Well, I am tentatively on holiday until January. My work on skate 2 is essentially done. Since we're supposed to be in stores in the third week of January, some of you can probably guess we're either in internal EA or 1st party (Sony and Microsoft) certification. There's a chance we'll get kicked out of cert by Sony and/or Microsoft. That would be bad and even more bad if it was because of something I wrote. In that case, I'd have interrupt my holiday to come in and write a fix. Barring that situation, I am free until 2009!

There are dozens of things I'd like to turn my attention to. I have a stack of games, movies, and TV shows I'd like to get caught up on. Most of my clothes are dirty. The items of clothing that aren't dirty have been worn so much, the treads on them are nearly bare. I went from playing tennis once (or more) a week to having my exercise being running up the Skytrain stairs. I'm not even sure how many friends I have left in the city. I used to do regular lunches and dinners with people I quite liked. How many of you have seen me in person in the last few months?

Despite all those worthy tasks, the most logical and sensible thing for me to do is to actually just sleep. I'm exhausted and not the exhausted that just goes away after a good night of sleep. A few weekends ago, I had the rare luxury of sleeping in. I clocked in at ten hours of sleep but I just woke up tired. I wake up tired even when I get eight hours of sleep. I'm going to need several nights, probably a week's worth, of sustained, restful sleep to feel completely normal again. Of course since I had three Coke Zeros today, tonight might not be night one of those nights of sleep.

In any case, life returns back to normal. What the hell do you people do with all this time on your hands?

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My Internet connection crapped out about half an hour ago. I'm currently typing this on my Dell Mini 9 using an unsecured wireless connection that one of my neighbours has conveniently left open. Because you should never trust an unknown wireless access point, I'm taking care not to visit sites that are require me to enter my personal info but are also not encrypted. Luckily, Blogger is one of those sites that encrypts my login info before sending it out. Oddly enough. Facebook isn't encrypted so that means no Facebooking for me while on this connection.

Of course, it's ok to surf other general purpose sites, other than the fact someone might know I'm visiting Digg, TSN, CNN, bigguns.com and Apple trailers. I sure hope my Internet comes back soon, I hate typing on this small keyboard.

Oh, totally off-topic but I picked up Wanted on Blu-ray on Tuesday. Yeah, I know someone of you may not have enjoyed it but there something to be said about seeing Angelina Jolie in high-def.

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Rightly so, there's barely anyone here at the studio right now. I'm supposed to provide SE coverage until 10pm tonight but I wonder if anyone will miss me if I leave early.

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I've heard of dozens of little personal records that people keep. How long a person has gone without smoking. How long someone has gone without throwing up (this is a personal favourite of mine). How many cheeseburgers someone has eaten in an hour.

I had a little record going that I was quite proud of. How many years of using public transit without losing an umbrella. Over the last decade, I've used public transit a lot. From buses to Skytrain to commuter rail, I've been on them all. Living in Vancouver, you can bet I've gone from A to B while it was raining with umbrella in hand. In over ten years of transiting, I don't think I've lost a single umbrella... until last week.

I'm not sure what happened. I was on the Skytrain and had put my umbrella underneath me near my feet, like I always do. When it was my stop, I just got and left. It wasn't until I was on the next train on the other line that I realized I didn't bother to pick up my umbrella. I also realized at that time, I hadn't lost a brolly in many, many years. Now replacing that umbrella won't be that hard but going another decade without losing one, that'll be tougher.

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I have decided I am going to sell my Nintendo Wii. The decision came to me while I was in the shower, as most decisions in my life are made. I realized that it's been a year since I actually sat down, turned on the Wii, and actually played a game (it was Medal of Honor: Heroes 2 by the way, good job EAC!). I unplugged it about six months ago, so its been unable to tell me what updates are available and I really didn't care. I didn't even send away for the free Wiimote protectors.

For a gaming enthusiast like myself, it was quite telling that I hadn't found any excuse to play Wii games in a year, yet I found time to play both PC and Xbox 360 games. I also realized that I'm just not a real Nintendo gamer. I know now that games like Left 4 Dead will never come out for a system like the Wii. Speaking of L4D, holy crap let me tell you about a campaign a buddy and I were playing this evening. We were doing "Blood Harvest" and we were along the train tracks with the wrecked rail cars. We were standing on top of one of the cars when a Tank appeared. He went up to get us, so I jumped off one side and my buddy jumped off the other. Unfortunately, that meant we were on the opposite sides of the line of cars and no way for us to easily meet up again. The Tank went after him, so he just ran like the wind, all the while I'm looking for gaps in the cars to get back on the other side. Of course, a horde of zombies came outta nowhere on my side and here I am all alone. I woulda got my ass kicked except for the fact I had one pipe bomb left and the horde ran after that. After I dealt with that, I looked back to see where my friend, Zoey, Francis, and the Tank went. They were almost a speck in the distance, they had run so far back, they actually were back at the initial safe house point. I'd never been so far separated before from my team. In all that craziness, they had managed to kill the Tank.

Wait, what was I writing about? Oh yeah, my dust covered Wii. I think I'm going to ask for $200 for the whole package, which includes the console, two Wiimotes, two Nunchuks, an extra S-video cable, and a few games. I think that's a reasonable price. Is anyone interested?

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