Monthly Archives: July 2007

Wastin’ Away Again in Margaritaville

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I did end up having to send my new Treo 750 back, but they were able to get me a new one just in time for my birthday. I spent most of the day trying to get my work e-mail transferred to the device and finally just gave up.

On Monday, we went to Typhoon Lagoon to continue using our annual water park passes. We had fun and actually got Emily to go on one of the water slides. Last time we got all the way to the top and she refused to slide down. Around 2:30 they shut down the rides because a thunder storm was heading our way. We had already been there since 10:00, so we took this as a sign to get going.

On my Birthday, we headed down to Universal CityWalk because I wanted to waste away in Margaritaville. I had a Cheeseburger in Paradise and downed a couple of Margaritas (which were very good). We were going to do some shopping around the CityWalk, but once again those pesky late afternoon Florida thunder storms scared us away. Overall, a nice birthday. As you get older, it gets harder and harder to get excited about birthdays. It’s just another day.

Today we headed to church mainly because we had to teach Emily’s Sunday school class. It’s always tough to do this because Emily clings to us the whole time. At one point I refused and walked away. This just caused her to become a puddle on the floor, refusing to participate. After church, we headed to Five Guys hamburgers. I had been there a couple of times for lunch, but this was the first time I took the family. They have very good hamburgers and French fries. I really recommend them. Because we had nothing else to do, we headed over to the Altamonte Springs mall. This mall we don’t get to as much since we moved up to the Lake Mary area. We had two missions: find a new camping cookbook and find some school shoes for the girls. Four pairs of shoes later, I can say we were successful in one of those missions.

The rest of the day was a lazy day around the house with most of us electing to take a nap. Me and the girls finally cleaned up their play room. The summer has been long and their room has become a mess. Neither Jennifer or myself have the energy at the end of the day to make them clean it. We are always ready for them to head off to bed.

NCAA Football 08

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For my birthday coming up I ordered a new phone, a Treo 750. I haven’t gotten it to work and I’m assuming that I have to get it fully charged. I’m going to let it charge up over night and hope for the best. Otherwise, it’s back to AT&T for another one. We also upgraded Jennifer’s phone to a Razr, since it was free.

I also played NCAA Football 08 at home for the first time tonight. It’s much better playing in at home than at work. It was the first time I got to sit down and play the Campus Legendmode. This is really cool. You get to create a player. I created a free safety #37 who played for Lindale High School (this is the position & number I played in junior high). The mode starts out with you playing through the state high school championship tournament. How well you play in the tournament determines the school you will play at in college. It was fun although the position of free safety isn’t all that exciting.

New President of EA Sports

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Vacation Bible School is getting more stressful for Jennifer as they keep adding more and more kids. They are now over 400 kids and the crafts she’s in charge of are going fast. She doesn’t want to get into a position where she has to tell one of the kids that there isn’t enough supplies for them.

Today it was announced that Peter Moore is now President of EA Sports. Recently Electronic Arts split into four separate labels or brands: EA Sports, EA Games, EA Casual, and The Sims. Each label will have a president who reports directly to the CEO of the company, John Riccitiello. EA Sports was the only label which didn’t have a president. Peter Moore comes from Microsoft where he was head of marketing for the Xbox. It’s good that John Riccitiello recognized that we needed someone from the outside to give us a different perspective on how to take our games into the next decade of gaming. I’m closing in on my seventh year at EA and it’s been pretty much the same thing: each year there is a packaged good that we sell: Madden 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, etc. How long can that be sustained? Are there better methods? Hopefully Peter Moore can help guide us in the right direction. It will now be interesting to see if this changes how the reporting structure works between studios. We’ll have to wait and see.

Today was another softball game this time against the QA department. We ended up losing 13-3. We were leading after 1 inning, 2-0, but after that our bats went away and they started getting in the runs. I went 1-2 with an RBI for hitting. They were playing with a “rover” in the outfield. I was able to plunk it right between the gap in the outfielders, but beyond the reach of the rover.

First Day

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Today was the first day of Vacation Bible School for Jennifer and the girls. Even Isabelle got to go now that she’s two. Almost 400 people are attending and Jennifer said it was a sea of kids in the Family Life Center gymnasium up at church. Fortunately, Jennifer only sees a hand full of kids at a time and only for around twenty minutes until the next group comes in. Today’s picture is some of the decorations that were put up this weekend.

At work, I conducted the first team meeting for my new team. It was pretty much silent as I explained the plan for figuring out the type of game we were going to build. I also had to give some bad news to some guys who were going to moving off to a new team. Of all the things I don’t like about being a manager, it’s delivering bad news. It’s a fact of life that it’s part of my job and I know I have to do it and I don’t have a problem doing it. I just don’t like doing it. I guess no one really does, unless you are sadistic.

NCAA Football 08 comes out tomorrow and the Marketing department had some extra Xbox 360 Faceplates, so I snagged one for my 360. The requests for copies of NCAA from some of my friends started coming in this weekend. I plan on picking up my copy tomorrow. A pretty good commercial featuring the Texas Longhorns was sent around work today as well.

Setting up for Vacation Bible School

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Today was a lounge around the house day with the kids while Jennifer went up to church to set up for vacation bible school. Jennifer is teaching crafts next week at our church’s vacation bible school, so she had to spend the afternoon up there getting ready for almost 400 kids to show up. They decorated nearly every room in the entire church. Jennifer was originally expecting around 325 kids and it kept increasing over the week. There was a mad dash this afternoon for some extra supplies, but they found what they were looking for and they should all be set.

Abby and Emily pretty much played on Jennifer’s computer while I watched TV and did the laundry. I also spent some time updating the look for Frenchville.

Plaques & Racks

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We started out the day by heading up to where I work. I recently moved to a new project and, thus, moved to a new office. When ever that happens, that means that I have to re-hang all my game plaques. Now totalling eight, it’s not an easy project. I try not to do it during the day, because I never have enough time and I don’t want to be banging on the walls with a hammer. So, it’s a family trip up to the office to hang the pictures. Jennifer did most of the work arranging them in a pattern. Because there’s now eight and I had a smaller area to hang them, we went with a double stacked approach. It also left some room for a new plaque when I finish the project I’m on a year from now. The girls ran around the cubicles and found some Nerf darts that some of the guys on the team sling across the cubicles. Abby was actually pretty good at firing them.

After that we went to pick up the camper. We bought some bike racks for the top of the camper. We noticed after we bought it that it had a Yakima rack system on top. So, I visited the web site and found some bike racks so that Jennifer and me could take our bikes. We didn’t buy four because we didn’t know if Abby and Emily’s bikes would fit. However, once we got them up on the camper, we tested their bikes and what do you know, they also fit. I’m going to go and buy two more so that we can fit all the bikes on top of the camper.