New Ford Truck

Posted on January 25, 2011 by Jason

A few Fridays ago the Toyota Camry started to idle real rough and the Check Engine light came on. It appeared that the old car was finally on its last legs. We bought the Camry in early 2000 soon after we were married and Jennifer started a new job half-way across Houston. We thought it would be safer for her. Soon after we bought it, she was in an accident: rear-ended while waiting at a light. (This is pre-Frenchville so I don’t have any pictures online). She was okay, but we were worried about Abby, who was still inside Jennifer’s belly at the time. In fact I was waiting at her doctor’s appointment to check on the baby. This was also a time before mobile phones. She had one, but I didn’t. So, I had no idea where she was and why she was late. She finally rolled up to the doctor appointment crying and the back-end of the car totally smashed in. I was surprised she was even able to drive it from the west side of Houston to Clear Lake, where we were living at the time.

Well, it was time to say good-bye to the old Camry. We drove two of our girls home from the hospital after they were born in that car and it was pretty dependable over the ten years we owned it. We had already sunk a lot of money into the Sequoia and when the brakes went out and now potential issues with the engine, it was time.

Since we had had so many problems with the Sequoia, I had pretty much sworn off Toyota. I wanted to “buy American” and I wanted a truck again. I hadn’t actually had a new car that I could call “mine” since 1996, so this time I was going to be the one choosing the vehicle. The only condition I had was I wanted the Ford SYNC system so that I could throw away my old tape deck audio cable that I used to plug into my iPhone to listen to podcasts. It was time to move into the 2010’s and not the 1990’s. The SYNC system has a USB port so that it will index the songs on my iPhone and then I can play what I want through the voice activated system. For example, “Play artist Pink Floyd” or “Play playlist Podcasts”. It’s great. It also allows me to make phone calls hands-free.

I looked at several cars and trucks on the lot, but ended up with the Sports Trac. It was a combination Ford Explorer and pick-up truck. The cab is large enough for the whole family and I have room in the bed of the truck if I need to get something at Home Depot.

I’ve been driving it around for a week now and I’m loving it.

Happy New Year

Posted on January 3, 2011 by Jason

Hope everyone had a save New Years Eve. For the first time, we went to a New Years Party. Our friends the Carbones invited us over to their house. We initially turned them down because we don’t really have a regular babysitter. We didn’t know there were actually going to be other families at the party with kids the girls’ age, but when Tom informed us as such, we accepted.

We had fun visiting and playing games. We played Apples to Apples, which neither Jennifer nor I had played before. It’s a word game where an adjective and read aloud and then each player gives a noun card from their hand to the player who is playing the judge. The judge then determines which adjective best describes the noun cards which was submitted. Low-and-behold, Jennifer and Emily were experts. They killed the rest of us taking 6 of the 12 rounds we played.

We were surprised all the girls were able to stay up until midnight. They looked beat and we left the party soon after midnight. Izzy fell asleep immediately when we got into the car. We had a great time and are grateful to the Carbones for the invite.

Madden Holiday Lunch

Posted on December 12, 2010 by Jason

On Wednesday, nearly the entire 5th floor of Electronic-Arts Tiburon got a request for a “Mandatory Madden Team Meeting”. Working on a Central Team is tough. You never know if you are supposed to be invited to team meetings or not. So, I went by the new Executive Producer of Madden, Phil Frazier’s office to find out if his meeting was intended for Central Gameplay as well. He said that it was and that I needed to make sure that some of the guys on the team showed up. He said that the meeting was actually going to be a nice catered lunch with a silly awards show. He said that there was going to be a band there, but who the band was a surprise and that there was going to be no way I could guess who it was. He was right.

When I got back to my desk, I already had several e-mails asking if we were included. One person in particular wasn’t looking forward to sitting through a two-hour meeting and was asking if he could skip it. It just so happened he was going to be receiving one of the awards, so I insisted that he show up.

When we showed up on Friday, the line was long to get into the big conference room on the first floor. The room was packed. About one quarter of the room was sectioned off with black paper. Phil let us eat for a bit and then he gave an introduction for our entertainment for the afternoon. He started off by saying, “How many of you remember a pizza place called Showbiz Pizza?” He then introduced The Rock-afire Explosion, the animatronic band from the pizza place of all of our youth.

However, this wasn’t just some old recording, they had gone and recorded the award show so that the robots were giving away the awards. It was impressive that they spent so much time figuring out how to program the robots and set it up for the award show. It’s an event that I won’t soon forget. But, just in case, thanks to Ian Cummings for capturing video.

Happy Thanksgiving

Posted on November 28, 2010 by Jason

We did something unique this Thanksgiving. A few weeks ago we received an e-mail from Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse inviting us to Thanksgiving. They had a special 3-course meal and special pricing for kids. So, we decided instead of cooking Thanksgiving dinner ourselves, we would let them do the cooking for us. If we did it ourselves, we figured by the time we bought the bird and the sides, it wouldn’t be that much more expensive (we were wrong by the way).

