Yesterday was probably the most aggravating day I've ever had at work - which isn't too bad when I look back in hindsight, cause I've experienced much worse. Anyway point is, the morning was pretty uneventful - it was me, Don and Adrian since Dave and Alex were still away, and we weren't having much luck finding bugs. Reg emails us in the afternoon just before lunch wondering what's going on and why we weren't finding any bugs. Considering Don and I were doing compliance all morning and Adrian was working on his own hoarde of scripts, it shouldn't be too surprising that we weren't finding anything. But Reg said Montreal had submitted 16 bugs in the last 2 hours!
So we decided to do a little research and found out that Montreal was writing up the same bug for every character in the game. I'm not sure if Reg took the time to look at their bugs but if he did, I'm sure he would have noticed the kind of bugs they were submitting. So I took it upon myself to exact revenge and "sabotage" their bugs by elaborating upon what they had already written and linking it to my own bug.
I'm continuing to write this on Saturday, 5 days after what I've written above. It's finally the weekend - and a long weekend at that.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Sort Of Promotion
I actually meant to mention it sooner, but somehow kept on forgetting. My aunt was in town, arrived 2 weeks ago today but just left sometime this afternoon. It was good seeing her again after so long, and I was looking forward to a change of cooking with her being here. But as usual, her archaic values managed to stir a little resentment in me - pretty much everything I don't like about my dad (she's his sister) multiplied exponentially. But on the whole, I was glad she took the time to visit.
Last weekend was pretty much ruined by some douche on Youtube insisting on starting a flame war with me and we just went at each other's throats. I must say though, I'm proud of myself that I didn't turn it into name calling and character bashing ... sort of, lol. But I think we managed to smooth things over.
The key feature of the last few days though would have to be a mini promotion I've gotten at work - not really a promotion in the sense of pay, more like responsibilities. I am now considered compliance trained, meaning I test games for how well they comply with Wii guidelines set by Nintendo which Reggie (lead QA dude) stressed was "very important". If you ask me, if compliance testing as important as he says it is, why don't we have more people working on compliance scripts? There's 198 scripts to get through and only 2 people to do it all. Who knows if there are any more scripts that the shared services testers are doing for us? And not all of the scripts even apply to our game. So it's up to me and Donovan to sift through those scripts, determine which ones we can run, which are in valid, which to fail and which to pass. This, on top of regression, regular scripts and bug writing. They weren't lying when they said QA isn't a glamorous job.
Alex left an hour and a half early today to make it to Pemberton Fest, and Dave's gonna be following tonight. So tomorrow (they cancelled Forget-It-Fridays, dammit), it's just gonna be me, Don, and Adrian working on all the crap we have to get done. We didn't have enough people to begin with and since Alex is gone all next week and Dave will be gone on Monday, it'll be the three of us tomorrow and Monday. Logic would say our production would go down. But I'm determined to keep it the same at the very least. This is our moment to shine as far as I'm concerned, show that we are completely capable without supervision.
Last weekend was pretty much ruined by some douche on Youtube insisting on starting a flame war with me and we just went at each other's throats. I must say though, I'm proud of myself that I didn't turn it into name calling and character bashing ... sort of, lol. But I think we managed to smooth things over.
The key feature of the last few days though would have to be a mini promotion I've gotten at work - not really a promotion in the sense of pay, more like responsibilities. I am now considered compliance trained, meaning I test games for how well they comply with Wii guidelines set by Nintendo which Reggie (lead QA dude) stressed was "very important". If you ask me, if compliance testing as important as he says it is, why don't we have more people working on compliance scripts? There's 198 scripts to get through and only 2 people to do it all. Who knows if there are any more scripts that the shared services testers are doing for us? And not all of the scripts even apply to our game. So it's up to me and Donovan to sift through those scripts, determine which ones we can run, which are in valid, which to fail and which to pass. This, on top of regression, regular scripts and bug writing. They weren't lying when they said QA isn't a glamorous job.
