The Starfarers of Catan

Next year I think I'll do them on-line.

So yesterday two things happened at work:

First the bad news: It turns out that my partner on my current project and I underestimated the workload for the project by a factor of more than two. Don't ask how; there's a perfectly good reason for it, and it's not like getting the estimate right the first time would have resulted in less work. But it was annoying to discover at this late date. Fortunately our boss was understanding about it and guided us to figure out how to prioritize things, which we have nearly finished doing. It will all keep us busy for a while, no question about that!

On the plus side, we had an off-site yesterday afternoon, going to a restaurant called Campo de Bocce to celebrate the release of WebObjects 4.5, which we shipped a month or two ago. We all received copies of the product, as well as polar fleece vests, which are pretty nice, but alas, I am not much of a vest person. (I mainly wear polo shirts, which don't go so well with vests, never mind my neurosis about being very picky about what kinds of clothes I wear, even though what I wear is nothing special.) I am envious of the people before me who got very nice gray jackets for shipping 4.0.1; I would really love to have one of those jackets. Alas...

As the name of the restaurant suggests, they also have alleys for playing bocce ball. Bocce ball is (I understand) an Italian game, which involves playing on a bowling alley-like clay court, about 60 feet long by 12 feet wide. Two teams stand at one end of the court, and one person throws a small white ball down the court so it travels at least half the length. Then teams take turns (more or less) throwing larger balls of two different colors down the court from the one end, the goal being to have the ball which is closest to the white ball. You can knock other balls - including the white one - around, and one side scores points depending on how many balls they have closer to the white one than the closest ball of the other team. You play a series of frames until one team has 15 points.

It's pretty tricky, as it's easy to throw not far enough, or too far. And going first is not always a plus, since you might score a well-placed ball, only to have it (or the white ball!) knocked away on the very next throw. We all actually had a lot of fun playing, and I'm pleased to say that my team won the first game in a blowout, and lost the second one only narrowly (coming back from a 7-0 deficit). It was fun. Apparently several folks in the department went out to price bocce ball sets afterwards.

It actually made me think that I'd like to buy a croquet set, which I always enjoyed, and have not played for years. Apple's courtyard has nice grassy areas which would be good for croquet (and I've seen people playing bocce ball on them!).

In other Apple news, our stock has been falling with the rest of the Nasdaq. On the plus side, we announce quarterly earnings in about a week, and there's some hope that we'll get profit sharing checks. We'll see!

Tonight was gaming night, and Subrata received the new game The Starfarers of Catan, recently imported from Germany, and an English version due out in the summer. The German versions of previous games from this company, such as The Settlers of Catan, are generally of higher quality (in terms of the board, pieces, artwork, etc.) than the English version, but the drawback is that everything's written in German. Although the imports always include English rules and translations for everything, it's sometimes annoying to have to look up the meaning of a card you've just drawn.

Starfarers has this problem in spades, since there's a 50% chance each turn that you'll draw a random and complicated card which is difficult to find in the translation list. So this slows down the game somewhat, though no doubt Subrata (or one of us) will simply print a better index sometime.

Other than that, Starfarers is fairly cool: It has the same resource-generation-and-building elements as Settlers, except that you build ships which explore a set of solar systems to settle them, or make contact with alien races. The basic concept - settle things and gain victory points - is the same, but there are modifiers allowing you to make your ships move faster, or deal with certain hazards you might encounter. It's certainly cool enough to play again, and I might even buy a copy!

Still having trouble catching up on my sleep after last weekend, I've actually been considering taking a sick day to rest up. I haven't taken a sick day since I started working at Apple, so it's not like I'd be cheating anyone...

Plus, it started raining tonight, indicating that summer is not quite here. Apparently there's a chance of rain over the next two days... not that I'm complaining!