UPDATED: Added movie clip after Phil was declared the winner.
"There is something I want to get off my chest. It's about that summer, when you went away to community college. I got an offer to do Playgirl Magazine, and I did it. I did a full spread for Playgirl Magazine. I mean spread man, I pulled my butt apart and stuff. I was totally nude. it was weird, I... I mean you probably didn't hear about it because I went under the name of Mike Honcho. But I just wanted you to know that. If you can hear me, if it got into your brain somehow. That I spread my buttcheeks as Mike Honcho."
Today, EA released the first bit of gameplay footage from skate, the game I'm working on. EA held a press event in San Francisco this week, where media people from both gaming web sites and skateboard mags got to play an early build of the game.
Several preview articles have already been posted, with more coming for sure Friday morning. The reaction has been fairly positive from the media. The peanut gallery, though, has already voiced a few opinions on message boards. I will make no comment on their comments.
A list of previews:
GameSpot (includes video from the press event with interviews with my co-workers and a reference to features I worked on!)
"The demo build we played had a few events to compete in, such as video challenges, where you have to pull off a number of tricks within a certain amount of time while your tricks are being 'recorded' on video (after all, if a skate trick happens but nobody is there to record it, did it really happen?). There are also photo challenges where you'll be able to take pictures of your skater in action. Speaking of recording, the game will also include a pretty cool replay feature, which will let you rewind the action and focus in on your best tricks. This is complete with a number of different camera angles and even a currently unspecified method of 'sharing' your replay footage with your friends (presumably via the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3's online capabilities)."
As a student of the fine art of comedy, I believe there are just a few sure-fire bits out there. In my book, we have "football in the groin", "little kids smashing into bushes on bikes", and "groom passes out at his wedding". Actually, I'm not sure if those are sure-fire bits or just my favourite America's Funniest Home Videos pieces.
Well, it's time to promote another bit into those lofty heights. Please welcome "middle-aged guy sings Don't Cha from The Pussycat Dolls". We've seen this with Big Red's interpretation on YouTube. Damn, TV's Uncle Jerry sure does kick some ass. Now, here comes Kyle Gass with his version. Gass is of course, one half of the dynamic duo known as Tenacious D, partnering with Jack Black. Unfortunately, Gass' performance is embedded within a blooper clip from the new movie Wild Hogs. It really picks up near the middle but wait for his fantastic finish, you got it goin' on!
I've decided on a new route to work now. My old commute consists of one bus, which basically takes me from door to door. Travel time is usually 45 - 55 minutes. My new route consists of one bus, Skytrain along the Millenium Line, and then Skytrain along the Expo Line. Travel time is anywhere between a swift 40 minutes to no more than 50 minutes. Is it more of a hassle along the new route? Yes, I gotta get off the bus, onto a train, off the train, and then back onto my last train.
The positive is there's a lot more room on a Skytrain car than my old bus. When it's crowded I'm sealed in that bus for almost an hour. Combine that with the stupid bus heaters and possibly wet umbrellas and clothes, it's unbearable at times.
I just enjoy the commute a lot more when I'm taking Skytrain. I almost always get a window seat, I'm above the roads, I can see for kilometres in every direction, and interesting people get in and out of the cars. When I say interesting, I don't mean smelly old people.
On the way back home, I'll still take my old route because it's a lot less crowded in the evenings and I like sleeping on the darkened bus. Without having to change buses, I can usually get a 20 to 30 minute nap in there.
Does March 24 have any significance to you? Of course not. Anyways, it was the day erwintang.com came into being. This year marks the seventh anniversary of this web site.
It's also the last day I can renew my domain before really bad things start happening. For example, some Russian hacker group can buy my expired domain and then start re-directing my vistors to porn sites.
Why I only renew my domain a year at a time is a mystery to me. Maybe I like the excitement. Who knows. Well, if I wanted excitement, this year I got it. My domain is registered with a Mickey Mouse operation. GoDaddy it ain't. Anyways, my registrar went through some sorta name change and their web site is a mess. The kicker is that they changed over to a new billing system, which includes the functionality to renew domains. They've sent out e-mails to their customers for them to request the new billing log in info. Guess who's tried to send that request out to the four times now? Yep, yours truly.
I've gotten no response from them. The next step is now to call them. Of course, being a shoddy operation, they have no toll-free line. I gotta call them long-distance. I won't do that though. I'm going to call them collect. Who wants to bet they won't agree to the call?
So what are my options? I can transfer my domain to GoDaddy and get all my services consolidated under one roof, domain and hosting. I could do that now... except the control panel that allows me to do that is broken because my registrar has responsibility for that.
I also could let my domain expire and then re-register my domain, using a more reliable registrar, on my behalf. It should probably slip back into the pool of available without too much fanfare since it's not exactly largeboobies.com. I am, however, writing about this now, so there's a small chance one of you jokers out there could beat me to the punch.
There's less than a month until D-Day! Johnson! Move us to Defcon 4!
Tomorrow, I'm signing up for the company group RRSP plan. The deal is if I contribute 6% of my gross yearly income, EA will match that amount in a profit sharing program. Well, they'll kinda match it. If the company is doing poorly, they'll match a percentage of that amount. In any case, people tell me it's a no-brainer. Everyone should be putting away money for retirement anyways and in this case, the company is giving me free money.
Since I'm just signing up now, it's a pretty hefty cheque I'm writing to London Life. Hefty in the sense that I usually write cheques for about $100.
I'm sorta late to the RRSP game. I made small contributions before grad school but man, I wish I was like other people. I know some who have put several thousand into RRSPs every year since they were in their early 20s. Now in their early 30s, they're in great shape and can easily see the power of compounding.
I guess it was hard for me to contribute since I only worked full-time three years out of the ten when I was in my 20s. Wow! What a stat. That's just horrible. I feel shame.
