A long day on the bus...

I guess I'll start by saying I spent 4 hours on the bus today... or a least in transit...

I got up and left the house at 8am.... then proceeded to walk to my bus... ride from 8:15 till 9:53, and walk in to work about 4 minutes early.

Then I worked for 10 hours... rigorously playing video games... killing and willingly being killed... digging up potential bugs... I even submitted my first bug report... and then left work...

Waited from 8:00 to 8:18... rode to Bellevue and waited 20 minutes... rode to Renton and waited 15 minutes... kept going to Kent and waited 15 minutes... took the bus up the hill and walked from my bus stop...

oh the glory of public transit. but it was pretty cool when my Volt ER got me a cup of coffee and a snack at Star Bucks for my welcome meeting...

Now I'm here... I still haven't put my spare tire on the Van yet... and I really don't know if I'll get around to that tonight... maybe one of these nights, or some time really soon. who knows... at this rate I don't know when I'll drive my car again. (I bet you're happy mom ;)

so... I love the job... it gets better every day... I get free drinks and snacks... free coffee... Bungie Studios is right in down town Kirkland... which is a really nice area to be... and after 6:30 we are allowed to drink beer at work... actually, the direct Bungie employees get to drink beer all day... but we lowly contractors don't get any of their free stuff...

The only thing that is kinda annoying at work is the ever clear presence of a hierarchy where the Bungie people are on top, and the contractors are on bottom... we get free snacks, coffee, and drinks... they get all our stuff and free meals, beer, and better snacks... Plus they get to tell us what to do. It's like each person who works at Bungie has a team of contractors to work for them... I guess I'll just have to get one of their jobs.

it's kinda cool when I'm on the bus people see my MS badge and ask me what I do... and I get this whole feeling like I'm a politician saying "I'm working my way around to figuring out how I won't answer that" every two seconds... everyone has questions... are there new this and that... did you read about this online and what are you gonna do about it... It is really fascinating to hear all the questions...

James was finally able to start answering some of the questions I had for him about his project... it turns out that all this time he's been working on a project called Microsoft Surface... which is this really cool idea of the coffee table/cash register of the future. It's designed to integrate a table, computer, cell phone, PDA, credit cards, and any other wireless device all together...
Check out the web site, it looks really sweet! Straight out of Sci-Fi. I even want it... and I hate almost everything Microsoft (not including companies owned by Microsoft) makes!

anyway... once I got home I was happy and sad to have an empty house... Evelyn went with Maninther to Bellingham to pick up a load... and because she baby sits Jaani at the house, she took him with her... which is kinda nice because she will take him to the vet for me tomorrow, and keep him company while I'm at work... but this will be the first night since I got Jaani that he won't be sleeping in my bed... it kinda makes me sad... even to think about it... but it's for him.

unfortunately he seems to have some sort of skin thing going on right now... he keeps itching, and we can't find any fleas... that hot spot stuff works for a little while, but I think he might need something more. I hope it doesn't cost too much, but at least I have a care credit card to pay for it... that way I won't get any interest... plus it is actually a great supplement to insurance because I can use that to pay any co-pay, dental, or Rx... even though I will have dental in July.

well, between getting a flat tire, and all my other bills money will be really tight until the 8th... but I just may have automatic deposit available by then, which means I'll actually get paid on the 7th... and I should be getting a little more money than I was originally expecting. so from that point out things should be good. after all, with this bus pass, I have a far smaller chance of getting unexpected bills, and that pesky thing of the car being really old and it could just die at any moment... it really is unfortunate that cars don't have a 3 second re-spawn rate... heck, even a 30 second rate would be sweet... the car dies and a new one just reappears... the garbage collection just making the old one vanish without a trace.

So... yea, that's what's up today. I hope I entertained someone...

that's it for tonight. g'ngiht

Later,
SteveO

a long day.

Today was my 1st 12 hour shift... and it wasn't the hardest, but it was kinda frustrating for a good chunk of it... I think the best part is they started giving me my own test cases, so I can think of ways to think of new cases to work with.

1st. the good part is I got my Microsoft badge and my bus pass today, so I'll start taking the bus tomorrow.

2nd when I went to get my badge I got a nail in my tire, and the tire went flat when I was on my way to get a new one. that cost about $93

3rd we went to Evelyn's mom's house for dinner and she made us fish and clams... that was good!

4th, when we got home, kinda late we had to call security to have some guy towed from my spot.
now I'm waiting for the tow truck so I can move my car and go to bed.

it really sucks that people have no consideration and park in my so much. I hate it. but I think I hear the tow truck outside now, so that means I'll be able to go to bed and get some sleep.

in short, not the best day, but at least I won't have to drive my car to work every day... but it will take me an extra hour to get to work... and I'll have to wait an hour for the bus when I work 12 hour shifts. so... yea, that's my story, and I guess it's not too bad to have to use public transit, but at least it won't cost me anything.

so... yup yup yup, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

later,
SteveO

Another day in the refrigerator

Day 2 at Bungie. More testing on Halo 3... today we had this big ordeal over the Xbox hack where someone got into the custom game menu due to some sort of NAT error... we couldn't repo (reproduce) it yet... but on the other hand I did repo an error 5 times (out of 118 attempts...) so it was a good day.

