Category: Uncategorized

There have been nine movies made in the Star Wars universe that deal with the space opera saga that is the Skywalker family. The last three movies, dubbed the sequel trilogy, are terrible. They came very close to ruining Star Wars for me, which given how important those movies were to my childhood, would have made little me very sad.

The last three movies were soulless, empty shells that were superficially movies in that they had dialogue, characters, and visual effects but it amounted to pretty much nothing. They were forgettable. I’ve never really had the elegance to put into words how bad they were but the video essay above does a better job that I could ever have.

A young and jeans-clad Conan O’Brien visits Dave just weeks after the Canucks lost game seven in the 1994 Stanley Cup Finals. Conan and Dave have nothing to do with that, I just wanted to give some personal context. I was probably still pretty sad at the time.

If were to be lucky enough someday to be rich, like multi-millionaire rich, one of the indulgences I would partake in would be a subscription to YouTube Premium. Can you imagine watching YouTube videos free from ads? Gosh, this is what the elite of this world get to experience every day. I can only dream.

As a game developer, I’ve been on many teams where leadership has decided to send everyone swag as a token of appreciation or to increase morale. Some of the stuff is genuinely awesome, like the luxury, high-quality blanket that my current team sent me for the holidays. Other items, I wind up receiving but then regret my choice.

One time I received a very expensive rain jacket made by an outdoor clothing company that is well-known for its quality and also its high prices. The jacket was sized correctly in the body but the arms were way too long. There was no way to get a different size unfortunately. The jacket looks silly on me, so I have never worn it outside.

I’ve also received books from my various teams. Some books are graphic novels or have some story tie-in for the game. Other books are like the “art of” style books. These are nice to look at once or twice but for someone who wasn’t really into the games those books were based off (is that bad to admit?), they just sit in storage wasting space.

I know though that there are people out there who love this stuff more than I do and some of these items are exclusive to us developers so they could be quite desirable. In an effort to make some space and perhaps make some money, I’ve often thought about selling this stuff. There is unfortunately one problem.

I don’t want people to know I’m selling this stuff because it’s kinda bad form. Swag like this is intended to be enjoyed by the person receiving it, not to be sold for profit. I can be anonymous on eBay but selling on eBay means that I have to factor in shipping and some of these items, like books, are really heavy. This makes it much more expensive for any prospective buyers.

Facebook Marketplace is great in that there is no shipping involved since most buyers are local. Unfortunately, those types of listings use my real name on my personal Facebook account. It would be easy to see that I’m the one selling the items.

To get around this, I suppose I could use an intermediary to sell the items but that makes it complicated and I’d probably have to give a cut to the middle-person. I could also make a fake Facebook account but I believe Facebook restricts new accounts from selling for a certain amount of time.

Anyways, I’m stilling trying to solve this problem. I gotta make some space and money.

I am now hungry but I have to go to bed if I want any semblance of a normal night of sleep. Since I’m old now, I can no longer eat and go to sleep because I’ll get heartburn during the night. My only options are to eat and then stay up too late or just drink some water and go to sleep.

It’s times like this that I wish I were filthy rich and could just eat, sleep, and wake any time I wanted.

The other day I was thinking I should get Chinese New Year off as a paid holiday because it’s an important cultural holiday but then my team announced this week that we’re all getting the 17th and 18th this month.

Once per season or every four months, our team gets two extra days off to make it an extra long weekend. For this season, the two days come before a normal holiday Monday (here in B.C., it’s Family Day), so I’m getting a five-day weekend this month. I remember the barbaric days when there wasn’t a public holiday in February, which meant you had to work through January, February, and into March before you had a long weekend. Considering it was also the cold and dreary parts of the year, it made for a tough slog to make it to March. Though back then, we weren’t living in a pandemic, so maybe that’s a fair trade.

I haven’t decided what I’m going to do with my five-day weekend but not working is a good start.

On the occasion of Chinese New Year, I present Ronny Chieng and David Fung doing a fundraiser for a Chinese restaurant.

Apparently the official Seinfeld YouTube channel is less than six months old. It’s got a ton of classic clips from the show.

For some people the last two years have flown by and that feeling doesn’t seem to be ending. January is already over. I guess the perception of time flying by this month was helped by the fact that I didn’t go back to work until the 13th.

January is already in the books. It will be spring soon.

After weeks of rain, temperatures well above zero, and lots of fog, it got cold again this week in the greater Vancouver area. It’s currently zero degrees Celsius outside and my apartment feels chilly. Sometimes you can forget it’s winter when you live in Vancouver. I’m not sure if you can say the same in, let’s say Winnipeg, where it’s around -20 right now.

Along with the milder temperatures, I can also see that winter is retreating ever so slightly. The sun lingers just a bit longer during the late afternoon. Today for example, I was able to still see a hint of sun even at 5:30pm. We might even have a pleasant and sunny afternoon in about six months.