My break over, I headed back to work last Thursday and right back into our Finaling period on NFL Head Coach. So far, we’ve been able to keep it 10 – 11 hour days with weekends off. So far, so good. One of the nice things about working for EA is you get to go to special NFL events. As part of research for NFL Head Coach, this past weekend, I was able to go up to the Annual Owners and Coaches’ Meeting taking place here in Orlando. We were able to interview most of the coaches in order to get ideas for the game. One of my co-workers did most of the talking but I got to meet the following coaches: Bill Cowher (Steelers), Marty Schottenheimer (Chargers), Dick Jauron (Bills), Andy Reid (Eagles), Jim Mora (Falcons), Mike Holmgren (Seahawks), Jack Del Rio (Jaguars), and Mike McCarthy (Packers). Bill Cowher is going to be on the cover of NFL Head Coach and I got to show him a build of the game, which we filmed for marketing purposes. If any of the footage makes the light of day, I’ll be sure and post a link. Meeting all of them was great and a excellent resource for ideas for our game.
On Wednesday, we had several magazines come to visit Tiburon in order to get a first look at NFL Head Coach. Gamespot and IGN have both written pretty good previews of the game. This week we also announced that the game is officially entitled “NFL Head Coach” and that Bill Cowher is going to be on the cover. We also announced the ship date of: June 20th. The feedback was pretty favorable and we are all looking forward to getting this game done so we can see the reaction of the fans to the game.
I had some time today so I added a few features to Frenchville today. First, you will notice on the right of the page is “Jason’s News Shelf”. This is a list of tech news stories that I find interesting. This is provided by a site called digg. They call it a “social book marking” news site. Basically news stories are added by and voted upon by the users. The more “diggs” a story gets the higher it is elevated in the list of popular stories. The stories on “Jason’s News Shelf” are stories that I’ve “dugg” recently. Another addition is my Xbox Live Gamer tag under “Jason’s Game Shelf”. This shows the most recent games I’ve been playing on my Xbox 360 and other Xbox Live stats. Finally, I’ve added Google Ads and search on the left. The Ads are free and if I get some click throughs, then I get some money. So, I figured why the hell not.
Jennifer went to something different tonight. It’s called Super Suppers. You get together with friends and make meals that you go home and freeze and have later in the week. One of her friends at church heard about the place and so they went to check it out. She thought the place was the best thing since sliced bread. She came home very excited and with meals for the next 12 days.
Since I’m still off from work I took Abby and Emily to pre-school this morning. I usually take Abby on Tuesdays and Thursdays and we talk about what she’s learning in school. This morning we talked about counting. I was surprised that they had been working on counting to one hundred. I asked Abby if she could and she took off counting. She did pretty well. She had trouble bridging between thirty and forty, however. She went, “38…39…80…81…82”. I didn’t correct her and she continued, “88…89…40…41…42” and then, “49…80…81”. I felt we were going to get into an endless loop, so when she got to “89” for the second time, I corrected her that the next one was “90”. Then it was smooth sailing to “100”.
One of the good things about staying home from work while the girls are in pre-school is that Jennifer and I can get out to a restaurant. Isabelle is so much easier to take out that Abby ever was. I remember us going to eat at Jason’s Deli in Round Rock because the place was so loud it would drown out her cries. Isabelle just sits there in her carrier and laughs and has a great time. Jennifer feeds her a jar of food and Isabelle feeds herself a bottle of formula while we eat. The real question is: was Abby bad at eating out or have we’ve gotten better at parenting? I’m leaning towards the former.
One thing that’s nice about living in Orlando is baseball’s Spring Training. About half of the Major League Baseball teams spend the month of March down in Central Florida. The Houston Astros’ home is South Orlando in Kissimmee, about a forty-five minute drive from where I live. The past two years, I’ve made it a point to make it out there to see at least one game and this year was against the Detroit Tigers. One of the nice things about Spring Training is that the stadium is small and pretty much every seat is nice and cheap. Well, I couldn’t get anyone to go with me, so I went myself and I’m glad I did, because I got monster seats: first row right behind home plate. It was great. The batters were warming up right in front of where I was sitting. I took some great pictures of the Astros baseball players. The Astros ended up loosing, but it was a nice day to have a hotdog, some peanuts and to get some time away from all the estrogen in my house.
