Web of Power

One of the managers on my team at work is a gaming junkie. He has, like, a dozen board games in his office which he apparently plays with a group of other folks around Apple regularly. Since I game many Wednesday nights at Subrata's, I figured I ought to start borrowing some of his games so we could try them out.

Last night we gave Web of Power a try. It's a building-things-and-gathering-influence game that takes place in first-millennium Europe. Players first place "cloisters" on a road network in Europe to give them a base of power in the nine nations, and then place "advisors" in those nations to take credit for forming alliances between them. We played two games and the strategies seemed reasonably complex and the game plays very quickly. Fans of Settlers of Catan might enjoy it.

I may have to go buy this one myself. I have another game I borrowed which we might try next week, although it doesn't look as good to me.

I've been having fun this week exchanging e-mail with a high school classmate of mine. They're planning our 15-year reunion for late next year (egad! Already?), and a few of us were sending out e-mail saying what we've been up to lately. I'm usually reluctant to send mail like that to a wide distribution list, but I figured what the heck; so I wrote that since our 10-year reunion I've moved to California and started working at Apple.

A woman from my class dropped me a line that she moved out here about seven years ago, and we've been talking about being Boston transplants in California, whether we ever want to move back, and broadly reminiscing about old times, as much as we can given that we were part of fairly different social circles. It's been fun.

One thing I've realized over the last couple of years is that I no longer truly feel like a Boston native. I enjoy the city, but other than my family, I only have two friends who live there now. And after ten years of living in fairly new-growth environments the old-style feel of Boston feels increasingly foreign to me. I'd probably feel right at home if I actually moved back, but I no longer feel like I'm definitely eventually going to move back there. Heck, give me a few more years and I might not even feel like I definitely want to move back to a northern climate. Who knows!

Despite this, I still look back on my high school years more fondly than I do my college years. I feel no attachment at all to New Orleans. I'm grateful to a few folks from that part of my life (a few professors in particular), though I'm only in touch with a one or two (hi, Dan!). I'll go back to visit New Orleans at some point, but it's not a priority.

How are things in the Valley lately? Well, Jenn writes about layoffs happening at her company, which she thought had been doing quite well. Meanwhile, another friend of mine had been laid off from his startup (although it sounds like he was about ready to go anyway), looked around for another job, found one after a few rounds of interviews... and then the company shut down a week later! Geez!

Things are considerably rosier at Apple lately, as we announced a return to profitability in the second fiscal quarter. Apple beat analyst expectations, and the stock is up five points. Woo-hoo! It really is a cool place to work these days.