How to not get a job

I'm a cool guy, and to keep my place in the hierarchy of society as a cool guy, I always need to be doing cool things. In this particular instance, I'm talking about when I bought a Wii, because there was a point in time when having a Wii was pretty cool. As it turns out, Wii is actually one of the biggest scams of all time. The graphics suck, the motion controls don't really work, you can't watch DVDs on it, really you can't do much except play the games that are on Wii. Here is the second part of that problem. The games on Wii are horrendous. Sure, the staples are fine. Any Mario/Zelda game is going to be fine. But what a slippery slope the system takes down from there.

In order to validate my purchase, I decided that instead of admitting defeat and trading the system away while it still had some value, I would need to dig deep and find some quality games. Upon Bruce's recommendation I checked out IGN and started looking through the trenches to find some games that didn't totally suck ass. I ended up finding a couple good ones I never would have heard about, so pretty much every day I check IGN just to see if anything groundbreaking is up.

Well, on October 12th, there certainly was something of note. This was the news story on their front page. It was a call that they were hiring editors. If you read the article they posted, it seems like they don't take themselves too seriously. Which makes sense if you've ever seen Grandma's Boy.


Here is my cover letter for that job. I will include analysis after any points which I see fit:

To whom it may concern,

Let me begin by writing that I am not comfortable beginning with such a formal statement when applying for a job at a videogame company. As it would seem on your “call to arms” online, this is one job that requires a certain type of laid-back personality. Maybe not as lax as the guys from Grandma’s Boy, but I think you catch my drift.

Ok, so film studies taught me to underline the titles of movies. Good work.

Here are the facts: my name is Richard Shilling. I am Canadian. Along with that goes every stereotype you could possibly come up with. I love hockey and beer, and I am always cold. I go to the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Every day I wake up and wonder who decided that this would be a good place to start a city, it has seriously got to be the coldest place you could ever imagine. It got down to -50 degrees Celcius (that’s -58F for you Yanks) last year and I wasn’t sure if I was going to survive the day.

I had to use a unit converter online to get Celsius to Fahrenheit. This paragraph has absolutely no business being in a cover letter.

When I was a little boy, every three years I would ask for the same birthday present: a re-subscription to Nintendo Power magazine. This was before the days of IGN, when I was forced to play Pokemon without a walkthrough (which led to me using my Master Ball on Zapdos). I fantasized about having a career in the videogame industry, and when I saw this ad online, I was overcome with a rush of nostalgia. All my life I’ve loved videogames, and now this is a chance to realize my sickest fantasies.

Think they stopped reading after this point?

I believe that my first time playing through the Shadow Temple was scarier than the first time I watched SAW. I believe that every business course should have a week where students must negotiate certain Pokemon trades. I believe that plumbing is an honest day’s work, because if you can work with poo all day, surely there is nothing that can bring you down. I have signed up for online dating websites, with one of my sticking points being how I can play Guitar Hero guitar and drums on expert. Between my roommates and myself, we have three PS3s, three Xbox 360s, and two Wiis. Videogames have had an enormous presence throughout my life.

Unfortunately for me, everything in this paragraph is true.

If you can believe it, I do enjoy activities other than gaming. I love hockey, to the point where I decided on a whim last year that I was going to start a blog about my beloved Calgary Flames. That material is available at http://thelightersideoffire.blogspot.com. Be warned: there is some harsh language. I prefer to think of it as “colorful”. As well, I have recently teamed up with another blogger who worked for TSN as an intern this summer; that material is available at http://pstfreehockey.blogspot.com. I think that even without a strong hockey background the material is accessible; I mostly aim for writing that comes off as dry and extremely sarcastic. You’ll find links to some of my personal favorite entries in the e-mail I sent.

Major league name drop: "I write with a guy who got coffee for the guys at TSN this summer". Sold.

I hope this cover letter finds you well and I certainly hope it stands out, as I am sure you are going to be flooded with all sorts of attempts to beg and plead for jobs. So to conclude, when continuing the hiring process, just remember that Bioware is located in Edmonton. If the city can produce one good thing, certainly it can produce another. Also, I want to move to the Bay Area upon graduation, but honestly I’d rather get there ASAP, something I could justify doing if I actually landed this job (I’m in my fourth year of studies right now).

-Richard Shilling

I would LOVE to leave Edmonton and move to San Francisco.

This is really more of a cry for help than anything, can somebody please teach me how to write a proper cover letter? 

My New Favourite Twitter Meme

By Dan Moser

So if you have been on Twitter you may have noticed people like to put a # before a string of words occasionally. Sometimes, "hash tagging" a phrase can become so popular that it spawns a terrible television program. Sometimes they fizzle out quickly or never gain a following at all. Recently for example my writing partner and I have been trying to jump start a #SpidermanPSA meme. It has not caught on, probably because I have less than 200 followers and about the same celebrity pull as the homeless guy cleaning the windows of the downtown Toronto coffee shop I'm writing in (ivory tower).