Alex left an hour and a half early today to make it to Pemberton Fest, and Dave's gonna be following tonight. So tomorrow (they cancelled Forget-It-Fridays, dammit), it's just gonna be me, Don, and Adrian working on all the crap we have to get done. We didn't have enough people to begin with and since Alex is gone all next week and Dave will be gone on Monday, it'll be the three of us tomorrow and Monday. Logic would say our production would go down. But I'm determined to keep it the same at the very least. This is our moment to shine as far as I'm concerned, show that we are completely capable without supervision.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Sleep Schedule is fucked
Monday I had next to no hours of sleep, Tuesday night I slept for a good 7 hours and Wednesday night i got hom eat 10:30 and woke up at 4 in the morning. I tried to get a little more sleep since i'll be working overtime again tonight (worked overtime again yesterday too) and I'm not dreading it as much as I was yesterday.
That's cause yesterday was one of the most interesting experiences I've ever had even though in the grand scheme of things, it probably wasn't all that great. I got a chance to test NHL09 with the developers and actually see (what I believe) the offices where Gurn worked. Not that much nicer than my own office, lol. The controls were alot better than yesterday and I was able to move around with relative ease, and the night just flew by. I think it had something to do with the developers letting us go half an hour earlier than planned.
HHOD's just updated her RE fic of ff.net and I just finished reading the new chapter. More of the usual plot driven events, lots of talking. There's not much action at the moment but for some reason, the reader gets really absorbed into the story even though there's not much going on. I think her characterization is phenomenal. Even though these are original characters she's working with in an established universe, they seem so real, as if they belong in the series.
I'm thinking of starting a blog featuring my own original characters, who will update the blog regularly as if they were real people, just for fun.
That's cause yesterday was one of the most interesting experiences I've ever had even though in the grand scheme of things, it probably wasn't all that great. I got a chance to test NHL09 with the developers and actually see (what I believe) the offices where Gurn worked. Not that much nicer than my own office, lol. The controls were alot better than yesterday and I was able to move around with relative ease, and the night just flew by. I think it had something to do with the developers letting us go half an hour earlier than planned.
HHOD's just updated her RE fic of ff.net and I just finished reading the new chapter. More of the usual plot driven events, lots of talking. There's not much action at the moment but for some reason, the reader gets really absorbed into the story even though there's not much going on. I think her characterization is phenomenal. Even though these are original characters she's working with in an established universe, they seem so real, as if they belong in the series.
I'm thinking of starting a blog featuring my own original characters, who will update the blog regularly as if they were real people, just for fun.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
First Overtime Shift!!
I wasn't able to sleep Sunday night for some reason - most likely because I woke up at 5 in the evening that day. So try as I might (and I didn't try very hard, if at all), I couldn't fall asleep. Instead I spent the night up modeling my new character that I wanted to base off the game I'm currently testing at work. Mike says the character is kind of like one of the existing characters in Facebreaker, but I flatly disagreed with him. I'd love to disclose what it is at this point but I think I'm bound by EA to keep it a secret until they release details on this character ... oh no wait, I think they already released it, lol. Nonetheless, rather not include any information here that they might not want out.
So I went to work not having any sleep the night before and it was surprisingly okay. I left home earlier than usual and got to the office at around 7:30 in the morning. Had a smoke, skipped breakfast cause I ate before leaving the house, but I had the sourest yogurt I've ever eaten but somehow managed to finish it. Oh, also played a few rounds of street fighter 3 in the arcade and made it all the way to Gill by switching between Akuma and Chun Li. Yeah, I died a couple times but at least I made it all the way to the end. Never quite managed to defeat Gill however, and the guy that tried after me (the same guy that kicked my ass in that game a couple of days ago) couldn't defeat him either, so I left him to his devices and went out for another smoke before work actually began.
We got more builds in and some of the longest scripts I'd ever seen in my life. Donovan told me today he counted about 17 scripts for himself but I never bothered counting mine. I assume it's around just as many though. Sometime between lunch and the late afternoon break, Yevar came to our team and started recruiting for overtime during the week. Due to my lack of sleep, I told him no at first, but the prospect of looking good in the team's eyes actually convinced me to say yes and I did - which was probably the worst decision I've ever made in my life cause I was in no shape to work overtime. Somehow I managed to pull it off.
