Attn: Seattle-area Fanboys & Fangirls!

Tickets for the Lord Of The Rings Trilogy at the Cinerama go on sale Thursday Oct 9 at 10am. Basically you get to see all 3 films Dec 16, the day before the official opening of Return Of The King.

http://www.cinerama.com/special_events.html


Tickets for The Matrix: Revolutions IMAX at the Pacific Science Center go on sale Friday Oct 10th, starting on opening day Nov 5th.

http://www.pacsci.org/default.html

First Day @ Sierra

I'm sitting in my office at Sierra, and I'm still working on getting my machine setup and getting familiar with the corp policies and such. I really need a new chair, a new mouse, and a larger monitor as these temp ones are driving me nuts, but it is nice to have an office again. They apparently have ordered some new machines that should be here in 2 weeks and until then I'm using this one.

Some good things: Payday is every two weeks so I'll have some money before my next month's bills (although my paycheck next week will only cover 3 days). Juice and sodas are free. There is an arcade & pool table and a nice kitchen.

Some not-so-good things: Bi-weekly timesheets--bleh. No long Christmas break.

I'm spending my first day getting development tools installed and "getting familiar with the products" (i.e. installing and playing Hoyle card games).

Update: Well I've signed all the requisite HR paperwork and had a safety training meeting--our safety Nazi is *serious* about her preparations... it makes the Boy Scout in me proud. Had a quick lunch with some of my teammates, but really haven't had much time with any of them as of yet.

Update 2: I now have an id badge--the first time I've ever had one at any job--and a new chair... yeah!

Welcome to globalization, baby...

OK, so I'm now a little clearer on what company I actually work for. I am actually employed by "Vivendi Universal", which is a merged Vivendi and Universal Studios. They in turn own Havas, a German-based publishing company. The software division is Havas Interactive. Sierra Entertainment is a development house that is owned by Havas Interactive. HI also owns Blizzard Entertainment, and as some of you may know back when the purchase deal happened... it wasn't a good thing for the employees there and many of them got hosed on their stock valuations.

As with all things corporate, they have actually reorganized since then and I really work for Vivendi Universal Games and their studios include Sierra Entertainment (my group), Blizzard Entertainment, Knowledge Adventure, Black Label Games, and Universal Interactive.

Actually the Sierra Seattle studio is the remnants of the Sierra studio Dynamix, which they had bought, and was based in Eugene OR then relocated to Seattle back when Sierra was down-sizing.

Is anyone else dizzy at this point?

Anyhow, I'm clearly working for "the man" and I'm fairly sure a French man at that :>

(no subject)

Got a ruling on that speeding ticket back. Basically they will give me a 1 year deferral (and King County apparently only allows 1 every 7 years for a moving violation like speeding) and the ticket will be dismissed on three conditions: no other traffic violations for 1 year, $100 to the courthouse with 3 months, and 10 hours of community service reported to the court within 3 months.

Guess 10 hours of community service is better than wasting the same amount of time taking a boring defensive driving course. Any suggestions as to where I should do my community service?

In other news, there is concert on Nov 16th at McCaw Hall in Seattle with Mary Chapin Carpenter, Shawn Colvin, Patti Griffin, and Dar Williams. I'm thinking I'll not be able to make it as I've spent my concert budget for Nov on Indigo Girls...

More reflections on Sierra

It also seems like my new co-workers are NOT foodies. They invited me to lunch today with an ex-Sierra employee that now works at Monolith, and they had decided to meet at Wendy's. Sigh. I guess I'll continue to be going home for lunch more often than not unless I find some other folks in the area would enjoy actual restaurants :>