Back to the beef of this "story." The other night I stumbled upon a fantastic hockey related hockey meme: #ECHLMarketingIdeas. Who started this? I have no idea, all I know is that it is hilarious. I assume it came from the same minds that brought us #NHLCupCakes.

Background info: I realize some of my readers (like my family, my primary readers) probably don't get the joke at face value. The ECHL is a feeder league for the AHL which feeds into the NHL. The ECHL is professional AA hockey, it's a league with some hilarious team names, jersey concepts, and team locations. It is actually a lot like Canadian Junior Hockey buy way funnier because it's not teenagers riding the bus across country, it's professional athletes.

My favourite contributions to the meme:

hockeenight Score during shoot-the-puck and you dress for the 3rd #ECHLmarketingideas

Ozman51 #ECHLMarketingIdeas slightly less fighting than the central hockey league. 


TheRealDanMoser At least our website isn't http://www.theechl.com #ECHLMarketingIdeas
(The AHL's website is www.theahl.com. I always thought that was silly)

TheRealDanMoser Is this the year I don't need to get a summer job? #ECHLMarketingIdeas  

TheRealDanMoser ECHL players are just like me and you. Plus they're.....well they are just like me and you. #ECHLMarketingIdeas  

ECHLMarketing Most leagues say "2010-11 season", we say "2010-?" because who knows how sustainable we'll be in a few months. #ECHLmarketingideas 

chrissampang #ECHLMarketingIdeas It's Kazoo Night at the coliseum...because we need a goal song. 

Ozman51 We Use East Kinda Liberally These Days. #ECHLMarketingIdeas  
(There are an awful lot of West coast teams!)

Ozman51 Bubble Hockey ain't got nothin on us. #ECHLMarketingIdeas  

Hockette #ECHLmarketingideas We don't know who we are either.  

ECHLMarketing Don't let any of these tweets fool you, we don't actually have any #ECHLMarketingIdeas  

Real_PeterEvans Even bloggers don't write about us. #ECHLmarketingideas  

HockeyJoePHT It's like beer league hockey except... Actually, it's exactly like beer league hockey. #ECHLMarketingIdeas 

HockeyJoePHT If you thought the Islanders fisherman jersey was bad, you ain't seen nothing yet. #ECHLMarketingIdeas 

Ozman51 Bring your Arena Football stub in for a free fountain drink. #ECHLMarketingIdeas 

HockeyJoePHT Helping you discover rural America one burned out factory town at a time. #ECHLMarketingIdeas 

thelinear #ECHLmarketingideas "Eklund E5 Rumor Alert: There's going to be an awesome @ECHL game this season"  

HockeyJoePHT Looking for all of Doug Risebrough's favorite prospects? We got 'em. #ECHLMarketingIdeas 

thelinear #ECHLmarketingideas: Your-kid-draws-our-logo night http://www.logoserver.com/ECHL.html  

HockeyJoePHT Where mediocrity happens. #ECHLMarketingIdeas 

DownGoesSpezza Wade Redden's NEXT home #ECHLmarketingideas 


So, which were your favourite? Did I miss any good ones? Can you come up with any better ones? 


In all seriousness I can't stop typing in italics, the button is not working. Also, I wish I was playing in the ECHL.
 

Catching up

Footage from Flames practice 10/31/2010

You only need to watch the first two minutes, its worth it.

What is going on with Glencross' pumpkin.

The kid about 1:00 in gets talked to by the Flames TV girl:

Flames TV girl: Cameron are you a big Flames fan?

Cameron: ...Not really.

Can't blame him.

Flames TV girl: Who is your favorite player?

Cameron: Ovech... I mean not Ovechkin. Uhh... Iginla.

What a bandwagon fan.

Two minutes in Ian White gets some camera time and that's when you know it's time to stop watching.

I went to the slaughterhouse  game on Saturday night and was there firsthand to witness what will hopefully be Cory Sarich's final game as a Flame. Also I think someone important from the Dome is (finally) reading some of this stuff, because after Ovechkin's second goal they played a song I had recommended in an earlier post.

Line of the night goes to my dad. During the 2nd intermission (score 7-2 for WSH) there was an advertisement on the Jumbotron that said something to the effect of, if you have tickets you aren't using, the Flames would like you to donate them to some group that gives the tickets to underprivileged youth. Upon this announcement my dad turns to me and says, "Shit, they're already underprivileged, haven't they suffered enough?".

