I rarely post twice in one night but I'm gonna make an exception in this case. Today was the finals for the Mega Ramp competition at the 13th X Games. Since our game is going to feature the Mega Ramp, a lot of us were watching the competition live via web cast.
Australian Jake Brown pulled off an amazing 720 spin and was just one landing away from taking the gold when he lost control of his board. It is estimated he fell from 45 to 50 feet in the air, straight onto the ramp surface. There were exclaimations of disbelief from all around the studio. I thought he was probably seriously injured at the very least.
The video above shows the incident. The objects you see flying off his body at the end are his shoes. Think about that for a moment. He hit the ground so hard, the force tore his shoes off his feet. Incredibly, the X Games staff deemed it unnecessary to stabilize his neck or back and allowed him to walk off to the sidelines. Brown was sent to the hospital to get checked out but there is no word on his condition.
On a planet of over six billion people, very few things are genuinely unique among humans, save perhaps DNA. Even then, for identical twins, you can't count on that. Names are hardly unique, take for example my name. There's the dude in Malaysia. Also, the dentist in Texas who's is one hell of a father, and a pillar in the community. Just between you and me, I think he's pretty disappointed a boob like me owns this domain.
Anyways, you might have your own name dopplegangers. I know my sister has them. There's the Tracy Tang who's the book publisher in New York. The Tracy Tang in Florida who appears to be a Caucasian health care adminstrator. Last, but certainly not least, there's the Tracy Tang who lives right here in Vancouver. Thanks to Google, we've been able to find all these Tracys. My sister and I have been wondering about the last Tracy though... right here in our fair city.
We knew that Tracy had a web site. We knew she liked to take photographs. That was all we knew. So as the months dragged onto years, that's all we knew... until recently.
A friend of mine, let's call her LaFawnduh, called me a few weeks ago. LaFawnduh told me that she met someone that knew both myself and my sister. Now, the number of people in the world that know both my sister, myself, and LaFawnduh is very, very small. So small, in fact, I did not know who LaFawnduh was talking about.
It turns out that LaFawnduh's boyfriend, let's call him, Kip, is friends with alternate Tracy Tang. One evening Kip had Tracy and her boyfriend come over to meet LaFawnduh. At the end of the evening, LaFawnduh found out Tracy's last name and pointed out she knew another Tracy Tang. That's when Tracy was surprised.
"You mean the Tracy Tang? Sister of Erwin Tang? erwintang.com?"
LaFawnduh was quite surprised. It turns out that alternate Tracy Tang had been keeping tabs on us as well. When I first snagged my sister's domain for her, I briefly had it redirecting to my site for a while. It was there that alternate Tracy was made aware of my existence and how it interweaved with my sister's existence. Alternate Tracy was even kind enough to read my blog a few times before she probably got bored and started to surf for porn. If you're smart, you'll be able to figure out the fake part of that last sentence.
Tracy is kinda envious of my sister's domain. I can understand that. I watched tracytang.com for about three years waiting for it to go back into public domain so I could get it for my sister. If that's not brotherly love, I don't know what is. While the domain does not currently have a site, my sister does in fact have tt.com e-mail which she quite enjoys, so she's not going to give that up anytime soon.
I was gonna post something interesting tonight but I ran out of time. Who knew knitting the collar on my new sweater would take that long? Anyways, instead please enjoy this short clip of a monkey washing a cat.
I am indeed under the spell of some sorta common cold. My throat hurts the most but I don't have a runny or stuffy nose. Nor does my head hurt. I have developed a really tiny cough though. Funny thing about the cough... If you've been with this blog for a while, you'll know I developed a very nasty cough about two years ago in my last semester as a grad student. The cough lasted approximately two and half months.
My coughing was so bad, I thought it was whooping cough since it would rack my body so much. Anyways, it took a long, long time to get over it. To this day, I still don't know what it was. Scary. Even my cough today feels a bit like the old one. It's a part of me now. Sorta like when Frodo returned to the Shire after his arduous journey to rid Middle Earth of the Ring. His injuries never fully healed and were a constant reminder of the trials he had to endure.
Where else can you read a blog about coughs and Lord of the Rings?
Last evening, a coworker and I were on the patio on a break, enjoying the view of North Vancouver. One of the security dudes joined us before his shift started. As he lit up a smoke, he told us a few days ago, they found one of Need For Speed guys sleeping in the 19th floor lounge. They told him he wasn't supposed to be working that hard and sent him home for a full day of rest.
It's true, no one should be working that hard. Granted, if the game has to go out the door on Monday and you find a crash bug on Sunday night, that might call for last second heroics. Keep in mind though, that happens maybe once or twice a project. NFS isn't even supposed to be shipping soon, so was there really a need to sleeping at the studio? Maybe there were some details I wasn't privy too.
