Category: Uncategorized

The regular season for the National Hockey League starts next week and for the first time in a long, long time I am overcome with indifference about it. I am normally somewhat interested in how many different ways the local team, the Vancouver Canucks, can manage to lose in the course of 80 games. This is year is different however. After a summer of questionable trades and mind-boggling player signings, I really can’t find any enthusiasm to follow the team.

Make no mistake, the Vancouver Canucks will be terrible this season and likely be so for many years down the road. It is my prediction that in less than three years, the Canucks will have a top-five draft pick during the summer and sadly that won’t come from trading for it.

I am more excited about the prospect of a team coming to Las Vegas than I am about my local team. Can you imagine how fun it would be to see real NHL hockey in Las Vegas?

At work, we’re lucky to have two Starbucks branded coffee kiosks. It’s convenient and offers a small selection of Starbucks beverages at a slightly lower cost (compared to their retail outlets). This week they started offering pumpkin spice lattes. I was feeling the afternoon fade and seeing as how I’ve never had a PSL, I decided to go for it.

A woman who had previously made my caramel macchiatos made my PSL today. As I was handed my drink, I saw the lovely presentation of a small dollop of whipped cream with what I imagine was a light dusting of pumpkin spice on top. Alas, my delight was short-lived. I took the drink back to my desk and I partook in my first sip. It was very sweet and dare I even say it was perhaps too sweet. I was also not a fan of the pumpkin spice flavouring. It just did not resonate with me. I was actually quite surprised by how much I hated it, given that I love eating pumpkin pie.

I could only drink a few more sips before abandoning the experiment. I am sure there are millions of people who enjoy a Starbucks PSL but I am not one of them.

Hey, let’s do something fun! About a year ago (or more, who knows), I made some investments. One was an RRSP (because I needed to for the home buyers’ plan) and the other was a new TFSA account (because I wanted to get rich). Admittedly, I went really far towards the risky end for these investments but how did I make out some 12 months later?

First up is the CIBC Latin American mutual fund. I know nothing about the Latin American economy, except that it’s even shakier than the North American economy. There’s a lot of corruption in these countries and depending on the region, people can be quite poor. So like an idiot, I put $1500 of my money into this fund. That $1500 is now worth $1234 as of today. Keep in mind, having this RRSP meant I paid less taxes last year, so you can’t just say I’m in the hole $300. Nonetheless, this doesn’t seem like it was a smart move for me. Who knows what will happen years down the road but if I had to do it over again, I probably would have not bought this fund.

Next up is CIBC Energy Fund, which I put into a TFSA. I put $500 into, so it’s not a big deal. I bought it when the price of oil had dropped. I didn’t realize it was going to drop even lower. I expected it to rebound pretty quick and then I’d make some fast cash. Nope. My investment is worth $392 today. I also hear that oil prices are going to stay depressed for a year or beyond. It looks like I’ll need to hold onto this for a long time before I break even again.

So there you go, that’s how I used some of my hard-earned money last year. This year, I anticipate being a little more reserved with my investments. Perhaps a bar of gold, hidden in a cave somewhere?

The best part is when Travolta dances.

This milestone passed about three weeks ago but I’m now half way through my current employment contract. On March 2, I started work again and here we are, more than six months later. As with a lot of things, it doesn’t seem like that much time has passed. Obviously this is a good thing. I’ve been at jobs where it’s a total slog to get through the day but on most days now, the end of the day almost comes too soon.

I guess I haven’t mentioned too much about what I’m doing in my current role. Part of that is laziness and the other part is my ingrained nature to not talk too much about a game before it’s released. I can definitely say I was put in an area that I’ve really had very little experience in before. You can classify my current role as an online engineer. Most people think that means sending the zeros and ones over the Internet that tells everyone if you moved or shot your gun. While some online engineers do that, modern video games use the Internet to do so many more things compared to just even a few years ago.

Our online systems deal with commerce, telemetry, metadata, user account info, and a whole bunch of other data. I work with a great group of individuals who have helped me learn these new systems. I’ve asked a lot of dumb questions and I continue to ask dumb questions every day to figure out this stuff.

Some systems I work with, cause me more stress than others. The commerce system makes me really nervous. If I don’t do things right there, consumers can spend real money and they won’t see their virtual items in our game. Nothing gets people more incensed when they spend their real, hard-earned money and get zilch in return. Those are the type of bugs that Microsoft and Sony give you no leeway on (and deservedly so). Stuff like that keeps me worried on the weekends.

Overall, it’s been an enjoyable six months so far. I imagine the last six months will go by even faster.

