Hidden Pugmarks

I can still remember my first day of work here at EA.

I walked into the lobby downstairs and had a seat near security. Rob came by and chatted with me for a while (the friend who got me the job out here) and then as we finished catching up the franchise head of NHL came along and took me up to see the work area.

I remember in great detail seeing my cubicle for the first time. My own two and a half almost walls; a name plate on one of them. It all sounds silly, I know, but coming from where I had come from and the way my life had been going it was a huge moment. Touching even.

There was no expense spared. I had my own TV, devkits, dual monitors, multiple keyboards, a shelf, some drawers and the most amazingly comfortable chair in the entire world to sit in. All quite a step up from everything previous in that regard.

It was the first step toward fulfilling, no living a dream. I had always wanted to make hockey title since I had played the immortal classic Ice Hockey. I love hockey. I always have.

So here I am now. I have lived the dream. I have shipped two of the greatest hockey games ever made. I hope that all of the friends, family and critics alike will agree that 08 is simply fantastic.

I have an unending thirst for challenges though. No matter how much I try to downplay it and pretend that I am happy just maintaining the status quo, that just isn’t the truth.

I know there is another challenge in my professional life that I have to take on at some point. I need to be part of a start up again. One that has a chance. One that works hard and goes far. I know so many amazing programmers, almost all of whom would love to work with each other again, that I am not the least bit worried about finding the programming talent. The trick is the business end, as it always has been. I need to find a company willing to give us a contract.

If that little bit could get kick started somehow, I already have a 10 year business plan. I know the life cycles I would put on the projects. I know the projects that I would do. I know what order they would be done in, how many people it would take, how they would overlap. That’s all figured out. That initial investment of money is the part that always eludes me.

I, am not a schmoozer. Although everyone agrees that if I could ever get schmoozed into a business meeting with someone who had some money that I could convince them of anything. That if they heard the passion and the thought that has gone into this whole idea that they would shower us with money.

Ultimately I want to start a company of about 20 people at first. Then over the course of the first five years it would slowly staff up to about 120 people. Three teams working three separate games. From the 5th to the 8th year we would staff up to around 150 as people shift onto our fourth and last team.

That would be the end of the growth. That would be as far as I wanted it to go. I’ve seen too many huge companies and teams that become disconnected at some level. I work in a building that has a higher population than many of the small towns I grew up in.

In no way is working here a bad thing. It is quite the opposite. This is a great place to work, surrounded by bright people and beautiful scenery. After having worked so hard to build this foundation though, I’m loathe to just coast along, tweaking things here and there, adding slight improvements to the parts of the game I work on. There is no more room, now that we have a solid base, to do radical and crazy things.

When will it all happen? That’s hard to say. It could be five or ten years before everything works out to where I could branch out and do my own thing. It could be in a year.

Maybe it will never happen. Life is a crazy thing.

This weekend was a very full weekend.

I took Friday off to make it a three day weekend. I need to use up that comp(ensation) time some where. I’m hoping to take a week off at the end of the month, as well as a few days here and there.

So Friday consisted of doing very, very little. I have to admit that this was very, very nice. It was good to unwind. I played some video games and re-watched 300. You simply can’t go wrong with that movie (at least I can’t). After Holly got home we turned around and headed out to one of her best friend’s birthday parties.

It was interesting to hang out with some people who are bigger geeks than I am. It was nice to talk about Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2, Army of Darkness and a few other campy movies. It was nice to talk about comic books and video games. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it was nice to “geek out”.

We didn’t get home until pretty late, and I hadn’t been feeling very well all night, so I didn’t make it to bed until around 2:30am.

The next day I slept in until about 11:30am. That was a rare treat. My body wasn’t going to let me do anything else though. I apparently slept through the alarm. After that sluggish start to the day we headed out refrigerator hunting.

This was our second recon mission for a refrigerator. Previously we had taken a look at Sears to see what they had. We found a few that were interesting, but we didn’t make any final decisions that day. For the second mission we decided to scout out a place called Trail Appliances. I have to say that this place was a breath of fresh air. At Sears we got a salesman who didn’t know anything about what he was selling. At Trail, we got someone who know the ins and the outs and what would be good for us.

Since we were also in the market for a new washer and dryer, Holly asked if they could get us a good deal if we were to buy all three appliances. I had been very keen on getting the top of the line LG washer/dryer combo (when do I not want the top of the line?). When talking about the benefits of the steaming capabilities of the washer Holly interjected that we do almost all of our laundry in cold water.

The salesman then talked us down to the entry level LG models. So we got all of the core features that we were looking for, without the costly bells and whistles. He probably saved us a thousand dollars. This guy had a lot of good things going for him at that point. When it finally came time to get down to the nitty-gritty details he told us that he wouldn’t recommend the extended warranties (which are way overrated according to Consumer Reports research).

At this point, he had pretty much hit a home run in my eyes. A salesman who is honest is hard to find. A salesman looking to save you money is even harder to find. So hopefully in the next couple of weeks we will be getting our appliances delivered (the washer and dryer were on backorder).

In the evening we headed over to Holly’s parents’ so that I could meet another of her Aunt and Uncle pairs. Overall I have to say that the evening was a success. I talked more than normal. I made a good effort. I didn’t even need to drink to loosen up. It turned out that this was not the Aunt and Uncle that I had thought I would be meeting, but they seemed nice enough.

On Sunday we went to do some grocery and week to week upkeep shopping. It involved stops at Costco, Save-On Foods, The Real Canadian Superstore, Grocery Store B, Canadian Tire, A&W (yummy Chubby Chicken burgers) and the Butcher.

Three hours later we got home. We watched the end of the second season of Battlestar Galactica. Then we started to do some around the house things, and that’s when it all started to go downhill. All day we had both been feeling a little bit woozy. I think it was a culmination of a dehydration, lack of food and lack of sleep all coming together at once.

I disappeared into the the laundry room to put away the new soap that we had bought. When I placed it on the shelf, the shelf ripped out of the wall and fell on me, along with everything else that was on and in the shelf. The drill beaned me in the face and knocked my glasses to the side. Holly came rushing into see if I was okay, which I was and still am. She helped to get the shelf and miscellaneous off me. Then when she went to the fridge and opened the door, part of the inside of the door fell off (can’t wait for that new refrigerator to arrive).

At that point we decided to throw in the towel for the day rather than continue breaking things, including ourselves. We ordered in some pizza instead of cooking the nice juicy steaks because we felt that neither of us, based on how the day was going, should be anywhere near propane and fire.

Now, for a nice relaxing week at work to recover from the weekend.