Hello again, Long Beach

March 9, 2021, 11:32 AM PST by Parkzer • Tempo, Travel

This post is over 5 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.

It’s been just over a month since my last visit to SoCal, so I made an extended weekend trip over to Long Beach again to visit the Tempo staff. The beginning of every month is usually straining from a work perspective because of end-of-month finance tasks I have to wrap up from the previous month, so making a visit to SoCal is a nice change in scenery for a bit while I recover from the Tetris effect, except with rows, columns, and cells instead of Tetris pieces.

Our group activity of the trip was a team lunch at The Crab Pot Restaurant & Bar.

Because of the pandemic, we were only able to dine in with outdoor seating, and our party of 7 had to split into two separate groups.

The cold in Long Beach is a special kind of cold. I grew up in the Chicagoland suburbs where it just randomly blizzards throughout the winter, but I guess I never got used to the cold. It does also get cold in Las Vegas—it can drop below freezing temperatures overnight during the winter. But, the cold in Long Beach, even though it’s technically numerically 10+ degrees warmer than Las Vegas right now, feels much colder because of the ocean wind.

While we were waiting for some tables to open up, we were seated at a “bar area.” The bar was still a table, but I imagine it’s some technicality that allows them to remain operational during the pandemic if they split up their tables by classification. The “bar” table wasn’t that cold; we got a few appetizers, including some oysters.

After our actual meal table was ready, we were relocated closer to the oceanfront, where I proceeded to begin freezing to death. The restaurant had some heat lamps, so I asked for the one near our table to be turned on, and I sat myself down directly under it. I know for a fact that it helped a lot, because the person sitting to my left had a little container of liquified butter, and her butter literally started forming ice on the top because of how cold it was.

After our meal, our friend saw a different party getting some dessert, and she wanted some as well, so she ordered a mud pie for us. We found out that mud pie wasn’t cake, but rather, a massive glob of excessively sweet ice cream covered in chocolate syrup and whipped cream. We got through a decent chunk of it together, but we eventually couldn’t handle the sweetness and passed it on to the other table that had the other half of our party.

This was a fairly quick trip just to visit staff; I’ll be headed back to Long Beach again not too long from now for a more long-term stay. Before my flight back home, I stopped by a French bakery to get some macarons for my roommate. It had a nice, warm aura to it, so I snapped a photo.

How not to steal

February 26, 2021, 7:29 PM PST by Parkzer • Highlights

Today felt like a long day. I’ve been going to sleep and waking up relatively late lately, but I had to get up before 9 AM PST this morning for class. My sleep tracker says I got less than 6 hours of restful sleep last night, which is not very good considering I have an overactive thyroid and need a lot of sleep. Classes have also been difficult lately, because sitting in a teleconference for remote learning during the pandemic doesn’t really engage my mind as much as traditional classroom settings do, so it’s a constant struggle not to fall asleep the entire time.

At 4 PM, my class finally wrapped up. I spent about an hour catching up on some work tasks that I missed during the day, then laid down in bed to watch some videos and relax.

After I finished petting the cats and getting comfortable in bed, I got an email notification from DoorDash. Apparently my account had a new log-in from an unrecognized device. I definitely didn’t just log into DoorDash, and I would never commit such as sin as to use a device with iOS, so I came to the conclusion that my account got hacked. I got out of bed and logged into my computer.

My credit card protects me against unauthorized charges, but that claim process is a hassle and I wanted to stop the theft from happening before the suspect had an opportunity to follow through. As quickly as possible, I changed my password and removed my saved credit card details from my account. Not only did this stop the suspect from completing the checkout process, but it would’ve also thrown an error, because I have a free DashPass subscription courtesy of the Chase Sapphire Reserve that requires a CSR credit card number to be tied to the account. By removing my card details, I changed my account’s eligibility status on particular promotions, and DoorDash would refresh the storefront and reapply any relevant delivery and service fees.

