SICK DAY

Lots of people were sick at work today. Most of them work directly with me on a particular part of the game. That made it kinda quiet around the office. It was nice to just work in peace.

In other news, I’m having lunch with Greg Williams on Wednesday. Yes, gwilli of the lunch blog fame. We work very close to each other now. I probably haven’t had a real sit down lunch with Greg in about five years. In half a decade, I’ve managed to see Greg a dozen or more times for less than a minute each time. It’s so weird. There was the time he gave me a twoonie before a stag at the UBC bus loop. There was a time he ran by me on Broadway near Oak to catch a bus. Or the time I actually saw him at the village buying lunch.

Assuming I spend an hour with him on Wednesday, that’ll be more Greg time than the five previous years combined.

I’m going to blog the lunch.

BRUSH WITH GREATNESS… SORTA

On Saturday, I played ball hockey with the son of Doug Lidster. If you’re a fan of the Vancouver Canucks, you’ll recognize that name. Lidster played for the Canucks from the mid-80s to the early 90s. He was a solid and dependable defenseman. Lidster was deemed to be the 21st greatest Canuck in history, a notch above goalie Glen Hanlon and just below fellow defenseman Jyrki Lumme.

Though Lidster had a great career as a Canuck, what sticks out in my mind the most was that he played for the Rangers in 1994. That was the memorable year where Vancouver met New York in the Cup final. I wonder he felt at least a tiny bit sorry for Linden and the rest of team. Lidster would go on to win another Cup with Dallas before retiring.

Anyways, yeah, I played ball hockey with his son Ryan on Saturday. Actually, we played last week as well but I didn’t know who the hell he was that day. You can tell he’s played some hockey in his life though I have to be honest and say Carl and Ben are better all-around players. His positioning is top-notch though and he always knows where to be. He’s a friendly guy and from what little I’ve interacted with him, he seems like a good fit for the College. If appearances count for anything, both Mr. and Mrs. Lidster did a nice job of raising their son.

Maybe next week, I’ll go bowling against Thomas Gradin‘s son.

CONGRATS!

Congratulations go out to Dave and Abigail on the birth of their baby daughter Lucy. Hard to believe I first met Dave as a fresh-faced first year university student. Now he’s a doctor and a father.

THIS DAY IN HISTORY

I had a day very much related to the video game industry. In the first bit of news, I worked my very first day or should I say evening of OT for EA. It was my first bit of OT for EA since March of 2002. Yay! Just like old times.

In all seriousness though, it was a slightly casual evening of OT. Actually, there were quite a few people there. Since we’re a bit early in the project, there were no set meals. The production coordinator told us to go get our own food, keep the receipt, and then get reimbursed. The area around our building is pretty sparse when it comes to covenient food at night. I’m ashamed to admit this but I went and got McD’s for dinner. To be fair, it was right across the street and the guy behind me brought his McD’s in first. I was powerless to resist the aroma of fresh fries. When I got to the counter, our technical director was just leaving with his McD’s. Hey, if it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me.

It might be strange to say but I’m glad I stayed tonight. I got some much needed work done and I went home to the kids with a satisfied feeling. I’ll probably have a different feeling after three straight weeks of OT but that’s yet to come.

In other news, the second game I worked on as a software engineer was submitted to Sony for certification. Sonic Rivals will be in the hands of Sony testers for approximately one week. They’ll be looking to see that the game meets Sony’s high standards. In reality, that means they’ll be looking for outright crashes and legal issues. If all goes well, the game will be off to manufacturing in about one week and on store shelves sometime in November. When it gets released, it will be my very first game as a developer.

And finally, a professor from the University of Lincoln in the UK has asked me if he could use a grad project of mine in his course on gaming AI. Of course, I said yes. How many assignments get looked at again after the prof marks it? I figure this way, my effort goes a little further. Plus, it will give the students inspiration. If a dude like me can get hired at EA, so can they!

HOCKEY

I played ball hockey at SJC on Saturday. It was the first time I played since probably July. There’s a new resident who’s running the show now. He sent out an e-mail out a few weeks ago asking if anyone was interested in playing. I replied and told him how we did things way back in the day. I also mentioned that he was free to do whatever he wanted to with hockey now that he was in charge.

He was nice enough to let me play for the first outing of the season. When I showed up, there were only two others guys there who had played at SJC before. It was Penson and some Swiss guy that played twice last year. Not coincidentally, we were also the only three guys who wore gloves.

The others that showed up came in various states of athletic gear. Two guys wore jeans. That kinda reminded me of the time Bone showed up drunk one night and played in his white jeans. The rest wore shorts but no one had shin guards.

