Microsoft definitely knows how to have a meeting, that much is definitely clear after today. My team was sitting on the floor level at Safeco Field in between home plate and the pitching mound with a gigantic constructed stage on the other side of the mound and gigantic video screen on either side. Needless to say, we were definitely able to see all of the action that was going on. You could argue that it was almost more of a production than just a meeting since there was a host (Seth Meyers from SNL, so I had no idea who he was), videos, product demos, blimps, and paper airplanes. The last two were related because the goal of the paper airplanes was to get them in the nets the blimps were carrying around.
Compared to today, tomorrow (and probably the next week) is going to seem really, really boring. I’m not doing anything for Day of Caring tomorrow, so I’ll just be going into work for a little while to do what I do best and read emails all day long. Reading emails might not be the most fun thing to do in the world, but I should probably save anything that might be remotely entertaining for later when it won’t have to live in the shadow of today.
Personal - Seattle
So apparently I’ve been failing miserably at my job of promoting Chuck among my friends because Alex just saw it for the very first time extremely recently. If any of you are not aware of this insanely awesome TV show, all I can say is hit up your Netflix account (or Hulu if you’re cheap and don’t mind watching the series out of order) and get on board. It’s sharing a half-season timeslot with Heroes this year, so I don’t expect to talk to a single person come January who hasn’t watched this show.
My work week is effectively over now, but that doesn’t mean I get a four day weekend. Tomorrow I go to work, get on a bus, and get taken to Safeco Field downtown for the company meeting which should last until mid-afternoon. When you take into account the time to get back to Microsoft I may not really be leaving work that early, but it’s definitely not going to be a hard day by any stretch tomorrow. In fact, the hardest thing will probably be deciding what clothes to wear so that I stay comfortable all day long.
Personal - Seattle
It seems like almost everything that I want to get right now I have to wait to come out. Zune HD, have to wait. All the cool games I got to play at PAX, have to wait. Netbooks based off of Intel’s new platform for netbooks that should offer better power and battery life, have to wait. Come on, companies; I have money to spend now and no one wants to have their product ready for me to buy it!
One thing that falls into the category of something I want but I don’t feel a burning urge to go immediately buy it is the DSi. Really the only thing new it adds that I’m interested in is the download store like the Wii has, but I’m a sucker for downloadable games on the cheap. Especially when said games are “retro” and rereleases of games that I already own but for a system that I don’t want to drag out of the closet to be able to play it. Those are the killer ones because you already know they’re insanely fun to play.
Personal - Seattle
Let’s see, today I…did pretty much nothing. Sure, I watched Shrek 2 from my server, I popped in Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction to start replaying it, and I even managed to log into Aion and play in the beta some, but in the grand scheme of things, does any of that really count? I used Labor Day for exactly what it was meant: a break from any and all forms of labor.
I’ve already gone through my rundown of everything that’s happening this week, so maybe it’s best to start looking forward to what will be going on next weekend. I definitely plan on getting in a new movie at some point, probably Gamer. Aside from that, the Aion beta runs until Sunday, so I’ll keep playing around with that until it expires also.
Personal - Seattle
I think after spending $60 on preordering Aion, the worst thing I could possibly do would be to play it soooo much this next week that I get burned out by the time that it really launches in another couple of weeks. I expect that I’ll probably get slightly past the newbie zone and maybe into the mid-teens by the time the beta ends, and since the level cap will be 50 at launch, there should still be plenty of new stuff for me to experience. I like the fact that it seems like they took the best parts of WoW and brought them over into a unique game rather than just trying to make a WoW clone. If you’re going to clone WoW, why not just play the original?
This next week at Microsoft isn’t exactly going to be one of the more productive ones since my start date, and that goes for everyone, not just me. Basically, tomorrow is a holiday (duh), Thursday is the company meeting all day long, and Friday is Day of Caring where you’re encouraged to go volunteer at specific United Way projects rather than come into work. So…two day work week effectively? I believe this arrangement works quite well.
Personal - Seattle
Microsoft, I’m quite happy that you feel the need to shove lots of money at me every couple of weeks. Seriously, I have no problem with that. I’d just guess that when I want to give you back some of the money in the form of buying points on Xbox Live, you might want to take it. However, rejecting my credit card because of an authorization problem isn’t really helping that cause much. Steam will take it, Stardock will take it, so why not you?