So I went to work not having any sleep the night before and it was surprisingly okay. I left home earlier than usual and got to the office at around 7:30 in the morning. Had a smoke, skipped breakfast cause I ate before leaving the house, but I had the sourest yogurt I've ever eaten but somehow managed to finish it. Oh, also played a few rounds of street fighter 3 in the arcade and made it all the way to Gill by switching between Akuma and Chun Li. Yeah, I died a couple times but at least I made it all the way to the end. Never quite managed to defeat Gill however, and the guy that tried after me (the same guy that kicked my ass in that game a couple of days ago) couldn't defeat him either, so I left him to his devices and went out for another smoke before work actually began.
We got more builds in and some of the longest scripts I'd ever seen in my life. Donovan told me today he counted about 17 scripts for himself but I never bothered counting mine. I assume it's around just as many though. Sometime between lunch and the late afternoon break, Yevar came to our team and started recruiting for overtime during the week. Due to my lack of sleep, I told him no at first, but the prospect of looking good in the team's eyes actually convinced me to say yes and I did - which was probably the worst decision I've ever made in my life cause I was in no shape to work overtime. Somehow I managed to pull it off.
After the normal work day ended, we were told to head straight for conference room C, where we usually pick up our paychecks and they told us we were basically going to be testing online capabilities for NHL 09. I didn't have to do anything but play the game. It was nice not having to worry about bugs and to just enjoy the game for what it was ... except that it was hockey ... ZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz. Yeah, pretty much wanted to shoot myself. If video games consisted of nothing but sports games, I wouldn't like playing games at all. Managed to squeeze a break out of the 3 hour working period and played some more NHL after that. To think I'll be doing the same thing tomorrow sends chills up my spine. I'd rather return to work at Chapters.
Today, Matt didn't show up to work for the ... I've lost count how many days in a row he's missed. I think it's safe to say he's been fired. We told him to buck up but he didn't listen to us, and Sara even went so far as to call him an idiot but everyone agrees with her even though we're too nice to say it.
Since I started working here, I've been part of the daily spam mail that Steve, Justin, Shiach, Eric and Loi send to each other, and I've even participated in a few of them. But most of the time, it's just me deleting all their spam mail. Anyway today we ended up getting into a small verbal fight, nothing huge but I ended it asking to be removed from the list. I did it out of anger but reflecting back, I don't regret it. It's not like we're no longer friends or anything, it was just your everyday banter but I'm glad I'm off their list though, so at least now my ATC won't catch me emailing when I'm not supposed to.
So that's been whats up the last couple days. See what'll happen next.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Week's Flown By
I remember waking up for work on Monday thinking "aw shit, this is gonna be another long week." and feeling like utter crap. But surprisingly, I'm already writing this on the Saturday after and wondering where all the time went. I'll try to recall the week best as I can.
Monday started out pretty shitty cause dad decided that on the way to work, he wanted to pick up some gas, which could ultimately make me miss by bus and be late (because I still needed to buy smokes as I was freshly out and I didn't want to do it in front of him). But the gas station had something going on with their pumps - I didn't catch all of it, something like "wrong labels on pumps" so my dad ended up driving us around the gas pumps for like 3 minutes trying to find a pump, dodging other cars. I thought he'd give up and drop me off at the bus stop before going to another gas station but no, he wanted to complain. Really pissed me off so I went and bought my smokes when the attendant was helping him fill up (seems like the labels were stuck on the night before but hadn't been taken off yet).
At work, Mat was telling us how tired he was - hadn't slept in a long time and later that night he was going drinking with some girl, and how his body wasn't going to be up to it. I told him it'd be best to have gone drinking the night before and it was stupid now he wanted to do it now especially when he was so tired, but he shrugged me off in Mat fashion.
The next day (this was either Tuesday or Wednesday, I honestly can't remember the week too well) was possibly the worst day of my life. I was in the worst mood at work cause I wasn't catching any bugs and the ones that I wanted to catch, I couldn't cause Adrian was borrowing my tape recorder. So I thought I'd just ad-hoc for awhile, try to repro a bug I found late into the game but I couldn't cause the computer was kicking my ass and I couldn't make it that far. That morning my bug count sat at NOTHING. Finally after lunch we received our first scripts of the week and some new builds with new front end music and everything. Mine was testing to make sure all the poses and facial damages were in there, and some weren't so I had some nice bugs to write up bringing my count to 2. Woot ...