There was some spirited competition and we played for nearly two hours straight. I can’t imagine how some of the guys survived the whole two hours without water. I went through nearly a litre of water myself.

Two guys got hit in the eye with the ball but they weren’t serious injuries so they continued to play. That’s the nature of SJC ball hockey. You haven’t lived until you’ve gotten a ball to either the eye or the junk. If that’s true, I lived twice vicariously through my own crotch.

While it was a good two hours of running around, I still think of the golden era of SJC hockey. You know, the days where Phil patrolled that wing along the wall. Joel was always fond of mentioning that. The days where hockey was played twice a week, once on a weekday evening. The days where UBC Parking would come harass us and then we’d have to speak to the RCMP. Oh those heady days.

Anyways, I would like to play again because this is a somewhat convenient venue for me to run around and get sweaty on a regular basis.

Here’s to continued hockey.

THE SWEETEST BATHROOM

I knew one of the things I was going to give up when I took the job at EA was the best set of workplace bathrooms I had ever seen. The Backbone office had seven individual bathrooms for a staff of about 80 people. Each bathroom was designed to be used for just one person. They were spacious and inviting, allowing you to do your business (whatever that might be) in amazing comfort and privacy. It nearly made eliminating waste at workplace a perk.

When shifted workplace locations to an office building downtown, I thought the days of private bathrooms were over. Indeed, for a while they were over. The bathrooms I were shown during my orientation tour were for use by multiple people at the same time. No more privacy.

Then I noticed that I would never see certain guys in the bathroom. Was it just luck? Maybe we never went to the bathroom at the same time. Maybe they went to a different floor. Curious, I pulled up a schematic for my floor. And there it was, right on blueprint. A single, private bathroom on my floor. It looked huge according to plan.

After work on Friday, I entered said bathroom for the first time. It was a sight to behold. It was indeed a large bathroom for just one person. The toilet was located at the deepest point of the room, far from the door, enabling even the noisiest of users to have some privacy. At the foot of the toilet was a beautiful wicker basket, the kind you’d find at Pottery Barn. Inside the basket was a fine selection of gaming magazines. There was a single sink, in a pedestal style. It reminded me of a sink you might find in a hotel. I noticed that there was a switch on the wall but the lights were already on. I pushed the switch and a single shaft of golden light illuminated the sink, as if from heaven.

From now on, this will be my “Fortress of Solitude“. From what I’ve seen of other floor plans, no other EA floor in the building has a single, private bathroom like this one. I find this hard to believe since I can’t see the bigwigs up on 20 sharing a bathroom.

And that’s my post about pooping at work.

WHAT JEFF KILLED


Photo courtesy of whatjeffkilled.com

Please allow me to share with you an interesting site I found a few weeks ago. It is simply entitled What Jeff Killed. According to the owners of the site, Jeff is an orange cat who lives in California. Jeff is not a house cat. He lives in the wild. The site owners supposedly supply Jeff with some food and water but do not own Jeff nor let him inside their home. All their interactions with Jeff happen in or around their back patio.

For some reason, Jeff kills animals of varying sizes and brings them to the patio for the home owners to see. The people who run the site thought it would be neat to document and photograph each of the kills.

Judging by the size of Jeff’s kills, he is an efficient and probably vicious hunter. Looking at his pictures though, he seems nothing but a lazy, docile house cat. I personally found the site fascinating. Somewhat like a wildlife show, it shows the seemingly cruel ways in which animals hunt each other.

Yes, some of the pictures will make some people squeamish but I guarantee you you’ve seen worse if you grew up anywhere near a farm. The site does get hate mail but please, Jeff is gonna kill those animals whether or not anyone takes photos of the kill. There’s nothing glamourous or sensational about those photos.

Nature at work!

WHAT?

Man, I had a nasty case of insomnia last night. I wasn’t really sure what caused it. I was well hydrated and stayed away from any caffeine all day. Maybe it was because I ate some spare ribs before I went to bed. It was like four pieces. Next time I won’t soak them in coffee.

Anyways, it made for a hell of a morning. I thought work was going to be bad but it turned out alright. I was fairly productive and I only felt tired at lunch which was the best time to feel the fatigue. On the way home, I didn’t even nap on the bus.

I am feeling wicked tired now though. I’m going to bed fairly soon. My mind is running all over the place. I thought of half a dozen different topics to write about tonight. There’s my next selection for my book of the month club. I was also going to write about one of my favourite South Park characters. I briefly thought I’d write about my experiences with spending and saving money as well.

I’m not coherent enough to write about any of those topics, instead here’s Neil Patrick Harris’ funniest scene from Harold and Kumar (contains language that would make your Mom blush, but that’s why it’s so funny).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0MvZyMTBnQ]