The Deadpool movie is filming in Vancouver currently and I’m pleased as punch that a high-profile production is in the city. Ryan Reynolds, who grew up in Vancouver, plays the titular character. In the video above, someone in the awesome looking Deadpool costume (who may or may not be Reynolds) waves to people who are watching the filming.
A lot of people have high hopes for the movie and don’t want it to suck.
I have a very unique name. Not a lot of people named their kids “Erwin” these days, no matter how they spell it. I’ve gone through my life meeting very few people with my name. Back in 2008, EA hired a contract artist who had my name but he spelled it differently. That was the first time I worked with anyone that had my name, even if the spelling was different. His contract ended and I became the only “Erwin” on the team again.
A few weeks ago, I learned that there is already another “Erwin” on my current team. He spells it “Irwin” but I won’t hold that against him. He’s been on the team long before I was but then again, given the pedigree of the team, could you not say I was actually there before he was and I just came back after a long absence? Well, that matters little now I suppose. I wonder if he feels like I’ve invaded his turf with my “Erwin”. He’s a QA guy, which is interesting because I used to be a QA guy too. Imagine if we were both QA guys on the same team. They’d have to label us as “Erwin” with an “E” or “Irwin” with an “I”.
Well, my contract is over in 11 months, so after that he can go back to being the only “Irwin” on the team.
I’ve been a bit vague about all the details of my current job because there are aspects about it that I can’t reveal until probably around June. Nonetheless, I can say that I’m on the Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare team. As such, it’s my understanding since I was hired, I am the only person so far to have worked at PopCap Vancouver proper and also on be on the Garden Warfare team. It’s been interesting to compare and contrast the two teams from my unique perspective.
PopCap Vancouver was a very unique studio. We were a small group of perhaps 20+ people, spread across two teams. Originally, PopCap Vancouver was an independent studio that PopCap bought, changed their name, and brought them into the PopCap family. This was before EA bought PopCap themselves. PopCap Vancouver was much more PopCap than EA and I realized this quite quickly when I was first hired. First, my main e-mail address was a PopCap one. Sure, there was an EA e-mail alias that worked but I was considered a PopCap employee and my entry in the e-mail address book was not under EA Canada but in the PopCap section. Most of our IT and systems were administered by PopCap staff in Seattle. I remember asking for VPN access and that came through Seattle and not Burnaby. Indeed, when I connected, I was going through the PopCap network in Seattle and had no access to the network at EA Canada. Most importantly, I was also subject to the PopCap bonus and vacation structure. At PopCap, you’re given four weeks of vacation right away, no matter if you’re a junior engineer or a senior art director. I remember thinking that I instantly had more vacation than several of my more senior former co-workers out in Burnaby. PopCap also gave out quarterly bonuses, which was something unique within the family of EA studios. I’m not sure if they still do that but it was great getting that one quarterly bonus… lol. Overall, my entire time I was at PopCap Vancouver, I felt like a PopCap employee through and through, with a slight acknowledgement that EA owned us overall.
On my current team, things are a bit different, even though we work with the most successful and popular intellectual property that PopCap has ever produced. First, no one has a PopCap e-mail address. We all have standard EA e-mail addresses. All of our systems and network access goes through the EA Canada. We really don’t have access to the PopCap network, nor do we need to on a daily basis. Even though I’m a TFT and I don’t get bonuses, my regular full-time co-workers are still subject to the EA Canada bonus structure. The vacation policy is also the EA Canada one. No four weeks of vacation for everyone. From an organizational standpoint, we are definitely EA Canada employees who just happen to work on a game that has PopCap intellectual property.
I’ve always struggled with eating enough green and leafy vegetables. Fruit I’m ok with because I love fruit, so tasty. The salads though, yeah that’s a bit tougher. I tend to eat more salads when they’re made for me. If I have to go make a salad before I eat one, that’s where the whole thing breaks down.
When I returned to EA though, the salad situation got much easier. You can fault the EA cafeteria for some things but I think they have a great salad bar. You can make your own salad like at Salad Loop or you can get someone to make one for you. There’s usually one new feature salad each day or you can choose from some old standbys. My go to is usually the Burnaby, which is mixed greens, chicken, goat cheese, dried cranberries, walnuts, all tossed in a strawberry vinaigrette. My old complaint is they usually skimp on the vinaigrette dressing.
Since coming back to EA, my salad consumption has definitely increased, though there are days where I falter, like today when I had the buttermilk fried chicken instead. Tomorrow will be a salad day to make up for it hopefully. Here’s to a healthy colon!
If you’re like me, you no doubt have a cell phone or possibly tablets in your house. Those devices need charging all the time and with that comes cables and chargers. I have a multitude of USB cables lying around, along with manufacturer chargers and chargers I’ve bought from stores. Sometimes those cables and chargers degrade and/or break, leading to longer charge times. It be difficult to find out how good these cables and chargers are performing.
