked the Escalade so that it faces the car2go cars. Is he auditing the cars or observing usage patterns? I don’t think so because the Escalade is pretty blinged-out to be a research vehicle. It looks like it’s got gold rims and white leather seats.

The fact that it’s parked in the motion capture lot makes me think he’s the driver for some VIP talent that’s come to use the motion capture facilities. We often get celebrities and high-profile athletes who come get their motion captured for movie or games. Their visits are very low-key and I’d say 99% of the employees don’t even know they’re here. Anyways, I’ve seen Escalade guy sitting in the same spot well into the late afternoon. Whoever he is, he is very patient.

I wonder, will he be there tomorrow?

GASTROINTESTINAL

I’ve been dealing with a gastrointestinal issue since last Friday. I got the case of the poops on Friday. I pooped three times at work because I wasn’t feeling too well. I felt somewhat better on Friday evening but I started to get some cramps in my lower abdomen.

Now normally when I get cramps in that area, it leads to poops, sometimes in an explosive manner. This time, however, it was just cramps or just discomfort in that area. It wasn’t followed by any urge to poop. I also developed a bit of a fever of sorts. Sometimes I’d just get sweaty hot.

Throughout the weekend, I’d get the random cramp and then sometimes I’d get hot. The regularity and nature of my poops remained normal though. It was odd.

The cramps sorta let up this evening, so I’m hoping whatever I had is now on its way out of me, so to speak. Not sure what it was and let’s hope it doesn’t come back.

WINDOWS

I opened both my living room and bedroom windows today. It was hot enough out that I required ventilation in both rooms. I also washed a few of my shorts and t-shirts today. Monday and Tuesday calls for sunny skies and highs nearing 20 degrees Celsius. It’s not exactly summer just yet but it’s getting there.

REVIEW TIME

I had my annual review today with my manager. I never know what to expect with these things because I never know what my colleagues and co-workers will say about me. In my company, you ask people to leave feedback about you. You never know who is going to say what and the comments kinda get anonymized.

Anyways, I was bracing for the worst today but it actually turned out really well. My manager said I had a great year and everyone was quite pleased with my work. For the last year, I worked closely with a senior engineer and also with content creators, who used the tools and systems I developed so they can be creative and produce content for the game. I’ve enjoyed the process this year and I think it showed in my work.

In a few weeks, my manager and I will meet again to discuss compensation, which means whatever my raise and bonus will be this year. I’m not on FIFA which means I should expect quite modest amounts, which has always been the case in my business unit. I’m not complaining though, I had a good review and that’s great.

THE FUTURE IS NOW

Like an idiot, I delayed filling out my tax returns until this week. I’m still not done but I was amazed at some of the new features in my tax software, TurboTax. The software can now sign you into your CRA account and then import in many of the forms and slips that you would have needed to collect separately. These include your T4 and RRSPs receipts. Incredible! I used to have to either collect the physical copy or download the PDF from various places and then gather them all up so I could enter in the info into the tax software. Now, all that is done for you and it automatically gets filled into the right places. I’d say that was more than 50% of the time I spent doing my tax return, so this year, my return will probably take less than 30 minutes in total to complete.

Now that I think about it, they should have done this a long time ago. Many of those forms and slips are already in the hands of the CRA. They already know how much I made last year. Why is the onus on me to enter in that info? The government knows, so why the farce of allowing me to tell them?

Anyways, this is a great development and if you’re still doing taxes by hand, I pity you!