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.
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!
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.
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.