That worked, because the purchase never went through. However, during the few minutes it took me to do this, the suspect did a little work on my account.

Once I was done locking down my account, I saw a few things pop up that weren’t there before.

In addition to informing me that the suspect was interested in purchasing 30 traditional wings from Buffalo Wild Wings, they were also gracious enough to provide me with their address and phone number.

I looked up their address on Google Maps and saw that it pointed to a dormitory on a university campus. I looked up some local law enforcement agencies that had jurisdiction over the area and found a university police department, city police department, and county sheriff. I pulled up the information of the university police department and gave them a call to let them know what happened.

An officer picked up the phone, listened to my story, and passed my call onto someone else, as he was unsure how to proceed. A different officer came on the line, listened to my story, and said that this is the first time something of this nature had been reported to them. The officer ran a records check for the phone number in the description of the DoorDash delivery address, and it came back as a match to a current student.

I let the officer know that I was not interested in pressing charges—this is literally a hungry college kid who made a mistake, and I don’t want to damage their reputation and future by putting them through the criminal justice system. (Also, even if this did go to court, unless the student confessed, it would be extremely difficult to prove this beyond a reasonable doubt, as the defense could claim that an unrelated third party hacked my account and attempted to send food to this student without their knowledge or consent.)

However, I did say that I would like the police to at least speak with the student as a preventative measure to discourage the student from doing something like this again, if it was indeed the student. I also informed them that this could end up being a liability issue for the university because, if this student was on dormitory Wi-Fi, they were technically using university technology systems to commit a cybercrime across state lines, making it a federal offense.

The officer noted everything and said that he would go with my wishes and just process the student through the university system instead of going through the court system. I followed up via email with the officer and provided him with the evidence above (unedited and uncensored, of course) for their records. Due to privacy reasons, I imagine I won’t ever find out what actually happened, but hopefully me doing this helped set a student on a better path to a brighter future, and protected a potential future different victim from credit card fraud.

So if you ever had plans to hack someone’s DoorDash account and get yourself some free food, I highly discourage you from doing so… not only because you shouldn’t steal, but also because providing your address and phone number to your victim generally isn’t the best idea.

Cat mom is out traveling

February 25, 2021, 10:47 PM PST by Parkzer • Cats

My roommate is traveling out-of-state back to her hometown to visit friends and family for Lunar New Year, so I’m alone with the cats for a few weeks. With my roommate gone, the cats are spending a lot more time together and with me, presumably because they don’t have their regular owner around to bother.

When I say “spending a lot more time together,” I mean really spending a lot more time together. That includes watching each other going to the bathroom in the litter box.

Most people use their living rooms as a hangout place. They get a couch, maybe a table, and hang up a television on the wall. Well, my roommate and I aren’t “most people.” We use our living room for something far more utile—as a cat play area. Here are Pumpkin and Pudding surrounded by over a dozen of their toys.

When they’re not lounging around in the living room, they also have their own combo bed that one of my roommate’s fans sent her. It has a little tunnel area that Pumpkin likes to lay in, while Pudding rests in the padded area outside the tunnel.

They also like lounging around on my bed. I moved my pillows to the corner and laid out my blanket so they have a nice play area. Here, I managed to capture them playing with a toy mouse.

After it gets late and the cats are done playing, I convert my bed back to normal so they can snuggle up against pillows and wrap themselves around the blanket to go to sleep. It was a little too bright for Pumpkin though, it seems.

I have a fake sheepskin rug by my bed so my feet can feel something nice and soft and fuzzy when I wake up in the morning. Pudding also likes this rug and runs around in circles playing on it. Sometimes he lays very, very still, and I assume that he is pretending to be a chameleon blending in with his surroundings.

