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At the appointed time the next day there was a knock on my door. When I opened the door, I saw two people there: a man and a woman. The woman introduced herself as “Mary”, a manager from UBC Housing housekeeping services. I forget if she was the manager of all housekeeping or just one of the managers. The dude was “Mike” from the pest control company. I believe he was an Orkin guy. Mary wanted to meet me, get a bit of my info, and introduce me to Mike. After a brief conversation, Mary left to let Mike and I get down to the business of bed bug inspection.

It didn’t take long to tell Mike was an alright guy. He was patient, explained everything, and genuinely seemed to care about my well-being. He asked me when I noticed the marks on my body. How many marks, the shape, and the location. He then asked to go upstairs to the bedroom to start his inspection. Mike immediately went to the mattress on the floor and got out a flashlight. He examined the duvet cover and then the sheets. Then he removed the sheet from the mattress and looked at the mattress in great detail. He dug at the seams and even brought out a tiny magnifying glass to see the finer details. Mike explained he was looking for two things. The first was bits of dried blood that might have come from bite wounds. The second thing was bed bug poop. Bed bugs are nasty creatures. Not only do they prey upon you for your blood, they have the audacity to poop in your bed. Think about that for a second. On this planet, there exists a creature that consumes your blood for food. When it is done with its blood meal, it will defecate your blood. So Mike was looking for insect feces in my bed, feces that was made of my own blood. That part did not sit with me well.

He then fanned out from my bed. There was my night stand next to where I slept. Mike asked if he could turn the night stand over. I gave him the ok. Keeping the drawers shut, he went bottoms up with my night stand. There were four holes at the bottom where screws went. Mike immediately shined his flashlight into these holes and looked through his magnifying glass. He looked up and asked me if I had duct tape. I actually did have a roll lying around. I went and got it for him. He took the tape and taped shut all four holes. He then put the night stand back upright. Next he examined the carpet in the corner where my mattress was. Using a utility knife, he dug at the carpet corner and pulled it up a bit. Then using both hands he just yanked on the carpet, pulling it up away from the floor. There was more examining with the flashlight.

After that, Mike said he’d seen enough and asked me to come back downstairs. He was very matter-of-fact when he told me there were indeed bed bugs in my apartment and they were at the very least in my bedroom. The reason why he taped up the night stand screw holes was because he saw bed bugs nesting in them. The corner where he pulled up the carpet contained bed bugs. Surprisingly, he didn’t see any bed bugs evidence in my bedding nor my mattress. Mike told me that I’d have to be very vigilant from now on if I wanted to get rid of them as quickly as possible. There would be things I needed to do and I had to them without wavering and without delay.

Mike said he didn’t have time to do a full treatment on the same day and I also needed to do prep work anyways. What he would do was to go and get some of his chemicals and do an emergency spot treatment in the areas he did see bed bugs. I was also then told to do some important things. I had to assume that anything in the apartment might have bed bugs or their eggs in them. I had to isolate items that were known to be infested. I then had to decontaminate anything that might or definitely was infested. Anything that was guaranteed clean had to stay that way by isolating it from anything else.

Mike informed he was going to get his gear right away and that he’d treat my upstairs but it wouldn’t be a full-on roll in nerve gas nuke it from orbit just to be sure type of thing. I was to stay away from the upstairs for a few hours and leave the windows open. He also suggested I get back in touch with Mary. Since I had the time and the UBC Housing offices were a short walk away, I went to see Mary in person. She didn’t seem at all shocked when I told her about what Mike had found. She did seem very motivated to help me with my problem however. She told me that I could get free laundry cards from the life residence manager, we’ll call her Alexis. RLMs help a residence with more of the social and living aspects of housing as opposed to the business stuff like Mary did. I went downstairs and met Alexis for the first time. She also told me she would be there to help me with any aspect of getting rid of my bed bugs that she could assist with. The first order of business was nearly $20 dollars worth of free laundry. At UBC, there was no insuite laundry, so it was all coin operated laundry rooms.

Mike had explained to me that getting my clothes clean needed to be one of the first things I did. The heat of water and especially the heat of dryers would be able to kill beg bugs and their eggs. It was critical that I get a first batch of clothes in the guaranteed clean category because I was running the risk of contaminating other places just by going outside. To help with this, I was also handed a box of garbage bags. Keeping items stored in bags would help isolate clean from infested.

