blog.erwintang.com

I left work today at the relatively early hour of 7pm to attend a small get-together organized by my apartment building’s strata council. The event was not technically a strata council meeting where official business was conducted but more of a social gathering. My reasons for going were several fold. First, since the last strata council meeting was just two weeks ago and I wrote my first letter to strata, I wanted to know if my letter was read and what they thought about the subjects I raised in said letter. Second, I wanted to talk to the various strata council members about things that might not come through the correspondence to the owners. I’ve been told that if you own an apartment, it’s always a good idea to be friendly and communicative to council members. Third, I wanted to meet other owners in the building.

Within ten minutes of arriving at the event I found out my letter was indeed addressed but the property manager was just taking his time in responding to me. I spoke to the strata president directly about my issues. In short, no one cares if I want to change my blinds. Also, no one has any problems if I want to rip out my fireplace. Though it was only verbal confirmation, I essentially have the green light to start ripping stuff out. If I do decide to go ahead, I’d get rid of that damn fireplace before my blinds. I want that thing gone.

While I was talking to another council member, I found out something that took me by surprise. In no less than two months, everyone who has been assigned reserved parking spots in levels P1-P3 will be reassigned spots in levels P7 and P8. I had just gotten used to parking in my spot and now it won’t matter anymore. The reason for the move is that P1-P3 will apparently now be designed for commercial parking as the construction is beginning on the shopping centre part of the development. Parking in the new level necessitates entering in a completely new entrance and up this sketchy two-way spiral. It’s been decades since I’ve seen a parkade with a spiral and I don’t think I’ve ever heard of one that had two-way traffic with no divider between the cars!

Last but not least, I’ve learned about the seedier elements about my building. When my building first opened, there were some pretty sketchy people that moved in as renters. I have learned that there have been drug dealers, grow-ops, and even prostitution in my building. According to strata though, the majority of these people have been evicted. I think that’s actually true. There used to be this one guy who used to loiter in the front of the building with his “crew”. Everyone knew he was up to no good. I don’t see him anymore so hopefully he got his ass evicted. Strata seems to be taking a real pro-active approach to getting rid of the douchebags in the building.

I’ve been a homeowner less than a year, so I’m still learning many little details of owning an apartment. My suggestion is, get to know your strata council. They’ll tell you all sorts of useful things.

If you’re interested, apparently the brothel in my building was on the 35th floor.

Welcome to another fascinating installment of the “Did You Know?” series! Did you know that I have not adjusted the time on my wristwatch since daylight savings time kicked in over a month ago? Yes, that’s correct. Despite changing the time on every single other timepiece in my apartment, I somehow forgot to adjust the time on my watch. When I first noticed the problem, I simply subtracted one hour from my watch’s time to get the correct time. For whatever reason, I’ve been doing that ever since.

I wonder if I’ll get my watch on the correct time before we spring forward again in March.

Last week, I realized, through various means, that more people from my work have read my blog, more than I currently thought. I’m not exactly sure how they find this little dog and pony show but I’m sure putting a link on my Facebook profile helped a lot. Also, there’s always the good old stalker stand-by, the Google.

The interesting thing is, even if every single person on my team read my blog (and I’m certain that would never happen), I wouldn’t really change what or how I write. There’s a few reasons for that. First, as many of my long time readers would attest to, the stuff I pen here is pretty mundane and non-controversial. Oh sure, once in a while, I’ll report on wang-files but for the most part, this blog struggles to stay one level above this one. Second, I’ve been doing this since 2002. I’ve had a long time to witness the emergence of how blogs can affect people and the world. I’ve duly noted the times where people’s blogs and workplace collide in a non-awesome manner. As such, I’m very careful about what I write pertaining to work and my colleagues. That hasn’t stopped me from writing about my job though. As you can tell, a lot of my posts are about work and I’d like to think some of them are even entertaining. Also factor in that at times, I have to tiptoe around intellectual property disclosures and you can see there are lots of areas where if I strayed into, things would get messy for me.

