blog.erwintang.com

Up until today, I’d never taken two straight days off work before. In any case, I am feeling much better now and I think I’ll be able to make it to work tomorrow.

Faithful readers, I am currently battling the flu. Not half an hour after writing my previous post, I was set upon by chills and full body aches. You know the aches I’m talking about, where every part of your body reminds you that yes, they contain pain receptors. Even the process of moving a hair on my head triggered pain signals in the follicle.

Heading to bed, I shivered for about an hour under the covers before somehow, I fell asleep. Awaking around 7am, I instantly knew that there would no code written at work today. My head hurt like a sonvabitch, I was fatigued, and I generally felt awful.

Falling back to sleep, I again awoke, this time at 10am to send out a message to work that I would not be in today. Strangely, while feeling completely like crap, my appetite was still there. Eating breakfast though, was a sad experience. While hungry, I sat at my breakfast nook with a blank look on my face, staring at the wall, devoid of any energy. I slept for most of the rest of the day.

For about an hour, I felt somewhat better which might have been the Tylenol kicking in, otherwise, it’s been all chills, fatigue, and aches.

EA had earlier offered free flu shots for employees and I’m kinda kicking myself for not taking them up on their offer. It’s not that I’m afraid of needles but mass flu shots is one of the scenarios for the start of the zombie plague.

Ok, I think I need to go back to bed.

EA has started a new project and I’m excited to be part of the new team. We had a team meeting last week and from what I was shown, the new game has strong potential to be a real crowd pleaser. I can’t give out any details yet but in due time, there will be news.

Anyways, the point of this post is that we still need people to make this game happen! We’re in need of software engineers, artists, and project managers. Take a look below at the positions available. RTF means “regular full time” and TFT means “temporary full time” but keep in mind a lot of TFTs become RFTs after they’ve proven themselves after a single project. If I refer you for a position and you get hired, I get some cash! I’ll be willing to share it with you!

So if you want to work on a kick-ass project, them e-mail me!

J’ai pris un comprimé somnifère qui m’a incité trop somnolent pour faire un poteau logique. Plutôt qu’essai pour écrire quelque chose de plein d’esprit, je serai juste honnête. Le clavier semble étrange pour quelque raison.

It’s been a while since I’ve developed a new pet peeve but here I am with a new entry. This new one has been in the works for months as I’ve been reading video gaming messages, sifting for posts about skate.

A huge majority of the gaming public refers to a software defect in a game as a “glitch”. I guess since I’m getting older now, this irks me to no end. At least to me, the proper term for a software defect is a “bug“. In the nearly two years I was a games tester, I never heard the term “glitch” used once on a project. Without fail, the term “bug” was used universally. We had bug reports, bug counts, the bug database, showstopper bugs, rendering bugs, audio bugs and I could go on.

Even now as a software engineer nothing has changed. Developers call defects bugs and this has been my experience at two different companies. As soon as someone says or writes the word “glitch” I instantly classify that person a civilian, some dude who doesn’t work in the industry.

So please, do me a favour and don’t call them glitches, they’re bugs. Even if you have to change:

“Erwin, you worked on a glitchy piece of crap”

to

“Erwin, you worked on a buggy piece of crap”

That’s ok with me. At least it’s the proper terminology.

Last week, I had a chance to purchase Rock Band at a discounted price and nearly a month before it arrives in Canada. The studio managed to get twenty sets of the special edition. Knowing that there would be a huge demand, the right to purchase one of the twenty was done by a draw. I was not chosen in the draw. Several people on my team did, however, get selected.

Today the Rock Band boxes were made available to the lucky twenty. The designer sitting next to me picked his up and brought it down to his desk. There were five people around him almost immediately. He was adamant about not opening the box until he got home. Despite the peer pressure, he stuck to his guns and people went away disappointed.

Later in the day, he said it would be interesting carrying the big box down Seymour to his apartment. I’m sure he was fine but there is a big demand for this title. In the meantime, I’ll have to make do with Cowbell Hero until next month.

I bought very first scarf today. Yeah, it took me a while but I finally committed to a purchase. I’ve never been a big scarf fan. I agree that yes, my neck area gets cold once in a while but a scarf seemed like too big of a hassle to wear.

I think I’m mature enough to wear one now. I hope I’ve gotten over the whole “hassle” thing. I was prepared to buy a 100% cashmere one because believe me, I’m not buying another scarf for a few years. I was in hurry though while on my lunch break, so I wound up buying a mostly wool one.

I’m hoping this means I can just wear a t-shirt underneath my jacket because the scarf will keep me warm where it counts.

I’d love to hear everyone’s scarf stories.

If you’re going to use online services to book a flight to and a hotel in Las Vegas, don’t do it about an hour after you’ve taken a sleeping pill.

I’ve often thought about how my blog would read if there had been blogs back when I was younger. Actually, I was blogging before I even it knew what it was. When I first got hosting for my site, I’d write a little something on the main page of my site and then put an interesting picture up. I’d try to put something new up about once a week. Because I didn’t use a publishing system, there was no such thing as archives. I just overwrote what I had before.

Anyways, it’s a shame there were no blogs back when I was in undergrad. I was very, very stressed out for the first three years I was at UBC. Yes, I also managed to have a bit of fun but I was extremely high strung back then. I was probably certifiably mentally unstable back then.

There’s also the question if I would even have time to write back then. When I was eighteen to twenty-one, I was more sleep-deprived than any other period of my life. I imagine I’d blog about naps a lot. Some of the most pleasurable things about undergrad were my naps, no joke here. I’d love coming back to my dorm room and letting the exhaustion take me over, if only for just half an hour before I had to go to another class.

One time in my first year, I had about two hours in between my classes. After I returned from the cafe for lunch, I was just exhausted, so I was looking forward to a nap. When I got back into my room, there was thunderous roar coming from outside my window. A mini-bulldozer was digging up the ground right at my ground-floor window. I shut my window but it was no good, it sounded like the machine was right next to my bed, which it actually was since it couldn’t have been more than five feet from the wall.

As noisy as it was, I decided to just lay down anyways, not convinced I was going to fall asleep. I was wrong. I was so tired I fell asleep in less than five minutes, as the bulldozer continued to dig up dirt at the base of my window. When I woke up later, it was the first time that I realized university was kicking my ass bad.

I’ll have more later.

This happens fairly often but this is the first time I’ve written about it. Often, as I sit to write a post, I get fairly conflicted on what I’m about to write. Sometimes I have several ideas but then I start figuring out those ideas won’t work for a post. One idea might take an hour to write out properly. Another might be just lame.

Tonight, I can’t decide if I want to write about:

1. The fact I’m undecided about what to wear for this year’s James Bond themed EA Holiday Party.

2. Lately, after trying to limit my sugar consumption, I have sudden strong cravings for sugar.

3. Why some people on the Internets were so wrong about something, even though we all know most people on the Internets are complete idiots.

Maybe I’ll have something better for tomorrow.