Thus began a series of protocols that I would follow for what turned out to be months. It was something out of the CDC in Atlanta. Now you might be asking why I just didn’t get the hell out of there at that point. It’s not practical to just leave when you first detect you have bed bugs. Unless you’re willing to basically leave everything you own in your infested home, you can’t just take off. Anything inside your home can’t be trusted until it’s decontaminated and deemed safe. Even taking a book away is dangerous because there could be eggs hiding in the pages, waiting to hatch into bed bugs. So until I had a handle on things, I had to keep myself isolated in my apartment. Considering I had blood-thirsty creatures in my bedroom, that was no small feat.

In the next post, I detail some of the changes I instituted in my every day life to keep things clean and safe.

You can find the other posts of this series here.

The next entry in my detailed battle with bed bugs has been postponed because I’m trying to track down some images that will be relevant to the next post. I also happened to get Deus Ex: Human Revolution this evening which admittedly ate up some of my free time. I regret nothing.

Recently, I received some e-mails from some random Internet dude. They were looking for information about a game that I worked on but hasn’t yet been released. I believe this was the first time someone who I didn’t know was trying to solicit game information from me. I understand and appreciate that some people are genuinely excited and curious about aspects of a game that hasn’t come out yet. Unfortunately, it’s not my place to divulge details like that. First, I’ve signed a non-disclosure agreement or NDA, which legally prevents me from telling anyone who will listen every single aspect of the game. Technically, I could get sued for breaking an NDA. Second, it’s not my place nor my job to spill the details about a game. I’m paid to make the game, not sell it. The marketing guys behind a game are the ones who control what info gets out and when. Sometimes they have really elaborate plans and promotions in place. Lastly, there’s no benefit for me to let these details out. I’ve heard of instances where people have attempted to leak information but in nearly all those cases, those people are doing it to gain “Internet” cred, which is useless in real life. Most of those people are very low on the totem pole who hear a lot of second hand info at a studio and then try to look important on a message board by spewing out random details.

You know, if this type of stuff got women all excited, I might re-think my position but as it stands, I can’t be bothered to waste my time on this.

As my food poisoning ordeal subsided, I began to settle into my new apartment on-campus. My new home was definitely institutional living. The apartment, while fairly large, was very basic in design and construction. It appeared, at first glance, to be clean. Then, things began to happen.

I first noticed problems on my upper right shoulder blade and on one of my legs. These areas were itchy, red, and raised, almost like welt. I had no explanation for these initially. Insect bites didn’t even come into my mind. Previously, the only things that had bitten me were mosquitoes and I knew how my body reacted to them. Those bites were certainly itchy but didn’t cause major redness and large, raised areas on my skin. I actually began to reason it was an allergic reaction to something, food, clothing, or a detergent. It looked like hives to me. I even made a visit to the on-campus medical clinic to see a doctor. It was easy to see doctors as a student, especially if you lived on-campus, so I thought why not? The doctor had no answer either unfortunately. He didn’t think it was an insect bite but he didn’t rule it out either. He asked if I had recently changed detergents. I had not. There was nothing medically wrong with me in his opinion so he was not concerned and told me to just keep an eye on it. Since there was no medical reason for the skin condition, I let my worries subside just a bit.

Then a few nights later, I made first contact, without even knowing it. I was asleep and it was sometime after 2am. My bladder woke me up and I crawled out of bed to relieve myself. It was dark and since my bathroom wasn’t near a window, it necessitated turning on the lights in there. The light was bright in there and walls were mainly white, so I went from near pure darkness to instant blindness. Through the piercing light and my unfocussed grogginess, I peered into the bowl, about to do my business. Then I noticed something through my squinting and my sleepy haze, it was dark, small, and round spot on my right bicep. Without thinking and just using my instinct I flicked it off my arm. I knew it was an insect but for some strange and worrisome reason, I didn’t give it a second thought. I finished my business and then went back to sleep.

It was several hours into the next day when possibilities began to churn in my head. It was after my classes for the day before I suddenly arrived at a more reasonable hypothesis. I was sitting at my computer when I realized those itchy areas were indeed insect bites and that spot on my arm had been a bed bug. I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t even know what bed bugs were. I thought they weren’t even real. It was just something you mentioned in that stupid saying. I turned to Wikipedia for the first of many times that year. In 2004, Wikipedia was still quite new to me but it gave me the first bits of crucial info about bed bugs, including what they looked like. It was at that moment that I saw my first picture of a bed bug and it sure looked like what I saw on my arm. It was not looking good for me.

