Electronic Arts: Self destructive or just stupid?

For those of you who know me personally you'll know that I've worked at Bioware for a year as a Term employee, for those of you who don't know me...I've worked at Bioware for a year as a term employee.

Let me explain, nah that'll take too much time, let me sum up. A term position with Bioware means that you're a full time employee but you're on a contract that either expires in a year or at the end of a specific project. The likelihood of you being extended past the end of a project is about 2% and the odds of being extended at the end of a year are 0% . You then have to take at least 3 months off and wait for them to rehire you for another project.

This sucks enough as it is and makes little enough sense. You take a loyal and well trained employee and make them do something else for at least three months upsetting them because they need to find a new job for three months and then try and earn their own job back which is very difficult because they're three months out of practice.

Just to add insult to injury Electronic arts have now enacted a policy that says after working as a term employe for two short years you can no longer EVER work at any company owned by EA again. So people who've worked at Bioware or other EA owned companies for years on and off have been let go and are no longer welcome. My understanding as someone on the short road to banishment is that EA wants to train employees for their competition thereby making their competitors better which forces them to become better.

Bioware has excellent employees and their training is fantastic, They have high standards that weed out most of the riff raff and leaves only hard working competent employees that are very good at their jobs. Couple this with EA's policy that no one can hire full time employees and you get a lot of well trained, highly skilled employees banned from ever working for your company.

EA: "Hey, welcome to your new position!"

New Employee: "Wow, thanks. I'm super excited to get started training."

EA: "Excellent, We plan on spending a tonne of money training you and wasting lots of other full time employees time by making them watch you and help you as you get the hang of the job."

NE: "I appreciate it, But I don't think it'll be a waste I love this industry and I plan on making this my career."

EA: "not with us you won't. We don't take kindly to experienced or highly trained employees. so we'll be letting you go after two years of highly expensive and time consuming training where you'll grow to love the company and build friendship with all of the permanent employees."

NE: "Can I ever come back?"

EA: " What?! No, of course you can't. we want untrained buffoons so we can start the process over again. anyway, welcome to the team."

NE: " Thanks, I guess..."

EA: "Now get to work, but don't get too comfortable."

So That's basically how that's gonna go from now on. Or until EA goes out of business because they enact a policy that says they'll only hire people who hate video games or only hire employees for 24 hour periods in a bizarre parody of an improve sketch where the actors switch out randomly to create a hilarious hodgepodge of silliness.

This has all sounded pretty bitter and disgruntled and while yes, I am pretty confused and upset by this. Let me say that Bioware is still a fantastic place to work and it's a gleaming highpoint on a resume' if you're interested in working in the video game industry. Just don't get too attached.

Later days everyone.

Finally something to write about.

I realize I've been gone for a while but with a combination of excuses and legitimate reasons I could explain this away...I'm not going to, but I could. Moving on to the reason I'm back.

For those of you who know the comedian Paul F Tompkins, you'll know that he's delightfully funny , whimsical and full of mirth, not to mention other praise. What I'm saying is that he's very funny and you love him already. For those of you who have no idea who Paul F Tompkins is, I'll wait while you click the link in his name...

Right, everyone back? Good.

The reason I bring up Paul F Tompkins is that I've recently had his fantastic podcast brought to my attention by my good friend Doctor Teeth, and while there's only one that's been released it, IS, AWESOME!

I don't want to go into too great a detail and ruin jokes made in the podcast but I urge you to at least listen until the 11:00 minute mark. Paul has started reading out the transcriptions of Google Voice, which in Paul's own words are "wildly inaccurate" and in my own words are "pants wettingly funny" (no pants were wet, but you get what I'm saying).

Let me leave you with the title of the podcast so that you can:

A) find the podcast

B) realize just how clever Paul F Tompkins is.

So please, if you value our friendship (I know I do), look up and enjoy the "Pod F Tomkast".

Later days everyone

I love it when a plan comes together!

