crazy crazy

Over the past couple of weeks things have been pretty crazy, at the office and on the home front... most of it I mentioned in the last post...

With the move from one project to another at work, I spent part of last week tying up the lose ends on the old project while attempting to ramp up as quickly and smoothly as possible on the new project. Unfortunately, life didn't want to cooperate with that schedule. Aside from some minor issues with getting things all closed off on the old project, my original schedule for ramping up on the new project was being interrupted and "hijacked" on a minute by minute basis... usually when making a switch of this sort, the first thing to do is spend a few days just playing the game. Get acclimated with the game, controls, story, themes, gameplay, overall design, etc., and then file some feedback on the current state. While I had intended on taking that route, I instead had to get started right away on learning where everyone was at working on the project, where the other Design QA Analysts were focusing their time and effort, learning what reporting and feedback had been done to this point, and start coming up with a plan on how to get us from "now" to the end of the project.

With all of that in mind, I had booked off a few days for an extra long weekend... I had actually requested the time off before learning of the project swap... the timing just turned out to be unfortunate...

On top of all of this, I received a very sad phone call from Tia last wednesday... her grandpa in Nova Scotia had passed away. It was really sad because Tia and I had been talking for the past couple of years about going out east sometime next year to be able to see her family... so, this definitely dampened the excitement of that trip, but I really hope we can still make the trip out there because I would really love to meet the other side of Tia's family and finally get a chance to see the beautiful countryside that I keep hearing about and seeing in Tia's photography.

So, after getting a little bit of work done on the new project last Tuesday, I missed the better part of Wednesday, worked some more on Thursday, had Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday off, and returned to work today/yesterday depending on how you look at it. Now, we are essentially 3 days into our first week of a 3 week sprint, and we have a LOT of work to get done before the sprint ends on Dec 5, and even more that needs to get done for Dec 19 when we break for the holidays for a couple weeks.

And that is where I am right now... awake working on documentation and scheduling for the next couple of weeks... while my beautiful girlfriend sleeps down the hall... I really need to get this stuff done so I can go get some rest with her :-)

Needless to say, it should be an interesting few weeks as we head down the homestretch to holiday break.

b

(note I am already posting more regularly here... told ya :-) )

ah geez!

Well, as expected, I forgot about this blog... :-P

Actually, that's not entirely true... I just got really busy and didn't have a lot to write about for a while... at least not regarding me.

I have been writing a lot lately, but it's all for a "secret project" and also for documentation for a project at work... which brings me back to the being busy thing...

For the past 4 months or so I had been working on an unannounced project at the studio, but the studio has gone through some changes and I have now been bumped to a new, also unannounced, project. I am making a straight lateral jump onto the new project. Moving from the QA Design Lead title on my previous project to the same position on the new project.

This is actually a pretty exciting development for me. While I was getting a lot of stuff ready on the previous project, this new team is more established, I am pretty familiar with most of the team, and I am also working with more QA Design Analysts right away instead of waiting for the team to ramp up. The best part for me though is part of my personal goals for joining this project is to see the project through to release as the QA Design Lead, and train up and prepare one of the QA Design Analysts to be able to officially take this role on the next project, while I hopefully make either another lateral or possibly forward jump to a new position on an upcoming project down the road.

The Analyst I am working with to "mentor" is actually someone I have a tremendous amount of respect for. He constantly is trying to learn more about the projects we work on, the industry as a whole, and improving process. So my role working him will be more guidance than true teaching. He's got a tremendous foundation already laid out for his career. He actually reminds me of myself quite a bit, as far as work ethic, eagerness to learn and excel at new tasks and challenges... overall, couldn't be happier about this opportunity, for myself and for him. It's going to be awesome to have someone to talk game design and theories with, and our skills actually look like they will compliment each other really well. An opportunity for both of us to learn and grow our skill sets over the course of the next year or so.

I've also been keeping very busy with creating some documentation, previously for the old team and now for the new team. I'm actually hoping it's something we can use for the department as as whole as well. I have been learning a tremendous amount of new stuff over the past 2 years since I joined the BioWare family. That new knowledge continues to grow on what seems to be a minute by minute basis... and I LOVE my job for that exact reason.

As for the personal/home front... it's been a busy time there too...

The house is finally starting to come together, and just in time too... my younger cousin is set to move into our home in the next couple of weeks when he takes a job as a term tester at BioWare. It should be pretty cool having him here... hopefully this experience will show him a career path he may not have considered or been fully aware of previously. Plus, now I'll have someone to help me tackle the co-op modes in a ton of the games I keep telling myself I want to finish :-)

Tia and I are busy as always, her with work and school, and me with work and side projects, and I'm back to playing hockey on a team again. Of course both of us are always doing work in the house as well.

Been trying to get caught up on my ever growing backlog of games to play while at the same time trying to get some concept art and level design learning work done, and let's not forget learning more and more about the various design theories out there... all this leads to a lack of sleep... but it's all worth it :-)

Anyway, that is enough for me today... but I hope to make posting to this blog more of a regular thing... I even made it one of my starting tabs in Firefox, so that should serve as a reminder going forward :-P

One more thing to forget about...

Well here is my first post on a new blog that I am likely to forget about like I have all my previous blogs :-P

Anyway, I thought this time it/I would stand a better chance of staying up to date since there is a lot more going on in my life to talk and update about...

And even though there is tons of stuff to talk about right now... I am going to bail until later since the new NHL 09 demo on PSN is just too awesome to stop playing.