I was even pleased to hear that everyone is really happy with me because nobody else actually had the patience to do that. after that I played for a while... you know, to get to know the stages well enough so that they can tell me to go somewhere and I know how to get there... and I shot at some people on the way... gotta love halo...

Then when I got home I found out that Dell now offers 3 computers that come loaded with Linux! and they offer 1 year support for people to learn! this is awesome!

Then I checked out Dealcatcher.com and found a dell online coupon for $500 off a dell Inspiron notebook of over $1399 (which considering after pricing out the computer I want, it came out to be $1360)... meaning that if I upgraded to a better monitor, I could get a better computer than I wanted for $918... I can't wait until I get enough money to get a new computer... I guess that I can deal with having another Dell if it runs Linux out of the box!

So, check out my shared items in Google reader section on the right to look at Another Linux Milestone to see dell computers pre-loaded with Ubuntu Linux...

check out Links on the frizzlefry home page for cool deal sites!


Later,
SteveO

Day one at Bungie...

Deep in the darkest corners of Bungie Studios is a little room filled with computers... known to myself as the refrigerated sardine can. It's nice, about 10 of us are all crammed in a room with about 60 computers and over 200 X Box 360 game councils. All day today I was doing Black Box testing (testing a released product with no debugging tools) on the X-Box Live server for the Halo 3 Multi-player Beta. It was kinda cool. I must have started and dropped over 80 games today, but it was all in the name of finding a few certain bugs that they have been trying to track down.

I found it entertaining that we were getting out early today and only working an 8 hour day. I guess typically we will be working 60-80 hour weeks for the next few months. including nights and weekends.

It's cool though, the normal work day is Mon - Fri, 10AM - 6:30PM, and everything outside of that is overtime. I get paid vacation time, and certain holidays we get payed for even if we don't work.

but I'm not really supposed to talk about what I do... I'm just supposed to play dumb about everything... including what the beta test (publically available now) is like and stuff like that. But I'm really happy. It really is my dream job! I mean come on... how many people get to play am entire video game beginning to end 4 months before it comes out... get to give a vote on what skins the characters will end up with in the RCs (Release Candidates)... and even get to have to potential to have glitches I find fixed? it's so sweet!

And all for the sacrifice of working a butt load of overtime... It's really not bad at all... it was the quickest 8 hours I ever worked... free snacks... we had a holiday barbecue... free pop and juice... it's just great! I can't wait until I get my badge and bus pass... unfortunately I had to drive to work today, and I will probably drive at least the next couple days, but then I'll be taking the bus so that I can have some much needed reading time.

anyway... that was my first day. I need to go take the dog for a walk or something...

Later,
SteveO

A New Chair!

Today I got a letter from Michigan... it contained my 2006 state tax returns! so I went down to check out Ikea's no sales tax sale! hidden deep in the employee only section of the as is section ( I get special access because they all know me there) and there I saw it! A nice computer chair with good back support! just what I've been looking for sense we got here! so it's mine now! I'll have a picture soon. They gave it to me for only $40! it's awesome! a $80 chair too... so yup yup yup! thanks mom! I'll have pictures soon!

Later,
SteveO

New today...

so, tonight (about 5 minutes ago) I started a new home page. it's at the right under my links... and it is done using Google Pages. a new service still being beta tested in Google labs. So far it does a good job at making the web page creation process fairly easy, but I guess there is some room for improvement. but anyone who knows how to use MS Word could use it to make a simple page with cool little gadgets on it. so check it out!

Later,
SteveO

I love samosas!

so, tonight I went up to Alki and went for a walk near the beach by all the bars with Allister. We went to a bar, got a burger and had a couple beers while the pistons vs ohio game was on. it was such a nice day all day long... Mt Rainier was out all day, but I never got a good shot at the mountain... I did however get a good shot at the Olympic mountains. Then, after I dropped Al off, I went home, and Maninther had brought over a whole tray of like 20 or so samosas... I love samosas! They are these pouches of bread filled with potato and spices and stuff... they rock.

Anyway, on our way home, we took a picture of Seattle as the night came near... which turned out ok... I think I've taken better though... and Evelyn got mad at me for taking Alister even though yesterday I told him I would take him up there, and she said that if she went up there she wouldn't want to go if Allister was going. She says I treat her like s*** when I'm with my friends... I think it's because I don't give her all of my attention and she gets jealous. anyway... here is Seattle... It's not the best picture, but it gets the point across...


Later,
SteveO

P.S. the icon here means that I used Picasa to put this picture on my blog... it works pretty nicely if you select all the pictures you want to put up at once.