Month: March 2023

My family doctor is retiring at the end of August. He sent out an e-mail to all his patients informing us that he is leaving his practice along with three of his colleagues, who are also retiring. Four doctors, all from the same medical clinic, retiring at the same time. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that before.

So that will leave the medical clinic with just one doctor after they retire. I was also informed that they could not find replacement doctors to come take over at the clinic. This means that I will no longer have a family doctor after the summer ends.

My family doctor has been my doctor for well over two decades. Over those two decades, I thankfully haven’t had the need to see him very often or when I did, it was for very minor or preventative reasons. I know others haven’t been as lucky and I feel very blessed in that regard.

While my doctor has earned a well-deserved retirement and I wish him well, the timing isn’t great for me. Though I feel like I’m in relatively good health, I am getting older. As you age, having a good and consistent doctor available to you is important. Seeing a doctor at a walk-in clinic is fine as a stopgap measure but building that relationship with a family doctor is different.

The fact that four doctors are leaving the clinic and they couldn’t find a single family doctor to replace them, with a built-in set of many patients is quite telling. There is something not quite right with the medical system in this province and I guess in most provinces as well. There are just not enough family doctors to go around right now.

I need to start the search for a new family doctor now, before I actually have a dire need for one. Who knows how long it’ll take before I find one.

Earlier this afternoon, my employer announced that they would be laying off about 6% of their global workforce. Some of these layoffs actually started several weeks ago when my employer closed a studio in California and cancelled two games. Today’s announcement revealed more people will lose their jobs and in total, about 800 people will be out of work.

I gotta admit, the games industry seems to have weathered this economic storm better than other tech companies so far. Compared to the layoffs at Google, Amazon, and Meta, their layoff numbers would have wiped all the people at my company worldwide. That’s not to diminish what has happened and will continue to happen where I work though. Any way you look at it, 800 people losing their jobs is a lot. That’s 800 people with bills, mortgages, families, loans, children, spouses, and other responsibilities to take care of, all of which require a job to do so. If there might be a silver lining, it’s that the severance packages in the past have been extremely generous. I know of two people who were laid off a few years back that received severance for approximately two years. That’s not a typo, these people were given over twenty months of severance. Of course, not everyone will be as lucky. The amount of severance will be tied to the length of employment at the company.

Those getting laid off will also be put into the job market that already has been flooded with job seekers from all the recent tech layoffs as well. It might be a tough road for some. From what I’ve seen and heard, it might be especially rough for recruiters.

From a personal standpoint, I’m not worried. In the CEO’s statement today, he called out a few teams and games that were doing well and represent the present and future of the company. I’m lucky enough to work on one of those games he mentioned. I’m privy to a bit of our financial performance and without saying too much, the game I work on is profitable and provides a significant amount of revenue for the company. I also happen to work on features that a have direct impact on how much money the game brings in. Lastly, I was informed today, by more than one person, that our team is safe for the most part.

No one is ever 100% but as far as I can tell, the odds of me being part of that 6% is are extremely low. I have high hopes I’ll be ok and I hope everyone affected finds something soon.

A new spray wand for my kitchen faucet arrived at my front door this morning. Amazon usually doesn’t deliver right to my door, so this was a pleasant surprise.

It took all of two minutes to remove the old wand and to attach the new one. It just worked. I am now able to get full pressure water from my kitchen faucet now.

I am quite relieved I didn’t try to replace my entire kitchen faucet. That was not necessary.

Inevitably, more of that brown gunk will come through the hot water line. I just hope that it’ll be easier to clean it out with this spray wand than the last one.

I had a 9am meeting this morning and I have another 9am meeting tomorrow as well. I’m not a morning person, so having two early meetings like that to start the week is not great.

I had six meetings just today and that pretty much means my Monday was mostly attending meetings. Since I started my day so early, I ended it early as well. I was pretty much done with the day at 5pm. I’ll do the same tomorrow.

I suppose it could have been worse. I didn’t have to be at work somewhere to attend these 9am meetings. I only had to sit in my PJs while on Zoom.