Sometimes, Pumpkin likes to troll me. One day, I noticed that Pumpkin had gone missing, so I started going around searching for him. He sometimes sneaks into the closet after I open it to get something, and I accidentally trap him in there once in a while, but I checked all the closets and couldn’t find him. Then I randomly decided to check in the litter box… and there he was. Just peacefully laying there on top of his and Pudding’s poop.

Here is Pudding being a distinguished gentleman.

I had another incident of Pumpkin randomly disappearing, similar to the litter box incident above. This time, the litter box was one of the first places I checked, but I couldn’t find him in there. After a few minutes, I discovered that he was laying inside some Amazon boxes that I was getting ready to take downstairs to the trash compactor.

And finally, here is Pumpkin being an almost-distinguished gentleman… if only he had crossed his legs. (I tried crossing them after this photo, but he doesn’t really like it when you touch his feet, so he ran off.)

Another week of cat photos

February 8, 2021, 11:35 PM PST by Parkzer • Cats

I did some laundry and left the empty hamper next to the washer and dryer so I could use it to load my clothes after the cycles were done and bring them back into my room. Well, apparently Pudding somehow managed to get into the hamper, which then proceeded to collapse on him. Pumpkin decided this was a great opportunity to trap him inside, so here is Pudding asking with his eyes for me to help him get out, while Pumpkin snoozes on top of him.

If you remember from last week, the reason I have difficulty taking photos of Pudding is because, every time I swoop down to capture him in a photo-worthy moment, he immediately stops what he’s doing and starts walking towards me to headbutt me. One way to avoid that is if Pudding is trapped in a collapsed laundry hamper, but I guess another way to avoid that is to just get miraculously lucky, so here is a photo of Pudding just sitting there doing nothing.

One of my favorite parts about living in a high-rise condo is the view, so I tend to leave my blinds open. I guess one of Pumpkin’s favorite things about living in a high-rise condo is also the view, as he likes to lounge around on my bed and look out the window. Here he is in his new natural habitat. (The light is my lamp being reflected on the window; it’s not a UFO.)

Pumpkin also enjoys lounging around in the kitchen in hopes that I drop some food for him while I cook. … Little does he know, I don’t really cook, unless he’s expecting me to somehow spill instant noodles or something.

One of Pumpkin’s new favorite activities is to join me in the bathroom while I shower and watch the water trickle down on the glass door. I guess watching the water wasn’t stimulating enough for him anymore and he wanted to join in on the fun, so I saw him lounging around inside my shower one day. It took a lot of self-control and restraint to avoid pranking him and turning the water on for a little bit…

Pumpkin also likes sunbathing. Not quite as exciting as waiting for food that will never fall, or wanting to participate in a shower only to learn that you probably hate water… but definitely much more relaxing.

Because I live on an upper floor in the aforementioned high-rise condo, I generally want to carry all my groceries up with me in one trip, otherwise it’s going to take several minutes to wait for the elevator, go down a few hundred feet in elevation back to the parking garage, load up a second batch of groceries, wait for the elevator again, then go back up a few hundred feet. To help with this effort, I usually use a storage container so I can transport several bags at once without cutting off blood circulation from my fingers.

Well, as we’ve seen, Pumpkin likes to participate in a variety of activities, and I guess he also wanted to participate with groceries. He found my storage container lying on the ground, so he hopped in. … And apparently it was comfortable enough for him to take a nap in it.

Pudding joins in for this round of cat photos

February 1, 2021, 11:40 PM PST by Parkzer • Cats

A few people have been asking me why I’ve only been featuring Pumpkin in my photos, even though Pudding has been moved in since the end of November. There’s actually a really simple explanation for that—it’s because, whenever I go up to Pudding to take a photograph when he’s doing something photo-worthy, he immediately stops, walks towards me, and headbutts my shin. That obviously makes it very difficult to capture him doing anything other than walking towards me. However, I did manage to capture a few decent shots of him, which I’ll feature in this post.

I have a second desk behind my main desk where I put my gun safe and a collection of plushies. Pudding decided to jump on that desk and disguise himself as a plushie. I was almost fooled.