It still boggles my mind that I was able to sleep that night, knowing what possibly could have been in my bedroom. The plan was to contact UBC Housing in the morning with my suspicions and to get someone to inspect my apartment. I woke up the next day and I was on the phone before doing anything else. It took a bit of transferring but I eventually got in touch with the housekeeping department at UBC Housing which apparently were the best people to deal with my inquiries. I calmly told them I had a strong belief that my apartment had bed bugs and I wanted someone to come inspect it and confirm my suspicions. There was strangely no surprise reaction on the other end. Whoever I was talking to seemed to almost expect I’d be calling and that this was a normal request, like I had asked for a repair for a sticky window. I was told they would get back to me once they had secured an appointment with a pest control company.

I did get a callback that day which informed me that someone would be coming by the next day (strangely expeditious). Though I didn’t know it, that week would be the week I got to meet three people that would be regular “buddies” of mine for the next several weeks, if not months.

You can find the other posts of this series here.

Loyal readers, welcome to the first post of a multi-post series on a subject I have not publicly divulged on this blog yet. Privately, some of you know have known about my battle with bed bugs. You may be surprised that this battle occurred nearly seven years ago, so I now tell this story from the standpoint of a grizzled, old war vet. I have decided to tell you this story now because I believe the time is right; also, I don’t have anything else interesting to write about. Because the gap of seven years is fairly lengthy, some details have gone fuzzy and I may get some of events in the wrong order. The following account though is truthful and without embellishment.

Though nearly everyone now knows about the incredible resurgence of bed bugs into modern civilization, seven years ago, bed bugs were still relegated to the domain of that old bedtime saying. Back then, I certainly only knew bed bugs as that mythical thing. I was still in grad school in 2004. Due to having too much fun and putting off important scholarly pursuits, I needed an extra eight months to finish off my M. Eng. Having taken all my time at my beloved St. John’s College, I had to find another place to live. That place was to be a one-bedroom apartment at the Thunderbird Residences on-campus at UBC.

There were signs of my impending misfortune but I wasn’t smart enough to notice the clues back then. It’s easy now to see the pieces put together. The first sign of trouble was the move in date. I was expecting to move in at the beginning of the school year, which traditionally is at the beginning of September. I was told cryptically that while the apartment had already been vacated, I couldn’t move in until three weeks into the school year. It was foolish for me not to press UBC Housing on the matter but when they told me it was because of maintenance issues, I left it alone. The second sign of trouble was literally a sign. I somehow wrestled the apartment number from the housing office. Early in the school year, though still weeks away from the move-in date, I went by my future apartment. Because I was in a hurry, I didn’t have time to come up close to look at it. I was perhaps about 20 to 30 feet from it. What I did notice was some sort of sign or notice on the door. It had some big letters on it and some symbols. Stupidly, I did not go up to it and look at it closely. I now recognize that sign was a warning from the exterminators. Seven years ago though, I did not know that.

The move in date finally arrived weeks later. Because I knew I was only going to be there for eight months, I decided to furnish the large, split-level apartment with very little furniture. The bottom level, which contained the kitchen and living room, had only a small card table and two fold up chairs. The upstairs, which had the bathroom and the bedroom, had a mattress on the floor (which turned out to be a terrible, tragic choice), a small night stand, a desk, and a chair.

If you go back in my blog archives, you can actually read up about this period in time. Go and find the archives for September of 2004. You won’t find any mention of bed bugs but you’ll notice that I actually moved into my apartment while enduring a nasty bout of food poisoning, a gift from my mother, who while always means well, has a poor understanding of food safety (to this day). So my week or so in my new on-campus apartment was taken up with me dealing with liquid death coming out of my butt just about every 30 minutes or so. The food poisoning incident was certainly an ordeal but had I known what was coming, butt coffee would seem like a minor inconvenience.

In my next post, I detail the first signs of the initial skirmishes and the horror which had just begun.

You can find the other posts of this series here.

It wasn’t until this weekend that I discovered Brent Spiner’s amazing impression of Patrick Stewart. It’s almost flawless.

Some of you might find this interesting but I technically have been crossing a picket line to go to work for many, many weeks now. I work in the same building that serves as the head office for Rocky Mountaineer, a company that runs trains to popular destinations. Since the end of June, the company has locked out their onboard train attendant employees. Their story can be found here.

Anyways, the locked out workers have been picketing in front of the building on the sidewalk for a long time now. The company has hired extra security to keep an eye out on the picketers. I have not witnessed anything dramatic happen. The picketers don’t hassle any of the people coming and going from the building. They seem quite respectful, at least to me. Some deliveries have been affected though. A few courier companies with unionized workers have refused to cross the picket line, so alternate arrangements have to be found in those cases.

