Work time fun time

Whoa. Working at EA is way different than working at CanAssist last term. The only thing I can really say is similar is that the hours are fairly flexible, though I can't be in later than 10 or out earlier than 4. CanAssist gave me about a few hours of training and told me to get to it and figure things out myself. EA's a little bit more organized with their training (two days of orientation and I spend the next little while learning how to do my specific job). I'm sure there'll be days where I'll need to stay late or work weekends, but not yet. There's a lot more software to work with, too.

The commute's been good to me so far. I've been overestimating traffic lately so I've always been there really early for stuff, but it's still a long way down, I've got no radio yet, and gas isn't cheap (65 bucks for 7/8ths of a tank when I filled up last Tuesday). I'll be fine, though.

Oh, yeah, my family got a car. I'd say I got a car since I'll be its primary driver (and maintainer) for the first four months, but it's not actually mine. We sold the minivan a while ago since we got a new one, but we wanted something cheap and efficient to replace it. It's a '92 Jetta, it was two thousand bucks and it runs really well, despite some starter problems, which isn't too bad and should be fixed sometime soon. I like it. It's pretty fun to drive, repairs are cheap because my dad sells the parts for it, and it works really well. As I've said, there's no radio (yet), but that'll also get fixed soon.

Anyway, work. Then there's the perks. Oh, the perks. Aside from being in a really nice building, if you didn't have to work, it would be a gamer's paradise. They have a full size soccer field, streetball court, indoor basketball court, beach volleyball court, and a really nice gym, if you want to stay in shape (it is EA Sports, after all). They have tons of arcade and pinball machines on free play (no DDR or ITG as far as I've seen, though), including various fighting games I like and NFL Blitz (oh, man, I haven't played that in forever). You can buy anything EA develops for 20 bucks, and over the course of my work term, I get three free games. And then there's the IRC. Imagine a small library. Except this library not only stocks books, but also movies and games and sometimes consoles (!) as well. And you can borrow this stuff for a week. For free.

Some of it's done for research, but you can also take things out for personal use as well. You can't find very much from this generation unless it's more than a few months old, and they don't have anything really historic back there (nothing N64/PSX gen or older), but if you're looking for something on the PS2, XBox or Cube, and it was released in North America (heck, there's a few import titles as well), they have it, regardless of how hard it is to find these days. I saw so much stuff there that I've always wanted to play but I had given up on because my only hope of finding it would be resorting to EBay or something. Well, I think I've found another way out. :D

There's some other cool stuff in there as well. I don't think you can borrow it, but they do have some stuff hooked up to some TVs there, too. There's some obvious stuff, like an N64 and a SNES, but there's some stuff that I was kinda (but not really) surprised to see, like a Dreamcast, a Sega Saturn (!), a Sega CD (!!), heck, even a 3D0 (!!!).

That being said, I'm sure the work won't be easy otherwise there wouldn't be a reason to give all this stuff to us. But so far, things look pretty nifty.

Oh, and I can't tell you what I'm working on, unfortunately. NDA and all that. You'd think that if EA makes the same sports games every year I'd be working on something that I actually knew was going to come out in about a year's time (if I was working on NHL10 or NBA10 or something, I would be allowed to tell). But no, I've gotta wait for the official announcement. Oh, well.

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Alive and well

I moved back home last Saturday, which is nice considering I haven't been back for more than two weeks since last summer. Marks are starting to come back, and by the look of things, I'll be fine (A- in CSC 225, which is what I was most worried about). In the mean time, I'm just killing time until I have to start work. I think it'll be an interesting work term coming up.

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Just a few more days and I'll find my way home

I just woke up before 8am this morning for the last time this term. Yay! I wrote my CSC 225 final, and I think it went well. The exam was straightforward, I guess. No surprising questions, it's either you know it or you don't. I think it went well in the end, but we'll see. This was the one course that's been bugging me all the time, but at least it's over now.

Anyway, afterwards, I stopped by the Rogers Video near the house. See, we're planning on getting an Xbox 360 in the next few days as an end-of-term gift to myself and my brother, so I was browsing around and picking up stuff for it in advance. (Don't worry, I'm not touching it till after I'm all done... :P). Anyway, I got my manliness questioned by a Rogers employee. :P I go to buy Eternal Sonata (I've heard good things about it and the story seemed interesting), and the lady at the store took one look at the cover and asked me "You're not buying this for yourself, are you?", to which after feeling just a little embarrassed (not because of what I was buying, it's not as kiddie as it looked, just the fact that I was even being asked the question), replied yes. Sure, it felt like a slap in the face, but it was funny.

