Month: February 2022

ANNOUNCEMENT

If were to be lucky enough someday to be rich, like multi-millionaire rich, one of the indulgences I would partake in would be a subscription to YouTube Premium. Can you imagine watching YouTube videos free from ads? Gosh, this is what the elite of this world get to experience every day. I can only dream.

SELLING SWAG

As a game developer, I’ve been on many teams where leadership has decided to send everyone swag as a token of appreciation or to increase morale. Some of the stuff is genuinely awesome, like the luxury, high-quality blanket that my current team sent me for the holidays. Other items, I wind up receiving but then regret my choice.

One time I received a very expensive rain jacket made by an outdoor clothing company that is well-known for its quality and also its high prices. The jacket was sized correctly in the body but the arms were way too long. There was no way to get a different size unfortunately. The jacket looks silly on me, so I have never worn it outside.

I’ve also received books from my various teams. Some books are graphic novels or have some story tie-in for the game. Other books are like the “art of” style books. These are nice to look at once or twice but for someone who wasn’t really into the games those books were based off (is that bad to admit?), they just sit in storage wasting space.

I know though that there are people out there who love this stuff more than I do and some of these items are exclusive to us developers so they could be quite desirable. In an effort to make some space and perhaps make some money, I’ve often thought about selling this stuff. There is unfortunately one problem.

I don’t want people to know I’m selling this stuff because it’s kinda bad form. Swag like this is intended to be enjoyed by the person receiving it, not to be sold for profit. I can be anonymous on eBay but selling on eBay means that I have to factor in shipping and some of these items, like books, are really heavy. This makes it much more expensive for any prospective buyers.

Facebook Marketplace is great in that there is no shipping involved since most buyers are local. Unfortunately, those types of listings use my real name on my personal Facebook account. It would be easy to see that I’m the one selling the items.

To get around this, I suppose I could use an intermediary to sell the items but that makes it complicated and I’d probably have to give a cut to the middle-person. I could also make a fake Facebook account but I believe Facebook restricts new accounts from selling for a certain amount of time.

Anyways, I’m stilling trying to solve this problem. I gotta make some space and money.

HUNGRY

I am now hungry but I have to go to bed if I want any semblance of a normal night of sleep. Since I’m old now, I can no longer eat and go to sleep because I’ll get heartburn during the night. My only options are to eat and then stay up too late or just drink some water and go to sleep.

It’s times like this that I wish I were filthy rich and could just eat, sleep, and wake any time I wanted.

DAYS OFF

The other day I was thinking I should get Chinese New Year off as a paid holiday because it’s an important cultural holiday but then my team announced this week that we’re all getting the 17th and 18th this month.

Once per season or every four months, our team gets two extra days off to make it an extra long weekend. For this season, the two days come before a normal holiday Monday (here in B.C., it’s Family Day), so I’m getting a five-day weekend this month. I remember the barbaric days when there wasn’t a public holiday in February, which meant you had to work through January, February, and into March before you had a long weekend. Considering it was also the cold and dreary parts of the year, it made for a tough slog to make it to March. Though back then, we weren’t living in a pandemic, so maybe that’s a fair trade.

I haven’t decided what I’m going to do with my five-day weekend but not working is a good start.