Category Archives: Electronic Arts

Working Too Hard to Post

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Sorry it’s been over a week since my last entry. It’s been another busy week at work. Fortunately I’ve been able to do all of my work from home, but it still takes it’s toll when you are having to constantly think and do work. Even when I was my busiest last year while we were finalling Madden 2005, I had time for a small entry. This past week I haven’t even had time for that, if that explains how busy I’ve been. I’ll try to get better from here on out.

Enough about work, this morning I was woken up by Abby screaming “Sister is throwing up!” Emily has had a runny nose lately and apparently coughed once to many times and ended up gagging. Up came all the milk she had been drinking in the morning. Because Jennifer’s queasy due to the pregnancy, guess who got to do the honor of cleaning up the mess.

Because Emily wasn’t feeling well, she and I stayed at home while Jennifer and Abby went to church. Today Abby was singing in the choir. She was giving one of the small choir robes and stood in front of the church and sang. We’ve been working on her stage fright and she did very well. We had to bribe her with a trip to “Burger Cheese” in order to accomplish it, but hey, she wasn’t a crying mess, so that was a bonus.

All the Engineers One Can Handle

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Another week that went by quick because I was so busy at work. I have found that our team is way too big for me to handle. Even with the number of people split amongst myself and the new Development Director, I still have sixteen software engineers that report to me. I’m working so hard on day-to-day problems, it’s hard to get to keep up with everyone’s schedule much less any long term planning that needs to be done. Looking at the work load it looks like six to ten engineers is the maximum number of people one should have to help. Beyond that, and you start losing issues and the product starts to suffer.

Tonight I met the girls at Quiznos for some dinner. Abby and Emily sat at a table all by themselves and ate their dinner. Emily has started talking a lot more. She’s started saying “Yes” instead of just nodding her head. She also says, “I’ll be right back” and holds up her index finger. Today’s picture is of Emily wearing her Dora the Explorer backpack. She’s started putting it on all by herself and walking around the house saying, “Let’s go”.

Getting Rid of the Body

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Once again another busy week at work and at home. Jennifer has been working very hard at Hanna’s Closet, the consignment sale fund raiser for her mother’s group at church. The sale ended up selling $26,000 worth of merchandise, 40% of which will go to the church group. The other 60% goes back to the people who put the items into the sale. She had fun, but it was a lot of work and she’s glad it’s over with.

One of our fish died this week. I’m not sure if it was Nemo or Dory. After Abby left for school, I was asked to “get rid of the body” so that she wouldn’t notice. She actually did notice later on that afternoon when she got back from school. When she was told that the fish had died, she was very apologetic for feeding the fish too much the other day. We thought this was pretty funny, but told her that it wasn’t her fault.

We just got back from going over to the Meador’s house to watch the first half of the Super Bowl. Greg was my boss on Madden NFL 2005 and just recently left Tiburon as well. So, now my boss and my former boss have left. Both of whom are moving to Austin. What’s wrong with this picture?

Late Nights and Slumped Shoulders

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It’s been a week since my last entry and boy has it been a busy week. As predicted, last week was pretty hectic at work. It was the end of our second milestone and I ended up working late every night. The last night I was there until 5:30 a.m. It’s funny now that I’m a manager, you would think I would have nothing to do and have no reason to be up there except for moral support, but our with our new Development Director’s help we are trying to get our schedule under control. Right now, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be settling down any time soon. I think if we could just get our schedule for the rest of the year nailed down we would be in a better position to take on the day-to-day problems. As it is now we are trying to do scheduling in the midsts of handling the day-to-day problems. Very difficult.

This weekend wasn’t very fun at home because Emily had a fever and kept throwing up. It’s never fun to have one of your kids sick. You can really tell when they aren’t feeling well because they stop acting the way they normally do. In the case of Emily, she would mope around with her shoulders slumped down and a pout on her face. Once the Tylenol would take effect, she was up and bouncing around again, but those times were few and far between.

Jennifer was busy Sunday and will be busy the rest of the week working on “Hanna’s Closet”. It’s a giant consignment sale of baby clothes, toys, and furniture that she’s been helping to set up at church. She will be up at church every day this week with the final sale on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

Today’s picture is of Abby with her baby. She actually had me go get the camera to take this picture. She’s been telling me lately that she wants to be a “mommy” when she grows up instead of a “princess”.

Too Cold for the Park

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I had the day off from work today and so we decided to go to the park this morning even though it’s been pretty cold here the past couple of days. The high temperature today was 58 degrees, which obviously isn’t cold for most of the country, but it’s cold for here in Central Florida. Also, it’s pretty cold when last week the high was in the 80’s all week long. Anyway, we were there for only forty minutes before it became too cold and we headed to Chick Olé for some indoor playing.

While talking to Jennifer’s sister on the phone today, Abby admitted that her fish were named “Nemo” and “Dory”, so that puts to rest what the name of the fish are. I suppose my arguments against naming them after herself and her sister actually were having an effect.

I finished Ratchet & Clank today. This game was okay. It wasn’t stellar, but had its challenging moments. What I didn’t like about it was that I had to collect a certain amount of money in order to kill the last “boss” creature to end the game. I got online and found a cheat in order to collect a lot of money so I could win. When you have to resort to that type of tactic in order to finish the game, then there’s a flaw in the overall design, in my opinion.

Today it was announced that Electronic Arts has paid ESPN for exclusive rights to their brand. This effectively deals a one, two punch to our biggest competition Sega/Take Two who had their ESPN line of sports titles for the past two years. The exclusive NFL license killed their football game and now our ESPN license has killed pretty much all brand recognition that they built up. All I can say is: “It’s good to be the king.”

