Mike Jutan's World: Visit to EA (Electronic Arts) and Alex is here

Today was cool. Alex Finlayson, my friend from Canada, arrived yesterday evening. We went to hang out with my Pixar crew, eat Pizza and pretend to enjoy the weird anime that was on TV. We eventually played some Halo and I concentrated on eating Pizza instead cause it was really good.

Today we had a fun filled/adventurous day. We schlepped (schlepped is definitely the operative word here) to Berkeley by cab to get some Cheese Spread for one of my former Alias managers/buddies. He is coming to Siggraph and I promised some awesome cheese spread/bagettes so I cannot disappoint. :)

Anyway after Berkeley we took a long BART ride to Millbrae and then to San Carlos near Redwood City, south of San Francisco and north of San Jose.

Mike, one of Omer's friends (and thus one of Salim's friends from Penn) was our awesome tour guide around EA's Redwood Shores headquarters. The place was huge. Like 5 buildings, 2000 people that worked at this office and it was nuts. Mike toured us around and it is pretty nice there. They had a sand volleyball court, 2 cafeterias, a games room where you can play EA games, a book and DVD and video game library where you can borrow that stuff, and more and more. It was huge. We saw some cool Xbox test machines and chatted with some of the other people that work there. Mike works in the tools area for one of the games that is currently in development so we couldn't see too much about that game but it looked like a pretty cool place to work. Lots of similarities to Alias and Pixar. Nice art on the walls and posters celebrating their successes. Very neat place. Mike rocks and it was really nice of him to take so much time to tour us around on the weekend. Sweet.

Then back to San Francisco where Alex and I continued to walk around for a long time, try on some shirts, buy some smoothies and BART back home to Emeryville, just in time to relax and not go anywhere this evening because we were super tired. Hehe so why am I still up at 1:42am blogging the events of the day? Hehe I'll let you answer that one. (3 votes for "I'm nuts and don't sleep enough) :)

Alex leaving Alias in Toronto

Alex flying over somewhere cool

Alex in Calgary

Me letting Alex into my apartment

BART train

And another classic photo...

We started off our morning by me running to a Cab and rushing off to Berkeley to get some cheese spread. Long story there. It's really good and garlicy, so I had to get some of it.

And off to get cheese spread in Berkeley

Then back to Emeryville where we were early, until it took 20 minutes for our bus to leave. W - times

At this point we were already running late to meet Mike at EA, but we did get onto the right BART train after a mishap and Alex getting some fierce attitude from a BART employee, always a fun time.