The crazy thing is I have yet another 9am meeting on Thursday. It’s almost like they want me to be non-productive for the majority of the week. Well, I need to get to bed because I have an early ass meeting to attend.

I am in need of a new kitchen faucet. For over a year now, the hot water in my building will be periodically fouled by some sorta brown gunk that somehow reaches the faucets in the apartments. Strata doesn’t seem to care about this, even after many complaints.

As a result, I’ve had to disassemble the aerators from both my bathroom and kitchen faucets. I then have to clean out the aerators to remove this brown goo and then put them back on. The bathroom once is straightforward but my kitchen faucet has a pull-out wand and removing the aerator there is a bit more tricky. I’ve now removed and re-attached that aerator so many times that I believe I’ve damaged the threads in the wand. What happens now is that if I turn on the faucet at full blast, the aerator will come flying off and the water is no longer directed in an organized fashions and it just sprays everywhere.

I can only turn the aerator onto the thread about two times before it feels like it’s no longer screwed on anymore. As such, it’s not on there as securely as it could be. So unless I want it to come flying off, I have to keep the pressure about half way or less. I can still use the faucet to clean, fill up pots, and everything else, so the situation isn’t critical but it isn’t ideal either.

So as I was typing this, I had a revelation. I only need to replace the spray wand, not the whole faucet. I just looked online and I can get a replacement wand for anywhere between $20-40. I’m not sure why I didn’t think of this earlier. Maybe I didn’t realize they made replacement wands for sale?

Anyways, I’m glad I worked out this problem in real time.

So management has officially announced that starting on April 3rd, members of the team that I work on (who are Vancouver-based), will be able to work from the new studio (if they choose to do so).

This has been a long time coming. I think the initial estimates had the studio open last spring but obviously that didn’t happen. There were delays upon delays but I think it’s actually happening now.

What’s interesting is that two teams that were scheduled to move in with us, are no longer going to be based out of this new studio. In fact, one team made the announcement just today that they were no longer going to the new place. It’s crazy that just weeks before the scheduled move, they are no longer going. I don’t have any details on why this was decided. I also have no clue where these employees are going to go if they want to work on location. Maybe they’re all just staying remote forever?

As I’ve written many times, from a personal perspective, my daily work life won’t change very much after April 3rd. Most of the people I work with on a daily basis are located elsewhere, mostly in or near Los Angeles. So, I can either take a Zoom call at home in my PJs or wake up early, have to get dressed, pay to commute, and then take a Zoom call at a desk that’s just temporarily mine for that day. On most days, there’s a clear and easy choice. I might go in perhaps once a month, on a day when they’re giving out free food. Otherwise, it’s life as usual for me.

There might be some local press coverage of the studio opening next month, so if there is, I’ll post some links.

So I get a meal kit delivered to me every week and discovered something interesting very early on. The recipes often instruct you to add salt (and pepper) at certain steps, which is frequently unnecessary.

First, I believe the average North American diet contains too much sodium to begin with. When you are cooking your own meals, it’s imperative you control the amount of salt you’re adding to your food. With processed foods or premade items, you’re not in control of how much salt has been added, but with a meal kit, you are.

Second, I don’t think the meal kit maker, in my case Chef’s Plate, understands how unnecessary salt is in their recipes. In a typical recipe that might have a vegetable component, a meat one, and a sauce one, they will ask you to salt all these components. You might think this is required for the dish to not taste bland but keep in mind most of these recipes have a spice or marinade component that adds flavour that way. Some of these spice blends or marinades already have salt added to them.

It’s gotten to the point where I usually never use my salt grinder at all while I’m cooking these dishes. The only exception perhaps is when the recipe has me cooking pasta and I’ll salt the water, and even then I won’t add much to it.

We should all strive to eat and cook as healthy as we can.

I went on a walk this evening and at the farthest point of my walk, I had to poop. I briefly thought about comedian Bobby Lee, who also has frequent gastrointestinal problems. I wasn’t driving though, so I couldn’t poop onto the back seat of a car.