Today’s picture is of Emily playing a little soccer (with a basketball) while we were at Grandma and Grandpa’s house in Houston.

It’s a Girl?

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It’s been a week since my last post so I guess I’m going to have to do a week in review. The biggest news this week is that we went to our first ultrasound appointment for the new baby on Friday. The nurse couldn’t tell if it was a girl or a boy, so we are pretty much going with the assumption that the new baby is a girl. This is the third time that the first ultrasound has ended in “I can’t really tell”, so I think it’s a pretty safe assumption. We are a little disappointed since we were hoping for a boy, but I guess I’m destined to be in a house full of women.

We did get some fish. Abby says they are named “Abby” and “Emily”, but we are holding off officially naming them. I’ve tried convincing her to name them “Nemo” and “Dory” or “Shrek” and “Fiona”, but haven’t had much luck. So, for now they are called “the Fish”.

The reason for the lack of posts is that I’ve still be working really hard at work the past week again. It’s starting to get a little easier as more and more of the project starts coming together, but it’s still really chaotic. My new boss has come up to speed rather quickly even with the programming staff having doubled over the past two weeks. There’s still going to be a rough couple of weeks as we try and plan the entire project while finishing up our second milestone.

TiVo is amazing. At work, Tom and I were talking about this particular television program, Mr. Show with Bob and David, on Wednesday. It was on HBO in the 90’s and I wasn’t a big fan of it, but I knew of the show and the two comedians who were on it. Last night my TiVo recorded it. How does it do that? Apparently TBS is showing syndicated versions. Amazing. I set up a season pass.

Today’s picture is of Abby who fell asleep with her chair turned upside down. She doesn’t take naps anymore and she usually paints or colors while Emily takes her nap. However, sometimes if she’s had a fun time at school that day, she can’t help but curl up and doze off. We just thought this was a weird way to fall asleep.

Three Events While on the Road

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We made it back home all in one piece. That drove from Houston to Mobile and then to Orlando is way too long. We drive from 7:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. both days. Abby’s new statement was that she was “tired of this trip”.

We had three events all happen while we were driving for the past few days. First, we were called around 2:00 yesterday while driving through southern Louisiana, by our alarm company. The alarm on our house was going off and they asked if they should send the police. We told them yes and then we called one of our neighbors. We didn’t hear anything back from the alarm company, but our neighbor walked around the house and said that everything was okay. We found out from one of our other neighbors that the police did come to our house, but didn’t see anything wrong. Once we got home, everything seemed to be in order.

While we were strolling through Mississippi, the “MAINT REQD” light came up on the dashboard. Our car is only a couple of months old and just has over 5,000 miles on it. When I noticed the light we had 5,003 miles on the car. Even though Jennifer went ahead and got the oil changed right before we left, I figured it was just a light to remind one to get their oil changed. Once we got to our hotel in Mobile, I used their Internet connection to confirm my suspicion on Toyota.com.

Finally, today while driving through Florida, I was called by one of the managers at work to inform me that my boss had quit. I don’t know the reason why, and may never know. So, my life at work just got more complicated. I guess I will know more of the fallout tomorrow.

Singing Through the Tears

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Today at lunch I went up to watch Abby sing at her school’s Christmas program. We were thinking that it was probably a good thing that we weren’t with Abby before the program started because the past few times that we’ve been there when she is going to sing in front of a crowd, she has a meltdown and starts crying. We figured if we weren’t there she wouldn’t have the opportunity of start crying. We were wrong. They walked out on stage and once they started singing and Abby saw us in the audience, the tears started to flow. Jennifer and I tried to show our encouragement from the audience and after the first song it started to work. Abby’s tears cleared up and she started singing with much enthusiasm. Afterwards, she was happy to see me and we told her we were very proud.

Very big news from work today. It was announced that Electronic Arts has signed an exclusive deal with the National Football League. This means that starting with Madden 2006 and for the next five years, Electronic Arts will be the only video game which will be allowed to use the real NFL teams, players, and stadiums. This is a very big deal and we were all very excited about it at work today. I’m sure our competition, ESPN NFL Football isn’t all that pleased at this moment. The question I’m wondering now is will they even make a football game for the next five years? We will have to wait and see.

Atomic Dinner

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Tonight I met some of my old Atomic workmates, Charles Morris and Tom Kent, who were in town for dinner and we waxed nostalgic about the “good ‘ole times”. I also talked about what it was like to work at EA. Sometimes it’s amazing that I’ve been with EA for four years while my time at Atomic was only two and a half years. Thinking back, it seems like my time at Atomic was much longer that it has been with EA. My time at EA has been a blur. Anyway, it was great to see them again and it is sometimes good to get a perspective from other people in the game industry.

Saying Cheese Amidst a Sea of People

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I took the whole week off from work, but today they were having a company photo, so I went up there to participate in that. I missed our last company photo because we were still living in Austin at the time. All 250 or so employees were down in our lobby area while the photographer was up on the third floor balcony. We’ll have to wait and see if you can actually see me amidst a sea of people. We also video taped a “cameo” video for the beginning of our game. We all yelled “EA Sports! It’s in the game!” and cheered.

Jennifer went to the Toyota dealership to see how much money it was going to take to fix the scratch on the Sequoia. It turns out that it will be about the same amount that Jennifer saved by complaining to Rent a Jumper. They are going to have to repaint the area that was scratched. We are going to take the truck back in on Friday and leave it there so that it can get fixed back up.

I put the final touches on the Close Combat: Battle of the Bulge tribute site. This was the second game I worked on and the last while I was at Atomic Games. I’m slowly going through all the games I’ve worked on and getting tribute sites up. The next one will be Madden 2002.

Today’s picture is of Emily playing on the bounce house at Abby’s party.