Category Archives: Television

Mad for Letterman

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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.

Shopping for Health Insurance

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This week our television was finally fixed. So, it was down and out for a whole month. As I mentioned before, this does not bode well for us buying a Mitsubishi ever again. Another company had to come out and fix the problem that the other company couldn’t diagnose. This time it worked. Jennifer is glad to finally have a television down stairs. She was having to wait until after the girls went to bed and sneak up and watch their television at night.

One thing that you miss when you go back to working for a small company is really good health insurance. The company I’m working for now is pretty small, only about 60 employees, and as such, the monthly charge on their health insurance was quite high. Because of this, I shopped around and found one that we are going to try out. It continues to be with UnitedHealthcare, which is the provider we had for EA. We had to go with them because they have doctors both in Florida and Texas. We really don’t go to the doctor that much, so this one has a low monthly cost, but you have to pay for the visits in full up to the deductible. I played around with some scenarios and this one ended up being the best for our average case. We figure if it ends up costing more than we expected, we could just switch next year. The difference between the monthly savings and deducible are within a few hundred dollars, so I figured it was a safer bet to go with this insurance. We’ll see.

Still No Television

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Nineteen days without a TV and one thing is for certain: Mitsubishi has guaranteed that we will never buy one of their televisions again. They have the most incompetent service organization working for them in Visions Electronics. They told us (without ever coming to see the TV) that it was the bulb. We waited two weeks and guess what, it wasn’t the bulb. They plugged in the bulb and drove off. Within a few minutes, the television was shutting itself off again. They then said it must be a sensor (again without really looking at the TV to diagnose the problem) and said they would be back the next day. They never showed up. When Jennifer called them today: their phone had been disconnected. Mitsubishi, whether they know it or not, has this company representing them. I consider them an extension of their brand. And if they are that incompetent, then how am I supposed to have confidence in their company? Jennifer called Mitsubishi and complained. First they called Visions Electronics because I suppose they didn’t trust Jennifer when she said that their phone had been disconnected. They then put her in touch with another company which proceeded to tell us it was a fuse again without really coming to see the television. So, we are once again in a waiting game while the fuse is ordered. As stated before, will probably never order a Mitsubishi television again just based on their level of customer service.

No TV Sunday

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Yesterday my new-ish 52″ DLP HDTV stopped turning on. The horror. I’ve had it for only seven months and it decided it didn’t want to be watched anymore. So, I spent some time on the phone with a customer service agent in India who proceeded to tell me that they couldn’t help me and I would have to call back on Monday. Sigh. Today then became “No TV Sunday” here at the French household. It’s amazing how much more you can get done when you aren’t watching TV. I was behind on all of our bills and calculating our budget, so I spent most of the day working on that.

Another event which happened today was the cleaning out of my office at EA. This up coming week is my last week and since we were already down in that area for church, I figured it would be efficient to pull the big Sequoia up to the building and get the remainder of my stuff. So, the five of us went up and collected the rest of the knick knacks up in my office and hauled it home. It still hasn’t sunk in that I’m leaving yet. In about a week when I’m driving to Houston, maybe it will be real then.

Playing Catch-Up

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Sorry that it’s been so long since I’ve blogged on Frenchville. Jennifer started poking me last night to get back on the wagon and start it up again. Let’s see what’s been going on since I wrote last…

Abby and Emily had their first day of school. Jennifer has been loving having Mondays and Wednesdays off without any of the kids. Of coarse, she didn’t get this past Monday off because Emily was up until 1:30 in the morning throwing up everywhere. I had to give her a bath twice because she didn’t quite make it to the bathroom.

Austin returned from his surgery in pretty good shape. He still has trouble getting around sometimes. When he tries to run he ends up sliding around on the hardwood floors because he can’t get any traction with his back feet. It’s sad and funny at the same time.

Jennifer and I have been watching the series Heroes on HD-DVD through Netflix. It’s been a great series. We have been watching at least an episode a night trying to finish it out before the new television series starts up.

Anyway, that’s a quick blog entry. Hopefully I will get back into this so you all out there can read up on what the French family is up to.

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.

Olivia: Ultimate Survivor

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Today we went over to the Carbone’s and watched the finale of Survivor. We had a great time, but poor Olivia, their daughter, had to play host to our two heathens. I’m sure they ran circles around her and all she could do is stand back and pray that all her toys would end up in one piece. Thanks Olivia for being such a good sport. Abby said that she had a good time while I was carrying her out to the car. Of course the two were dead asleep before we left their subdivision.

This season’s Survivor was good, but the finale was pretty predicable. Going into it we pretty much said that all Chris had to do was win immunity on the last two challenges and then take Twila to the final two and he would win a million dollars. That’s exactly what happened tonight. It was good that the show was very predictable because I didn’t have to worry about missing too much while I was checking out the girls to make sure they hadn’t killed Olivia.