blog.erwintang.com

Blogger remained mysteriously broken for over a half a day which explains my absence here. I hope everything will remain stable for the time being. I’ll be back on the weekend.

In recent days, I’ve been sent several items relating to Electronic Arts and the work environment they subject their employees to. The links I’ve received range from a blog from a former employee, a blog from an EA spouse, to new articles about an impending class action lawsuit.

When I read these items, there were only a few surprises for me to discover. Sadly, huge amounts of overtime are the norm in the videogame industry. Though, from what I read, some projects exceed what I saw when I worked for EA.

I guess some of you are wondering would I go back to EA and work for them? The answer for now is yes. It was definitely yes when I started grad school and I’ll tell you why. I started working at EA in 2000, some three years after finishing my undergrad degree. By then I was looking for a new direction career-wise. In a social sense, I had no life. I was three years removed from the university environment. In that time, I had been living with my parents to help pay off my debts faster. Being away from school and about an hour’s drive from what friends remained, my social circle slowly shrank to almost nothing.

So then, EA came along. I loved video games, so this was a dream come true. When the projects required overtime, I didn’t hesitate a minute to go along with it. Why? First, I really wanted to impress the higher-ups with my dedication. Second, what else would I do? By that time, I usually spent most evenings eating dinner with my parents. I’d spent the rest of the night either watching TV or playing video games. I knew no one my age that lived anywhere closer to me than an hour. If my parents had a basement, I probably would have been living in it.

The alternative of course, was to spend time at EA building, surrounded by people my age, testing a video game, eating food that my parents didn’t cook, and getting paid overtime for it. Why the hell wouldn’t I do that? I’ll be honest, I loved working overtime. I had nothing to keep me at home, no girlfriend, no kids, barely any friends, no social committments whatsoever.

So, when I decided to go back to school, in the hopes of returning to EA (for a better job), I was still ok with working crazy hours.

Two years later, things are a little different now. I have a bigger social support network now. I can call many, many more people my friends now. I have an interest in maintaining these friendships. I can see why some of the other guys wanted to take a night off.

Like I wrote earlier though, I still want to go back to EA. I still think I’d enjoy working there. I still think I could make a good software engineer. I’ll admit some of the new stuff I’ve read is unnerving. Apparently, some teams were working seven days a week for five straight months. This was unheard of when I worked at EAC (EA Canada). Mind you, work loads vary from project to project and from studio to studio. So while nothing at EAC might be that crazy, some poor team over at EALA is having a nightmare. Sometimes it even boils down to what manager is running the project.

I recognize some things might have changed while I was gone. For example, when I was working at EAC, we were paid according to BC labour laws down to the minute. One day though, around provincial election time, there was an event in the EAC lobby. Then Liberal candidate Gordon Campbell was giving a speech to anyone who would listen. Clearly, this was a sign that the senior management at EAC was supporting Campbell’s pro-business platform. Of course, the Liberals won the election. The Liberals then changed the labour laws. Among other things “high-tech” workers are exempted from is being paid overtime. Now, why do you think the management at EAC was so behind the Liberals? It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out.

So there are some definite drawbacks at returning to EA. Overall though, I still want to take another shot at it. Even now, I’d consider myself very lucky to get a job there. Let’s say I do get a job there again and I don’t like it. There are always other opportunities out there. For now though, I’m still chasing after a dream.

Yeah, everybody’s linking to this, but I found it pretty entertaining too. I think they should make more music videos out of Flash animations. This one has some great artwork. The tune is kinda catchy too. Don’t let the name fool ya, it’s as clean as anything you’d see on YTV.

Everyone Else Has Had More Sex Than Me – Tism

I have a Telus e-mail address thatI never use. I received it as a consequence of signing up my parents for ADSL at their place. Telus e-mail addresses can undergo a lot of turnover. You can change your e-mail address to almost anything you want just as long as no other Telus customer has it.

I gather I wasn’t the first person to have my Telus address. Everyone once in a while I get e-mails that obviously aren’t for me. Once, I got the medical test results for a newborn baby’s vision from a hospital. No joke. I’ve also received preliminary plans and budgets for real estate agreements. Just a few weeks ago, I got an e-mail from mom, not my mom of course, but somebody’s.

Last week, I got another one of these unintended e-mails. Here it is:

“Hi Erwin,

Thanks for the copy of the ‘Believers Declaration’. I still can’t understand why you wouldn’t read it to me again on Saturday…..



Coffee on Friday afternoon sounds great. I’ll be home after 12:30 if you want to call and we’ll where and when we’ll go.



I have a huge exam tonite. I don’t think I studied enough for it and I’m a little nervous. Or should I say a whole lot nervous, I was wide awake at 2:30 in the morning. I’ll have to turn up the music even louder on the way home tonite so I don’t fall asleep behind the wheel.



Talk to you soon,



Belinda”

Should I reply to this Belinda person and tell her she’s got the wrong person? Usually, I let these things slide, except if it’s important, like the mom e-mails and the medical reports. I think I’ll let this one go unanswered. I hope she did well on her exam.

One of the benefits of running this little dog and pony show is that anyone can go on Google find my site. Over the years, I’ve had numerous former classmates find me and some even send a little message. I wonder about the people who don’t send me anything, but continue to read the site.

Anyways, just a few days ago, a former high school classmate stumbled upon my site while looking for lesbian porn researching schools. She sent me an e-mail updating me on her life. While it was short, it was a nice little note. The last sentence read as follows:

“Good luck with your life (from your intro it seems as though you need it)”

I’m pretty sure it was said in jest. Even if it wasn’t, those things in my intro aren’t even true anymore. About the girlfriend… oh wait… ok… well then there’s the car… no… yeah… well, that part about having a poor paying job ain’t true… I don’t even have a job anymore…

In a dazed stupor today, I began to let my mind wander. I daydreamed about James Bond villains for some reason. I thought, “What if we combined the evil Blofeld with the menacing Oddjob?”

Yep, we’d get the supervillain named… Oddfeld. Oh how I pray for sleep.

If you type in “virtual bartender commands” in Yahoo search, my blog entry comes up as the fourth result on the list. And I don’t even have the full list of commands.

I have no idea why, but tonight I’d like to remind everyone that the movie The Goonies holds a special place in my heart. The DVD of the movie is also quite excellent. And, someday, I’d like to go down to Oregon to see where they filmed it.

Surprisingly, since I started this blog, I’ve typed the word “porn” only seventeen times in my posts.

When it comes to the effectiveness of cleaning products, I trust the opinions of homemakers and parents with young children. If they say something is good for cleaning, you can bet it does the job. So, when a young mother, wife, and homemaker found the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, she just had to write a positive review about it on her web site (for all her friends to see). Take note of the very first type of stain she says it’s good at removing.

I’d say the Magic Eraser is a must in any household!