Pumpkin was using my bed as a play mat, running around in circles and swatting and chasing around a mouse toy. At one point, he got caught on the edge and nearly slipped off the bed and into the crack between the mattress and the wall. Of course, I had to take a photograph before helping him get unstuck. I’m going to be a great dad one day.

After helping Pumpkin escape the grasping claws of the void, I grabbed a string that I saved that fell out of one of my hoodies while it was in the dryer. Pumpkin likes string.

My roommate got a package in the mail that had some promotional material from a business partner. The gifts were interesting, but clearly, the most interesting part about the package, as apparent from the cats… was the packaging. The lid of the box looks pretty cozy.

And to close out this post of cat photos, here’s Pumpkin sleeping.

Hello Long Beach

January 30, 2021, 11:56 PM PST by Parkzer • Tempo, Travel

Throughout the history of Tempo, I’ve always been involved in the team’s real estate initiatives. Apart from a team house in Arizona that the company got for the Heroes of the Storm team prior to me getting involved in esports, every other house has been toured, contracted, and set up by me. Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, that changed this year.

The lease on Tempo’s Beverly Hills house was running out, and we didn’t want to stay in that property for another year because it was very expensive, the air conditioning was catastrophically bad during summer months, and the Internet was catastrophically unreliable during … all months. I did the initial scouting on potential new properties, but one of our production directors found a great house candidate in Long Beach with amazing value.

We ended up moving forward with this property and I reached out to the leasing agent to organize a tour. It started out not going too great, because the leasing agent did not want to do business with a corporation and they didn’t even consider the possibility of entertaining the concept that we might actually be a reliable, real company, and not some shell company that was created solely to limit liability.

Eventually, they stopped responding to me altogether, so one of our production directors literally went in-person to the leasing agent’s office to figure out what was going on. Luckily, this director is probably the most charming person we have in the company, and he worked his magic—he put the leasing agent in touch with our CEO, and we managed to successfully submit an application for the property.

This is our new “backyard.”

It was weird being the one being given a tour, rather than the one running the tour. This was my first time seeing the house, as the residents and producers set this house up without my help.

I don’t want to show any photos of the interior because I don’t want to spoil any house tour videos that our production crew might have in the works, but this… this is absolutely, definitely a mansion. A lot of people called our previous Beverly Hills house a mansion, but this is a real mansion. It has far greater square footage, and my favorite part is that it is astronomically cheaper than our previous property because it’s a lot farther out of the way of Los Angeles (as opposed to being nestled in the Hills surrounded by celebrities).

Anyway, in addition to the show that we did yesterday, another reason I came to visit this time around is because the 27th is reynad’s birthday and the 28th is my birthday. We had a small staff get-together and grill at the house on the 29th in celebration of our birthdays, though it obviously had to be fairly small due to minimizing COVID-19 risks.

One of reynad’s friends made a Russian (or maybe it was a Ukrainian?) cake. Apparently it did not rise and shape properly, and the candle was limp. I found it in the refrigerator and took a photo of it in honor of her effort.

Overall, it was a pretty nice trip. The house was a nice surprise that exceeded my expectations (which only happens fairly rarely). I’m happy with where Tempo is in terms of staffing, and I think the core staff members we have are all pleasant and considerate people. I’m generally not one to enjoy birthday parties or attention, but it’s always nice to have reynad’s birthday so close to mine, so I can deflect some of the attention away from myself and towards him instead.

The house is busy and bustling right now with a lot of live-in staff and a lot of projects going on, so there aren’t any rooms available and I might not be able to make it out there again until another month or so, but I definitely am looking forward to it once the opportunity arises again. The roads are far less cramped, and I don’t need to drive 15+ minutes down a mountain to find commercial civilization, so it’s way more pleasant of an area to visit.

Until then, I’m back at home sweet home.