Captain's blog: 2005/06

First day at work and we BBQ

Posted Tuesday, June 21, 2005 at 6/21/2005 07:30:00 PM

My first day of work at a 3D software company and we canoe/ferry over to Toronto Centre Island for a department BBQ. I learned the secret of making cohesive hamburgers that are less likley to fall apart - add eggs and oatmeal to the ground meat mix, as oatmeal acts like a sticky glue when cooked, according to Ian the resident BBQ chef and today’s organizer. Never tried adding oatmeal or eggs before, but all of this will be good reference info if I ever need to organize a similar BBQ trip myself.

I did actually start the day quite normally, with a company tour to meet other relevant departments, getting the tax forms from HR, being shown the new but slow, beta-status content management system I will be using in the next couple of weeks, and even attended my first meeting. But then from about noon onwards we took the taxi out to the waterfront for our department team-building “day”, which was the canoe/ferry trip over to Centre Island for the BBQ for the rest of the afternoon.

We never actually got to official team-building activities involving some fancy baton. The ferry trip took at least a twenty-minute wait, and it seemed to take an hour getting canoes for those who took the canoe routes, then there was preparation of the site like hauling over two park benches to our park grill, pre-burning the grill, so it wasn’t until at least 2:15 that we finally brought out the nine hamburgers wrapped in foil with paper seperators in our cooler box to place on the grill. That was followed by the three veggie burgers before we started eating the meat hamburgers that were ready. There were two bags of twelve bread/hamburger buns each, minus one which was pecked away by an agressive seagull who punctured a huge hole in the bag while we weren’t looking.

We also took out the paper plates for the large, deep aluminum tray of salad. When the remaining hamburgers were ready we put them aside and brought out the ten or so chicken breast shishkabobs and three tofu ones to put on the BBQ grill, so those were eaten a bit later.

Apparently the shishkabob sticks should have been soaked in water to prevent them from charring and darkening when placed on the grill but Ian didn’t have time.

In addition to all of this food, Ian also distributed small individual brown bag snack kits beforehand at the start of the trip, each containing a bag of junk food, a juice drink, an apple and an orange, so all of this was more than adequate for our group of about eleven people.

By the time we finished eating it was already about 4pm and time to go.

Apparently there is a company-wide BBQ on the above-street porch on this week, but I’m not sure if I can handle another BBQ, as I always get so thirsty afterwards. Today at least, was a great first day at work. As my new colleagues say, tomorrow I will actually have to work!

Graduation

Posted Sunday, June 19, 2005 at 6/19/2005 12:31:00 AM

My graduation ceremony took place earlier this week on Tuesday in U of T’s Convocation Hall. It seemed like a very hectic day, because I was always moving non-stop. I remember moving from place to place taking photos with my parents, getting the gown, gathering and following the other graduands, walking up to get my handshake and furry hood placed over my head while watching my step and keeping pace, picking up the diploma backstage, and going for further picture-taking.

Most of the ceremony was rather boring, the one thing I do remember was that Douglas Wright, who reminded me of the bald spectacled scientist from the original Half-Life computer game, recieved an honourary Doctor of Laws degree at our ceremony. Apparently there is an entire U of Waterloo engineering building named after him and he had some large role in shaping current government policy. I remember he gave the usual career advice to follow our interests and abilities.

If there is anything I have learned here at U of T, it’s a deep appreciation of the first part of that advice, the interest aspect. I found that when I took a boring course such as some of those mandatory courses that I was not particularly interested in, I always ended up taking a billion times longer to actually finish the work such as an essay for that course, even if the work was simple. This is bad, because it means time that could have been spent on the more fun work, is being eaten away by time spent on the boring work. And it even brings down my total marks for all courses. Despite the greater time spent on the boring work, the boring work always brings low marks, while simultaneously, the inadequate time spent on the other more fun work means less marks for those courses as well.

In economic lingo, doing work you are not really interested in, whether for school or in your career is actually expensive, in terms of Opportunity Cost, the only worthy measure of expense. It costs you time out of your life that you could have been spending on doing something more fun, worthwhile and more productively, so that your total fun and productivity output goes down. So, I believe I should always strive to do what I am interested as I will accomplish the most when I do.

Returning to Douglas Wright, he also talked about being unconventional, and more importantly said “I recommend that you be ambitious”. After four years in this very traditional university academic environment and coping with barrage after barrage of endless essays, it was refreshing to hear someone talk again about being unconventional, and about being ambitious. I never forgot, but thanks anyway for the refresher!

Photo thanks to Alan.

IGDA Toronto First Indie Showcase

Posted Friday, June 03, 2005 at 6/3/2005 12:02:00 AM

Went to the IGDA Toronto’s very first Indie Game Showcase, which started about 7PM at the IAOD within the CBC Building on Front street. About 8 independent Toronto-based game developers presented quite a variety of games, ranging from arcade-like side scrollers to real-time 3D games both on PC and for windows mobile platforms.

I think it was set up very well. Two groups of presenters on either side of a main projection screen would alternate, so that when a team from one side presented, the next presenter would be getting ready on the computer on their side. Even when one or two groups did have technical difficulties, Anne-Marie the MC was able to either move on to further audience questions or switch to the next working group, so it all ran quite smoothly.

Each presentation ended with a short question period, and at the end of the presentations, around 8:50 pm it was the mingling period where we could go up and meet whichever presenter we wanted to mingle and chat with until about 9:30, when they had to close down the presentation hall. Regular students at the IAOD were still seen working late in the computer labs, but we had to leave.


Composite Photo, Top Left: Jim presenting his funny Juggling game; Top Right: U of T biz student Jerry with his Iron Nail side-scroller game; Bottom: The mingling period where we all swarmed the game developers.