Weekend: Civilization, shopping, and such
Dec. 12th, 2005 07:18 amWent out to
remcat's to play Advanced Civilization with a crowd of largely-though-not-entirely slightly aged Thetans, plus special guest
brief_life. This was not one of my better Civilization games, particularly since I spent most of the mid-game drawing calamities instead of useful cards (no really, when you have seven cities and draw tradeables for your 5, 6, and 7 cards, you're just doomed). The Iberian expedition did reach Babylon successfully; perhaps I should have crushed them with the barbarian hordes when I had the chance. Not a lot of conflict (I initiated two minor border spats but that's it), and thus Babylon handily won the game from their nigh-unassailable position with two friendly neighbors. Africa and Iberia, both much less friendly starting spots, did pretty well though taking some moderate hammerings.
This ruined my sleep cycle (if we "start at noon", the game isn't supposed to run to 2 AM), but
narya had an out-of-town friend over, so I hauled myself out of bed to go to dim sum. We then went off on a slightly groggy shopping trip to the Burlington Mall. The live models at one of the stores were kind of special. Said out-of-town friend got two pairs of jeans at Express (though not the W20 "Student Center" jeans) and blurbled about this for a bit; we then went to the somewhat disappointing men's department at Sears where friend, whose prominent memory of me apparently involves an FFF outfit, acted as fashion advisor but usefully pushed me into actually buying clothes (solid boring-colored turtlenecks). No sweaters, which is too bad, because I really do need new ones.
Got home, showered, went to a reunion of sorts at my former advisor's house. I probably spent too much of it talking with my coworker who's an alum of the same group, but I did get to catch up with my former research group. Different professor is doing a start-up; just hired research staff to do the job I was doing, after two years; StreamIt v3 spec in progress, with messaging and more powerful init functions but still no finite streams and no reinitialization. StreamIt front-end is apparently among the best-commented code in the system (yay javadocs). Advisor was amused when I told him that I had gone over to working on XML, but one of my group's major projects is still streaming (XSLT).
Not totally burned out for having no down-time, which is good. In the "useless observations" department, noticed a block signal on the Lowell-to-Lawrence freight line, reinforcing the largely-unproven notion that the B&M still has substantial freight operations. Have clothes. Discovered that there is a Sri Lankan caterer in the greater Boston area. Found three hides (they were living in my Civilization box, suggesting that when I bought Advanced Civilization twelve years ago I didn't migrate them over, so I've been playing a slightly broken game; also, there are three unworn cards in my "1" deck now).
This ruined my sleep cycle (if we "start at noon", the game isn't supposed to run to 2 AM), but
Got home, showered, went to a reunion of sorts at my former advisor's house. I probably spent too much of it talking with my coworker who's an alum of the same group, but I did get to catch up with my former research group. Different professor is doing a start-up; just hired research staff to do the job I was doing, after two years; StreamIt v3 spec in progress, with messaging and more powerful init functions but still no finite streams and no reinitialization. StreamIt front-end is apparently among the best-commented code in the system (yay javadocs). Advisor was amused when I told him that I had gone over to working on XML, but one of my group's major projects is still streaming (XSLT).
Not totally burned out for having no down-time, which is good. In the "useless observations" department, noticed a block signal on the Lowell-to-Lawrence freight line, reinforcing the largely-unproven notion that the B&M still has substantial freight operations. Have clothes. Discovered that there is a Sri Lankan caterer in the greater Boston area. Found three hides (they were living in my Civilization box, suggesting that when I bought Advanced Civilization twelve years ago I didn't migrate them over, so I've been playing a slightly broken game; also, there are three unworn cards in my "1" deck now).
no subject
Date: 2005-12-14 02:34 am (UTC)