I'm going to have to be discreet and tread carefully with this post. The subject of this entry is slightly weird in that the press hasn't been told about it, yet its common knowledge locally in the industry that I'm employed in. Notice how I didn't actually write out the specific industry I work in. The reaches of Google know no bounds, even here in the Outer Rim. If you're even remotely familiar with this blog, you'll know what I do for a living.

So the news is that earlier this month, the previous company I worked for told all its current employees that the company was shutting down and everyone would be out of a job. Most people were let go almost immediately. Some were retained to finish off a project that was nearly completed. Once that was finished, those people would be let go right away.

The odd thing is, the parent organization of my former company has chosen, so far, to not publicize this matter. I guess I can understand but keep in my mind, my current employer had to close down a similar entity last year and we were very forthcoming with the news. I suppose they only want to announce good news. Like I mentioned before though, the entire local industry knows about this shuttering. It didn't take long for other companies start sending out feelers for some out of work people.

Now I don't want to sound like an asshole but when I heard the news, I wasn't all that surprised. While I will always give them sincere gratitude for letting me get a foot in the door in the industry, it's telling that I worked there barely a year before leaving for some exceptional adventures. To put it bluntly (others would agree with me), there were some serious problems with the company. It was poorly organized and the upper management made some curious decisions that sent the company astray.

I find it horrifying that I even considered staying with them when I received my first offer from my current employer. I was told that I'd work on more interesting projects if I stayed, rather than some "yearly iterations" with this "other company". If you look at the projects now, side by side for both companies, they were essentially asking me to stay to make Pauly Shore movies while The Dark Knight crew wanted me onboard (to use one of the worst analogies I have written in recent memory).

Again, not to sound like a dick, losing their jobs might have been the best thing to happen to a few of my former co-workers. Some of them are really talented people who were just stagnating at their old jobs. Now, they'll be forced to find new jobs where they will really have a chance to shine.

So, I hope I haven't been too specific with the details but if you know even a little about me, everything about this post will have made sense.

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Because EA is super paranoid about security, I have to carry my ID badge where ever I go. If you work in an office building you probably have to do the same thing. Without my badge, I can't take the elevator to my floor nor can I open the doors. Without the badge, I am useless. It's also the place where I slip in my transit pass. On a daily basis, along with my wallet, it is an indispensable item.

There are several ways to ensure one keeps their badge with them at all times. One is to keep it in your wallet. This means all your important stuff is isolated in one spot. Unfortunately, sometimes your wallet is too thick for the card reader to read your access card inside of it. Second is to use a lanyard and put it around your neck. While this certainly works, I dislike having this thing swinging around your neck all day. Also, having to lean into card readers is annoying. A third option is to use a badge reel and that's what I do. You can clip a badge reel into one of your belt loops. The badge then just dangles from your waist in retracted form. It's much less noticeable this way. When you need to put it onto a card reader, you just pull the badge and it will unwind from the reel. When you're done, you just let it retract automatically back into place.

The single greatest weakness about a badge reel is the filament that connects the badge clip to the reel. In the picture above, you can clearly see how thin it is. For cheap badge reels, the filament is generally made out of thin, synthetic thread. Since you're constantly unwinding and retracting the reel, the filament gets pulled on constantly everyday. It doesn't help that sometimes I unwind the reel and then whip my badge around in a circle. The badge always becomes useless because the filament breaks. I've never had one last more than three months, if that. In just under two years of working at EA, I've had at least seven badge reels break on me.

I usually buy my reels at the EA store but I think it's time for the heavy-duty stuff. Apparently, they make badge reels with a steel wire filament. I wonder where I can buy these locally.

So there you have it, an entire post on a plastic card holder.

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In a previous post, I lamented the loss of five years of blog comments, dutifully and beautifully written by you, my faithful readers. While I understand the loss, I was going over some of my archived posts and for a new reader, it seems like I have quite the sad little blog. To someone new, it looks like I went five years of blog writing before someone wrote the very first comment on this post. Though it would be weird to think I had no readers and then suddenly developed a small but devoted group, as if I added water to a packet of Insta-Audience(tm).

It's hard to believe no one commented on classic posts such as "The Udon Experiment" and "Cover Me".

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I have over three decades of experience in being outside. Oh sure, I may not have done a lot of extreme sports/activities in those three decades but it was still outside. The outside which I have shared with birds, among other animals. The birds which have been known to poop no matter where they are or what they are doing (as in flying).

So this evening I was on my way back from getting some Somali take out and headed back to work. Given that I had a five-day weekend last week from the power outage, I wanted to catch up on some work. I was crossing Cordova towards Waterfront station when I was half way through the crosswalk. I then heard a light smack on the pavement to the left and slightly ahead of me. It could not have been more than three feet from myself. I looked over to where the noise was and saw a big splat of white, like someone had dropped a bottle of correction fluid on the ground. I immediately knew it was bird poop because I've had numerous close calls throughout my life. I've seen birds fly right above me, only to drop their poopy loads not a foot from where I stood. Each and every single time, I've dodged their bombardments.

Seeing the splat next to me, I was relieved that I survived another close call. Not a second later, I realized I was not so fortunate this time around. I was hit on my left hand, specifically it was confined to the ring finger. It wasn't too bad, it must have been trailing bit of his birdy dump. Size wise it couldn't have been more in volume than three or four drops from an eyedropper. Area wise, it didn't cover more than the nail on my pinky perhaps. I looked at it on my finger. It was mostly clear fluid mixed in with some milky white crap.

I was half a block away from the studio which meant it was the closest place to go wash this thing off. I resisted the temptation to fling my finger wildly and wipe it on the nearest tourist around me. I made a concerted effort to not let the large drop of poop on my finger get on any of my other fingers nor my shorts. Luckily, I was holding my dinner in the other hand.

I somehow navigated my way up to the 12th floor just using a single hand. I arrived at the kitchen area, put down my food, and calmly proceeded to the sink. At the sink, I turned on the water with my good hand. Gingerly putting my poop finger into the stream, I washed off the poop as best as I could. I then pumped out a baseball sized ball of foamy hand sanitizer and rubbed it into the as beforementioned poop fingers. I must have ran the finger under water for a good minute before I noticed the bottle of dish washing liquid near the sink. Thinking there isn't a way to overdo a "poop cleansing", I proceeded to pour the dishing washing stuff all over my poop finger. I did another lather-rinse cycle. I finally dried off with some paper towels.

If I ever catch that bird (which I did not get a good look at) that pooped on me, I'm gonna hold it down and poop on one of its feet (while it was trying to get a worm back to its nest).

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In a previous post, I mentioned how I did quite a bit of eating while I was in Hawaii. I'm going to devote an entire post to the gastronomic delights I enjoyed but for now here's a little taste. The above picture details the crab wontons I had at P.F. Chang's, located not five minutes by foot from my hotel. The wonderful meal I had there only reinforces my belief that my new concept eatery would be successful.

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