Jennifer got everyone dressed up for dinner (including myself) and we took some pictures before heading over to the steak house. We arrived at Ruth’s Chris to find no parking spaces available that weren’t valet, so I reluctantly did valet parking. I hate valet parking, mainly because I hate tipping someone to just park my car.

This is the fanciest dinner we’ve ever taken the girls to, so there was a lot of “training” going on. The hardest part was keeping their napkins in their laps and not on the floor. It was also hard to keep their attention between courses, so thank goodness for Fruit Ninja on the iPhone.

I got steak and Jennifer and the girls got turkey. The food was good, but not up to Ruth’s Chris’s normal quality level. The steak was a little over done and Jennifer said her turkey wasn’t hot. Still, all-in-all, it was a good meal that we were all thankful for.

We were sad that we couldn’t make it back to Texas, but we are all thankful for our family and each other this holiday. We are thankful for the smooth transition moving back to Florida (we’ve now been back longer than we were away). Hope everyone out there had a safe and wonderful Thanksgiving, hopefully with the people you love.

Madden Gras

Posted on August 16, 2010 by Jason

Had a great time at our media launch for Madden NFL 11, on Monday August 9th. It took place in New Orleans on the eve of the release of the game. We had a special VIP area which several PS3 kiosks running Madden on them. While I was playing a game I was impromptu interviewed by a local television station. I talked about our major feature, GameFlow, and answered a few other questions like who the highest rated team was in Madden.

Down below in the street, GameSpot had tents set up where people could get their first hands on Madden NFL 11. There was also a stage with a band playing. People were playing games trying to win Madden Gras t-shirts.

In the afternoon, it was my turn to get interviewed by our live USTREAM coverage of the event. There is a video of the recording and my part starts at 02:35:00. I gave a “shout out” to the server team back in Orlando who was still hard at work trying to make sure our servers wouldn’t melt down on launch night. I talked about various features on our server driven features and that was it. It went pretty quick, but I had a fun time doing it. Would love to start doing more media events like this in the future.

After a late lunch, the floats arrived and we got on board the last one in line. The football player guests we had, Marcus Allen, Deuce McAllister, and Marshall Faulk, were in the lead float. We rode on the float for several blocks, down Bourbon street, ending up in Jackson Square, where another huge stage had been constructed. The floats were loaded with boxes full of t-shirts, beads, cups, and koozies. We threw them out to the crowd as we rode down the parade route. It was awesome. Phillip Holt, the General Manager for EA – Tiburon said it best, “Riding a float and throwing beads down Bourbon Street needs to make your bucket list.”

Thanks to Seth Christie for the first photo above of all of us on the float handing out beads.

Gift of a New Home Office

Posted on July 26, 2010 by Jason

Last week when Jennifer was asking me what I wanted for my birthday, I had no idea of what to tell her. I’ve been wanting my own home office for quite a while and it didn’t even dawn on me until I saw one of the Featured Workspace articles on Lifehacker. It was simple and nicely organized. When I saw the pictures, I knew this is what I wanted. Jennifer spent the past several months painting the interior of our house and I knew that I could probably convince her to paint one more room. She was just excited that I wanted to use my birthday money on the house.

We told everyone to send money and we did a quick tally before heading out to IKEA. I settled on the Galant desk system which allows you to put together several pieces into a very sturdy desk. We added a couple of bookcases and some red paint and started to work. I’ve received many questions on “why red and not burnt orange”. While burnt orange would have been a great color, I do have to work in the office and I’m not sure I could stand such a bold color for that long. I tell myself that it’s Houston Astros “brick red” and that’s enough for me.

Jennifer spent all day Friday and Saturday painting and did a great job. Late Saturday, I started putting the Ikea furniture together and quickly the rest of the room came together. I would like to thank Jennifer for all the hard work she did in painting and also that she gave up her share of the office so that I can have my own space. It’s a great birthday present. I love you, Dear. Thank you.

Mad for Letterman

Posted on April 24, 2010 by Jason

This all leads to this past Thursday. It was a dream come true when the video game I’m working on, Madden NFL 11, was featured in a Top Ten list. Drew Brees was announced that day as our cover athlete to coincide with the start of the NFL Draft. So, he was in New York and our marketing department was able to get him on the show. I think it was a great coup to not only get him on the show, but have a Top Ten List which basically advertised our up-coming game. It was great to see Letterman holding up a box of the game before the Top Ten was read. Perhaps one of these days I’ll get there to see his show live.

Car Wrecks Are Universal

Posted on April 18, 2010 by Jason

The week started off with a fender bender that Jennifer got into. Well, it was a fender bender for the other SUV. For ours, it was more of a smash the radiator and push in the hood. We contacted our insurance and the truck is being worked on. The wreck did around $5000 worth of damage and we should have it back in a few weeks. In the meantime, we are renting car.

