Category: Uncategorized

One year ago, on April 26, 2013, the “summer of me” began. On that date, PopCap Vancouver shutdown, taking my employment with it. Kind as they were, however, Electronic Arts gave me a huge chunk of money to go and do as I pleased. I didn’t know it on that first day but it was the beginning of four and a half months of absolute joy. It’s not very often people look upon losing their jobs with such wistful nostalgia but in my case, it was such fantastic thing to happen to me.

As I look back upon it now, I was so lucky to get that job at PopCap, if only because when I was laid off, it allowed me to spend the loveliest four months of year without having to work. I had money in my pocket, sunny and warm weather, freedom to do whatever I wanted, and a well-rested body with which to do all those things.

Time certainly flies and I cannot believe a year has passed since that wonderful time of my life started. Though I’m so pleased to be employed where I am now, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to experience that freedom again this summer. I look upon last year’s “summer of me” with such fond memories, it’s only natural to want that again.

I’m hoping this summer will be good too but I’ll always remember how things got started last April.

According to news reports, an earthquake of magnitude 6.6 on the Richter scale occurred west of Vancouver Island tonight around 8:13pm PST. From my social media accounts, it appeared many people in the greater Vancouver area felt the quake, especially those in high rises. At the time, I was paying for some dental floss at a ground level drugstore. I know this because I went back and checked the time of my receipt. I felt nothing out of the ordinary.

To date, I have only felt one earthquake that I’m aware of and that was sometime around the year 2000. Tonight was exciting for some people but not for me.

On Tuesday, Stephen Colbert dropped by the Late Show with David Letterman, presumably to inspect the place before he takes possession sometime next year. During his appearance, he told Dave and the audience about an earlier run-in with Dave’s show. I wonder who the girl was.

By my count, I’ve had six jobs since the end of 2010. For most people, that’s a lot of job in four years. As you can imagine, I’ve been through many a job interview in that time. Of course, in all those interviews, I’m the job applicant and not the interviewer. The last time I actually was on the other side of the table was probably in 2008 if my memory serves me right (which sometimes it doesn’t). Since then, I haven’t conducted a single interview. That will change tomorrow.

The project I’m on requires some extra help and since we can’t throw extra time on it, we need to hire more people. My team is also quite small and by that virtue there aren’t that many software engineers available to conduct interviews. I’ve been chosen by our technical director to sit in an interview tomorrow for a software engineer position. I used to know what to ask and get the most of out my questions but I’m a bit rusty at this now. I’ve reviewed the applicants resume but I still need to come up with a few questions that will help assess this person’s fit for the job.

As you can imagine, I’m thankful to be on this side of the table for once. It’s never easy applying for jobs.

I woke up to some discomfort this morning and my condition was difficult to explain. It was like my eyes hurt but not really. Like I knew my eyes weren’t really bothering me but it felt like the discomfort was somewhat near my eyes. I couldn’t figure out what was going except that it was only slightly bothersome and that I needed to get going on my day. I was headed to the last day of Fan Expo Vancouver where my primary goal was to sit in Karl Urban‘s Q&A session in the afternoon. So I sucked it up, took an Advil left for the convention centre.

I felt totally fine throughout the day thankfully. By the way, the Q&A session with Mr. Urban was fantastic. He was delightfully charming throughout, even though he was suffering from a cold. I give him much respect for being so energetic during the session even though he probably wasn’t feeling so great.

Near the end of the day, a general feeling of being unwell swept through my body though, which had me concerned that I might be in the early stages of a cold. I took refuge at a restaurant where I had dinner with a friend. The pleasant dinner must have been answer because I felt much better after eating.

I’m still feeling fine now but I’m concerned that I might wake up tomorrow feeling bad again. I’ve just recovered from my sinus infection so I don’t need a cold.

As some of you know, I bought a wok over the holidays. After an initial furry of activity with it, I put it away for a while. Last evening, I pulled it out to stir fry a new adventure: vegetables. I specifically chose a bok choy recipe.

The recipe was very simple and called for very few ingredients other than the bok choy. I first stir fried three slices of ginger in some vegetable oil. I then added the bok choy, about a pound, and stir fried that. Next came about 1/4 cup of chicken broth mixed with some rice wine, salt, and some sugar. A few minutes of stir frying and it was all done. It wasn’t that bad. I liked how it wasn’t greasy and felt like a light dish overall. It also didn’t take very long to prepare and cook. My only concern is that I didn’t impart enough wok hei into the dish but I’m still working on that skill.