In today’s post, we go back in time and watch some dude play a video game that I enjoyed immensely as a kid. Winter Games by Epyx, as its name suggests, is a game based on the sports in the Winter Olympics. I played it mostly on the classic and legendary Commodore 64, where it was one of them most popular games for the system.

Hard to believe it captured my attention for hours at a time given the complexity of today’s video games but back then, it was amazing.

I’ve been thinking about getting a coffee/espresso machine, which is crazy because I don’t drink a lot of coffee. I have, however, discovered I occasionally enjoy an espresso marked with a bit of milk. Machines that make coffee and espresso can be very expensive though and it seems stupid to spend that much money for an occasional indulgence.

This is where the AeroPress comes into play. The AeroPress is a simple, fast, and cost-effective way of making coffee and espresso. It’s ideal when you just want to make one or two cups of coffee at a time. As you can see above, it’s essentially two plastic cylinders with a plunger. You simply add ground coffee, hot water, and you press the plunger. It’s about $40 with shipping, so even if I wind up just using it a handful of times, it’ll be worth it. The reviews of the AeroPress are great. A friend of mine has one and I’ve seen him use it at work many times. It’s literally takes about a minute to make a coffee.

I’ll still drink green tea during the week but on weekends, it’ll be a nice change to try a few shots of espresso.

I wore shorts today as I promised in my last post but I questioned the sanity of my choice as I walked onto the Skytrain platform this morning. The skies were grey, the temperatures were cool, and the rest of the assembled commuters were wearing considerably more clothing than I. I saw coats, jackets, and perhaps even a scarf; pants were common. It got better once I got inside a train car.

I didn’t even have to wait a second for a bus, so I was spared standing outside. Once I was on the bus, I was quite relieved I wore summer clothes. The bus was fairly full and the number of closed windows meant it got a bit stuffy within minutes. I was comfortable in my shorts though.

The short walk to the studio from the bus stop was pleasant and not cold. In fact, I actually saw a bit of blue sky opening up between the clouds. I was basically inside for the rest of the day, so it didn’t matter what happened to the weather. The sun did come out briefly in the afternoon though, which was nice to see. By quitting time though, the sun had retreated and clouds had come back again.

The weather forecast calls for rain until at least Monday, so I’ll have to switch back to pants for the foreseeable future.

Just a few weeks ago, I was lamenting the predictable end of the summer weather in Vancouver as August ticked over to September. Indeed, the first week of September gave us rain and colder temperatures. I was ready to put away the shorts and t-shirts but today I changed my mind. I’m going to attempt to wear shorts until it’s not practical. Now, the threshold of what is “practical” remains to be seen. I know some dudes have very high threshold of “practical” and wear shorts year-round. I already know that is not for me.

I do know, however, that I will wear shorts tomorrow. The high is going to be 18 degrees Celsius, which is far from cold. The only iffy thing is that there’s 43% chance of precipitation tomorrow around noon. That shouldn’t matter since I’ll be already inside at that time. With a 15% chance of precip at 6pm, I feel pretty good about going bare-legged tomorrow.

Of course, I won’t be stupid about though. I’ll bring a hoodie just in case I need it. Also, it being Vancouver, I’ll have an umbrella with me too. Who knows how long this will last? I’ll probably give it up once the torrential rains come, which could be as early as next week.

On Saturday evening I had the pleasure of seeing comedian Norm Macdonald perform live at the River Rock Casino. Norm is one of my favourite comedians and has been since his days at the anchor desk of Weekend Update on SNL. Despite living in the US for many years, Norm still has a great fondness for his homeland, which also adds to his appeal as one of many successful Canadian comics.

Norm did not disappoint and his set was performed very much in his style. He sometimes appears to ramble on and you’re not sure where the joke is going but you have to put your trust in him. You’re in good hands and he’ll lead you to the punchline eventually. He covered topics all across the board, jumping from one thing to another. He did a short bit about Bill Cosby and one of the jokes came from the Larry King interview you see above.

Norm also talked about getting old. He straight up said that his penis didn’t work as well as it used to and he wondered why people could retire from having sex like you retire from working. He also did an amazing bit about male masturbation. He revealed that he can only fantasize being with average women because even in his fantasies, he can’t imagine that an attractive woman would want to join him in carnal pleasure.

As a testament to his rambling style, at one point, he let on that he had got to the end of his material twenty minutes ago and that he had been just randomly talking about stuff since then. No one could tell as it all seemed to be all part of his set. Apparently the stage manager had signaled to him several times that he could leave the stage but Norm just ignored him.

Norm has a fairly active Twitter account, so you can view all the Periscope videos he made during the weekend here in Vancouver. Some people also paid extra money for a meet and greet (which I did not even know about) and their photos can be viewed here.