Category: Uncategorized

This weekend I did something that I’ve wanted to do for a while now, and that was to go visit my old alma mater, UBC. In particular, I wanted to see the AMS Student Nest, which is the new student union building. I thought that since it was the semester was over, it wouldn’t be crowded and that the wide open spaces of the beautiful campus would allow me to enjoy a bit of nature and see some of the new buildings.

I guess I should have expected this but basically everything was closed on campus. While some parts of our city and businesses are open under the new normal, much of the UBC campus still closed to the public. Nearly every building I saw had signs posted on all entrances, indicated the building would be closed until further notice because of the pandemic.

While this was a bummer, I couldn’t really argue against that. Each building would need a social distancing plan in place and some of these buildings are close to 100 year old, and keeping people two meters apart isn’t practical in some areas. Nevertheless, I was happy to walk around, get some fresh air, and reminisce about the good old days when I was a much younger man, attending UBC for both my undergrad and graduate degrees.

At one point, however, later in the afternoon I started to feel the need to go pee. At first, it was just a mild indication that my bladder was full, so I began looking for a building that was open, but everything I had seen beforehand told me I probably wasn’t going to find anything. Building after building was closed and locked up tight. I even wandered up to the University Village area where I found the McDonald’s there was open for take-out but the washrooms were closed.

As I continued to wander the campus, the urgency rose to alarming levels. Somewhere near the Totem Park residences, I decided I needed to relieve myself and it did not matter if I found a washroom or not. I began scouting the area. There were many which were exposed to the windows of the residences and I didn’t want to pee where someone might see me. I saw a small wooded area but I then realized the tree cover wasn’t as dense as I thought and I could easily be seen. I finally stumbled upon two large dumpsters in a small walled off area by a dorm. One was a normal but huge industrial sized dumpster and the other was a garbage compactor that was especially tall and wide. The walls were on three sides and dumpster and compactor blocked off the front. This was as good as it was going to get I thought.

I did a quick look around and saw no one, so I darted behind the compactor, undid my pants, and started urinating in public. I absolutely detest having to urinate in public. It was then that I realized one of the great ironies of doing so. Whenever you pee in public, you’re always so scared of being caught, so you just want to finish quick, zip up your pants and get the hell of there. Unfortunately, a pee that is done in public is never quick. The fact that you’re peeing in public usually means it was a last resort for you and that you exhausted all other attempts in finding a washroom. Now, your bladder has become so full, it needed to be emptied no matter what, even if done in public.

So, that was the situation I found myself in, I peed and peed and when I thought there could be no more pee left, I continued to pee, with a strong and unwavering stream. It felt like I was peeing for five minutes straight, long enough for someone to call the on-campus RCMP, for them to get in a patrol car, drive to me, and then find me behind the garbage compactor, all the while, I’d be peeing.

Mercifully, my peeing ended some thirty minutes later. Feeling very relieved, I zipped up and discreetly left the walled off area. I felt so much better. It was at this point that I decided I should probably head home before I needed to pee again while I was on-campus.

I know the issue I faced today wasn’t just something I alone have had to deal with. Homeless people in particular and anyone that needs to be out and about have had trouble finding washrooms to do their business because everything is now closed or won’t allow people to use their facilities. In my local municipality, they have tried to solve this by installing porta-potties in high traffic areas, so people have places to go, rather than on the street or in an alleyway. This hasn’t been done at UBC though, and that’s why I peed next to a garbage compactor today.

Be forewarned though, if your local health authority is lifting some restrictions but not all, and you’re venturing out more and longer now, you might be caught without anywhere to go.

I received my property tax notice in the mail today. The amount I have to pay is about $60 more compared to last year. That’s a relief because it went up over $200 the year before that. Like other years, I will be able to pay my property taxes in full this year. I don’t take that lightly. I know many people, whether they be locally or in other countries, won’t be able to pay this year. It’s a been a tough few months for a lot of folks, especially business owners.

So, I’m happy to pay my property taxes this year and hope everyone will be able to next year.

Like many of you, I’ve had Zoom installed on my home computers since the beginning of my quarantine to assist in communicating with my co-workers for meetings and one-on-one discussions. I was poking around Zoom and I noticed that our version of it has voice calls enabled. After some experimenting, I realized my work phone number is tied to the Zoom voice calls. So, I can make calls from Zoom and for other people, it looks like I’m calling from my work phone.