George, Sara and I were discussing how Mat wasn't at work that day so we were wondering what's going on. We theorized that he got fired because the rate he's missing shifts is not cool, and the fact there was someone else sitting at his desk now. George tried calling him on his cell phone to figure out what was going on but it was off. The next day George said he probably got into a car accident, which made me feel bad cause I remember telling Mat on Monday he'd better watch out or he'd get into a car accident and laughed about it.
Thursday was ridiculously windy. Sitting outside the cafeteria during breaks, the wind was blowing tree bits into my coffee. There wasn't a cloud in the sky but hte wind made is so freaking cold. Talked outside with Tricia and Chad at lunch for awhile, trying to move in the the sunlight where it was slightly warmer and that's really the most I remember about Thursday.
And yesterday was Friday thank god - Week was over before I knew it, and I was still willing to work one more day in a row and I'd start getting overtime for it, hahaha. Oh yeah, sometime earlier in the week, we got offers to do overtime, so I offered to do overtime for NHL09 for PS3 but I never got called back for it. Dave did though, lucky jerk. And he supposedly did that overtime today which means more money for him. Next week and I have Wii guidelines training. Of our team, it's only me and Donovan getting that training. Why they chose us over everyone else to get it, I don't know but at least more than one person on the team will know it, even though it's something I think everyone should know.
That's about the most noteworthy things that's happened to me this week. You know I hate to say it but when I was jobless, it seemed by blog entries were alot more exciting even though it was possibly the worst period of my life. Right now, I'm doing a little better financially (getting 300 odd bucks a week isn't too bad) but there's till the bruised ego I have to attend to. I think that might be the main reason I'm still hurting even after I've gotten a job and am well on the way to success ...
Monday started out pretty shitty cause dad decided that on the way to work, he wanted to pick up some gas, which could ultimately make me miss by bus and be late (because I still needed to buy smokes as I was freshly out and I didn't want to do it in front of him). But the gas station had something going on with their pumps - I didn't catch all of it, something like "wrong labels on pumps" so my dad ended up driving us around the gas pumps for like 3 minutes trying to find a pump, dodging other cars. I thought he'd give up and drop me off at the bus stop before going to another gas station but no, he wanted to complain. Really pissed me off so I went and bought my smokes when the attendant was helping him fill up (seems like the labels were stuck on the night before but hadn't been taken off yet).
At work, Mat was telling us how tired he was - hadn't slept in a long time and later that night he was going drinking with some girl, and how his body wasn't going to be up to it. I told him it'd be best to have gone drinking the night before and it was stupid now he wanted to do it now especially when he was so tired, but he shrugged me off in Mat fashion.
The next day (this was either Tuesday or Wednesday, I honestly can't remember the week too well) was possibly the worst day of my life. I was in the worst mood at work cause I wasn't catching any bugs and the ones that I wanted to catch, I couldn't cause Adrian was borrowing my tape recorder. So I thought I'd just ad-hoc for awhile, try to repro a bug I found late into the game but I couldn't cause the computer was kicking my ass and I couldn't make it that far. That morning my bug count sat at NOTHING. Finally after lunch we received our first scripts of the week and some new builds with new front end music and everything. Mine was testing to make sure all the poses and facial damages were in there, and some weren't so I had some nice bugs to write up bringing my count to 2. Woot ...
George, Sara and I were discussing how Mat wasn't at work that day so we were wondering what's going on. We theorized that he got fired because the rate he's missing shifts is not cool, and the fact there was someone else sitting at his desk now. George tried calling him on his cell phone to figure out what was going on but it was off. The next day George said he probably got into a car accident, which made me feel bad cause I remember telling Mat on Monday he'd better watch out or he'd get into a car accident and laughed about it.
Thursday was ridiculously windy. Sitting outside the cafeteria during breaks, the wind was blowing tree bits into my coffee. There wasn't a cloud in the sky but hte wind made is so freaking cold. Talked outside with Tricia and Chad at lunch for awhile, trying to move in the the sunlight where it was slightly warmer and that's really the most I remember about Thursday.
