Settling for Catan

Today seemed liked such a long day. I got up for the 7:30am breakfast which meant that we had to leave the hotel at 7:00am! No place opens that early for breakfast, but we got this greek restaurant to open up at 7:30 instead of 10am for the 20 of us. We ended up having greek appetizers for breakfast, but it worked out better than expected.

Unfortunately it was pouring rain on the way back from breakfast, so Janusz and I ran all the way back to the hotel and then went back to bed :) I needed some sleep, because I haven't been getting much. Been wasting too much time blogging... That and having fun. That and working I mean.

Then stopped by AAMAS and went to a few talks and the invited speaker's talk on Cooperative Game Theory commitments. He was basically trying to design non-cooperative games that endedup resulting in a more optimal cooperative end state. I initially thought that the talk was too trivial, but after discussing it with others, I am a little uncertain.

Then we had the conference banquet. It was pretty good. Lots of casseroles, probably traditional. The highlight was cooking your own meat on these outside grills. I, being the nerdy optimizer I am, threw my meat on the grill and went and got other food and came back and it was almost done. The banquet had this Utrecht cover band, the lead singer of which was donning this shirt that said, "Barbie is a slut." Which I have to disagree with, because she has been around for quite a while and has always remained monogamous with Ken. Which is a coincidence because their music disagreed with me ;)

Well, those of you that know I love board games, might also know that I really enjoy Settlers of Catan. I knew that it was popular in Europe so I was upset when I passed a game shop and couldn't find it in the window. Fortunately, Dimitri was with me, who is Dutch and he said, "What do you mean? It's right there." I leave you with the Dutch Settlers of Catan (pic above).