Hope everyone had a happy Christmahaunakwanzaka this year. I spent a few days playing poker with the extended family and getting sloppy drunk a few nights in a row, dodging the hangover all but once (I atribute that more to lack of sleep the night prior than my inability to hold my alcohol).

Having said that, I picked up some nice swag from the family this year, the most notable being the new desk chair I'm sitting in right now. You have no idea how nice it is not to lean back and be sitting at a 45 degree angle (the back broke on my old chair :/ ). I also picked up some gear from the Guinness store (ahh, how my family knows me) and a few iTunes prepaid cards, because shopping for music for me usually freaks my family out (...ever since I tried to discuss the philisophical aspects of "damnation and a day" over dinner)

I've done jack squat for anything creative in the last month, aside from a web-project (still in progress at Vaudeville-Music.com) and a sig/backdrop for my brother's WoW character. Check the radio on the mainpage for some tidbits of what I've been buying lately (I'm on a Judas Priest/Rob Halford kick lately. good oldskool metal, for sure) with some dance type stuff thrown in for variety.

I hope EA games gets their ass handed to them in court, really I do.

Everyone knows I'm not a fan of big companies that think they can control lives, and when those lives belong to geeks like me, I have a tendency to get in touch with the hate filled tree-monkey deep inside me. Enter EA Games and a tell-all blog post by the family member of an EA GFX designer. Let the anrgy, vine swinging, poo-flinging begin.

The background: Guy works for EA. when he's hired, the EA people get real 'evasive' about working hours. guy starts working normal 8hr shifts, 5 days a week. then his project enters "The crunch" (apparently an accelerated schedule when a project is behind on production).

from the original post:

Within weeks production had accelerated into a 'mild' crunch: eight hours six days a week. Not bad. Months remained until any real crunch would start, and the team was told that this "pre-crunch" was to prevent a big crunch toward the end; at this point... ...the project was dead on schedule."

then:

...they gave a specific date for the end of the crunch, which was still months away from the title's shipping date... That date came and went. And went, and went. When the next news came it was not about a reprieve; it was another acceleration: twelve hours six days a week, 9am to 10pm.

Weeks passed, another ending date came and went, then:

Now, it seems, is the "real" crunch, the one that the producers of this title so wisely prepared their team for by running them into the ground ahead of time. The current mandatory hours are 9am to 10pm -- seven days a week -- with the occasional Saturday evening off for good behavior (at 6:30pm).

so, 85 hour, mandatory work weeks, suspended vacation time becuase of "crunch" status, and here's the best part: EA SAYS YOU ARE EXEMPT FROM OVERTIME PAY

so now, we have lawsuits!

Slavery is bad yo, I hope EA takes it like a splintered, nail studded 2x4 up the backside!

take a hit, pass it down! ahh, the ease of things when an empty 250GB HDD starts making it's rounds like the proverbial bong.

It's actually pretty interesting to browse through what others have left behind, you get a real rounded out view by looking at what someone listens to in their spare time. Then you realize that by participating, your giving others a look at you >_< I feel so naked!

despite the fact I have to get up for work in a few hours, what am I doing? Updating the website becuase I love you people. I hope you appreciate it :P

Anyways, it's just one update (other art section), but it is the end result of a long nasty project that started as a 'dicking around' poser session one night last week, morphed into a 4 day tweakfest, and ended with a dozen or so hours in PSP making a stock render look like something evil. I'd like to thank Iced Earth, Guinness and Todd McFarlane. Now I shall sleep.