Sorry it’s been a while again. I just can’t seem to get back into writing on Frenchville. This week we started our finaling period on NFL Head Coach. That’s where we stop working on new features that will be in the game and just work on fixing bugs. That’s also the time where I put in the most hours. So, sounds like a good time to take a week off. I was approaching my limit on PTO, so my boss told me to take a week off so that I don’t hit the limit. I can’t complain with that. So, I’ve been home since Thursday and I don’t go back to work until next Thursday. You would think that we would get out and do stuff, but we’ve really just been hanging around the house. We did go play putt-putt golf on Thursday, but that’s the extent of our excursions.
The terrible three’s have arrived from Emily. She just doesn’t listen to what we are saying. She is just off doing what ever Emily wants to do. Jennifer and I are reaching our wits end. Today she pushed Isabelle over and she bumped her head. Emily ran for her life once Isabelle started screaming.
Speaking of Isabelle, she has really been getting around the house. She crawls pretty much every where now and can walk down the edge of the couch. Yesterday she’s started wheeling herself around in this walker we have. We’ve been using it for weeks now, but it hasn’t been until recently that she’s noticed that she can roll herself around. Today’s picture is actually a movie. It’s suggested for high bandwidth Internet connection because it’s almost 8 MB. Isabelle has a special interest in this plastic duck.
I finished The Da Vinci Code yesterday. It was pretty good. I guess I was expecting much more since the book was so popular. To tell you the truth, Angels and Demons was better. I can’t wait to see the movie. Unfortunately a preview for the movie spoiled the ending of the book for me. I kept waiting for this one particular scene to happen and guess what? I happened at the end of the book. Overall, though, I thought it was a good book. I’ve now read all of Dan Brown’s books. I really like him as an author and I plan on reading anything he writes in the future. Now I’m back to the Dark Tower series again: Wizard and Glass.
I finished The Da Vinci Code. It was pretty good. I guess I was expecting much more since the book was so popular. To tell you the truth, Angels & Demons was better. I can’t wait to see the movie. Unfortunately a preview for the movie spoiled the ending of the book for me. I kept waiting for this one particular scene to happen and guess what? I happened at the end of the book. Overall, though, I thought it was a good book. I’ve now read all of Dan Brown’s books. I really like him as an author and I plan on reading anything he writes in the future.
So, our dealings with Mobile, Alabama haven’t ended. We got our credit card statement last month and the hotel we stayed in over charged us for our one night stay. Instead of charging us around $130 they charged us over $300. Jennifer called a couple of weeks ago and spoke to the manager of the hotel. We thought everything had been taken care of and we would be getting a credit back on our credit card. Several weeks later and no credit. So, Jennifer tried another round of calls trying to get a hold of the manager. No dice. The furthest she could get was leaving a voice message, which he didn’t return. When Jennifer told the receptionist at the hotel that she was just going to have to go through our credit card company, she said “sounds like a good idea”. Fine. You can not only guarantee we will not be staying in your hotel, but in any hotel in Mobile, Alabama.
It’s been an interesting week in the French household. First, Isabelle has had chicken pox all week. She must have picked it up from the church nursery since that’s the only place she goes besides home. We started noticing red spots appear on her just over a week ago. At first we thought it was bite marks from a bug. We washed all of her bed linens, but once we took her to the doctor, it was confirmed: chicken pox. Fortunately Abby and Emily have been immunized against it. Poor Isabelle really didn’t know what was wrong. The worst part was a fever that she had a few days ago. On the bright side, she doesn’t have the hand/eye coordination in order to scratch, so it didn’t really spread that much. It’s pretty much over now. She has a few scabs here and there. Me and Abby gave her the name “Chicken Pox Baby”.
On Friday, Emily was discovered with scissors in one hand and a clump of her own hair in the other. She apparently decided it was time for her to have a haircut. She pretty much clipped away all of her hair on one side. We took her to the salon yesterday in order for them to clean it up. In order to even it out they pretty much had to cut her hair short. Jennifer thinks she looks like a boy, but I think it’s very stylish. One of the neighbors said she looked like a blonde Winona Ryder.