I’ve discovered that downloading a battery monitoring app can really help finding out which of your equipment is busted. These apps can tell you exactly how much current your device is charging at. Some apps will even graph your charging performance. If you’re on Android, I’d take a look at Ampere or Battery Monitor Widget.
Using such apps, I was able to toss out a few wonky cables that weren’t transferring the proper amount of current.
I’ve been back at EA a few weeks now, working with many of my old co-workers. Nearly all of them never left EA. When I got laid off in late 2010, they stayed behind, learned some new technology, helped make some new games, and stayed the course at EA.
I never really thought about it until recently but these people continued to get promotions, raises, bonuses, stock awards, and various other perks that you get when you stay at a full-time job. In contrast, I haven’t received a promotion since late 2006 or so. I guess that’s not hard to believe when I haven’t worked at a single job for more than nine months since 2010. In the last seven years, I think I’ve only gotten one bonus and that was at PopCap in 2012 when I got the company-wide quarterly bonus.
The trade-off is that I received a wide breadth of experience. I’ve had the chance to work with many different companies and on different platforms, from tablets to consoles. I’ve worked on games targeted to women over the age of 30 to games made for males ages 17 to 34.
It definitely fills my resume with a variety of experience but there’s no doubt that from a pure financial point of view, I am a less wealthier person for not having stayed in one place, like my co-workers did. I do not lament my nomadic ways though. I’ve met a lot of great people and in the end, I’m still able to put Hamburger Helper on the table every night.
I usually like the ones where they have to blur out a children’s cartoon but this one is pretty good too.
It was quite a surprise to me that I was remarkably thin before I started work at the beginning of this month. I tipped the scales at 155 pounds at the start of March. All my pants were very loose which was all kinds of awesome. It’s a great feeling when you know you’re at a good weight. I wasn’t expecting to be at that weight because I was at the end of my five month vacation, had been eating whatever I wanted and also had just come back from San Diego where I ate quite decadently. Somehow, I remained thin.
Tomorrow marks the end of my fourth week at work and there are signs I might be getting tubby again. I weighed myself yesterday and I’ve gained two pounds. It’s not a lot of weight but of course I would preferred to have not gained any weight at all. Without fail, I always gain weight whenever I go back to work. I bet if I stopped working right now, those two pounds would melt off in less than two weeks. I attribute the weight gain to mostly my diet. I generally consume more food when working. My body just seems to want more food when I have to work. I try my best to eat smarter. For breakfast, I try to only have scrambled eggs and no bacon nor hash browns. For a while, I was eating just salads at work for lunch. Where I probably failed was for a few days in a row, I had a big jelly doughnut for an afternoon snack.
There’s a new week and a new month coming right up, so I’m going try to get back on track. I really want to avoid what happened when I worked at PopCap and weighed a very shameful 175 pounds.
UPDATE: Not six hours after I made this post, I found that my tax refund was deposited into my account. I was worried about nothing!
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On Friday, it will be two weeks since I filed my tax return over the Internet. In that time, I have heard nothing from my illustrious government about my tax situation. Like in years past, I used a tax program to do my return and I was marked for a tax refund. The last tax year was not remarkably different from years past. My sources of income were essentially the same and my deductions were also the same. The only slight wrinkle was that I had income from Employment Insurance but so did millions of other Canadians and that’s something the federal government would have experience with. Usually, I get my refund in about five business days, so this delay is out of the ordinary, if years past are any indication.
I could speculate what this means but checking with Canada Revenue Agency website yields no answers. Stupidly, the website goes down for maintenance for three hours every day at midnight and of course, I didn’t check it until 10 minutes after midnight. I’m not staying up until 3am to get any answers so some potential light on this situation will have to wait until morning.
I’ve never been audited and I hope this isn’t what is going to happen. I have nothing to hide but I really don’t want to go through the hassle anyways.
As many of you know, I use a pouf, like the one pictured above, in the shower. I don’t use bar soap and have been using body wash and a pouf to wash my body (including my genitals) for many, many years. For the most part, I have found poufs to be durable and well-constructed. I never really looked at them in detail but everyone seemed to be constructed in the same manner. The pouf material appeared to be stitched together in the middle to hold it into the ball shape. I’ve used poufs for months at a time, probably way longer than I should have but that was a testament to their durability. Other than the shape being slightly stretched out, they were long-lasting products.
This all changed when I replaced a pouf several weeks ago. Not a week into using it, it unraveled on me, into a long, useless string of pouf material. When I looked closely, the material had not been stitched together in center but rather, just loosely tied together to form a ball. I couldn’t figure out how to get it back into a ball shape that would stay together. Every time I tried, it would always fall apart again. I decided to trash this one and just buy another one. Lo and behold, the same thing happened to the replacement pouf. I again bought another pouf but this time from a different store. My luck was no better, it also fell apart on me.
I get the feeling whoever is making these things fundamentally changed the manufacturing process very recently. Without the stitching, they fall apart very easily now. I wonder if I can find the old style poufs anymore. This feels somewhat reminiscent of when Elaine went looking for sponges.