So earlier today I watched the new A-team movie with my good pal "Dr. Teeth". I have to say over all it was exceedingly enjoyable. It took me back to being a young man watching A-team reruns and playing with my oldest brothers action figure of "Face". Let me first mention that almost any movie starring Liam neeson will probably be enjoyable in my books as I've never seen a movie that he was in that I didn't think he at least was great. yes... I even liked him in " the phantom menace". Anyway, The movie had a quick pace and almost all of the action was acceptably over the top; except for one small instance near the end of the movie. All of the actors portrayed their characters in a manor which pleased me, and the movie was really fun. I highly recommend it.

I'm giving this movie 8.5/10 and I'm probably going to buy it at some point in my life. If you haven't seen it yet and are on the fence as to wether you should or not, I can tell you you're probably safe to go and watch it. Odds are you'll like it a lot.

In other news ...nothings really happening, Hence the lapse in my blogging schedule.Hopefully something will occur in the next few days that warrants me actually posting something on this barren wasteland that is a Blog. Me and several friends are going to be taste testing several different kinds of Mac and cheese to see if we can tell the difference between the new vegetable flour pasta and the original pasta... This is the roller coaster of excitement that is my life. Someone please pray for me or something.

Later days everyone.

The great chili profusion of 2010

With my lovely wife returned to me, my experiment to see whether I could eat nothing but chili for her entire absence (except breakfast) has come to an end. Let me first say that whenever someone heard I was doing this I received a pretty constant flow of pity and concern as a response. I don't fully understand this response as; 1. not only was it a conscious decision. but 2. It's probably better than what I otherwise would have been eating.

I mean really, why the pity? It's delicious and nutritious. I've probably had more vegetables in the past twenty days than I have in the past twenty weeks. I've had three different kinds of peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes, corn, beans, onions and garlic (I realize not all of those are veggies, let's move on). The concern I understand, Chili is not the known for being gentle and calming on the insides or those around you...but fear not gentle readers I have insides like steel.

Now to the results! I feel I was quite successful, aside from breakfast and a couple of invitations out for dinner from friends and concerned well wishers(it would be rude to refuse on account of a ridiculous experiment) I ate nothing but chili for a solid twenty days. I found that the outcome was a near immunity to the "ill" effects of beans (I don't need to clarify that, do I) and several delicious and very cost effective meal ( it came to about 2.50 a meal). The only ill effects I suffered other than eventually becoming tired of chili ( It's not my favorite food, just the healthiest) was my tears started to smell vaguely of chili. My eyes started to water one day and I discovered after wiping them that they smelled like the meals I was eating...they did not taste of chili, they tasted of salt.

Not the most scientific of experiments but mostly done out of the curiosity if I could do it, not the need to know what the effects would be. You may expect my Canada day blog tomorrow but I wouldn't, I guess we'll see...

Later days everyone, enjoy your Canada day festivities and I'll see you again soon.

Magneto for Prez!

Watching an episode of "Wolverine and the X-men" today I re-realized something that I never should have forgotten;

Magneto is King awesome of wicked-cool island.

As magneto decimated the X-men for what seems like the umpteenth time I decided that the only reason the X-men ever win is because they're the good guys. They as a team are no match for Magneto but Magneto will never come out on top because he was created as a villain and villains are meant to be defeated.

Let's take a quick look at just how easily Magneto could kill/defeat the X-men. Some of these have been done in the comics but some not so much:

1. Ripping the metal out of wolverine and using it to smother the others.(The first part happened, not so much the second)
2. Pulling all the metals out of their X-bodies at once ( I don't even want to think what that would do to a person)
3. Cancel out the gravitational field and launch the X-chumps into deep space.
4. Increase the above mentioned field and crush them into paste
5. take a sliver of metal of any kind(preferably magnetic) and push it directly through their frontal lobe effectively lobotomizing them.

Anyhow I could probably sit here and type for hours about this grizzly business but I think I made my point(whatever that was supposed to be). Regardless Magneto should have definitely beaten the X-men and most every other force that opposed him time and again but he was written as a villain and what kind of message would we be sending the kids if we let the villains win?

bad guys are awesome!

anywho, Later days everyone. Hope to see you again soon!

Why women exist.

