I admit the title to this post is sensationalist. Technically, at no time today did any part of Black Box Studios actually catch on fire. There was, however, a real bonerfide fire in the office tower that houses Black Box studios. The fire happened below us... fourteen fours to be exact... in a second level underground parking garage... where a car caught fire. Let me start from the beginning.
Around 6pm today, we heard the sirens of emergency vehicles outside. Being downtown, this is not an uncommon occurrence, so I kinda ignored it at first. The sirens got real loud though so I noticed whatever vehicles these were had to very close by. I still didn't get up from my desk to look outside though. One of the new guys did though and then my lead went to look. Pretty soon, everyone started looking.
Outside were already two fire engines and I could hear more vehicles coming. They had stopped outside the entrance to the underground parking garage which is surrounded by our tower, the Vancouver Sun building, and Waterfront Station. We couldn't really see why they were here though, so most people just went back to work. About three minutes later, our building's public address system crackled to life. A nervous voice came on to tell us that there was car on fire on P2, firefighters were on the scene, and that no one was to attempt to go down to P2.
From then on, every minute the same message was sent over the PA. This happened almost ten times. Near the end, people were sarcastically saying, "Wait, I'm still not clear which level I'm not supposed to go down to. Tell me again."
Looking out the window, I saw some pretty casual firefighters if there was indeed a burning car in the garage. A lot of them were just standing around and one guy seemed to be filling out paperwork. Then the PA system came back on. Apparently, smoke had now been detected in our tower and they needed to check out if the source was indeed the car fire or something else. All tower occupants were to leave the building and go to the assembly area.
There was some real hesitation at first because we've got some deadlines to meet this week. Slowly, people realized that they probably should go, just in case. I actually went to the little boys' room first because I didn't know how long we'd be standing outside. When I got to the elevator area, there were people waiting for the next car. I said to everyone, "We should probably take the stairs." Then an elevator arrived just as I finished my suggestion, so we naturally piled into the car.
The ride down to the lobby was uneventful but we did smell smoke even before the doors opened. It was unmistakable smell of burnt electronics, like when you apply too much juice to an op-amp. The smell was quite strong and it was then I realized it was probably good that we had left when we did.
After standing around for about five minutes in the cold, a group of about eight of us decided it'd be better to wait at the pub across the street. We actually sat out on the heated patio, which afforded us a great view of our building. While we drank and ate dinner, we watched a whole lot of nothing happen. The emergency vehicles eventually went away one by one.
By the time we paid our bill, it was just after 8pm. Crazily enough, out of our group of about eight, only one of us decided to go home. The rest of us went back up to 12 and continued to work. I left at 9pm after a productive hour of work, leaving my pub group behind. That's dedication folks.
You'd think that at a video game studio, there would be a lot of people playing video games. At least for the team that I'm on, that's really not the case. Everyone is busy with the real work of making a video game, so there's little time to play finished games. Lunch hour provides a good opportunity but most people would rather take the full hour to eat their outside the studio, run errands, or just surf the web. Another factor is that only our Sony PS3 dev kits can play retail games unlike the Xbox 360 dev kits. Only just recently have more people (beyond the software engineers) received PS3 kits. Also factor in that most people don't own a PS3 at home, so they won't own PS3 games logically. All of this combines for very little game playing at work.
There are a few small exceptions and I feel lucky to be part of that. There are a group of about five of us that play Virtua Tennis 3 on my PS3 dev kit nearly every day. It's a great game to play at work because it's easy to pick up and be relatively decent at it. Also, one set matches last between 10 to 15 minutes at most, so a complete gaming experience can be had in a traditional "coffee break".
Another group used to play Mario Kart in the fall but that's stopped now. Currently, I think we're the only people who regularly play a game during breaks. And now, knowing this, your life is complete.
Last week, I mentioned that I'd be playing Rock Band with some dudes on Saturday. The video above is proof of that. I think I'm in frame for about a second and I'm playing guitar. You can't really see John at all but he's on bass. Ron is on drums. That's Tim doing vocals.
Everyone in the video is employed as a software engineer at EA, except for Ron. Ron isn't employed at all. That's ok because he gets a lot of sleep and plays as much video games as he wants. And yes, that's an old computer case and two phone books that Ron is sitting on.
Also, last week I mentioned I'd be bowling on Friday. Bowl I did on Friday. It was a rousing bit of five-pin bowling at the Commodore Lanes. Though I only bowled for about half an hour, it left me with aches and pains for about a day afterwards. What hurt the most was the muscle that's just above your knee, I think it's called the medulla cheddar-longoria. Anyways, that thing hurt like a sumbitch every time I went down some stairs. I'm ok now but you gotta stretch before ya bowl.
In other news, my web stats indicate that the other day, some one typed "erwin tang ea" into Google. I don't know who this person was but I have no idea why they want to know about me and how I'm associated with EA. Seriously, you if ask nicely, I will just send you naked photos of myself, no need to Google them.
Last but certainly not least, did you notice the archives have been updated again? It's super easy now that I wrote an application to automate that task. With this attention to detail, you'd expect me to give out free t-shirts or something.
It's not every day you see a dead body but that's exactly what I saw on Friday night. According to reports, a limousine bus struck and killed a man at Main and East Hastings just shortly before 9pm. I was on a bus that drove through that intersection just after 10:30pm.
By then, police had taped off Main, north of E. Hastings with yellow crime scene tape. Strangely, it was all motorcycle cops on scene. The bus was still parked where it had hit the man, about half way through it's turn, right in pedestrian crosswalk area. The dead man's body was still lying where he died. He must have died instantly or very quickly because it didn't look like anyone had moved him. A good portion of his body was still under the bus. Someone had partially covered the deceased but I was able to see the lower half of his body.
The cops must have been waiting for traffic accident investigators to attend the scene because the body had been lying there close to two hours by the time I saw it. After my few seconds of observation, the bus continued on its way.
