BUS ANECDOTE

On this glorious day that was this sunny Saturday I had to go to work. Yeah, it’s not my favourite part of the job either but I do what is necessary. Anyways, I had some errands to run so I couldn’t get to the office until the early afternoon. I also decided to drive to work.

I still haven’t figured out the best route to work from Port Moody but I settled on one that required me to only make three turns. I’d boot along the Barnet until I got downtown, left on Burrard, and then left onto W. 1st Ave.

The trip was uneventful until I got downtown along the Burrard, just blocks away from the bridge. Traffic came to a standstill and it was because of some sorta parade for world peace. It blocked off all lanes of Burrard and their were police monitoring the situation. A quick left and then a right brought me to Howe which would lead me to the Granville St. bridge. It wasn’t that big of a detour in the whole grand scheme of things.

I was about halfway across the bridge when I saw that a trolley bus was about ten or so car lengths ahead of me. I’m not sure if the bus had reached a junction point or not but the driver lost both of his poles. Now, if you’ve lived in Vancouver for any amount of time, the sight of a trolley bus losing connection with the overhead wires is probably something you’ve seen many times before.

Today, however, was something I’d never seen before. One of the poles swung up when it lost contact with the wire. The other did same thing but I think it hit some wires and/or some equipment along the wires either on the way up or down. It must have made a short circuit by touching both wires at the same time because it made a dazzling display of sparks that wowed myself and other drivers around me. Keep in mind we were in the bright sun, so the fact we saw so many sparks was pretty amazing. After the two second light show, the left pole then broke in half and I could see it fall on top of the bus and then onto the roadway. I had never seen a trolley pole break off before.

When the pole broke, it sent a shockwave through the grid of trolley wires that run along the entire length of the bridge. I’m not talking plucking guitar strings here, there was some wild movement of wires, much like the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. By now, the four or so cars behind the bus all braked and the car directly behind the bus stopped completely. I was behind that car, so I signaled and moved into the other lane.

As I got closer to the bus, I could see a large piece of the pole had landed behind the bus but amazingly had not blocked any other lanes. Through the driver side window, I could also see the driver putting on a safety vest to get ready to go behind the bus. I’m pretty sure at that point, he didn’t know he had actually broken a pole.

I didn’t stick around to see what happened afterwards but I’m certain he would have limped the rest of the way along the bridge using battery power and then kicked out all the passengers at the next stop.

And that’s the most exciting thing to happen to me today.

FREE E-MAIL ACCOUNTS

If the free t-shirts weren’t enough, I decided to give away free e-mail accounts using my domain. Oddly enough, I’ve actually received requests in the past for accounts on my server. For some reason, people wanted to be dave@erwintang.com or paris@erwintang.com. Well, now that can finally come true.

I have 500 e-mail accounts available to give away. There’s no chance I’ll use all of those for myself, so anyone can get a free account if you want one. Each account has a tiny 10 Mb allocation for space, so don’t expect this to be a Gmail or Hotmail type account, please keep this in mind. Nonetheless, each account features a powerful but adjustable spam filter, address book, calendar, message filtering, delayed delivery abilities, and option to check your mail using your favourite mail application.

For the most part, you can use any web browser to check your erwintang.com account from any where in the world. Click here for a screenshot of the interface.

If you’re serious about using the account, even if it’s only to use for contest entering or newsletters for example, e-mail me your desired username and we can get started. To be clear, here are some details you should know about. I’ll give you a default password to begin with. You can change that to anything you want so you can get some privacy. Keep in mind, I have no ability to see how much you use your account, so if you feel like you’re not using it, please tell me so I can delete your account. I won’t delete your account without warning. I can’t see myself deleting accounts willy-nilly unless I have a good reason to.

So, who wants to join the erwintang.com team?!?!?!

THE WEEKEND

There’s no time for a big post tonight because my evenings have been quite busy lately. Perhaps I’ll have more to say later about that. I also nearly rendered my blog unreadable earlier tonight when I started screwing around with some settings. A few e-mails later to tech support and I was able to right the ship.

The weekend will hold more time for me to get some things fixed. In the meantime, please take this quiz.

