Category: Uncategorized

This sporting event production would be considered slick and impressive even today.

I bought a new VR headset and it arrived in the mail last week. I’ve had another VR headset for a few years now, that being the PSVR, which is paired with my PlayStation 4 Pro. The PSVR was my first real foray into VR and I played a whole bunch of really fun and entertaining games with it. VR technology has advanced quite a bit since the PSVR was released. Coincidentally, the PSVR2 came out this month as well but I don’t have a PS5, so wasn’t an option for me.

The original PSVR required a camera to track your head and the controllers. That meant that if you moved outside the camera’s view or something got in the way of the camera, it would lose track of you. The controllers that PSVR used were also simple in that it could only track if you were gripping something with your whole hand or not. The concept of knowing what individual fingers were doing wasn’t possible.

The Meta Quest 2 headset improves in all these areas and more. First, the headset has onboard cameras, so it tracks your position from the “inside out”. It doesn’t rely on a camera or set of external sensors to know where you are in your space. Also, since it can work without wires, you’re free to move around in a massive space if you wanted to. Meta warns you not to use the headset outside though, probably for legal reasons (walking into traffic). The controllers are also more advanced. To varying degrees of accuracy, it can track the usage of your thumb, index finger, and middle finger of each hand.

Having onboard cameras is a huge bonus with this headset. As I mentioned, this allows the headset to track itself but it also allows something called “passthrough”. This is when the headset shows the user its actual surroundings, as if you were using the cameras as your eyes. I can’t tell you how many times I had the PSVR headset on and I was fumbling around, feeling for a controller I had set down for a moment. The Quest 2 allows you to see the “real world” at will, if you need to check your surroundings for a second. The view you see isn’t full colour, high resolution though. The real world appears as if you’re looking through black and white night vision googles. It almost feels like you’re seeing the real world in a VR setting. Since it’s wireless, there’s nothing to stop you from putting this thing on and walking out of your home and into the world.

My primary motivation for getting this new headset is to experience VR games at a high-fidelity than before. The game I am looking forward to playing above all others is Half-Life: Alyx, widely regarded as one of the best VR games ever made. I haven’t bought it yet, because at $80, it’s stupidly expensive but Steam allows you to walk around in some of the settings for free and it looks amazing. Once it goes on sale, I’ll grab it then.

I recently realized I needed new PJ bottoms and given how few people see in my PJs, I didn’t need to spend a ton of money on them. I’ve often joked how I should start shopping at Walmart exclusively for all my clothing but for PJs, this made sense.

I sauntered into my local Walmart and found a pair of PJ bottoms like you see above. They were $12, which is relatively cheap these days. I bought a pair that was dark blue and had hockey motifs and symbols on it, things like sticks, pucks, and nets. I brought it home and they fit great. For a guy that has short legs, they didn’t require any alteration and they weren’t long at all. With the elastic waistband, it was super comfy.

If only Walmart sold tuxedos.

Bobby Lee is one of my favourite comedians and I’ve had the pleasure of seeing him in Vancouver and Los Angeles. While we’re both Asia, Bobby and I have something else in common. We both randomly sometimes have to poo very urgently.

In the video above, Bobby tells everyone the time he ate some dodgy meat while shooting a movie. When he was done his scenes, gastrointestinal distress hit while he was driving home. I won’t ruin it for you, just let Bobby finish the story.

This isn’t an isolated case for Bobby, in the same video above, we are told a story where almost the exact same thing happens to him again.

I personally think he has undiagnosed irritable bowel syndrome, which is what I have. Based on the stories I’ve heard, I think I have a milder version compared to him. Which is not to say, my life hasn’t been affected by this. I think the only difference really is I’m able to hold onto my poops long enough to get to a washroom whereas Bobby just can’t.

So it turns out that my employer did have to lay off some people in the current economic climate. In a recent post, I was remarking that it was odd seeing thousands of people being laid off from these giant tech companies while my own employer seemed to be unaffected.

While I wasn’t affected, they did decide to cancel the mobile version of the game I work on. Some of the people on that team will find new homes within the same studio or within the same company at least. We were warned though, that there probably won’t be room for everyone and some might choose to leave entirely and take a severance package.

Worse yet, they decided to shutdown the whole studio responsible for the unreleased Battlefield mobile game. That’s a whole location full just gone. I’m not sure if any of those developers are going to find places internally within the company to continue employment.

In my opinion, these layoffs happened for a different reason than what happened at Google, Meta, or Amazon. Yeah sure, money is at the root of all it but those giant companies all stated they got too big when they bet on the pandemic bump in sales or revenue was going to continue without pause. When that didn’t happen they were too heavy to continue like that. For these games, I don’t think it was a bad idea to make these games in the first place. Fundamentally, these were great IPs to be making games from. For one of these games, it was hamstrung by a business deal that benefited one of the parties but not the other. It wasn’t really that people stopped playing games.

In the end, it’s very unfortunate that some people will lose their jobs or have already lost them. Also, it’s another case of just having some bad luck. Some incredibly smart and talented people were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. A lot of them are way smarter and talented than I am but it’s just luck that I’m still standing. Layoffs rarely have to do with individual performance.

I hope everyone gets everything they deserve and need in the next few weeks.

After weeks of humid and rainy weather, a blast of cold air on the weekend dipped the temperatures below freezing. Sure, the rain isn’t great but being freezing cold and having your skin dry up like an ice cube in the desert sucks even worse.