And yesterday was Friday thank god - Week was over before I knew it, and I was still willing to work one more day in a row and I'd start getting overtime for it, hahaha. Oh yeah, sometime earlier in the week, we got offers to do overtime, so I offered to do overtime for NHL09 for PS3 but I never got called back for it. Dave did though, lucky jerk. And he supposedly did that overtime today which means more money for him. Next week and I have Wii guidelines training. Of our team, it's only me and Donovan getting that training. Why they chose us over everyone else to get it, I don't know but at least more than one person on the team will know it, even though it's something I think everyone should know.
That's about the most noteworthy things that's happened to me this week. You know I hate to say it but when I was jobless, it seemed by blog entries were alot more exciting even though it was possibly the worst period of my life. Right now, I'm doing a little better financially (getting 300 odd bucks a week isn't too bad) but there's till the bruised ego I have to attend to. I think that might be the main reason I'm still hurting even after I've gotten a job and am well on the way to success ...
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Weekend Update
Whoa, been a couple of days since I've updated this thing but honestly, nothing much of interest has really happened. Canada Day was spent not doing anything except working on my portfolio. I would have liked to head down to Rocky Point to experience Golden Spike day. My past experiences with Golden Spike have been alot of fun. Last year, I went with Kim and Christine to try out some food and view the festivities - they really wanted to see Charlotte Diamond and we managed to take some pictures. But this year, both Christine and Andrew were out of town and they're really my only friends living in this area who give two shits about Golden Spike day. But yeah, I did manage to get some work done on the portfolio so it wasn't a totally wasted day.
Last weekend had some really nice weather, apparently the envy of all of Canada. But I found it a little hotter than I would have liked. Trent called and invited me to go up to Lion's Bay for the weekend but I wasn't in the mood - wanted to work on the portfolio since the weekend is really the only time i get to work on it. And with the 4 days off, I was hoping to get alot done. Phoned James up to ask him some lighting questions about Maya - didn't like the fact that my skybox for my western town was receiving and casting shadows on all the objects in my scene. Also just to check up and see how he's been doing this whole time.
On Monday, I tried phoning up Amanda from Blackbox to see if they had any job openings but she didn't pick up her phone. Then I remembered Cody and Alan getting a week off work that day. I'm not sure if that was just offered to the development team, but it seemed like it included everyone working at Blackbox too, cause Amanda wasn't answering her office phone after about three attempts. So I decided to try again later - or just write her an email, since that'll probably work better anyway.
Also, on the Friday prior, I went to the mall and got a new video game - Silent Hill origins. I know, I hate the Silent Hill series for the whole fog and darkness deal, not being able to see further than a few feet in front of you, but then I decided to ignore that and just enjoy the game for what it was. But once again, the inability to see has gotten the better of me and it's been a couple of days since I've touched that game. I hope I'll be able to get into it again. Not completely a waste of money though, since I got it for 30 bucks. Went back to the mall on Monday (or was it Tuesday?) and got some new clothes for work and a haircut. Wanted to go back to EB for Silent Hill 4. I remember that game didn't have so much visual impairment, and that was the main reason I was after it, because I love survival horror and it bugs me that I can't get into Silent Hill. Fatal Frame is a little scarier than I can handle, which explains why I haven't really gotten into that game ... I'm ashamed to say, lol. Anyway, turns out EB didn't have what I was looking for so too bad for that.
The work week proceeded as usual and I had a startling realization that week. I can't stand Dave. Sure he's a good guy, friendly and all but I can't believe how cut throat he is. Donovan, Adrian were sitting there testing out a game mode for Facebreaker and he noticed a bug. They both said they weren't going to write the bug up - I forgot what the reason was, and Dave just shrugged and said fine, one more bug for me. And on Friday, he revealed his bug count list - the guy actually writes it down! I know we were hired to catch bugs but on the job, there are certain things that take priority over bug hunting like regression and scripts, but to be so cutthroat about it, hoarding his bugs ... I don't know, I can't say I like the guy very much.
Loi said he was gonna sell his PSP to me for 25 bucks - all I had to get was my own memory stick to store the games, so I said cool, I'll come on Wednesday to give him the money and he can pass over his PSP. But when I actually did, he said he'd sell it to me on Monday. And I actually had the money in my hands and everything! I'm starting to wonder if I'll actually get it from him and not just buy a new unused one myself.