There wasn’t really anywhere for me to go unless I just wanted to poop in a side street and that was not going to happen. So I just walked quickly as I could.

I made it home in time but there were a few times where I did have to concentrate and clench a bit. The disappointing thing was it wasn’t even a big poop. For all the urgency, it turned out to be just a medium-sized poop.

One day I’ll poop my pants, but it was not today.

On Friday evening, I played about an hour and a half of Half Life: Alyx. While some VR games can be played while sitting, some games are better played while standing, because you need to be able to take a step or two forwards, backwards, left and right. You might also need to duck, crouch, and lean in any direction. That type of motion is difficult while seated.

So I was on my bare feet for almost two hours on Friday. I got hard flooring put in about a year and a half ago, so that’s what I standing on. As soon as I stopped playing, my legs definitely let me know it. My legs were immediately sore. It kinda sucks to stand on hard floors in your bare feet.

I needed to solve this problem before continuing my VR gaming experience. One solution would be to get rug but that’s just not practical. The rug would be need to be large and thick enough to be comfortable to walk on. That would be expensive and I’d have to store it somewhere, unless I’d just leave it out all the time.

The more logical solution would be to wear shoes. All my shoes are outside shoes though. I really don’t want to have to clean the bottom of some shoes every single time I wanted to VR game. So, I guess I just need a pair of shoes just for inside my home.

The next day I went to Walmart, because I didn’t want to spend a lot of money to solve this obviously first-world problem. At first, I tried on pair of Crocs knock-offs. Let me tell you, whatever counterfeit or copycat Crocs Walmart has, is not worth the money. There were just $9 but no one should be buying these. Walmart made them out of some hard plastic, so it feels like you’re walking on stone slabs. There’s no cushioning or comfort at all. Authentic Crocs, while more expensive, feel so much better on your feet.

I settled on a pair of slip-on sneakers, which if I had to guess were Walmart’s version of Vessis. The label said the soles had “memory foam” but I found that hard to believe. They didn’t feel like I was walking on stone but there weren’t exactly Nike Airs either. It was somewhere in the middle. It was comfortable enough that I didn’t need to break them in and my feet felt supported. All of this at the reasonable price of $19.

I gamed with these shoes on for almost two hours this evening and they made a huge difference. My legs and feet felt fine afterwards, not sore at all.

I never thought I’d need a pair of shoes as a gaming peripheral but here we are.

I mentioned previously that I acquired a new VR headset recently. This evening, I played the best VR game that I have seen so far. Admittedly, I’ve played probably around ten VR games so far, going back to the PSVR, so my sample size is really small. Nonetheless, Half Life: Alyx is simply amazing.

I guess it helps that the game is played via a link cable, attached to my PC. Instead of relying on the processor and GPU onboard the headset to render the game, my PC does that instead. My PC is much more powerful than the VR headset so the game looks phenomenal. The headset is just displaying the pretty pictures sent to it from my PC.

It’s also set in the Half-Life universe, which immediately gives it a sense of familiarity. For the last two decades or so, I’ve been used to seeing elements of this universe on a flat, 2D screen. In VR, I have been dropped into this universe and it looks and feels real. I examined a dead headcrab in my virtual hands and it was crazy how good and disgusting it looked. Walking through an alley and then seeing a walker appear above me was a breathtaking moment. It’s just truly great stuff.

Lastly, the game just has solid gameplay mechanics. Shooting a gun and reloading it in VR feels so intuitive. I can’t properly describe the rush I felt shooting a Half-Life zombie for the first time in VR. Seeing that thing shamble towards me was both exciting and scary. They also introduce these gravity gloves which allows to you to pull items in the world straight towards you. This is genius because in VR, it’s still a pain in the ass to move and locomote in the game world. These gravity gloves cut down on the amount you need to move because you just pull things towards you like you have the Force.

I just started this game but I can’t wait to try it again tomorrow!