Category: Uncategorized

There are sick people all around me in all aspects of my life. The guy at work who has his desk next to mine is very ill with a terrible cold. He looked and sounded awful on Tuesday. He soldiered on and dragged his ass to work on Wednesday somehow. That afternoon, I looked over to see him with his head on his desk, eyes closed. I felt very sorry for him. He thankfully decided to take a sick day and stayed home today.

Everywhere on transit I hear people sniffling and sneezing. Strangely, I don’t hear many people with coughs. It’s just runny and stuffy noses. Weird. I’d like to end this week with my health intact. One more day to go. I’m gonna go wash my hands again.

Conan doesn’t play video games but he got to visit Kojima Productions nonetheless. It looks like he might even be in Death Stranding!

The final trailer for the new Star Wars movie came out this week. This will be the third and last movie in the latest trilogy of the movies that started when Disney bought Lucasfilm. I have not seen the trailer and don’t intend to. I have become quite disillusioned by the first two movies. Overall, my opinion is those movies are quite frankly, terrible. As with many adults, I became a huge Star Wars fan when I was a child. Child me would be very disappointed in how little joy I derive from these latest movies. The first one, The Force Awakens, was a poorly executed rehash of parts of the original trilogy. The second, The Last Jedi, had a nonsensical plot and even featured a first in Star Wars lore, a low-speed chase through space.

I care for none of the new characters in this trilogy. I have nothing invested in their story and each one could live or die at the conclusion and I would not feel one way or the other. As maligned as the prequel trilogy was, it made me an even bigger fan of Obi-Wan Kenobi. I hold in great reverence the story of old Ben Kenobi, his life, his adventures, and his impact on the galaxy. I feel none of that for any of these new characters.

Will I see this new movie in December? Yes, eventually, just to close the chapter on this. I’ll see it once and be done with it.

My first officially sanctioned “work from home” Monday was wonderful. I got about 30 minutes more sleep than usual but was actually logged into my work computer and working about ten minutes earlier than if I had to commute to the studio.

It rained like a monsoon outside today but that had no bearing on my work day because I didn’t have brave the elements with all those other commuters. I stayed in warm and dry in my PJs all day.

Now you might find this hard to believe but I actually got a lot of work done today. My new desk is in a tightly packed cubicle farm and I can usually hear about four different conversations around me at any given time. At home, there’s no need for headphones because it’s just me.

I wrote this before but I’ll write it again, there’s no need for me to physically be in the studio for my current assignment. So when I go into work tomorrow, it’s mainly to appease managers who get kinda nervous when their workers work remote 100% of the time.

In a few weeks, I may float a suggestion that I work two days a week at home. Before that though, I need to back it up with results. I need to show them I’m making progress with what I’m doing. Let’s see how it goes.

For the foreseeable future, I get to work from home on Mondays now. Since I’m working for a team that’s based in San Francisco and I’m the only one in Burnaby that’s in the same boat, it doesn’t really matter if I do my work at the studio or at home. So, I’ve negotiated that I get to work at home on Mondays. Technically, I don’t need to be at the studio at all, but I think the higher-ups would get nervous if I didn’t show up ever.

In the past, I’ve randomly worked at home because of either sickness or if I had to be at home to let a maintenance person in. This is the first time in my career where I’ve had a regular day that’s set aside where I can work from home. I’m really looking forward to it!

I’ve gone over a week without a hot water dispenser and I gotta be honest, during that time, I’m less hydrated than before. There have been some nights where I’ll wake up and I’ll be super parched, thirsty as hell. Without the dispenser, I drink less water. I know it sounds ridiculous since I have a kitchen sink with a fully-functional tap but I rarely just drink tap water since it’s not warm. To cope, I’ve been boiling water in a small saucepan but it gets cold and I gotta reboil the water after I drink some. I guess I just get lazy and I don’t bother reboiling it, which leads me to drink less water. I’m just accustomed to drinking warm water on demand for so many years now.

Well, I shall be parched no longer as my new hot water dispenser should be arriving either tomorrow or the day after. I shall be parched no more.

In the above video, YouTube star chef Andrew Rea attempts to make the $5 milkshake from Pulp Fiction. The interesting metric for this is the dollar value. Adjusted for inflation Rea tries to make a shake that comes closest to the $5.

I actually had no idea where my new desk was this morning. Even though I had seen the location on a map, I’d never been there, in that exact spot before. It took about two minutes of randomly walking around before I spotted the guy who sits next to me, after which I followed him to my area.

It took my about two hours to unpack, arrange, and connect all my equipment together. There are so many wires for all my monitors, TV, dev kits, and computer. Because my desk can move up and down via an electric motor, I had to place my computer on my desk surface as well. I’ve never done that before. It does take up a bit of space but it prevents cables from having to be super long to accommodate the rest of the desk moving.

The consensus is that many people on our new floor, myself included, are packed in tighter than on our previous floor. I used to have a bit more space next to and behind me. There also seems to be less light in our area. I believe this is because our windows now face a massively tall concrete retaining wall. Previously, I had windows that had a clear view of the sky and the mountains to the north. It was picturesque. Now, all we see is grey.

I have yet to work in a standing configuration for any length of time. I gotta try that out tomorrow.

In my last post, I wrote about how I’m moving desks, two floors down, at work. My whole team is moving with me from the fourth to the second floor. There are a few pros and cons of the move. We have a patio on the fourth floor and it was nice having one close by in the summer time. The second floor doesn’t have a patio. Being on the second floor, does make it easier to get to my desk and to leave work. Being four floors up, I used to take the elevator up and down a lot. On the second floor, there’s really no reason not to take stairs.

The cubicles we’re moving to on the second floor are not the same as the ones on the fourth. They have all been converted to sit stand desks. This means it’s easy to configure the desk for standing as well as sitting. Sitting all day at a desk is bad for your health, so many office workers are now standing for portions of their day.

I’ve never had such a desk before, so it’s gonna be weird to be standing while working. I think it’ll take some getting used to but in the long run, it should be better for me. I’m not sure how it’ll work with all the wires I have on my desk. With my keyboard, mouse, two monitors, TV, two Playstation 4 dev kits, and an Xbox One dev kit all on my desk, there are gonna be lots of wires that will have to move with the desk. I’m guessing you want to minimize the amount of wires that stay stationary and are anchored to a non-moving surface. It’ll be interesting unpacking everything tomorrow.

The entire floor that I work on at the studio is moving this week. We’re on the 4th floor and we’re moving to the 2nd. This is to accommodate some renovation plans which will begin in a few months. Space is incredibly tight at the studio and this is with several hundred people who have already temporarily relocated to a satellite office in the Still Creek area.

Tomorrow I need to pack up all my stuff at my desk, which includes my workstation, TV, multiple console dev kits, controllers, office supplies, and a bunch of other random stuff. Since everything needs to be packed up and ready to move before 4pm, we get to all go home early.

A moving company will move all our stuff down two floors over the long weekend. On Tuesday morning, I’ll have to unpack everything at my new desk. I already know where I’m sitting. It’s not particularly close to a window, which is a bit of a bummer. I’ll be sitting next to different people, which is fine, because it’ll be a good opportunity to get to know them better.