On Saturday, EA paid for the whole company to go to Universal Studio. We could pick either park and then they were going to have a “picnic” lunch in the Universal CityWalk. We chose to go to the Islands of Adventure this time since we had never been there. Last time EA did this we chose the Universal Studios park because we thought the kids were too young for Islands. It turns out there was plenty of things for them to ride.

We started off in the Dr. Seuss area of the park, which had a few very tame rides, which the girls liked. We then headed over and saw the area where the new Harry Potter section of the park will be opening up in a couple of months. We split up so that Jennifer and I could take turns riding the Dueling Dragons roller coaster. It’s a couple of coasters which are intertwined where your feet are dangling free. It was pretty intense, several corkscrew 720 spins and a couple of full 360 loops. Both Jennifer and I were dizzy when we got off and it took us like 15 – 30 minutes to recover, but it was still fun.

When we got over into the Jurassic Park area, we decided to take the whole family on the River Adventure ride. The first part was pretty tame, just floating around looking at giant animatronic dinosaurs. Once you go into a building and start climbing way up into the air, it gets more intense. The last part of the ride has a giant T-Rex and you are heading right for it and then you drop. Needless to say Emily and Izzy weren’t too thrilled. Perhaps we should have warned them, but then we wouldn’t have gotten such a good picture as we were falling.

Overall, it was a great day at the park and we are thankful to once again be working for a company who will occasionally spring for such things.

Back in Orlando

Posted on April 11, 2010 by Jason

We’re now back home after our week-long trip to Texas for my sister Jill’s wedding. While it’s great visiting with friends and family, it’s always nice to return home and to be sleeping in one’s own bed again.

While we were in Houston, we visited the Houston Museum of Natural Science and the Butterfly Center. We walked around looking at the various exhibits, but the best part was the Butterfly Center. It was amazing how many butterflies were flying around. One of the workers said there’s approximately 2,000 of them. Emily tried several times to try and get one of them to land on her arm. Even picking a tiny flower at one point, trying to pose as one of the plants that the butterflies were hovering around, but she had no luck.

The flight back was pretty uneventful. The plan was for the Jennifer and the girls to wait and get the luggage while I headed out to the long-term parking and pick up the Sequoia. I reached the truck and realized that Jennifer still had the keys. I had to trek all the way back to the terminal and meet up with Jennifer. By the time I got back our luggage had arrived so we all hauled our bags out to the Sequoia. To top it all off, we couldn’t pick up Austin from the kennel because they had already closed.

We all had fun in Texas, now it’s back to work and school here in Florida.

Jill & Chris’s Wedding

Posted on April 5, 2010 by Jason

This weekend we flew out of Orlando to Houston in order attend my sister’s wedding in Shreveport. We decided to fly to Houston and then drive to Shreveport in a rental car because it ended up being cheaper than flying to Shreveport. There were no direct flights to Shreveport and that extra hop would have cost us another $500. So, we collected some of the points on our credit card and then used them to rent a mini-van for the drive.

The flight went smoothly and the drive over to Shreveport was pretty easy. We realized it had been several years since we had actually made that drive and the girls did great. I guess that’s the advantage of them being a little bit older now. Less drama around hour 3 in the car, which is what usually happened in the past.

Friday was the rehearsal. I met my fellow groomsmen, friends of Chris’s, for the first time. Abby, Emily, and Isabelle were also going to be in the wedding and they got instruction on what they were supposed to do. Afterwards, we headed over to Ralph & Kacoo’s for the rehearsal dinner. I tried some alligator, which tasted great (also like chicken of course). We had a great time visiting with Nana and Poppy, who sat at our table. The girls kept them in stitches when they told Poppy about their “get the plunger” saying that they made up.

The next day went pretty fast. We all got dressed up and headed over to the American Rose Center for the wedding. A lot of people had showed up and soon the wedding was underway. I escorted MaMaw and my mom down the isle and then ran back to be part of the wedding party, escorting my cousin, Brooks-Ann Camper, down the isle. Next Abby and Emily came down the isle throwing purple flowers and next Isabelle came down the isle caring the ring pillow. Finally, Dad came down escorting Jill. She looked wonderful in her wedding dress and the jacket that Brooks-Ann had made for her. The vows went fast and before you knew it, we had a new member of the French family, Chris Anderson. He instantly became an uncle to our three daughters, which I reminded him of when we all had dinner together on Sunday evening.

On Sunday morning, the Easter Bunny came and visited Nana & Poppy’s house. He was pretty sly hiding eggs in the room right next to where the girls were sleeping. But, they got up early and searched for the eggs that were hidden throughout the house. Nana and Poppy also gave them some kites, which we went down to LSUS to fly later that morning.

Frenchville

The Adventures of Abby, Emily, and Izzy

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