My life has been very interesting for the last month. Being on leave from work for this entire month , having the World Cup on TV, and my wife being gone on vacation to visit her family in Scotland is slowly but surely killing me. I don't have to get up for work so there's no reason to go to bed at a decent hour, and with World Cup starting at 5:30 most days why even go to bed at all. For the rare moments that I go to sleep I'm just going to get up in 2 hours and then return to the couch for soccer anyway so why not just sleep on the couch for 2 hours. When there's no soccer

I watch TV and play games(thankfully due to my wife's influence I'm sort of an adult and go for walks sometimes).

Also my eating habits have suffered slightly. I have no wife to cook for or cook for me so I decided to see if I could eat chilli for the entire time she's gone (with the exception of breakfast); I've had so much chilli my tears now smell vaguely of chilli. I'm doing this because quite often I'll have pizza or stew or some other delicious food and say that I could eat nothing but that forever and I'm proving that I can. I chose chilli because it was the food I could sneak the most vegetables into. My next post will probably be the results of the great chilli experiment so more on that later.

Needless to say without adult supervision I'm slowly wasting away. I'm very excited for my wife's return and realize that while my life as a bachelor would be pretty fun it would eventually lead to my demise, thus I prove that marrying this wonderful woman was not only a brilliant idea because she's beautiful and funny and I'll never do any better but it's also a form of self preservation. So let's raise our glasses and toast to women. I know I'm not the only man like this. I've seen them, wandering listlessly with no clear destination , slightly glassy eye's, wrinkled shirt and the vague smell of chilli or BBQ on their breath.So once again Thank goodness for women, they don't need to take care of us but they do make sure we take care of ourselves.

Later days everyone and stay tuned for the results of the great chilli month of 2010.

What's the deal kim...

I do not know why I can't hold a schedule. It's like I have some kind of disease that won't allow me to post a blog when I'm supposed to. So from now on if the blog is late I'm just going to say it's because of my rare anti-blogging disorder(antipostosis). let's move on.

This is probably old news now but, Iron man 2 is just excellent. Some people would say the first one is better (I'm one of those people) but I don't think that it is in fact better but simply lacking the magic and awe of the first one. The first one was fresh and new and exciting. The second one had all those things except the newness. in fact there were some much needed improvements made to the casting (Don Cheadle) but there was also a terrible choice of villain (whiplash) which was at best adequately portrayed by Mickey Rourke who apparently has no idea what a russian accent sounds like( I understand comrade, it's a tough one).seriously though, whiplash? Regardless of the terrible villain choice the movie was still very good and I highly recommend seeing it if you haven't (you have. I realize it took me forever). I would give this movie a solid 4 1/3 out of 6 2/8 (that's for you doc teeth).

Anyway that's about all I have to say in this tiny strange post. so I bid you all later days and hopefully I'll have more to post next monday...or whenever.

Alright, I'll buy the bread!

Okay fate, I get it. you've foiled me for the last time! I've been having trouble posting on a regular basis on Sundays. I've been shanghaied by friends, the sites been down I've forgotten it was Sunday (that last one's probably my fault). So I've decided that a Monday.Wednesday,Friday format would be better.That's right, my solution for not being able to post enough was to make a schedule that required me to post more what are you gonna do about it.Enough yik yakken' let's get to the proper blog stuff.

Red Dead Redemption
Sweet lordy loo! If you aren't playing this game right now you are failing at life, and I do mean right now. You should be reading this blog between shooting off the hat of that guy behind the rock taking pot shots at you and knife fighting that bear that's sneaking up behind you(bears are apparently the ninjas of the forest).

The Good: The graphics are clean and crisp and make you believe you are a cowboy in the old west. The vistas are beautiful and the sunrises and sunsets are just amazing. The weather patterns that flow around the game world are believable and realistic and you can see rain rolling in and ride out of it if you don't like a soggy gun slinger.

The world you ride in is wide open to you if you can see someplace, odds are you can get to it.There's obviously a barrier that prevents you from seeing outside the game world or worse escaping it but there's nothing that stands out as unrealistic or video gamey and the playable world is vast enough that it never seems cramped or restrictive.