It is somewhat amusing (if you can find amusement in people not being able to work and get paid) that there is a picket line in front of a video game studio. My industry will probably never been unionized. It just wouldn’t work. There are times and I’m not saying every studio does it, but sometimes studios press their employees to work a bit harder during crunch time to get the game done. With a unionized environment, either crunch wouldn’t happen or it would cost the company a lot of money. The game would then take an eon to finish or it would be prohibitively expensive to make.

I hope it works out for everyone in the end.

Yes, it’s another post relating to video gaming. I’m sorry ladies and gentlemen of my readership who aren’t interested in games. Well, there’s a huge trade show related to video games going on in Germany right now. Called Gamescom, it is the largest gaming related event in the world, surpassing that of E3 in Los Angeles.

EA used the show to debut the latest trailer for their upcoming modern combat shooter, Battlefield 3. The game looks amazing and the trailer features the public’s first look at jet combat. Ok, I promise the next post won’t be game related.

As many of you know, I’m working on a game called Prototype 2, which you can guess is a sequel to a game called Prototype. In the first game, you play as Alex Mercer. He wasn’t exactly like your normal video game protagonist. Some people found him difficult to like as a character. Mercer spent most of the game in a quest for truth. Powered by amazing and destructive abilities, you could leave behind a swath of utter mayhem as you drove Mercer closer to the truth. He was morally ambiguous. The game didn’t really punish you for killing innocent civilians. It was hard to play him as a good guy. This was most evident when you picked something up. In Prototype 1, picking something up meant death or destruction for that person or thing. There was no way to just simply drop that item. If you picked up a person, you only had two choices: consume that person (it’s as bad as it sounds) or throw that person with enough force for to kill them. If you picked up an object, you could only rid yourself of that object by destructively throwing it away, even if you were holding say a car with a civilian in it. I remember playing the first game and accidentally picking people up. As they dangled helplessly in Mercer’s right hand, I was dismayed to see the game giving me just two options: “consume” or “throw”. Either option meant death.

In Prototype 2, the protagonist is a new guy named James Heller. Heller is a family man who is driven by revenge. He basically just wants to kill everyone he thinks is responsible for the death of his wife and daughter. His backstory makes him easier to like and identify with. Unfortunately, until recently, the game play features didn’t exactly fit in with this dude who knew the value of family and morals. I remember starting work on the game and then realizing Heller had the same “pick up” limitations. He could only consume people or throw objects/people to their deaths. It just didn’t feel right.

Then just a few days ago, I received some release notes. Someone had put in the ability for Heller to put down objects and people. Amazing! I tried it out immediately. I went to a busy intersection and grabbed a random pedestrian. As people scattered in fear around me, my helpless victim dangled in the air in Heller’s right hand. I then pushed the button to let him go. Heller put the pedestrian down gently and they ran away. It was very satisfying. Heller doesn’t have to be a cold-blooded, indiscriminate killer and we just gave the public a way to express that. We now give them a choice. Not everything has to be destroyed. I then tested it on a car. I picked up a sedan with a driver in it. As Heller held the car up over his head, I easily could have thrown the car into the side of a building. I chose to put the car down. Heller didn’t just drop it to the ground, he actually bent his knees and placed it rather gently back on the pavement. Having a choice felt right.

I know it may seem silly but for all the games I’ve seen over the years, this little feature stands out in my mind as one of the more memorable ones.

A few weeks ago, I started an experiment by putting some ads on a few parts of my site. You won’t notice any ads on the main page of my blog because you, my loyal readers, are fine people and I don’t want to subject you to that. How am I doing, revenue-wise with this ad experiment? Well, I’m probably going to break some rules by telling you this but I’ve generated a whopping $0.00 from 377 ad impressions. Not one single visitor has clicked on an ad. I don’t expect you to click on them because you’re smart people. I’m counting on the random visitors to click on ads.

I’m not sure how other people are generating money with their web sites and ads but it’s clear to me my site isn’t positioned correctly to be making money in that manner.

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Last weekend I went to the paint store to buy some paint. This weekend, I borrowed some painting supplies from my sister and her husband. I am now finally ready to paint over the drywall repairs that have dotted my apartment for months now. This an extreme example of procrastination  for me.

Though I’m a total rookie when it comes to interior home painting, I’m give it a shot next weekend. It shouldn’t take more than two days as there are only two more walls other than the one you see above.