I initially just left it at that but then one day, I had to make a call to some business. I was at my computer, doing work, and I still had my headset with mic on as I had finished with a Zoom meeting. Rather than get my personal phone, I decided to just make the call in Zoom. There was a short wait required before I could speak to someone but that was ok because I could continue to still work as I waited. It was really convenient that the call was going through my headset as I didn’t need to put my phone down and then have to pick it up again when someone got to my call. Also, there was no need to put it on the awkwardness that is speakerphone.

I also was quite impressed with the call quality on Zoom. I’m not sure if it’s my carrier’s network (Rogers) or if it’s my phone but it’s so much easier to listen to people speak on a headset than that small speaker on your phone. People’s voice come in crystal clear on Zoom. Lastly, if you’re calling banks or credit card companies, using Zoom allows you to use your keyboard’s num pad to quickly enter in your info.

I guess the conclusion I have come to is that using a headset is the best way to make phone calls. Now if you’re wondering why I didn’t just plug my headset and mic into my phone directly, the one I have isn’t compatible with phones as it plugs into a USB port.

Well, now I know why call centre employees all use headsets, it’s so much easier that way.

It’s time for me to get rid of all the garbage and recycling that has been piling up in my apartment since mid-March. I wrote about this before but I have avoided going down to the garbage and recycling room in my building because it’s a highly trafficked area. Well, I now have three bags of garbage and three large bags of recycling that I need to take care of.

I’ll go downstairs after midnight, when most people are in bed or getting ready for bed. I might be super proactive and make multiple trips in one night to get rid of everything in one go, otherwise I can handle the garbage one night and do the recycling the next night.

The one thing I have to make special mention of is that amount of food composting that I’m creating has increased massively compared to before. Since every meal I have has basically been prepared at home, I have a lot more food scraps to deal with. A few months ago, I bought these compostable food scraps bags to handle all that. My last bag that I put into the communal composter must have weighed at least ten pounds. The bag had more room for more scraps and the only reason that I had to get rid of it was because the bottom was getting soaked through with delicious food scrap liquids. That was probably a month’s worth of food scraps.

It’s time to get this apartment cleaned up again.

It was a long weekend for this province and on Sunday, I had dinner with my parents for the first time since the beginning of March. Nearly three months had passed since we all ate together. This time around we had takeout and instead of eating at a restaurant, we had dinner at their place.

This week, more businesses in this province are opening up, albeit in a modified manner. As soon as this week, some restaurants will be open for dine-in service, but with additional guidelines to keep employees and patrons safe. This weekend, downtown Vancouver’s largest mall, Pacific Centre, re-opened to the public. Things are moving to whatever a “new normal” looks like in these times.

We should not forget, however, to continue to be vigilant. Our guard should not be let down. Just because people can go sit in a restaurant and have a meal or go shopping in a mall, that does not mean there is no danger anymore. No vaccine exists yet, nor does any effective and proven treatment. While we may expand our activities and reach into society again, it doesn’t mean we have to. The choice is there now, but it’s up to us how much of that we partake in.

I personally don’t feel like I need to eat in a restaurant right away. I also don’t need to go to a mall to get anything. These are not critical activities in my life right now. There are alternatives to each of these things, all of which were perfectly fine in the last two months, so I will continue to utilize them. I hope my fellow citizens of this province and country continue to be smart and logical about their behaviour. This summer should offer us hope for a better future but let us not be lulled into a false sense of safety.

My employer had its first all-remote global town hall last week. Normally, all the execs have a global town hall four times a year to give us a chance to discuss the company’s business and for us to ask questions to key leaders. The execs usually are on stage together in an auditorium.

This latest global town hall obviously could not be in that fashion. So, it was done over Zoom. Other than that, it was pretty much the same format. A lot of the discussion centered around the work from home situation. With the exception of the Shanghai studio, all employees in the rest of our locations world-wide are working from home. We were informed that even as local jurisdictions in many places in the world were loosening regulations, the company is holding steady in a conservative approach to allowing employees to return to work. We were told that for most employees, we should not expect to come back to work until closer to the end of the year. That means that everyone will pretty much need to work from home for the whole summer and well into the fall.

