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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