I’ve mentioned this before but I’ll write it again, thanks to all my readers, from whatever demographic they come from, for reading and supporting this little endeavour. I’ll let everyone know when I’ve mailed out the et.com keychains to you.

I am currently trying to decide if I should go to Vegas before Christmas this year. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know for the last several years I go to Vegas in December to meet up with some grad school chums.

There are a few reasons for going. First, I haven’t really taken a vacation this year at all. I didn’t go anywhere this summer and I didn’t even travel locally. The last time I was on a plane was coming back from Las Vegas in December of 2008. I think it’s healthy to get away from your normal routine, if only to get perspective on said routine. Also, with the US economy sucking bad still, Vegas is cheaper than last year and we all thought it couldn’t get any cheaper. It’s possible to get four nights on the Strip at a 3-star hotel, return flight, fees, and taxes included for less than $500. You’d be hard pressed to find comparable hotels in Vancouver for four nights at the same price and that’s without factoring in a flight. It would also be nice to see the boys again.

There are also reasons for not going. First, this was my first year living at my new apartment. There were a ton of associated costs beyond the purchase price itself. I had to buy a TV, furniture, Slap Chops, housewares, a bed, just basically everything you need to make a home, a home. Let’s not gloss over the fact that I went from being comfortable debt-free to in debt close to $200K. I owe a lot of money to people. Last year, I spent a lot of money in Vegas and didn’t care one bit because I didn’t really have anyone to answer to, other than myself and that dude was totally cool with it. This year, I’m thinking maybe I should use that Vegas money to pay down my mortgage. Last but not least, the Vegas package deals on Expedia fluctuate in price on a nearly daily basis. Sometimes it’s cheaper by $150 but then it goes right back up again. It’s difficult to know when is the right time to book.

No matter what, I better decide quick because the next few days and weeks are going to fly by.

So we have this contest at work. The details involve who can have the best holiday-themed decorated work space amongst the team. Apparently there will be judging and prizes. It all gets decided on December 17.

I’m thinking about making a real run at the grand prize (yet to be announced). You know how they have these specialty Christmas decoration stores that pop up around this time of year? Yeah, I’m thinking about going to one of those and just buying lots of big, loud, and flashy decorations. I’m envisioning many strands of blinking lights, animated Santas and elves, tinsel, coloured foil, lit up candy canes, and much more. As you can tell, I’m going for gaudy rather than refined and tasteful. There’s a chance this will all backfire on me and I’ll lose out to someone who decorates their area with a few simple but classic and classy set pieces. I’m willing to take that chance though.

My secret weapon though will be nearly unstoppable. I am thinking about renting a department store Santa for one hour on the day of judging. Who ever this jolly actor maybe, I would procure his services for exactly one hour where he would pose for photographs with people on my team at my desk. After getting their photo taken with Santa, people would receive a candy cane courtesy of me. I’d love to have sexy elf assistants help with the process but I believe that would be too much.

The one thing that would make this hilarious is if I decided to spend all this money and effort and the grand prize turns out to be a $10 gift card to Starbucks.

http://g4tv.com/lv3/43032

I have not seen nor read such critical reviews of a AAA title in long, long time. It’s very unfortunate considering how the first three games in the franchise were above 90 in meta scores.

Since this is my blog, I’m allowed to complain about minor inconveniences. This is one of those times.

So just like we had at our downtown location, our new suburban work location in Burnaby offers an employee transit pass discount. Back in the glorious downtown days, we’d go to the front desk and then on a sheet of paper write down our name and number of zones we’d need a transit pass for.

When the transit passes were all purchased, we’d all get an e-mail stating the passes were ready to pick up. Keep in mind since the list of people buying passes was manually entered in, the recipient list in the e-mail thus had to be manually written out as well. No one really forgot to get their transit pass even if it was really busy day since there was that e-mail that reminded you. Even if you forgot to get it from the receptionist and they went home, you wouldn’t be screwed. Since the security desk is manned 24 hours a day, the security dude on duty could always give your pass and then check you off on the list.