Even though I put in crazy hours, I always go home at night to my own bed. I never think about staying the whole night to work nor do I think it's even a remotely good idea to sleep on a couch somewhere. Plus, where exactly would I sleep actually? The one couch that I can think of is right in front of the security desk. Look at the pictures of the studio, there's nothing that even resembles a bed!
It never ceases to be interesting working for a large video game company that is located in downtown Vancouver. We're almost done skate, we've got good press, the rest of the company is behind us (and that starts from the CEO all the way down), and we've already got a lot gamers onboard. As such, we're putting in the final bits of OT and that includes working pretty late on weekends.
Tonight was the first fireworks night on the weekend and downtown was jam-packed. Two designers and I went for a slice of pizza just before 10pm and it wasn't too bad. It was a different story after 10:30pm. From about 11pm onto about 1am, there was a line-up for the Skytrain at Waterfront Station that extended probably at least a long city block. That was just to get inside the station.
At 1am, three of us realized we'd probably would need to start calling for cabs now if we wanted to get home anytime soon. Jordan got a jump on us and snagged a cab first. That left Arnel and I to wait in the lobby. Arnel's cab came next and he got in right quick. About 10 seconds behind his cab was another one, which I thought was mine. This guy was just about to pull in front of the building when for some reason, he pulled a quick turn and went to the corner across from me to let this other couple in. I got annoyed and I ran out to the cab against a red light. By the time I got there, the lady had already gotten in. I yelled at the driver.
"Wait, what are you doing? This is a corporate account. I called you guys twenty minutes ago. Why did you pick up a flag fare?"
The driver just shrugged and pointed at the couple who were now firmly entrenched in his cab. He drove off, leaving me to think he was probably an idiot that preferred Deer Hunter games anyways.
I crossed the street back to the lobby and sat on one of the armchairs in the waiting area. I was going to have to call for another cab but it had already taken me 20 minutes of being on hold to get the first one. It was then I noticed a group of about four or five young people who had sat down on the steps outside the building. They were probably in their late teens. They sat quitely, chatting amongst themselves. They also didn't appear to be drunk, which was really suprisingly or perhaps I'm just old and cranky now.
Anyways, it took me another good 10-15 minutes to get through to the cab company. When I did, I didn't mince my words.
"Your driver picked up a flag fare right at my corner. He left me here."
"He didn't pick you up? Geez... he is going to suspended. Ok, I'm sending you another cab."
The dude then asked me for my name but he didn't ask me where I was going. I looked up and the group of young people were still sitting on the steps. At the intersection, a cab with its light on was slowly rolling up. It wasn't the company I was looking for, so I didn't care. The group on the steps saw the cab and started waving to it. They got up to go to the corner. Unfortunately for them, the cab didn't stop but they remained on the corner. Crap, they were waiting for a cab... right on the corner where my cab was coming. I was hoping this wasn't going to be a problem.
Five minutes went by before I saw the Vancouver Taxi stop at the light. He was in the left hand turn lane, so I knew he was going to drive by the building. The teenagers started waving at him. I exited the building and tried to make eye contact with the driver. The teenagers all had their backs to me so they didn't see me behind them.
The light turned and the driver made his turn, slowly pulling up to the curb. I began to walk to the curb, about 15 feet down from where the teenagers were. The kids really thought he was going to stop for them. He glided slowly by them and I got to the curb at exactly the right moment.
"You Erwin?"
"Yes, I am."
I got in and leaned out the window.
"I'm really sorry. I'm just trying to get home from work."
I must have sounded like the most insincere sumbitch but it was the honest truth. I mentioned to the driver that I had just finished a 14 hour day. Ok, so it was more like 13 hours but who's counting?
He pulled a u-turn and as we passed the kids, he yelled out at them.
"He just finished a fourteen hour day!"
He laughed and one of the kids said something back that I didn't hear but it didn't sound mean or angry. I felt really bad. They did seem like some decent folk who were just trying to get home after fireworks. The fact they didn't seem drunk made it worse for some reason. I couldn't care less about some drunken morons trying to get home from the bar but these people weren't like that.
He already knew I was going to Port Moody, which was weird since I didn't tell the operator guy where I was going. Did they have my info on file now?
Anyways, my cabbie turned out to be an interesting guy. He's been both cocaine and heroined addicted. He also freely admitted to having procured prostitutes in the past. He also told me about the women he sometimes meets on the job. You have to take everything you hear with a grain of salt, but I kinda believed him. We even talked about the video game industry for a bit. Suprisingly, he even knew the biggest flaw that most junior designers have when they first start out... and if you mail me $19.95, I'll tell you what that is.
The dude was so interesting that at the end of the ride, I tipped him an extra $5 outta my own pocket.
I can't wait to battle it out for a cab next weekend.