There is a new bet between myself and The Real Dan Moser. For those of you who have been following (Flamesnation.com), myself and Dan made a bet as to who would score first: Taylor Hall, or Olli Jokinen. We put a $5 scratch-and-win on the line. both men scored their first goals of the season on the same night. Obviously the next step was to up the ante. Whichever player gets more goals over the course of the regular season, the loser of the bet has to buy the other person that player's jersey. To put things in a less convoluted way, once Jokinen outscores Hall, I'll be the proud owner of a #13 Flames jersey, courtesy of Dan Moser. Start the count!

Karlsson the natural

Came across a great read this morning when looking for info on who might start in net tonight for the Flames/Avs game. Basically, Henrik Karlsson never had a goalie coach until he turned 21, which means he never learned pretty basic things like proper recovery from the butterfly position etc until an extremely late age. Like, Carey Price is 23. Imagine if he never had anyone teaching him how to talk to the media until then (oops).

I am a fan of old videogames. For me, the last real NHL game made was EA Sports NHL 2004, with everyone's favorite all-star on the cover, Dany Heatley. That game was the first time you could build your own dynasty, and the first time NHL took a step in the direction it goes today, as you could somewhat dangle with the right stick and they got rid of the stupid gamebreaker option:

From Wikipedia:

NHL 2003 introduced a new feature, the GameBreaker. It is activated once a player performs enough "dekes" and it is used to help change the momentum of the game, such as scoring a big goal, delivering a big hit or winning a big fight.

The best part of NHL 2004, besides trading for Kovalchuk and him actually making your team a dynasty for twenty years, was anytime you traded for a goalie. They all had exactly the same mask, which was just a huge logo of the team right on the top/center of the mask. Nothing fancy or specific, just a big logo right on the front.

Boom. This is Karlsson's goalie mask. Whether he intended it to be or not, this is exactly what the goalie masks looked like from NHL 2004. I love it.

For those who are superstitious, it looks like Kiprusoff has a new mask this season as well, moving away from the white skulls he's been rockin' for the last couple years to something that looks almost identical to what he wore during the 2003-2004 season:

Blogger is a pretty fun guy and won't let me upload a zoomed in version to back up my point but you can see pretty clearly he's back to the old golden letters along the bottom as well as the fiery orange skulls along the sides.

Not a photoshop: the Flames did once make it past the first round of the playoffs

I think Karlsson will get the start tonight against Colorado, purely because I am betting Kipper is still hungover from his birthday bash.

The Oilers Flames Game From My Perspective

By Dan Moser


I'd like to start by saying first of all I don't normally do this. I'm no fan of post game blog postings. The primary reason is that I don't enjoy reading them on other sites. I tend to disagree with what bloggers see in the games and to be honest, so much of watching hockey games on television is subjective, the game can be different for everyone. Some might say that a goal was huge, other a save, others a giveaway, others a blown offside call. Honestly, if I miss a game, I'd much rather call a friend up and ask what I missed than check out some anonymous guy's blog. Also it's been a while since I wrote anything. My third and final point is that this is not really a post game review, this is a story about my experience viewing the game.

Unrelated, but I needed a picture here and I like this one.

 BACKGROUND INFORMATION: I am currently living in Toronto. Don't hate me. The house I am currently living in does not have a sports package that allows for easy viewing of all NHL games. The Internet connection in said house can be sketchy. The feed I was watching the game on was also sketchy. I purchased a Proline ticket for the night's games but did not bet on the Oilers game, that's bad luck. I work part-time as an overnight valet in a classy downtown Toronto condo, Drake has a place there, NBD, from 11:00-7:00 EST.

ONWARDS TO THE STORY: My night began at 6:00 PM EST. I awoke from my pregame nap (that's a nice way of saying I was sleeping during the day) and decided it might be fun to put some money on the games tonight. I'm usually pretty terrible, I don't think I've won since I had a friend buy me my first ticket when I was in grade 10 from the the Westmount Shopping Centre across the street from my High School. Anyway I quickly ate a light pregame dinner, got some gas, bought my ticket all before games started at 7:00 (impressed?).

Now, I watch hockey games like a lot of people watch football. I have a game or two on TV and then open the rest of them streaming on my laptop along with stattracker for my pools. This is not a recommended way of watching hockey, especially concerning whistles, I am always confused as to which game the whistle took place in, why players are stopping, and why some seem to be playing through the whistle.

I won't bore you with the details of the early games, (I made the mistake of betting on the Coyotes to win by at least 2 goals. Idiot.) let's get to the important action.

Fast forward to 9:00. I am already feeling a little dejected because of the epic fail that was the Ottawa Senators actually putting the puck in the net. I began watching the once coveted and interesting Battle of Alberta albeit with the volume low because Peter Loubardias's voice gives me a headache, I also hate it when the Flames' crew use players first names only during game action.

