Goodbye Jamdat, Hello ???????

Well, howdy there friends and neighbors.
It sure as shootin' been a while since I've posted anything in this here El Jay.
There's been a whole heap of happenin's down at the Kzinti Ranch!

The biggest news is most definitely my changing job.
This is my last week with Jamdat, a soon-to-be wholly-owned subsidiary of that fun factory, Electronic Arts.
I thought I was going to leave last Friday, but things didn't quite go as planned. It's been a rough ride.

It started with the infamous "KILLDIEKILL!!" post from Thursday January 12th.
I interviewed bright and early at 9am at a new, vibrant company and things went really well overall.
The rest of the day was complete crap, hence the "KILLDIEKILL" post.
I heard back from my agency about my interview, and the people seemed to like me.
A final interview was scheduled for Tuesday the 17th, also bright and early so as to not miss any Jamdat work hours.
It also went really well, and the guy at the new company told me he wanted me to start on Tuesday the 24th.
He would be in touch with the guy at my agency and would iron out all the details, including my salary.

Salary.
Yes, this is a real grown-up job just like for adults!
A permanent full-time salaried position with full medical benefits and other niftiness.
I've never had one of those.
Woa.

Anyway, I was supposed to hear back by week's end, and I didn't. I started getting worried.
I wanted to bail from Jamdat at the end of my shift on Friday.
But I needed confirmation that everything was hunky-dory and diamond dogs.
Le argh!
So Friday rolls around, and still nothing. Meanwhile, Embed, the department I'm in, is suddenly slammed with a
metric buttload of new games to test, so much so that there's talk of coming in on Saturday and maybe even Sunday!
Holy crap, things must be desperate indeed! Damn the expenses, full contractors ahead!!
What to do? What to do?
Finally, I got ahold of my guy at the agency, and he tells me what's what.
I'm 99% hired and the general manager needs to approve me and my salary.
This will be done on Monday the 23rd.
Holy cutting-it-close, Batman!!
So I decided to take the Saturday work at Jamdat, and also show up on the following Monday.
This has the net effect of giving me a bigger paycheck, as we're only allowed 35 hours a week (5 days, 7 hours).
This another way Jamdat sucks compared to Sony Mobile. At least, at Sony, I got my full 40 hours.
Saturday was interesting.
I put in a full 8 hours with no lunch penalty. The company let us order lunch from Louise's Trattoria, which
caused a few double-takes around the office, as it's not exactly Domino's or Pizza Slut, ifyaknowwhatImean.
We got a lot of work done and had fun watching the Embed head's head almost explode.
He's French, from Marseille, and gets downright hilarious when he's pissed.
"Charles! Yoo arr facking late!! Where have yoo been?!?! Bordel!!"

Brought half of my pizza home after work.
Pascal was entertaining an out of country friend from, yes, France. He's a producer guy who works with Luc Besson
and is friends with my brother's producer "Manu". The sibling was telling him all about Hollywood and movies.
They went off somewhere and left me alone to relax. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah...
I think I played some more Killzone. It's fun, but it's got some annoying bugs in it.
Then I watched some basic cable, which is unexplicably available on my TV now.
I watched a show on "Ski Dubai" being constructed. It's an artificial ski resort in the middle of the desert.
Went to bed late.


Sunday January 22nd
Woke up at noon. Found a message on the machine from the brother. He stayed out really late with the French guy
and had crashed on a rollaway bed in his hotel room. The caller ID said "Le Bel Age Hotel". Duuuude!!
I enjoyed my day off as much as possible, noodling on the computer, downloading tracks from this new band I had
been exposed to (Mindless Self Indulgence, thanks porsupah!!).
The sibling eventually returned, with Frenchie in tow. We plugged his MP3 player into my computer and grabbed a
few of his tracks, and gave him some in exchange. I converted some M4As he had into MP3s he could actually use.
After the friend left, Pascal and I went to Trader Joe's to do our food-shopping.
We had dinner upon our return, and it was stupid good:
between the two of us, we snarfled a whole pound of Portlock Alaskan smoked salmon, spread on Il Forniao buns,
with whipped cream cheese (instead of gota cheese), vine tomatoes, onions, and squeezed lemons.
We picked out a strange and wonderful new drink for this sumptious meal:
"Villa Italia" brand Italian Blood Orange Soda, which is as exotic and indescribable a beverage as it sounds.
It's really tasty and quite unusual, and reminds me faintly of red grapefruit soda mixed with passion fruit.
The bottles are easy to spot: clear glass, filled with an impossibly red Klingon Blood Wine like liquid.
We are bon-vivants indeed!!


And now, we're back to Monday the 23rd, today.
I went to Jamdat as usual, and started work. Or not. Actually, I didn't do jack until after lunch.
They didn't have any game for me to test. They were waiting on more stuff to come down from production.
I read through my copy of Gamepro and promptly donated it to the company library.
(These game magazines like Gamepro and EGM are completely disposable to me. No sense keeping them.)
Lunch was cool. I was able to hook up with two recent hires and I showed 'em where the "good" In-N-Out is.
Lunch was goooood!!!
After lunch, lo and behold, an actual game for me to test. We've doing a lot of Tetris, and that's what I got.
All this time, I had been checking my e-mail regularly, waiting to hear back from my guy at the agency.
With still nothing in my e-mail box ("Hey, Netflix is sending me "Lord Of War" today. Cool!"), I phoned my
agency guy to find out what was what. It took a couple of tries but I managed to get him on the line.
And he had good news! I was approved! I was 100% hired! And my salary was at the top end of my specified scale!
My new job starts on Monday January 30th, instead of Tuesday January 24th. But hey, you know what?
WHO CARES!?!?? I'M HIRED!!! HUZZAH!! HURRAY! YIPPIE KIYAY MOHERFUCKER!!! I'M HIRED!!!
I updated the guys in Embed (I had told 'em last Friday what was going on. They're good guys.), then gave my
resignation notice to the head of QA. My last day will be Friday January 27th. And then I'm gone.
I then sent an e-mail to Pascal to break the good news to him.
And then I worked my tail off, trying to finish testing that game before shift's end.
Then I went home.
The sibling and I celebrated by going to a local chinese restaurant and getting some good food.

Oh yeah, I haven't mentioned the name of the new company I'm going to yet.
It's Amp'd Mobile, a new cellphone provider with exclusive content and all sorts of multimedia goodness.
They have EVDO handsets that stream live video. It's really neat stuff.
I'm going to be a QA Engineer there, testing all sorts of programs and games.
It's going to be cool!!


PS: I got the LJ icon extension thingy, check the new icons!