I’m ok with that and I’m extremely pleased that company leadership is valuing safety above all else. In many of our studios, space is at a premium and many employees work less than 2m away from at least one other co-worker. If we returned to work this month, it would be impossible to be socially distanced from your fellow employees. The company will need to invest in time and money to alter work locations to assist in keeping everyone safe.

It’s looking like I’ll probably be working from home at least six months out of this year. That will mean I’ll continue to save money. No need for a transit pass. I’ll save money on food instead of spending it at the cafeteria. Again, with many things in life, I’ll take it day by day, month by month but I’ll be ok with work. Many others don’t have that luxury.

Now that we’ve been working at home for several months, I have made the determination that pretty much all of my co-workers live in homes more beautiful, clean, and well decorated than mine. From the many Zoom calls I’ve been on and pictures from Slack, everyone has a cleaner and more organized home than mine. Not once did I see a home where I thought it was messy or poorly organized.

It’s a good thing I don’t have my camera on when I go on Zoom because all they would see is a massive mess in my apartment. When this is all over, I need to toss out a whole bunch of crap in my place. I’m not sure if I wrote about this but before all of this went down, I was in the process of getting a baseboard heater installed. I had a few quotes and was about to go ahead with it. That was supposed to be step one of a few home improvement projects, culminating in the largest wall in my apartment being painted a different colour. I still want to do all of this, just need things to get to the new normal.

This weekend was a warm and unseasonably hot one for the greater Vancouver area. In fact, the temperatures broke records for several places as some residents had to deal with heat that approached 30 degrees. We’re not even in the middle of May and it felt like summer already. I was outside on Saturday and it didn’t take me long to sweat.

Normally, I wouldn’t complain about such good weather but we live in unique times right now. For the most part, we’re still living under some form of quarantine conditions. When my own quarantine started in mid-March, the weather was still quite cool, cold even. If you stepped outside, you needed a jacket for sure. Jackets have sleeves and in those heady and chaotic first days of the quarantine, it was easy to shield yourself from having to touch door handles, elevator buttons, or basically anything you didn’t want to make contact with bare skin. You just pulled your sleeve down a bit and used it between your hand whatever you needed to touch. I cannot understate how important my North Face jacket and a blue hoodie was in terms of providing me with my own PPE during the majority of this quarantine. It saved me from having to touch countless door handles and elevator buttons.

The pandemic, however, has now lasted long enough that the weather has turned from chilly to warm and sunny. It’s now t-shirt and shorts weather. All my t-shirts are short sleeves. If I wear those, I no longer have my trusty long sleeves to save me from having to touch things. So, I face a dilemma now. How do I dress for the warm weather but still have some level of protection?

The only compromise that I’ve come up with is to wear long-sleeved, button-up shirts, like an oxford. I can roll up the sleeves to handle the weather and then roll them down when I need to touch a surface. Not a great solution but perhaps a workable compromise.

Today is the tenth anniversary of the release of Skate 3. It is the most recent game in the Skate series and quite possibly the last, seeing as how there has been a decade between the release and present day.

As with all the games in the series, I remain proud to have worked on Skate 3. For a game that is now ten years old, it is still played quite a bit by our players and it is frequently mentioned in social media. There is a vocal group on said social media that is clamouring for a sequel but I believe some of them are just doing it for attention and wouldn’t actually buy a new game. It would be pretty cool though if we did try to make another one but the development would be fraught with danger. The industry is quite different than it was back in the heady days of 2010.

Alas, it’s better to reflect on the things we able to accomplish and that is making a third game in a beloved series. The team that made all three games remain the best team I’ve ever worked with by a country mile. It was like winning a Stanley Cup in my second year of being in the big show. I lucked out early and big with my dear co-workers.

Ten years! Where did all the time go!

For as long as this pandemic has kept me home is about the same time that my main desktop computer has been broken. It has been months. I’ve written about this many times now but I keep writing about it because it’s still broken. My computer refuses to boot into Windows properly, so I have to put it to sleep instead of shutting it down.

I’m going to try one last ditch effort this weekend to fix it and if that fails, I’m going to take it to a shop. I can’t have it running like this indefinitely. There will be a time in the near future where I need to reboot this computer and that won’t be possible anymore. I wonder how many people had to endure this quarantine with faulty electronics and computers that were critical to their well-being or employment. They have my sympathy!