So obviously I’m working on some sort of video game at work. It’s in one of those unfortunate phases where I can’t say what the game is. I have, however, been informed the game will be announced at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo or as it is better known, E3. This year, E3 will take place June 10-12. So about two months before I can divulge more details. What I will say is that it’s one of the more higher profile titles I’ve worked on in many years. Some could argue it is the clearly the highest profile intellectual property I’ve been associated with in my career. My part on it is small but I’m ok with that.

About two years ago, a Chronic Tacos restaurant opened up by my place. At first, I was very enthused such an establishment was so close to me. I had eaten at a Chronic Tacos in Vancouver proper several times and the food there was great. I came to realize the quality control at Chronic Tacos leaves something to be desired.

I tried the location near my home about three times. Each time, I was very disappointed. I just couldn’t understand why the food wasn’t as good as the Vancouver location. Then I realized it wasn’t me, the food did actually suck at this location. The people there just didn’t know how to make the food properly. The reviews also indicated I wasn’t the only one to dislike the place.

Fast forward to tonight. After hearing that management had changed, I decided to give Chronic Tacos a try again. I ordered some chicken nachos, which to me, didn’t seem that complicated to make. I knew I was in trouble when the person making the nachos told me she’d never made nachos before on the job. Great. She then proceeded to put about 3g of cheese on my tortilla chips. This was not hyperbole, it was literally about ten small shreds of cheese. This person then asked me if I wanted a particular topping on my nachos and then promptly forget to put them on. I ordered sour cream and guacamole as extra and paid for it but she was about to give me my food without actually giving me my sour cream and guac. There was only one other person in line with me and they managed to mix up our orders. The person behind the counter wanted to give me some other person’s quesadilla with me order.

I walked away from this place not impressed as usual. I see no reason to give this restaurant a chance again.

This evening, I gave my old phone, a Galaxy Nexus, to my Mom. She had been using an LG Optimus One. In every single category that you could conjure up, this was undoubtedly an upgrade. Probably the most tangible improvement was going from a tiny 3.2″ screen to a high-definition 4.65″ display. The virtual buttons and keyboard on the LG were so tiny. I have no idea how my Mom was able to use them without making numerous mistakes.

Of course, when you give new technology to older folks, it’s not all puppies and rainbows. I had to show my Mom how to turn the phone on, how to make calls, how to answer calls, and how to text. This was necessary even though the new and old phone were both using Android. Her old phone was stuck on an ancient Android 2.2 and the new one is on a relatively new Android 4.2.1.

I didn’t have time to show her the other new features of the phone, which I’ll do next week. She’s stuck with the default ringtone and various other default settings. I haven’t even told her about the Play Store, as many apps were not available to her old phone due to its age. I bet she’ll be happy to see some Mahjong games on there!

At the end of February I was very well aware that I needed to buy some RRSPs before the end of the tax year. For those who don’t know, RRSPs are tax shelters and optionally, can be investment vehicles over the course of time. From a personal standpoint, I am also required to buy RRSPs as repayment for the Home Buyers’ Plan.

Now RRSPs can come in many different flavours but my preferred choice over the years have been mutual funds. They offer a diversified portfolio in a single product and at least to me, they seem easy to research. So there I was about to buy some mutual funds for an RRSP contribution. Now as I was looking at which account to put these mutual funds in, I must have just gone totally stupid for a minute and decided to put the mutual funds in a tax-free savings account. Now I know a TFSA account is different from an RRSP account. I know that now and I knew that back then. So I’m still wondering how I managed to be so stupid and put the mutual funds into the wrong account.

I didn’t realize the error of my ways until this week, nearly two months after the RRSP deadline had passed. There are several consequences to my blunder. First, this caused me to have not purchased a single dollar of RRSP investments for the 2013 tax year. This means the amount of tax credits I have for the previous year will be miniscule. Almost none of my income will be sheltered from the tax man. Second, because I was required to repay some of my RRSP through the HBP and failed to do that, about $750 will be added to my 2013 income and that’s taxable income by the way. This compounds the first problem where I have no tax shelters at all this year.

All this means is that I’m almost positive that I will have to pay additional taxes this year after I do my income tax return. I’ve only had to pay additional taxes once in my entire life. That year was a crazy exception when I received a huge severance package from EA and then started working almost right away, effectively doubling my income for several months. Sadly, this won’t be the reason why I’ll be paying more taxes this year.

I encourage you to double-check your financial situation in January to ensure that you’ve taken care of all your responsibilities before the tax year comes to a close. Had I noticed in time, I would have just bought actual RRSP investments in addition to the funds I put into my TFSA account. Money wasn’t even an issue! Now, I’ll literally be paying for my stupidly. Don’t be like me folks!