Tomorrow I might go back to PAX, but likely I’ll spend most of my time playing in the open beta of Aion (this is, assuming, the servers can manage to stay up). I would think that NCSoft would have the beta process down pretty well by now so I have high hopes, but since the open beta only lasts for a week, I want to take advantage of the time I have to play it and start “learning” the game before I then have to play through all of the newbie zones again in another couple weeks. Fortunately I’ve seen just about everything there is at PAX aside from the panels going on tomorrow, so I don’t feel like I’d be missing out on much by taking the day off. You can totally put money on the fact that I’ll be there again next year, however.
Personal - Seattle
This weekend, Penny Arcade Expo is happening in Seattle. Basically, this is an event sort of like Quakecon in Dallas, but it’s much more focused on being a exhibit hall like E3 in addition to panels, concerts, and movies. In other words, it completely rocks. I spent a few hours this afternoon at it (it’s held in the convention center downtown), and I’ll very likely head back for a little while tomorrow also. I’ll likely end up using the bus option for transportation tomorrow though since paying $13 for the time I spent there this afternoon just doesn’t sit right with me (especially when Quakecon parking was “free” when it was at the Anatole).
While part of me wants to start playing WoW again, I’m likely going to take this pent up MMO desire and funnel it into Aion for the next month or two. The open (but not to everyone) beta starts Sunday morning, so I’m downloading the client right now and will likely preorder the game on Steam sometime tomorrow. I’m not going in completely blind because Aion is one of the many games being shown off at PAX, so I’ve already seen it being played and will likely be able to play it some tomorrow if I wanted. Anecdotally, quite a new fans claim to be WoW converts (although in the current MMO space, finding one who isn’t is probably more interesting), so that carries high hopes for me that it might be something that keeps my attention to justify the purchase price (and subscription fees, of course).
Personal - Seattle
Once I make this post I’m going to watch Duplicity before going to sleep, and I’m very curious to see if at any point during it my memory will click. Honestly, right now I couldn’t tell you a single fact about the plot of the movie, so whatever I don’t remember will be as if it was totally new to me. However, since I have technically already watched this movie, I may provide my opinion of it again tomorrow, but it won’t get another “review”. Sorry, but I have a one review per movie limit in place here.
Sam, Ryan, and I played Halo 3 for a couple of hours earlier, and I haven’t really gotten any better at that game. Granted, the fact that I play it extremely rarely doesn’t help much with my lack of skills. If I could either spend my time honing my skills on it or doing other things like rewatching movies I’ve forgotten and making blog posts, I think my choice should be fairly obvious by now.
Personal - Seattle
Jump is not the best movie ever made. It’s sort of a hybrid between The Bourne Identity and The Matrix, the former appearing with the shaky cam technique and two groups of people chasing each other around, and the latter with some very stylized and visually impressive fight sequences. Had I seen it when it came out like I intended to, I probably would have thought it was decent but nothing super special and not worth a DVD purchase. I still don’t think it’s purchase worthy, but from the opening scene you can already tell it’s going to be a better movie than District 9. My score: 6/10.
As of today, I can officially consider myself out of the iPhone using crowd. I still have mine and might use it on a phone on occasion (but more likely just for various apps and the like), but my new phone is a Samsung Jack. The path to how I got it is a long and winding one that I don’t feel like typing out (Andrew can attest to this because I did just that for him this morning), but I’m now a Windows Mobile carrying Microsoft employee instead of supporting the competition. It’s the little things in life like that which will help me sleep easier at night.
Personal - Seattle
If I didn’t hold myself to such high journalistic standards here with each one of my posts, I could easily get away with posting meaningless drivel each day that no one really wants to read. Oh wait, you mean I already do? I was actually referring to things like “blah blah” (or maybe to take a page from Arrested Development, Bob Loblaw) or “yadda yadda yadda’. If you believe that my current formations of pixels into letters into words into sentences into paragraphs into posts isn’t any better, then I encourage you to stop reading right now and go visit Bob Loblaw’s Law Blog instead.
Great, now that I’ve chased everyone away, I can talk about them behind their backs. Don’t take me for a fool; I’m not going to talk about them here, out in the open, where they will come back and read these things once they realize that Bob Loblaw’s Law Blog is in fact not as entertaining as mine. I shall post my maligned statements to a secret blog that only I know of. That way, I can even have an ongoing list that I can keep up to date with the latest follies of those I know.
Personal - Seattle