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Jun. 18th, 2002 08:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
goldenmeanToday was apparently big company meeting day at EA. I wonder why they had it on a Tuesday. It was much more of a Friday affair. And all very silly. One of the teams that a lot of my training friends are on are meant to have a final candidate ready at the end of the week. They're all going to be at work until past midnight. Want to guess how excited they were to blow two hours in a meeting?
It was all very ra-ra, go EA. If we had a corporate song, I'm sure we all would have been expected to sing it. As is there was a lot of "We're kicking ass, woo hoo! In your face Infogrames!" and "Well, as I'm sure you all know, the stock is doing great!" to which the general response in my section was "Nope, actually, we didn't have any idea. We're all limited to six month contracts, because otherwise you'd have to give us benefits, remember?". I probably would have cared more if part-time testing weren't so obviously second class citizens.
EA's a pretty damn cool company to work for, but days like this remind me that it is still a company. The whole thing was subtly icky. But it was two hours of a new sort of pointlessness, as opposed to the old tedious sort of pointlessness that comprises the rest of my work day. If I drank beer I probably would have been pretty excited about the concept of happy hour afterwards, but as is I just went back to the cube and read my Compilers book more.
I decided to pay attention to good things for the rest of the day to prevent me from slipping into misanthropism mode. Here's a partial list.
1) There was a woman sitting next to me at the Caltrain station with long hair, and when the train came by, the wind whipped several strands of it straight up and left it floating there like some aquatic frond.
2) On the way down University Avenue, two children in the maybe four to five year old age range went whizzing by emitting short almost ultrasonically high pitched giggling shrieks. I decided that they were playing Dolphin Tag.
3) At the bookstore there was a 30's something computer geek looking person explaining the premise behind one of Margarett Weis and Tracy Hickman's innumerous Dragonlance books to his pre-adolescent daughter in the tone of voice of someone imparting something beloved. Sometimes I have hope for the future.
Speaking of the bookstore, I went in looking to pick up the most recent Douglas Coupland. I was flipping through Life After God for the umpteenth time (rereading Gettsyburg in particular, which almost always makes me cry) at the Houseness BBQ, and I remembered that he had a new(ish) one out. Didn't end up having it there though so I picked up Haruki Murakami's Sputnik Sweetheart and Nick Hornby's How to be Good. Not that I'm not having fun with my Compilers book, but sentences like "Both deterministic and nondeterministic finite automata are capable of recognizing precisely the regular sets." can only carry my love of reading so far (Tangent: Has anyone ever actually written anything in PL/I? The fact that "IF THEN THEN THEN = ELSE; ELSE ELSE = THEN;" is legal syntax amuses the hell out of me (Not as much as the fact that people routinely write poetry in Quantum Intercal does, but still...))
Ok, laundry time and shower time, and maybe some chatting on irc, then tomorrow.
a
It was all very ra-ra, go EA. If we had a corporate song, I'm sure we all would have been expected to sing it. As is there was a lot of "We're kicking ass, woo hoo! In your face Infogrames!" and "Well, as I'm sure you all know, the stock is doing great!" to which the general response in my section was "Nope, actually, we didn't have any idea. We're all limited to six month contracts, because otherwise you'd have to give us benefits, remember?". I probably would have cared more if part-time testing weren't so obviously second class citizens.
EA's a pretty damn cool company to work for, but days like this remind me that it is still a company. The whole thing was subtly icky. But it was two hours of a new sort of pointlessness, as opposed to the old tedious sort of pointlessness that comprises the rest of my work day. If I drank beer I probably would have been pretty excited about the concept of happy hour afterwards, but as is I just went back to the cube and read my Compilers book more.
I decided to pay attention to good things for the rest of the day to prevent me from slipping into misanthropism mode. Here's a partial list.
1) There was a woman sitting next to me at the Caltrain station with long hair, and when the train came by, the wind whipped several strands of it straight up and left it floating there like some aquatic frond.
2) On the way down University Avenue, two children in the maybe four to five year old age range went whizzing by emitting short almost ultrasonically high pitched giggling shrieks. I decided that they were playing Dolphin Tag.
3) At the bookstore there was a 30's something computer geek looking person explaining the premise behind one of Margarett Weis and Tracy Hickman's innumerous Dragonlance books to his pre-adolescent daughter in the tone of voice of someone imparting something beloved. Sometimes I have hope for the future.
Speaking of the bookstore, I went in looking to pick up the most recent Douglas Coupland. I was flipping through Life After God for the umpteenth time (rereading Gettsyburg in particular, which almost always makes me cry) at the Houseness BBQ, and I remembered that he had a new(ish) one out. Didn't end up having it there though so I picked up Haruki Murakami's Sputnik Sweetheart and Nick Hornby's How to be Good. Not that I'm not having fun with my Compilers book, but sentences like "Both deterministic and nondeterministic finite automata are capable of recognizing precisely the regular sets." can only carry my love of reading so far (Tangent: Has anyone ever actually written anything in PL/I? The fact that "IF THEN THEN THEN = ELSE; ELSE ELSE = THEN;" is legal syntax amuses the hell out of me (Not as much as the fact that people routinely write poetry in Quantum Intercal does, but still...))
Ok, laundry time and shower time, and maybe some chatting on irc, then tomorrow.
a
