Category: Uncategorized

You know that common practice of taking a day off to extend a long weekend so you get four days off? I’m sure many of your co-workers and even yourself have done that. In all my years of working, I’ve never done that, not once. Sure I’ve taken vacation days before but I’ve done it just to extend a long weekend. I always figured I need every vacation for a trip or something.

Well, I’m about change all of that for Easter. For us non-government employees, we only get three days off for Easter. I believe if you work for the guberment, you get four. Anyways, my current job gives me four weeks vacation each year which is more than any other job I’ve ever had. I don’t think I’ll use it all so it’s time I start taking days off. The question remains, should the day off be so that I start the long weekend earlier or so that it goes one day longer at the end? I’m leaning towards putting it at the end, that way when all my co-workers go back to work, I can have satisfaction of sleeping in that day. What do you think?

To be honest, I’m not sure what this video is all about. Part of me thinks this is satire. I’m hoping this is satire.

Ellen DeGeneres had John the Sprinkles Kid on her show last month. Where does Ellen get the money to fly these people to her show? Her show must be very profitable. Technically, the kid was right in the video, the sprinkles container was not empty.

Despite the shortened NHL season is just about half over, I am ready to give my predictions on how the local ice hockey team will fare for the rest of the year. Based on what I’ve seen, the Vancouver Canucks will barely make the playoffs. When I make that statement, I am giving them a huge benefit of the doubt as I could easily see them missing the playoffs for the first time in many years. Should they make the post-season though, there is no doubt in my mind they will lose quite handily to whoever they face in the first round.

The season doesn’t end until the end of April but you read it here first. The Canucks limp into the playoffs under a best-case scenario and then go out with a whimper in the first round. There will be much hand-wringing in Vancouver over the summer.

In a previous post from the summer, I detailed how I worked on an iPad game before coming to PopCap. I’m pleased to announce that Capsized+ is now out on the Apple app store. I stopped working on the game in late July so I don’t know what has been changed or improved since I left. From what I see of the screenshots it still looks to be the same general game that I remember it to be.

This is a noteworthy title for me personally as this is my first iPad game that has been released to the public. Since I don’t own an iPad, I haven’t been able to see the finished product. At $2.99, it’s not going to break the bank but I guess I’ll have to wait for the Android version. If anyone who does own an iPad and wants to show me the game, I’ll be more than happy to reimburse you for the $3!

A couple of weeks ago I was at a suburban shopping mall in the greater Vancouver area. I was on the second level and above a large open area on the first floor where the mall usually sets up a stage if they have something going on. I noticed a lot of parents and kids near the railing and looking down to whatever was happening. I was curious so I casually walked closer to see what was there.

As I got to the railing, I looked down to see a small presentation area had been set up. There two lines of parents and kids. At the front of each line was a young woman sitting on a chair. Each child seemed to get about a minute or so with either of the young ladies. The kids seemed to range from two to possibly eight years old. Every child seemed to be genuinely excited and awed to meet either woman. I saw one little person high-five one of them with gusto. Most parents took a quick photo of their child during the meetup.

For all the excitement from kids and the parents, I admit I stared at the scene for several minutes and had no idea who any of those young women were. I realized that as a single man in his 30s, there are things out there that don’t even come close to my sphere of interaction or knowledge. This was one of those things. These women were obviously popular and known to the children and their parents but I had no such knowledge of them. It bugged me that I didn’t know who these people were. I made my way downstairs to get closer to the meet and greet. There was a sign there that told me the two women were Bobs & LoLo. They were obviously children’s entertainers but knowing their names did not advance my knowledge of them one bit. I went home and looked them up on Google. It was there I learned their origins and that they are popular for their kid-friendly songs.

On that one day, I peered into a world that I usually don’t have exposure to. I wonder what other things I don’t know about.

Despite living over a large supermarket, I came to the realization about an hour ago that I have no real food in my apartment. I had a small dinner consisting of a six-inch sub from Subway. For some people that would be enough to hold them over until breakfast. I am not that type of person. I spent most of the evening working a personal programming project and by the time I finished up with that, I discovered I was hungry and that I nothing to eat. Everything downstairs also had closed up for the night.

This is currently what’s available to me that feasible as food: two Twinkies, Almond Roca candy, and two peanut butter cookies. I also do have a few cups of microwave macaroni and cheese but the packet of powdered cheese contains a wealth of chemicals that I’m trying to stay away from.

It looks like I’ll probably finish the Twinkies and cookies and hopefully that will be enough to get me to the morning.

Today, for the first time since August of 2010, I received shares of EA stock through the employee stock purchase program. In this program, EA deducts a certain amount of money from your paycheque for six months. At the end of the six months, that money is then used to buy the stock at a discounted price. The stock is then for you to do as you choose. The safe bet is to sell the stock immediately because you assured a profit. Waiting is dangerous.