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2-second experience I never want to experience again.

Walking into a spider web that's at your face level. Really sucks.

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Current music: None right now, but I recently discovered kawaii-radio and have been listening to that a lot lately - hope I don't use up too much bandwidth doing it (funny how this is much longer than the actual post)

Exam time

And it's hitting quite hard. I've never had six exams in one term before, but thankfully some of them aren't as bad as others.

I wrote my elec final today. In all honesty, it went better than I expected, especially considering one question from our assignments that I didn't understand came back to haunt me. Thankfully, this time I was able to figure it out (thank goodness that the rest of the exam wasn't too bad), I think.

Two more this week (Wednesday and Thursday) and three next week (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday), then I can finally come home. It's been a while since I've been home for more than a few days. Should be fun.

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Camping!

I got to experience the great outdoors firsthand last weekend. For the most part, it went well. The part that didn't? Well, things worked out in the end, I guess.

Anyway, we went up to Mystic Beach, which is right on the coast, to the point where on a clear day, you can actually see the States on the other side of the water. Friday night was the 4th of July and we actually got to see some very miniature fireworks go off on the other side of the border. It was really cool.

You know what else is really cool? Air. Especially early in the morning. Here's the scoop: I don't own a sleeping bag. I asked around to see if anyone else had one and I was unsuccessful, but someone was nice enough to lend me some warm blankets. When we got to the parking lot, we got ready for the 2k hike ahead of us, and I swear I saw someone take them out of the trunk. Unfortunately, they went back in the trunk, as I found out later that evening, after hiking the hilly 2k trail. So I had to bundle up as best I could in the night inside the tent (at least I had a pillow, or else I wouldn't know what to do), but anything below the waist felt really cold. As a result, I'm currently under the weather.

Other than that little mishap, it turned out great. The beach is really pretty, I got to hang out with a bunch of cool people, and I got a bunch of exercise, too. I'll put the pictures up on Facebook when I get the chance.

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Surviving, I guess

I'm still here. I just don't post much anymore. I don't know who reads this anymore now that Facebook lets everyone else keep up to date, but I still post here occasionally.

Classes are doing fine, I guess. I'm doing well in most of them, and one could use a bit of work. I few weeks ago, I got a really bad midterm returned to me. I'd rather not reveal the mark, but I will say that I passed, and I don't like where this class is taking me mark-wise. To put it in an analogy that you may or may not understand, it's like being down 20 points on the last race of a Mario Kart GP. You can do as well as you want in the last race, but you're not going to get the first place trophy at the end. Well, I think I've all but scrapped my chances of A+ing the class, but I'll still do what I can to at least save my mark so it won't kill my GPA.

Other than that, classes are pretty good. I'm not doing horribly in anything, so that's a good thing, I guess. Last week was incredibly busy though, with assignments in everything and two midterms on top of that, but I think I got out alright. I just had my reading break (which was great, save for the last bus ride home; I'd explain, but it's easier to mention that it's Canada Day today, and the bus I was riding was eventually going downtown after I got off) and now I'm just getting ready to take on the world again. Stuff, here I come!

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Current music:

Secured!

After a few days of nervous pacing on my part, I finally got an email about a job offer from EA. Yay! This means I'll be living in Abbotsford for four months.

Now to worry about all the assignments and midterms and stuff coming up before reading break...
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Shortlist! Again! w00t!

I made it to the second interview process for EA, where I get interviewed on the technical stuff I know. No idea which of the three places I applied is the one I get hired at, but we'll see what happens with it.

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Test time!

I wrote my first of three midterms this week today. It was my math one (discrete math, fun), and for the most part, it went well. A few definitions I might have screwed up on, but whatever. The last question was great. It was a combinatorial proof (basically, they give you an expression, say, the cumulative sum of k=0 to n of nCk = 2^n, and you have to prove it by saying that both the left and right sides count the same thing), and the expression in the parentheses was our bonus question. Normally we have to give the boring old definition that it's just a way to count subsets, but determined not to get bored in class and wanting to let some creative energy out, I thought I'd have some fun. Basically, I wrote about the number of ways you can throw pies at n clowns where each clown can only be hit by one pie maximum. It worked out in the end, let's hope the marker finds it as funny as I did. The answer is correct, I'm just spicing up the marker's life a little bit.

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