The freedom they've given you to live out wild west fantasies is almost offensive in it's vastness. For instance; a man approached me in the wilds asking me to give him a ride into town because he was stranded. I acquiesced because I'm generally a nice guy and odds are an award would e coming as a thank you(I said I was generally nice not stupid). As the man reached me he promptly pulled me off my horse and rode away "stranding" me in the wilds. I ran after him but was obviously outstripped by a horse. That's when it struck me that wasn't my only horse. I whistled to call my extra horse and took chase. I found him standing in a ravine so I snuck up behind him and shot him in the knee, lassoed him and dragged him through the cacti until I came to some railroad tracks. I let him get up and then I shot him in the other knee, hogtied him and left him on the tracks never to be heard from again.(no one messes with the horse!)

The absolute tops though is the voice work. The voice work is so good it puts games like uncharted look like a big sack o' smashed raccoons.

Now there's still lots of good stuff to say about this game but it really would be way too long a blog if I didn't move onto....

The Bad: um...I'm sure there's something I can put here, Ah yes now I remember. There are some crazy bugs you can find. At one point I was in cover and a bandito took a shot at me which caused my cowboy to fly 60 feet into the air and plummet to his death. There's also the time I lost my horse until I looked up on the roof of a shack only to find him balancing on a crumbling wall, I had to lasso him and pull him down which killed him as he then fell off a cliff. My favorite though would have to be this (that's not me in the video).

The Verdict: All in all I'd give this game a 9 out of 10, It's not perfect but it's damn close. I'll be playing this probably for the rest of the year easily and with the amazing multiplayer it has; possibly longer. Rockstar finally put out a game that I've actually enjoyed playing the story from beginning to end and I hope this is the beginning of a trend for them. I'm pretty sure everyone's tired of running down pedestrians and beating hookers by now, yes?

Anyway I've just realized that due to a technical glitch with my computer causing me to have to restart from almost scratch I have missed yet another deadline and am posting this very early on tuesday instead of monday like I intended(Fate you are a tricky mistress) so I am forced to say later days for now and hopefully you're now all playing Red Dead Redemption.

Weekends are relaxing?

Before anyone brings it up I realize that my third post ever is late. What you don't realize is that I may have had the least relaxing weekend ever and was physically unable to post a blog... So get off my freakin' back!

Let me start at the beginning, Thursday evening my wife and I drove two and a half hours to Lloydminster, Sk (I call it a black hole from which no happiness can escape) and spent the night with my mother. She's a lovely woman but she thought it would be worthwhile for me to sort through all the things I left behind when I moved away and label everything.fun! we stayed the night and in the morning drove another two and half hours to Saskatoon, Sk for a very religious wedding(some would say too religious, the rest would say crazy religious) after spending the rest of the day with my wifes family (lovely people) and a large group of religious loonies it was nice to hit the hay.an hour more driving and I was visiting with my dad and step mom.(this was really nice I don't see them enough). Our last leg of the trip was 5 more hours of driving back to Edmonton, Ab and when we arrived we got to help our best friends move. I love these people like family but they have a lot of stuff...heavy stuff...nine and a half hours worth of stuff.Needless to say I feel like I've been beaten by several angry cossacks. I like helping people but boy do I hurt all over.

Now then, for those of you who've read that riveting bit of literature and are still up for more I have a game review.

Monster Hunter Tri
I've been playing this game for just over 50 or so hours now and it's just fantastic. I have to say it's the most fun I've had on the Wii so far a system that's more of a toy than an actual gaming system.

The Good:It's graphically very nice with the exception of the NPC characters who have apparently been copy and pasted from a game on the Nintendo 64. The Monsters for the most part are suitably large and terrifying (It's all very reminiscent of Beowulf)
It has excellent online Co-op which is very easy to set up and use and it also has a friends list that makes finding friends and people you met online and enjoyed playing with very easy. A very wide selection of armour and weapons make for excellent customization with the small exception of a few palette swaps.