If you wait, the stock price can then fluctuate from your original purchase price. Sure it can go up but that hasn’t been the trend for EA stock recently. It can also go down in price which is a more likely scenario. If that happens, you lose money if you sell. With the current state of the global economy and where EA is right now, selling immediately is the safe and logical choice. I put my sell order as soon as I got notification the shares were in my account.

I’ve been burned before. Some of my loyal readers know that I have four blocks of shares that I held onto when the purchase price was around $40 a share. What a fool I was. I can only hope to break even someday with those. The most likely scenario is I can just claim capital losses.

So it’s tax season in Canada and people are trying to align their finances before they file their income tax returns. One aspect of these finances is contributing to an RRSP or registered retirement savings plan. If you’re not from Canada, it’s essentially an investment savings vehicle for retirement. The immediate effect of contributing to such an account is the lowering of the amount of income tax payable for that tax year. Usually because of RRSP contributions, I receive a tax refund.

The deadline for this year’s RRSP contributions is the end of this month. As a Canadian citizen, I can buy RRSPs from a multitude of different financial institutions. Working for EA though, I have incentive to buy RRSPs from our group retirement financial product provider, Sunlife. That’s because contributions to that account are eligible for a company match, which is essentially free money from EA. Now in my situation, I have two separate RRSP accounts at Sunlife because when I left EA in late 2010, I had transfer the employee RRSP account to a regular one. When I came back to EA this summer, another employee account was opened for me.

Now since I want EA to match a portion of my RRSP contribution this year, I decided to contribute a lump sum of money last week. I guess I wasn’t paying attention because I contributed to wrong account, sending money to the non-employee account, which EA doesn’t care about. There was no easy way to transfer the money to the other account so I was stuck. Not wanting to lose out on the company match, I contributed an identical amount to the proper account just days later. I was extremely luck that I had the extra money lying around as the amount wasn’t trivial.

Wow, what a boring post. I hope you enjoyed reading about retirement investments and how I don’t know how to click on the right things on a web site. Tomorrow, I’ll explain how I observed some paint drying.

No matter where you work or what you do for a living, I am sure you encounter a few gripes (small or large) about your job. Take me for example. I went to work this morning and I found out the studio kitchen was out of English muffins. For breakfast, I was forced to eat a granola bar instead of my desired choice of a warm, toasted, and buttered English muffin. Is that a punk-ass thing to complain about? You bet since the English muffins arrived later in the day and I had one for an afternoon snack.

I stayed grounded and gain perspective about work in many ways but one of them is by reading a series of real life stories sent in by people to the web site Gawker. Gawker‘s stuff can be really hit or miss but these pieces are written by readers. Entitled Unemployment Stories, they outline how some Americans are dealing with unemployment and what they are doing to get a job. Being the Internet, it’s possible some of these people are making stuff up but of all the things to lie about on the Internet, lying about not having a job really doesn’t get you anywhere.

There are twenty-eight such volumes now. I’ve read through many of them and noticed a few interesting things. First, I was surprised at how long some Americans have been unemployed. Being jobless for over a year is not uncommon. I think I read that one guy was approaching four years or so. I don’t want to judge but how is it possible to go that long without lowering your standards of employment? When push comes to shove, you gotta make ends meet and if that means working the fry station or pumping gas, there’s no shame in doing what you have to do. Now I understand you don’t want to give up on the jobs that are right for you too soon but perhaps a deadline should be set. Take this guy for example:

I have applied to, on average three jobs a day since 11/14/2012 and have gone on a total of three interviews.

When does this guy loosen up his standards? Another thing I’ve noticed is that there are a lot of university graduates who can’t land that first applicable job after they graduate with their undergrad degree. Some of them give up on the job search and then go back to school to get a graduate degree in the exact same field that they couldn’t get a job in. In my opinion this is super risky. In some cases, it totally wasn’t their lack of education or lack of specialization that precluded them from getting that first job. Then they come out of grad school with the extra degree and even more school debt and they still can’t get a job. In many ways, they’re now even worse off.

I did not have a plan for after college. I cried to my professor. He helped me find a part-time job and told me to get my Master’s. Subsequently, I became a graduate student the next fall

The last thing I’ve noticed, and is the most sad, is that people lose hope when they can’t find a job. They get depressed and life isn’t really fun for them. A lot of people derive purpose by having something to do. Without that, they feel lost.

I’m depressed, and if it wasn’t for the family pets needing kibble, I wouldn’t get out of bed. I’ve contemplated suicide. I’m a burden on my parents, who are approaching the age of retirement. I don’t have a husband or boyfriend to rely on for financial or emotional support. I think back to college and wonder what I should have done differently, and I can’t believe I can’t even score a job as a dishwasher, or a waitress, or bagging groceries. I’m not picky. I just want a job…

When I read these people’s stories, it does put into perspective where I’m at and how my problems compare to theirs. I hope you can gain some perspective as well.