Now they do things a bit different in Burnaby. First, you don’t write down a damn thing. The receptionist makes you scan your badge when you go buy your transit pass. So the information of every single person who buys a transit pass is recorded on a computer somewhere. Now keep in mind which system would probably be more capable of sending out a reminder message to pick up your transit pass. The system where all names were written down manually or the computerized system where names are recorded digitally? You guessed it. In Burnaby, they can’t seem to find a way to translate the names in the computer into an e-mail reminding you to pick up your transit pass.

Today was the last day of November and because I was so busy, I forgot to pick up my transit pass. I remembered at 6pm and I knew the receptionist would be long gone but I was hoping the security dude would help me get my pass. No dice. I was told in no uncertain terms that the receptionist was the only person in a studio of over 1200 employees that could give out the transit pass. I along with several other people were told that even though our passes were just a foot away from us at the front desk, we couldn’t have them. So now, I gotta pay my own way to work tomorrow morning.

The names are already in the computer. How hard is it to craft an e-mail one day a month that simply says “pick up your transit pass”? When we were about to move to Burnaby I was warned that EA Canada and Black Box do things quite differently in certain areas. I guess this is one of these things. Maybe I’ll walk to work tomorrow.

UPDATE: I just phoned the property manager and it turns out that my letter was actually read. It’s just taking a few days for a response to be drafted up and mailed out to me. I will keep everyone posted.

In a previous post, I mentioned how I left a letter for my strata council to read. I left the letter in a mailbox in our lobby mailroom. The mailbox is labeled as a suggestion box and a place to leave correspondence to the strata council. After going five days without any kind of response to my letter, I decided to peek into the slot of the mailbox. The mailbox still contains an envelope and I’m pretty sure it’s my letter. I can’t see the front of the envelope so I’m not positive it’s still my letter but usually in these types of matters, my guess is right.

I left my letter in the mailbox on Sunday evening. The strata council meeting was scheduled for Monday evening. I left myself some leeway of about 24 hours for them to open up the mailbox and get all the correspondence in there. How hard is it for strata to do that? Why have the mailbox there if they’re not even going to use it?

I’m going to phone the property manager tomorrow to figure out what’s going on. I’m really peeved right now.

It’s nearly December and I still haven’t turned on my heat in my apartment. A crazy part of me thinks I might actually be able to go through the entire winter without turning my heat on. Of course, now that I typed that, watch the temperatures go near freezing soon.

On winter coat front, I’ve managed to get away with not wearing my heavy wool coat. I’ve added a scarf to my ensemble but I’m still getting away with a lighter jacket.

So last week Activision released Tony Hawk’s new game entitled Tony Hawk: Ride. Because of some weirdness with apparent distribution issues, review copies of the game were not sent out in advance to reviewers (as is the usual case). As such, reviews are now only trickling into print and the Internet.

So far, it hasn’t be a spectacular reception from reviewers. On Metacritic, Ride is garnering a 53 on Xbox 360, while on PS3, it’s coming in at a 49. As this franchise is really our only competition in the marketplace, our team has been following this game and its reception. We actually have two copies of the game for the team to try. Last week, everyone had a chance to play Ride including myself. I thought the board was really well-made. It feels solid and sturdy. It never gave me the impression it was a toy and I believed I was on a real skateboard (minus the wheels).

I played the game for about 15 minutes or so. In light of that, I don’t think that’s enough time for me to make an honest and fair assessment of game. I won’t make any more comments until I’ve had a chance to really play through a large portion of the game. At more than $120 though, I just don’t see myself buying it at that price.

My belief is the game will probably sell well among parents who will buy the game for their kids. I’m not sure how well it will do with older gamers who do all their game buying themselves.

Have you tried Ride? What do you think of it?