I left GDC on Friday and flew back into Los Angeles over the weekend, regretfully though the entire weekend was spent fighting off this hardcore virus I picked up while traveling. It hurts, it’s annoying, it all around sucks. Regardless of how I was feeling though I decided to come into the studio today as we have a lot of stuff you guys are waiting on from upcoming patches and the DLC we’re working on, so I don’t have time to be sick. On my arrival to the studio, I was greeted with some surprises when I got to my office.

First, a little background story.. about a month ago one of the guys here at the studio was lovingly shoving his face full of peanut butter crackers, so I politely told him, “So… are those crackers good?…. because your face smells like shit.” Clearly exposing the fact that I can’t stand the smell of peanut butter, it was all meant in a friendly (but seriously your mouth smells like shit when you eat peanut butter) manner but still I had unwittingly left out a weakness.

Rule #1 of inner office warfare, never let them know your weakness. I failed that rule just then. Back to present day, I return to my office, having been at GDC all last week to find my office door closed. Odd… I never shut my office door. Ah well… and I open it to find the pungent ass smell of Peanut Butter… strong peanut butter… Skippy Rich All Smooth peanut butter and what is the source of this smell? My poor ole’ Master Chief helmet which resides on my desk.

His armor had been replaced (or covered) in Smooth and Rich Skippy Peanut Butter, his visor replaced with M&Ms, and his top crowned with Peanut Butter cups. Now if I didn’t hate the smell of peanut butter, this would be a delicious prank, regretfully I can’t stand the smell of peanut butter, especially peanut butter that’s been left on a Master Chief helmet for an entire weekend.

In addition to the peanut butter and candy coated treat, a Cliffy B poster had been taped to the wall, my ring tone on my desk phone changed and turned up to the highest volume, same with my iPod Home’s volume, my laser mouse was taped and some Blu-ray’s I ordered from Amazon that arrived last week were opened, discs removed, filled with peanut butter, resealed, and repackaged, and put back in the mail pile in the lobby for me to discover when I excitedly opened my new movies.

Beyond all that, there’s this constant yet completely randomly timed beeping coming from somewhere in my office that I’m convinced they’re behind and it’s driving me mad. I think I’ve discovered everything, although I think the paranoid feeling that I haven’t is probably their ultimate satisfaction. They still decline to comment on the beeping. All in all, this wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t feel like I was dying from this damn virus I caught. You win this time…. merely because I’m weak… but my day will come!

As for work related, looks like the Sony PS3 Worldwide Feature patch has started it’s certification process according to production, I will confirm that tomorrow with the official, “PS3 Feature Patch in Certification” post as it just finished up Activision QA today and was being sent over so I’ll wait to celebrate till it’s officially at Sony and going through the rounds. That’s for worldwide users (except for Korea and Japan), so everyone should get it on the PS3 at the same time.

The Xbox 360 Feature Patch is still at certification, there was a minor hold up that we were able to discuss with them and get cleared up hopefully at GDC so that should be fine and hopefully finishing it’s certification soon. They don’t give us ETA’s on those sorts of things. I did lots of DLC interviews this past week that I’ll try to make a list of in a upcoming post.