Category Archives: Electronic Arts

Hi Ho Hi Ho Back to Work I Go

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I went back to work today. Yes. I know it’s a Saturday. We have an Executive Review on Wednesday where the senior executives in all of EA will be looking at our game and it was important that I jumped back into the fray.

In the morning we headed out to our usual breakfast where the ladies at the Peach Valley Cafe gushed over Isabelle. It’s been really weird having to now get three kids out of the car. I have to get Emily out of the car and tell her, “Stand right there” while I get Isabelle out. It’s a little awkward.

I rushed home to cut the lawn right before the started raining. I can’t wait until we have the play gym all together so the backyard will be much easier to cut.

Shark Girl & Lava Girl

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It was another rough night last night. I was up several times and ended up rocking Isabelle for about an hour trying to get her to go to sleep. Then, I was up at 6:00 when Isabelle’s crying woke Abby and Emily up. So, not much sleep is happening in Frenchville.

This morning we packed up the whole group and headed to Peach Valley Café in order to show Nana and Poppy where we each every Saturday morning, since they have to leave tomorrow. We had a good breakfast. Abby and Emily acted well and Isabelle slept the entire time.

After lunch Poppy, Abby, and myself headed out to The Adventures of Shark Boy & Lava Girl in 3D. It was a pretty corny movie, but Abby seemed to like it. The 3D effects were fairly lame, with only a few good areas. Also, after a while, the 3D effects were giving me a headache. After the movie, Abby and Emily ran around the house with the 3D glasses on pretending they were Shark Girl and Lava Girl.

After dinner I took Nana and Poppy up to my work so that they could see the new building we moved into at the beginning of the year. They were amazed at how much we had grown since I gave them a tour a year and a half ago when they were here last.

Today’s picture is from when we were in the hospital the first day when Isabelle was born and Nana and Emily were visiting.

Abby Sings Her Heart Out

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It was a rough day at work trying to get our E3 presentation together. We pulled an all nighter and I didn’t head home until 10:30 this morning, but it’s done and on it’s way to Los Angeles. E3 starts tomorrow and hopefully we will start getting some press this week.

I slept the afternoon away and then headed out to Abby’s preschool graduation ceremony. She doesn’t graduate this year, but she was singing along with the other kids in her class. She didn’t have a meltdown as she has in the past, because we now make sure and let her know we will be in the audience and make a point of waving to her so she knows we are there. As you can see from the video, when she wants to sing, she really puts all of her heart into it. If you are having trouble picking her out, she’s in the lower right hand corner.

Xbox 360 Unveiled

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Abby had a rough day today. Somehow while playing with Austin, she bumped her tooth and it pushed it up a tiny bit and her gums are all bruised. Jennifer is going to call the dentist tomorrow to check whether or not she needs to bring her in. Another funny incident was when Abby exclaimed that Austin had tinkled on the floor. Jennifer looked over to where she was pointing and Austin was licking it up. Jennifer thought that was odd and it turned out that Abby had spilled juice on the floor and was blaming it on the dog.

Today Microsoft unveiled the system that I’m working to bring Madden to for launch: the Xbox 360. They debuted the system with a special on MTV, which was pretty stupid. You can check out another concept video for Madden NFL 06 Xbox 360 on MTV’s site.

Austin & Emily Potty Training

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Sorry it’s been a while since my last entry. Long day and long nights in preparation for the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the big trade show for the gaming industry. This time and finalling are the two times when I work the most. We are finally starting to see a game come together and it’s pretty exciting. Hopefully we will get a lot of press at E3 that I can share.

At home, we are continuing to potty train Emily and Austin. Both are doing well, but only if you take them to their potty location. Neither one of them are very good at letting you know if they need to go. We had a pretty good milestone today in that Emily pooped on the potty for the very first time. This would have been a great accomplishment if she hadn’t have had a tinkle accident about an hour later.

Today’s picture is from our trip to the beach several weeks ago.

Lazy Dog

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It’s been another long week at work and it’s nice to get home and have a quite weekend with Jennifer and the girls (and Austin too). We are getting close to E3, so we are scrambling to get pieces of the game together so that we have something to show off.

Today Jennifer went to get her haircut at the RDV Sportsplex. They have a giant kids area that you can leave your children in while you go to the salon. Normally when we drop Emily off at church she throws a fit for a few seconds, but gets over it once we leave. However, when Jennifer dropped her off today at the RDV, she just took off to go play. It’s amazing how fast she’s growing up.

Austin is still alive in spite the girls’ best efforts. Emily picks up Austin in a bear hug and carries him around while he yelps to get let down. He’s grown quite a bit in the past couple of weeks since we’ve gotten him. He’s definitely our dog. He lounges around the house quite content on doing nothing all day.

A New Football Era

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A new football era for myself has begun. The Ricky Williams era has ended and it’s the beginning of the Derek Johnson era and with the NFL Draft yesterday, my new team was revealed. As the 15th pick in the first round Derek Johnson went to the Kansas City Chiefs, which will be my new football team. Here’s some back history, for those who don’t know. My original football team was the Houston Oilers, but when they left for Tennessee that left me with no team. I went back to my alma mater, Texas, and an up and coming star, Ricky Williams, who was on the verge of graduating. I followed him from Texas to New Orleans and finally to Miami, where he quit last year. So, last year I went back to Texas to follow another up and coming star. I actually had two choices: Cedric Benson or Derek Johnson. I chose Johnson for a couple of reasons. I’ve been watching him for a while as a great linebacker. Even as a freshman I remember him being in attacking every play. At Texas he wore #11 which was Major Applewhite’s and Ricky Williams’s numbers while they were at Texas. Finally, I didn’t want to follow another running back. So, this brings us to the Kansas City Chiefs. Go Chiefs!

Hopefully everyone saw the Madden NFL Next Gen commercial during the draft. If you didn’t, you can find it at this link.

Madden NFL Next Gen

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Electronic Arts has finally decided to announce the product that I am working on: Madden NFL Next Gen. I’ve created a site which will track the different announcements leading up to the launch of the game. We will be showing a commercial during the NFL Draft which will be a preview of what might be possible to accomplish on the Next Generation of consoles. I am currently hard at work trying to make that preview a reality and hopefully there will be more to share at E3.

Back to Work

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Back to work for me and back to school for Abby. I had mountains and mountains of e-mail to sort through today. In fact, eight hours wasn’t enough, so I headed back up to work after dinner in the hopes of getting all my e-mail sorted out. It only took another four hours, but I did get through all of it.

The girls didn’t do much today after Abby got out of school. They went and got the Sequoia washed at the car wash. Jennifer said that there was actually a lot of people there and it took over an hour to get the car washed.

Today’s picture is from Easter morning. Emily found an egg, but she’s still gripping the Dora video she got from the Easter Bunny.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

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Wow. That week went by fast. Not much writing last week because it was the end of another milestone for the project I’m working on. Extra time was necessary over the weekend in order to pull it all together.

Even though I was working a lot this weekend, I was able to escape for about four hours to go see an Astros Spring Training game against the Braves. This is the third Spring Training since I moved to Florida and I just couldn’t let another go by without going to see the Astros considering that they practice in South Orlando. So, Tom and I headed out to the ball game. The weather was great and it was nice to go to a baseball game again. I haven’t seen one since moving away from Houston.

Besides that, nothing much happened over the week. Jennifer has been getting quotes from painters in order to paint the house and the girls have been their rambunctious selves. Hopefully, I can get back into the habit of writing again on a regular basis. It’s easier to write about events on the day that they happened instead of trying to do these “week in reviews”.