Went to Brentwood with Tito (I think that's his name), Mike (character artist) and that guy from my training group who offered to do the bug dance by himself because he "had no shame." We were discussing how there was a new anime shop at Brentwood and they came to EA to sell some stuff. So we went down, I specifically went looking for Resident Evil merchandise but they didn't have any. Then went to EB and I almost bought a PSP and Crisis Core with my paycheck but - I'm proud of myself - decided against it and actually walked out of EB for once without buying something. I'll try again on Monday to see if Loi really does want to sell his PSP to me. As much as I don't want to, it'll save me alot of money - much cheaper than buying a new one, that's for sure.
Last weekend had some really nice weather, apparently the envy of all of Canada. But I found it a little hotter than I would have liked. Trent called and invited me to go up to Lion's Bay for the weekend but I wasn't in the mood - wanted to work on the portfolio since the weekend is really the only time i get to work on it. And with the 4 days off, I was hoping to get alot done. Phoned James up to ask him some lighting questions about Maya - didn't like the fact that my skybox for my western town was receiving and casting shadows on all the objects in my scene. Also just to check up and see how he's been doing this whole time.
On Monday, I tried phoning up Amanda from Blackbox to see if they had any job openings but she didn't pick up her phone. Then I remembered Cody and Alan getting a week off work that day. I'm not sure if that was just offered to the development team, but it seemed like it included everyone working at Blackbox too, cause Amanda wasn't answering her office phone after about three attempts. So I decided to try again later - or just write her an email, since that'll probably work better anyway.
Also, on the Friday prior, I went to the mall and got a new video game - Silent Hill origins. I know, I hate the Silent Hill series for the whole fog and darkness deal, not being able to see further than a few feet in front of you, but then I decided to ignore that and just enjoy the game for what it was. But once again, the inability to see has gotten the better of me and it's been a couple of days since I've touched that game. I hope I'll be able to get into it again. Not completely a waste of money though, since I got it for 30 bucks. Went back to the mall on Monday (or was it Tuesday?) and got some new clothes for work and a haircut. Wanted to go back to EB for Silent Hill 4. I remember that game didn't have so much visual impairment, and that was the main reason I was after it, because I love survival horror and it bugs me that I can't get into Silent Hill. Fatal Frame is a little scarier than I can handle, which explains why I haven't really gotten into that game ... I'm ashamed to say, lol. Anyway, turns out EB didn't have what I was looking for so too bad for that.
The work week proceeded as usual and I had a startling realization that week. I can't stand Dave. Sure he's a good guy, friendly and all but I can't believe how cut throat he is. Donovan, Adrian were sitting there testing out a game mode for Facebreaker and he noticed a bug. They both said they weren't going to write the bug up - I forgot what the reason was, and Dave just shrugged and said fine, one more bug for me. And on Friday, he revealed his bug count list - the guy actually writes it down! I know we were hired to catch bugs but on the job, there are certain things that take priority over bug hunting like regression and scripts, but to be so cutthroat about it, hoarding his bugs ... I don't know, I can't say I like the guy very much.
Loi said he was gonna sell his PSP to me for 25 bucks - all I had to get was my own memory stick to store the games, so I said cool, I'll come on Wednesday to give him the money and he can pass over his PSP. But when I actually did, he said he'd sell it to me on Monday. And I actually had the money in my hands and everything! I'm starting to wonder if I'll actually get it from him and not just buy a new unused one myself.
Went to Brentwood with Tito (I think that's his name), Mike (character artist) and that guy from my training group who offered to do the bug dance by himself because he "had no shame." We were discussing how there was a new anime shop at Brentwood and they came to EA to sell some stuff. So we went down, I specifically went looking for Resident Evil merchandise but they didn't have any. Then went to EB and I almost bought a PSP and Crisis Core with my paycheck but - I'm proud of myself - decided against it and actually walked out of EB for once without buying something. I'll try again on Monday to see if Loi really does want to sell his PSP to me. As much as I don't want to, it'll save me alot of money - much cheaper than buying a new one, that's for sure.
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