Sid Meier's Pirates

Stardate 58011.2 (1-12-2005)

Last Friday I purchased Sid Meier's Pirates!, using some money I got for my birthday. The gameplay is very simliar to the original release a decade ago. You are a 17th century buccaneer captain, and you plunder ships and towns in the Caribbean. The graphics are, of course, much better than the original. One of the complaints I do have is that the graphic sequences as you board a ship and fight the captain are repetitive. The updates and changes are not significant. You now have to do a series of keystrokes to follow the governor's daughter around a dance floor (Patrick was very concerned that I could not master this and get married). And in the original, you had to align yourself with either the English, French, Dutch, or Spanish to survive. Now they have "Pirate Havens" so that you can be a pure pirate and plunder everyone. I have not tried that yet, but it sounds interesting. I will say that if you did not like the original, this version will bore you.

Basketball starts Saturday. The games are later in the morning, so at least we don't have to get up at seven. I am not sure how long Patrick is willing to play. Last year he got pretty frustrated that no one would give him the ball. Practices go from 6:30 to 8:30 on Wednesdays, so the day gets long. Good thing Enterprise was moved to Fridays.

I had a meeting at work on Tuesday to set up a timeline to move to web development. It's not as aggressive as I would have hoped, but it's not bad. Possibly by September half of my time will be on that. Not that what I do now is bad, but after 8 years it would be good to do other things. I have to fight the tunnel vision and look at different techologies. It doesn't help that with software development the rate of change is high. I've tried to branch out and still keep doing what I am doing, but learning new things takes concentration, and I have to keep going back and complete tasks, which breaks up my line of thought. It's kind of like a TV show that gives you two minutes of the show, and switches to something else for a half hour, and then puts on a bit more (I am reminded of Cartoon Network's Star Wars: The Clone Wars five minute episodes). You loose track of what was going on, or I do anyway. But it does feel like a weight is lifting.

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