I had naively put away my humidifier weeks ago but I had to bring it out because the moisture in the air dropped to almost 20% in my apartment. On Sunday afternoon alone, I dumped close to four litres of water into the air of my bedroom and it still was less than 50% humidity in there. Meanwhile, I’ve been applying moisturizer all over my body to ward off the itchiness.

Thankfully, tonight is supposed to be the last night of freezing weather for at least this week as the lows return to above zero.

At end of December I ordered some items from an online retailer. The package was going to be sent via Canada Post and by their estimation, it would get to me around the first week of January.

One day, a weekday, in the first week of January, I got a notification via e-mail from Canada Post that my package had been delivered and left in my mailroom. I read that e-mail about 50 minutes after it had been delivered. I went downstairs right away because package thieves are known to be working in my building.

As I was going downstairs in the elevator, I actually it was weird that they said my package had been left in the mailroom. Unlike Amazon delivery people, Canada Post rarely, if ever, place packages in my mailroom if the package doesn’t fit in the actual locked mailbox for each resident. They almost always leave a notice card and we’re supposed to pick up the package at a post office. At least from our building, theft from Canada Post should be way less frequent. I knew my package wasn’t going to into my tiny mailbox.

When I got downstairs, my package was nowhere to be seen. I looked several times around the mailroom but none of the packages there were mine. I went back upstairs and e-mail the online retailer and to their credit, they got back to almost immediately. They said they’d start an investigation on their end but told me to wait at least ten business days before contacting them again. As these items were less than $50 in value and not critical to my well-being, waiting ten business days was not a big deal to me.

On the twelfth business day I e-mail the retailer again to get an update. They immediately offered me either a refund or a new order shipped out again. As these items were non-essential, I briefly toyed with a refund but since a new order wouldn’t cost me any more money, I went with a re-order.

The new order shipped out the next day and it would take about a week or so to get to me. Such wonderful customer service from the retailer, who was so quick to respond and didn’t hesitate to give me options to make things right.

Two days later, I get a notification in my e-mail that a package was waiting for me at the local post office. This was unexpected because I have no other outstanding orders from anyone in flight, other than the one that was going to take several more days to get to me. What was this?

I clicked on the tracking link and it revealed that this was the original tracking notice from the beginning of the month! The latest set of status updates went from “delivered to mailroom” to “item available for pickup at post office”. What happened here? How does a supposedly “delivered” item get transported to a post office? I have no idea where my package was for the last three weeks or so. I went down to my mailbox and sure enough there was a notice card there so I could go get my package.

I immediately realized I had a problem here. My original package was now at the post office and the replacement was probably somewhere near Manitoba right now. I didn’t need a double-set of these items and frankly, it seemed kinda low if I just took both packages. I do, however, know that if I don’t pick up the package from the post office, it will just get sent back to the sender, without additional charges.

I came up with the idea that I’d just not pick up the package from the post office and the retailer would just get it back that way. I’d just wait for the new package to arrive and accept that one instead. Of course, I wanted to clear this with the retailer first. I e-mailed my solution to them and they agreed that would be acceptable.

I feel slightly bad for the retailer because in the grand scheme of things, they had to pay for shipping twice but they still get one set of the items back. I hope it won’t be too much hassle to re-stock them. I plan on writing a good review somewhere for them because their customer service was excellent.

I’m not sure if you can remember that far back but in the early spring of 2020, most of us spent a lot of time at home back then. Malls and restaurants were closed, lots of stuff was cancelled, and people didn’t do a whole lot. I was lucky to keep working back then and I noticed staying at home a lot meant I saved a metric ton of money.

For the months of April and May of 2020 and into the summer, I saved the largest percentage of my paycheque ever. It was perhaps the only good thing to come of those early months of the pandemic.

Well, it’s years later and we’re still in a pandemic, with the added bonus of everything costing a metric ton more. My condo insurance renews in early February and it will cost me just shy of $700 for the year. As a comparison, the same coverage cost me around $300 about ten years ago. I couldn’t believe my insurance was going to be that costly, so I shopped around recently. To my surprise, all the quotes I got were even higher. I’m actually getting a deal!

On top of this, the Bank of Canada raised the prime interest rate this week, which means my mortgage payments will increase yet again. There was a time where I paid about $600 a month in mortgage payments. Oh those golden times were sure fun.

All of this makes me want to duplicate my spending habits from the spring of 2020. No takeout meals. No dining in. No shopping. No frivolous spending on anything not essential to living or working. Cut spending for at least February to offset some of the insurance cost and higher mortgage payments.

I’m already trying hard to be good with my money. I’ve made all my meals at home this week, including an incredible “lasagna” soup with orzo and ricotta cheese. I wonder how long I can keep that up.

This evening, I started watching a TV series because I knew it filmed in my area. I fully admit, I would not have started watching it otherwise. I’m four episodes in and I can tell they filmed several scenes in a coffee shop and a restaurant that are located about a block from where I live.

The show isn’t half bad but sometimes I fast-forward through a scene just so that I can get to the next external location shot and recognize where in Vancouver they are. I didn’t know this show existed until last week but the first season came out in late 2017, so I’m really behind the times. For the first season, based on the weather in some of the scenes, I’m guessing they shot it in late 2016 or early 2017.

I know a lot of people will watch a show because a certain actor will be in it but I’m watching it because I just want to recognize my hometown in it.