Not Bowled Over
Stayed after work yesterday to play The Settlers of Catan with some folks. It was a strange game. For those familiar with it, we had the desert in the dead center of the board, and I was forced to place my second settlement on the coast (I took the ore port). Wheat was as rare as mathematically possible to get (its rolls were 2, 11, 11 and 12), and the robber played a major role.
I ended up winning through what seemed like dumb luck - I was able to place a couple of strategic settlements just before someone else beat me to it, and that led to my getting the longest road and a nice position to get lots of ore to trade in. It was a close thing, though; the player I'd expect to win was pretty close.
Afterwards we played a round of Master Labyrinth, which was pretty hard-fought. I didn't win that one.
I'm hoping soon to be able to play the Seafarers expansion to Settlers. Two of the people playing last night had never played before, so we kept it simple. More or less.
Since I'm biking into work on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, this meant that I got to bike home in the dark. I nearly had to beg a ride, as it was raining quite hard during most of the game (we made the pizza deliverer come out in it to bring us food). But it ended about half an hour before we did, and it was a pleasant ride home. I hit a couple more bumps than I would have otherwise, but the water on the ground had largely drained away, so I at least didn't hit any puddles.
My body complained a bit on the ride in, I think it was unhappy that I'd not biked at all over the weekend. I may have to remember that for next weekend.
All of this basically boils down to this: I'm not doing any programming (not, "I'm mostly doing other things and trying to fit in the programming; I'm doing no programming), and haven't since the middle of last week, and this is usually a good way to make me unhappy with my job.
The only good news on that front is that my boss and I seem to be coming to a meeting of minds regarding the issue holding up my project. I feel that we need to do X to make it work right, and he says that if we do X then we have to change the structure of Y to make it sensible from a user standpoint, and I tell him that makes sense to me even though it's a bunch more work, and he says that if that's the right thing to do, then that's okay with him. I just hope it's still okay once he can devote more of his attention to it.
Meanwhile, I test. Testing is very dull. Well, to me it's very dull. One of my best friends at work, Tracy, is the lead tester for my team. We get along pretty well, both personally and professionally, and we've talked on occasion on how we would never, ever want to have the other person's job. The irony is that she doesn't have to program, but reviewing other peoples' code means that I basically have to test. But she likes testing, and just as I complain when I'm not doing any programming, she much prefers to spend her time actually testing.
Gah.
Clearly, once I finish all of these books (or even one of these books) I need to treat myself to something I think will gosh-wow me.
Ah, well. Have I mentioned how much I'm enjoying Joshua Redman's album Moodswing? It had some nice hooks to start with, and it's growing on me more and more. The liner notes, in which Redman makes some observations about The State of Jazz, are pretty cool, also. Always nice to have one thing around that's an unreserved plus in my life.
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