Category: Uncategorized

This is the last week of August and in my mind, this is the end of summer. I don’t listen to equinox people, the days are already getting shorter (and have been for many weeks) and students will be returning to school next week.

On a selfish note, I cringe at the return of students to school. They clog up the transit system in the mornings. They make what was a leisurely and comfortable bus ride on most summer mornings into a crammed, cattle-car simulation in the fall. I get so ornery and crusty in my old age.

In an earlier post, I wrote that I was cat-sitting for a friend and co-worker while he was out of town. I’ve been spending some of my evenings with his cat since Monday. Today was my last evening of duty as my friend returns home from Germany on Friday.

It had been going pretty routinely every evening. I refill the wet and dry cat food dishes, give the cat some fresh water, and I clean the cat litter boxes if necessary. I then watch TV for about twenty or thirty minutes with the cat before I leave.

This evening, I was in the TV watching stage, with said cat on the coffee table in front of me, while I was on the couch. He began grooming himself while I watched in amusement. I was about two or three feet away from him while he was doing this when he made a weird sound. I then felt something on my face. It took me a few seconds for me to realize what happened. He had sneezed and some of whatever he sneezed out got on my face. I wasn’t sure if some of it got in one of my eyes. When I realized he had sneezed, I backed off considerably, and then he sneezed again! I took a couch cushion and used it as a shield. The little dude sneezed two more times!

I got up, went to the bathroom, and washed my face, and I even flushed out the eye that may have gotten his sneeze boogers in it. I left not long after that. The nerve of that cat to sneeze on me, how very rude.

It’s late in the evening now but my eye seems fine but we all know how these things go. I probably have feline AIDS.

A few months ago, I wrote about an experiment where I gave up applying baby powder to my body after showering. As you might recall, I used to apply talc or baby powder to arm pits, my boys, and to my butt crack. It kept those areas dry and fresh-smelling.

I stopped doing that because it made a mess in my bathroom and because I was concerned about the long-term safety of having talc and baby powder dust in the air and on my sensitive body regions.

It wasn’t an ordeal giving up the practice during the winter but I did wonder how it would affect me during the summer, when temperatures are higher, where having a fresh sprinkling of talc would be more useful. Well, the summer is almost over and I haven’t missed the talc. Now, I must admit, this has been the most mild summer I’ve experienced in years. There were no long stretches of hot and sunny weather. At best, there would be a single day of warm temperatures, and the next day would cool down considerably. I don’t think a lot of high temperature records were in danger of being broken this summer.

Even with the mild summer though, I think it’s time to determine the results of the experiment. I will not be going back to the talc life. I didn’t really miss it and it sure made cleaning up my bathroom way easier. I don’t miss having to wipe up caked up layers of fine talc all over my bathroom surfaces.

Onto the next experiment!

Last week, Telus’ e-mail services were out of commission for almost a week and thousands of people were not able to check their e-mails. For those who don’t know, Telus is a large ISP that offers services in several provinces in Canada. They are a national company. When the e-mail outage occurred, angry mobs of people stormed social media and phone lines to complain that they couldn’t access their e-mails. A large majority made the case that access to their e-mail accounts were critical to their everyday lives. Make no mistake, e-mail is so important now, I understand how frustrated they might be. On the other hand, how foolish could you be by choosing your mission critical e-mail provider your ISP?

I gotta think that there were folks at Telus who were genuinely surprised that that many people used their e-mail services as if they were their most critical accounts in their digital lives. I have always viewed ISP e-mail accounts like a throwaway service. ISPs aren’t in the business of providing e-mail services, their main focus is giving people access to the Internet. For years, ISP e-mail accounts had crappy web interfaces, tiny limits on attachments sizes, limits on inbox size, and the general stigma of being an ISP e-mail address. Not to mention that you’re stuck with that ISP if your e-mail accounts is tied to them.

I read so many comments that people were going to switch to Shaw, a rival ISP, as punishment for Telus. What an idiotic move. Their internet access was fine but they want to move to a rival because of their ISP e-mail account? That puts them right back in the same situation again, just with another company. These people should uncouple their e-mail accounts from their ISP. At the very least, they should get a Gmail or even a Hotmail account. What’s crazy is that some businesses were using their ISP e-mail accounts as a primary means of communication. That’s just dumb. If you’re gonna be a business, pay for a real e-mail provider, with a custom domain, and a minimum uptime and/or a guaranteed service level agreement.

I hope some people learned some hard lessons on how the Internet operates and how careful they need to be when choosing what services to use.

I am once again catsitting for a friend and co-worker while he’s gone on a business trip. This time he’s going to Gamescom, which is the largest video game convention in the world by attendance. I’ve cat sat for him before. His cat was most likely a street cat when he was younger, which makes him much more standoffish and detached than other cats I’ve met. He seems to be mellowing a bit but I don’t think he’ll ever be affectionate towards me.

I’ll be feeding him and making sure he’s ok all week. I’m looking forward to it!

I’ve been working on a game for almost three years now and it’s just about ready to hit the literal and digital store shelves. I can’t say too much about it now but I hope to reveal more in the next few weeks or even possibly days.

Three years is a long time to be working on a game, especially in this day and age. Even though things were still rushed in the end, three years is an absolute luxury. Some poor souls have to bang out a game in a year, which is just an impossible task if you want your game to be good and polished.

I hope I have just as much time for the next one.

Today the company that runs food services at work announced they are raising prices 7% across the board, starting on Monday. The reason for the increase, according to the company, is due to inflation. This is the second increase since this company has taken over, which happened about two years ago.

I have not hesitated to state that the quality of the food in the cafeteria has been substandard since this new company started serving us. I’ve mentioned this in numerous surveys and informally to other co-workers. Prices go up but the quality has stayed low.

Many people now bring lunches to work. In the past, I have not done this because I find it inconvenient to heat up food at work. Microwaves are available but I’m not a big fan of how microwaves heat food. They tend to dry out your food and the heating is uneven. When at home, I use a toaster oven to heat up leftovers about 99% of the time.

In response to the price increase announcement, I made a query to facilities about bringing in a toaster oven to the coffee station area on my floor. I was told that I could do so. My plan is to bring the toaster oven I currently have at home to work. I’ll then buy a new, fancier toaster oven for home.

I may not bring my lunch every single day but I’ll be happy to bring it once a week to start perhaps. The less I patronize and spend my money at the cafeteria, the better it’ll be.

YouTube chef Andrew Rea recreates the scene from the first Harold and Kumar movie where the titular characters finally reach a White Castle restaurant and order a massive amount of the iconic burgers. I didn’t actually know how White Castle make their burgers but Rea goes over that in his video. I won’t spoil it but the beef patties don’t actually touch the grill surface when cooked. Watch the video to see what I mean. As always, Rea makes a mouth-watering end product.

Late this afternoon, an unfinished trailer for the game I’ve been working on was released to the Internet. I won’t link to any copies of it because I feel like the trailer deserves to be seen when it’s done and not in a rough cut with missing elements. I haven’t been told how the leak happened but there are people who know more details than I do. I always wonder how things get out onto the Internet when they’re not supposed to. I hope to get the full story of what happened this afternoon.

Whoever leaked the trailer also knew some aspects of my employer’s future plans as well. The divulging of these details was less widely reported, but in my estimation, that info was much more damaging that the trailer itself.

When info, images, and trailers leak out early like this, lots of marketing plans go out the window. People have to scramble to adjust and it causes a lot of headaches and work. It will be an interesting a few days ahead.