A NEW BEGINNING

It may seem the same on the outside but old et.com is definitely new underneath the hood. If you’re reading this, that’s a good sign that the transitition has gone somewhat smoothly.

I’m on a new web host now and for the first time ever in the history of this site, I’m paying for hosting space and traffic, plus e-mail. I now have space and bandwidth limitation to think about. I think my previous e-mail server allowed me to have an account that grew to easily over 100 Mb worth of messages. I now have 25 Mb to work with.

I no longer can use Pine to check my e-mail. I use this Web-based application which is taking some time to get used to. The cool thing is that I am no longer deluged with spam. The filters at my new host take away every penis enlargement message that I used to get.

A lot of stuff is still missing from the site and it will take some time for me to get everything the way it was. I also still have no access to my e-mails from the previous four years.

Well, in a few days, things will look a lot better. I even have some surprises in store!

PHONED

I finally got a phone for my desk at work. Ya see, I’ve been at my new spot at the office since the end of May when I was moved over to be closer with my new team members. The day before I moved, they gave me a phone at my old sweet cubicle. I didn’t even have a chance to use it once.

I was miffed at first but then reality set in. No one knows my work number. No one calls me at work anyways. I still have my cell phone with me during the day. When I thought about those things, I wasn’t really missing my phone any more.

Yesterday, I got a new phone for my desk. Since our company is expanding faster than my waistline, they’ve had to get new spaces wired up for phones, data, and power. I was the beneficiary of such work since they made a new phone jack by my desk where none existed before.

I set up my voicemail but no one has called me yet. I don’t forsee my co-workers calling me either. It takes less than a minute to walk to anywhere in our building, so the phoning is just lazy. Plus, I don’t think anyone even knows where the phone directory is stored on the network. Also, with MSN, it’s probably easier and better to use IM to communicate.

Ok, on that note, here’s a list of superheroes and their (assumed) religious affiliations.

2006 HARVARD CLASS DAY SPEECH

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9QXyuUqKCs]

Yes, I said I’d try to post less videos but the Harvard Class Day speeches have become something of a yearly tradition here at et.com. It all started with the man himself, Will Ferrell, who introduced me to Harvard’s Class Day. His speech was fantastic.

Then, I featured the sensation from Staines, Ali G. He wowed the ivy-league audience with his street lingo where he mentioned movies like “Backdoor Burglar” and “Shaven Buffet”. Videos do exist of this speech but they are heavily edited. A full, unedited transcript of the speech exists for the history books and I recommend a read.

This year, Family Guy creator, Seth MacFarlane was asked to address the Harvard grads on Class Day. The video above is part two of four and features MacFarlane doing Peter Griffin. The rest of the parts can be found here. While entertaining, I will admit the speeches by Will Ferrell and Ali G were funnier. Still, Harvard seems to pull out all the stops for their grads. If only I were as well endowed as they are. Bada bing! I love university jokes.

YEAR ONE

Today marked the end of my first year as a software engineer. By all accounts, I should feel lucky to be employed in the video game industry in the role that I have. It’s been an interesting year. I still remember my first day at work. I was really nervous and didn’t get a lot of sleep the night before. Wow, I still had my apartment back then and was eating my dinners at SJC.

I know that I cursed the game I was on several times during the year but in hindsight, it was a good project because of the people I got to work with. I haven’t had a lot of luck with workplace mentors in the past but the lead programmer on my team was just the guy I needed to start off my career. Nigel was patient, good natured, and always understanding. He gave me just enough support until I felt I was a good programmer.

I know I worked a lot of long hours that first summer at the old office on Broadway and Arbutus but it was a lot of fun. Man, I miss that bus stop across the street. Our producer said that we were the most “giggly” bunch of programmers he’d ever worked with. We did indeed enjoy hanging out together and being immature.

There were seven core programmers that I worked with on my first game and only two of them remain with the company now. The rest have moved on which makes my current days a little less enjoyable. Oh what would I have done without Ron and “The Bet“? Nigel, I still have your gum collection in that beer bottle on my desk. And Tim, thanks for putting the collection of farm porn in my network folder.

I’ve learned a lot over the course of a year but I remain very much a padawan. There’s still lots to know. So, with a nod to the good times of year one, I look forward to year two at Hogwart’s.