The first stream I am using is not great, so I try using a different stream. Once the second stream, of lower visual quality begins to work I immediately notice that the score is 1-0 for the Flames. Goal 1, missed.

It is announced the Oilers will be on the powerplay and guess what? My computer says it must close down my browser to properly install a lovely Windows update. I figure sure why not? This update will surely just make my computer a more powerful learning machine. Besides, watching an Oilers powerplay usually just makes me notice that no defenceman on the team can carry the puck at all through the neutral zone. Goal 2, missed.

With a minute to go and the Flames going on the PP again I am sure another goal is coming so I go to the washroom. Goal 3, missed. Of the whole first period that I saw, I don't think I saw the Oilers have one scoring chance, its reminiscent of the last Battle of Alberta where Telus got me so drunk I don't remember much of the game.

The intermission is a perfect time for me to take a closer look at the games that are on my ticket. Everything seems to be in order, except for that the Coyotes at this point will need to score 5 goals to make me a winner. Also, may as well play with the stream again, is wanting to watch a game illegally in great quality a crime? Don't answer that. When I get a working stream, poor quality, I am greeted by the screeching noise of Glencross scores! Goal 4, missed.

See where this is going?

Now the second frame started around 10:00, I need to get ready for work around 10:20 so I can make it in by 10:50 and ask the guy I am relieving if he minds staying a couple minutes longer so I can grab some Timmys.

If you can think of a better or healthier way to stay awake from 11-7 I'm all ears.

Once I get to work this happens:

Co-worker who drives a motorcycle (CDM): I completely forgot about the Leafs game, did you watch it?

Me: Yeah, Leafs won.

CDM: Score? How did they play? Was it good?

Me: It was a Leafs game man. They won 3-1 I think.

CDM: Uhhh how did they play?

Me: I dunno man they were playing Florida.

CDM: What does that mean?

Me: Florida is awful. The Leafs were the Leafs, Colby Armstrong left the game in the first, they were lucky Pete DeBoer didn't get the to score of Giguere you just need to make him move a little.

CDM: Who is that?

Me: DeBoer? He is the Panther's coach.

CDM: What are you watching now? Is that the Vancouver game?

Me: No. Oilers Flames. It's a s***** one though, I think the Flames are up 3-1.

CDM: Buddy, the Flames are in trouble this year.

Me: What? 4-3 when the f*** did that happen?

Goals 5, 6, 7, missed.

Just as I am getting comfortable and done being in amazement that the Oilers are in this game, a car pulls up. The only car of the night. I have to leave my post and go park said car in the deepest darkest regions of the lot. I return. Goal 8, missed.

At least it was a nice car

 Overtime was overtime. For some reason the Oilers chose not to select their statistically strongest shootout player as one of the three shooters. Oilers lose, but salvage a point they probably didn't deserve. Flames win but will likely have a wonderful puke filled no puck practice tomorrow. Happy Birthday Mikka Kiprusoff.

Hope you enjoyed this brief window into the life of an Oilers blogger. See, we don't all live in our parent's basements.

Texts from last night

Miikka its your birthday

Happy birthday Miikka Kiprusoff. For your 34th birthday may the Flames blow a three-goal lead to the worst team in the NHL in your honor.

For those who don't know, the Calgary Flames led the young and exciting (make sure you have safesearch on if you Google image that) Edmonton Oilers last night 4-1 at one point during the second period. Jordan Eberle pulled his trademark "score on Ian White" play to end the second, and then at some point in the third the Flames completely lost the lead, as the score became 4-4 headed into overtime. Alex Tanguay justified his entire contract by scoring the game-winner in the shootout, and the Flames escaped with the win and two points.

Here are the texts I got from last night as the game went on (blue denotes Oilers fans, red for Flames fans):

We are well on our way back to the glory days of the 80's

They are just kids out there trying to have some fun. The flames are their parents asking if they are doing the weed.

It's [the Oilers'] year

Omg taylor hall is so good! He can score goals from absolutely anywhere!!!

I'm not even interested tonight. The sens already fucked up my sports select ticket.

These oilers are so exciting to watch

Oh my god Loubardias, no one gives a shit that Whitney was a USA Olympian

I'm scouting at the game. Olli almost had one there

Is your Jokinen doing fighting?

These upstart oilers are terrible.

(Before the game) You know I love staios. I think he's better than mickelson. still confused why we couldn't have used that money for better forwards but whateva

(From the same person, later in the game) Okay staios should not be playing.

I actually hate Cory sarich

I have missed every goal in this game.

I stopped watching after the second. WTF.

Beezly

If you've ever taken in a game at the Saddledome, this video should absolutely captivate you.
Beezly is one of the best parts about going to a home game.
Raw emotion. The guy loves hockey, and the Flames, and it shows night after night.

PA announcers can't be taken for granted. Enjoy what you've got.