The Bad: A new addition to this series is the under water combat which while an interesting idea should have been left out until they knew what the hell they were doing because it's absolutely dreadful. Every time I see that I need to combat a monster under water it makes me want to kill myself. while you're in the water these monsters savage you and relentlessly chase you, if you exit the water however they have very little interest in following you or harassing you with the exception of the Lagiacrus (that beasty on the cover) who shoots lightening out of it's mouth at you until you reenter the water(which now that I read that out loud sounds like a terrible idea). The major problem with the water combat is the sheer speed at which these aquatic monstrosities move through the water. They can be next to you one moment and across the map in another, which means you spend a lot of time very slowly chasing after them or dodging their attacks until you get lucky and they stop nearby you. The second problem is trying to follow them with the disastrous camera control. I've been playing with the Wiimote and the nunchuk which might contribute to the problem as I've heard it's easier using the classic controller but regardless this could have all been fixed with simple camera lock. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was released in 1998 and they had camera lock-on. 12 years later we don't? there's no reason to leave this out.
The next problem I have with this excellent game is the collection system. To build armour and weapons you need to kill monsters and harvest scales, bones, claws and other grisly bits of monster however some pieces are more rare than others. I don't have problem with random collection quests that involve rare drops but when the whole game is based around this style quest you can't make things insanely hard to find. If I were to risk m y life fighting a three story behemoth to build amour from it's hide why would I collect two claws and some skin when all I need is a tail. I can see the tail, it's right there attached to the thing I just killed why wouldn't I take it! instead I'll take my claws and skin back to camp drop them in a box and head back out to kill yet another monster and hopefully I'll take it's tail...nope! bones and scales. It really doesn't make any sense. They could allow you to harvest less if you took rare items or increase the number of items needed to create items, but making it completely random just reeks of artificially lengthening the game on the part of the game designers. my last problem is the multiplayer. while the online is fine for one person at a time per system why not allow multiple people per system. You can play two players in the arena offline but not online and why can you only use the arena with multiplayer and why can't I use my equipment in the arena instead just a seemingly random mish mash of amour pieces and a choice of four random weapons.any way I'm starting to ramble so I'd better get to...


The Verdict: All in all I'd give this game a 7 out of 10. If you don't mind repetitive games there's enough going on in this game to keep you entertained for many hours. Now if you'll excuse me I need to say later days because I need to get that damn tail!

Oh yeah, I have a blog...

Alright, for those of you who've noticed that there was a small 5 month gap between posts... I have some reasonable excuses.

1. I wasn't able to release the first blog post to the public because someone hacked my e-mail and changed my password.
2. I forgot my password and couldn't release the first post to the public and only recently regained control.(it was probably this one.)
3.I moved apartments and have been busy settling into my new home.
4. I'm really lazy...
5. a combination of some or all of the above

Regardless of how many posts I've made I'm going to try and make this a weekly thing or some kind of Monday, Wednesday, Friday kind of deal.

Lastly, while this post is kind of short it was mostly serving to jump start my return to the internet as contributor and not just a lurking voyeur. That was far creepier than I had intended...

so come by every Sunday and see what's gone on in my week. Later days everyone and for my Canadian readers enjoy your Victoria day long weekend

How could this go wrong?

And so it all begins. My first of what I imagine to be many rambling, poorly put together, nigh unintelligible posts. I have to be honest. I'm a little exited, a little nervous but what's the worst that could happen? I by some random chance type in the exact letter and number sequence that awakens the slumbering leviathan that is the internet's long dormant sentience and it conquers the globe in a matter of minutes crushing all of humanity under it's digitally iron shod heel.(the odds of that are low though, right?)

Anyway, a lot of you are probably wondering; who is this guy? Why is he even starting a blog if he doesn't think he should? Why would anyone ever read this for more than a minute? Why do people start new blogs when there's so many good ones to read already? Why do people start new blogs when there's so many that are absolute rubbish already? Who put the bomp in the bompshubompshubomp and didn't they realize there was already two bomps in there? Well if you are thinking these things, you really should stop because I'm not going to answer any of it.Mostly in the hopes that all that intrigue will keep you coming back and partially because I don't really have any of the answers...yet.

Seeing as I have little to say and typed the majority of this out because I dreaded leaving my blog empty for any amount of time; I'm going to bid all of you adieu. I hope to see you back here again soon.(not that I can see you reading this.that would be creepy)Happy new year everyone.