On Monday Abby and Emily sang in a musical performance at school. This was the first time I’ve seen Abby stand up there and sing with the other kids. She usually gets a severe case of stage freight right before the performance. In the picture you will notice that she’s dressed up. The 4-year-old class was dressed as different professions. Abby was dressed as a teacher. Emily did well too. She didn’t know many of the words to the songs. However, she did know she was supposed to bark during “How Much is that Doggy in the Window?” At the end of the program, the kids handed out Valentine’s Day cards to their parents. Emily gave hers to Jennifer and Abby gave hers to me.
My eyes are getting a little better. I’m being very impatient and I want perfect vision right now. I know it takes time, but it can get frustrating at times. I’m okay to drive and watch TV, but looking at stuff from a long distance is still blurry.
Everyone has been telling me how much they enjoyed my Rose Bowl coverage. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get back into the habit of writing on Frenchville. Things are starting to settle down, so hopefully I can get back into the routine.
One of the first things that happened once we got back was Emily’s 3rd birthday party. We rented out The Little Gym and we were really worried if anyone was going to show up. We ended up inviting some of Abby’s friends in order to round out the group. We only had one out of Emily’s six classmates show up. For the cake, Jennifer made a new creation: a group of cup cakes which had candy lions, zebras, tigers, and elephants. They ran around the Gym for two hours and had great fun. It has been though planning Emily’s parties since they are so close to Christmas. This year was no different.
At work I moved on to a new product tentatively entitled NFL Head Coach. It’s a new NFL franchise we are creating at Tiburon that is a strategy game where you attempt to build and manage a football team. I’ve come in to manage the Gameplay and Online aspects of the game. The game will be available in stores spring 2006 for the Playstation 2, Xbox and PC.
A couple of weeks ago Tiburon paid for everyone’s family to go to Disney World’s Epcot. The girls had fun going to a park that we don’t normally go to. (We usually go to Magic Kingdom.) We went from “country” to “country” decorating a mask at each one. I finally got to ride Mission: Space, which is only at Epcot. It’s a simulator ride which really makes it feel like you are taking off in a space shuttle. It was pretty cool. However, I was feeling a little dizzy when I got off. It spins you around like you are in a centrifuge, but you can’t tell it since you are locked into a simulator room.
A week ago last Wednesday Electronic Arts laid off 5% of their work force. It was a cost cutting move that typically happens during what we call a “transition year” (the time between generations of hardware). 35 people were laid off from Tiburon. It was sad because this was the first time that we had to go through this. Last transition (1999-2000) the lay offs happened at other studios because Tiburon was so small. Now that we are approaching 600 employees, it was time to downsize our work force. Although I wasn’t personal friends with some of the people that got laid off, I knew some of them and, like I said, it was sad to see them go.
This weekend I took the plunge and had laser eye surgery. I went in Friday morning. It was really easy there wasn’t much pain at all. I could tell a difference right after the surgery. I went home and slept for several hours and I could see much better. It’s quite amazing. My vision isn’t 100%, but it’s getting better every day. There were two strange events that went on. First, a very tall lanky guy comes up to you and says in a real calm voice, “Dr. Filutowski is going to be your surgeon today. He requests that everyone have a massage to relax you for your surgery. Would you care for a massage?” That was weird, but a guy who works on NFL Head Coach who got the surgery two weeks ago pre-warned me of the event. The other strange thing is that immediately after the surgery, Dr. Filutowski has you give a “thumbs up” and they take your picture with him. It’s framed and given to you when you leave. Besides the two strange events, I’ve been really happy with my surgery so far. I was amazed how easy it was.
Finally, Isabelle has made a lot of progress over the month. During Christmas vacation she was sitting up on her own. Now she crawls all over the house and will stand up against any kind of furniture that will let her. At first she would stand up and then she couldn’t get down, but now she’s fully mastered getting up and down. This is the first time we’ve had a baby so young that is mobile in a big area. When Abby and Emily were mobile we were living in apartments and we could section off the areas of the apartment. Isabelle is going from room to room getting in trouble. Abby has been a great help watching over her and moving her from room to room when necessary.
Frenchville 