Happy mid November. I hope you have exciting holiday plans ahead.

1. 🚘 Where I've Been Traveling

Not much travel this month as we've been enjoying staying settled in Napa as well as lots of family time. Our three house guests should be able to move into their newly remodeled home in the next week or so. I did take a short trip up valley to play in very enjoyable golf event with vintage clubs at Brambles.

Julie and I are playing and practicing golf, routinely getting out with the local Napa crowd to play pickleball, and walking to and fro Planet Fitness three times a week.

2. 📖 What I've Been Reading

Articles:

1. I've got more on Alpha School, which I've mentioned in prior newsletters. I read the entire (long!) "Your Review: Alpha School", a reasonably objective and balance view from an Alpha parent. I also read Parents Fell in Love With Alpha School’s Promise. Then They Wanted Out, which to me read more like a hatchet job.
2. I've fully embraced Johnny Decimal as a digital organization scheme, and Johnny recently made his workbook free. If you wish you could find your digital stuff more easily, or if you are just a productivity and organization nerd and like to blow up your systems from time to time, check it out. Julie and I (well really, just I) implemented the Life Admin System instead of crafting our own index from scratch.
3. ‘The Old Paul Was No Longer the New Paul’ is a good prelude to the Wings book which I will eventually read.
4. Good timing for What Was The First Great Indie Album? as Jim and I are currently going deep on The Velvet Underground and Nico.
5. The points made in"University education as we know it is over" ring true as we struggle with how to walk this difficult line in CS undergraduate education.
6. Julie and I would do readings over dinner from The Art of Manliness when our boys were in middle / high school, and it is nice to revisit the old and new there as we move into grandparent roles. "10 Rules for Raising Thriving Kids in a High-Tech World" is a good example of how Brett and Kate are still relevant.

Books:

1. London Rules, getting ready for watching the next season of Slow Horses.
2. I'm still trying to figure out the point of Read Write Own by Chris Dixon. Too abstract for me so far, and too much "history of the internet" that his readers probably already know. I'm not sure he's skating to where the puck is going.
3. I found the The Battle of Arnhem by Anthony Beevor at the local library and am holding on to it for a bit to read as a companion to my latest playing of Holland 44.
4. Still grinding through and enjoying The Yom Kippur War, the recently updated classic by Abraham Rabinovich. More on the reason I picked this up below (Playing...).
5. Listening to the outstanding My Effin' Life by Geddy Lee. This combined with my latest album club pick (see below) has me consumed with listening to Rush's catalog, watching live performance (and their R&R Hall of Fame Induction).

3. 🍿 What I've Been Watching

TV Shows:

1. Not much! Just catching up on the two recent seasons of South Park.

Movies:

1. Remember how I mentioned wanting to watch Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, if only I could find it? Well I found it (if you dig deep enough you can too) and it was... disturbing. If you want more music and less disturb, watch The Carpenters' Story: Only Yesterday.
2. Hereditary was a fun kickoff to spooky season, with Julie even opting in to watch the entire thing. Not a great film, but a very solid offering in the horror genre.
3. Pyewacket was also pretty good; lower budget than Hereditary and fewer jump scares than expected.
4. Poor Things has been on my watch list since we lived in Spain for the winter, though I knew nothing about the movie. We were all... shocked. Extremely well done. Loved Mark Ruffalo's performance.

YouTube:

1. The Science of Putting with Dr. Sasho MacKenzie
2. How Wichita Lineman breaks your heart
3. Radiohead live in Madrid

4. 🎶 What I've Been Listening To

Music:

1. Moving Pictures by Rush, Jim and I both highlighted "Red Barchetta" as our favorite.
2. Pat Sansone (of Wilco) hosts the weekly Baroque Down Palace on WYXR 91.7 FM Memphis. Great stuff but the tech makes it hard to listen to: no podcast feed, and if you use their app to listen to back shows and pause, you are unlikely to resume where you left off. I'll be automating a download and push to my podcast player soon.
3. New music highlight for me is Nathaniel Rateliff and the album South of Here. Poppy Americana - what more could a boy ask for?

5. 🎮 What I've Been Playing

Boardgames:

1. Still working through Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West with Jacob, Kaitlin and Julie; approaching the final episode.
2. Played a four player game of Obsession with Napa folks at a local hobby store.
3. Learned and played 3 Chapters, a light and fun trick taking game.
4. Picked up The Number at the game shop and played with the family. Very unique and creative social game.
5. Jacob and I have played Ark Nova twice in the past month, with him winning both games. The next time we want a heavy game we are going to revisit Terraforming Mars.

6. I'm happily back into playing weekly (or more) wargames on Vassal with Portland friends.

   1. With Doug I'm playing the latest edition of Holland '44: Operation Market-Garden, one of my all-time favorite wargames. I'm playing the Allies and we are on day 2. My airborne drops have been on time thanks to some good weather, and XXX corps is rambling up Hell's Highway. Grateful to be back into regular gaming with old friend Doug.
   2. With Allen I played the short Golan scenario of Valley of Tears: The Yom Kippur War, 1973, a game in the Battalion Combat Series. I've dipped my toe in the water in this series a few times but am committed to learning the series and playing more of the games. This is a tough road; nowhere near the complexity as Advanced Squad Leader, but different enough from other wargames that you have to unlearn a lot. We've pivoted to playing the full Arracourt, a better entry level offering for playing a full campaign. Allen is a great learning partner as we both stumble through our rules mistakes and misguided tactics.

Videogames:

1. Still locked and loaded in Hades 2.

6. 🏗️ What I'm Attempting

1. I choose to live in multiple browsers for work, hobbies, and personal development work. I also store a lot of links in Obsidian. The tiny tool Choosy is making all that easier for me.
2. Still working on my playlist generator app. I had to make a pivot away from MacOS to iOS because of shortcomings in the MusicKit API on MacOS: turns out you can't create and modify playlists. Claude Code was quick to help me switch the target over to iOS and I'm back to where I was before the switch.
3. I'm playing with Ghostty as my terminal (still have iTerm2 close at hand) as I experiment with panels within a single window instead of different tabs or terminal windows. iTerm does that too, but Ghostty so far is feeling a bit snappier.
4. Speaking of Obsidian: I've completely migrated away from the Dataview plugin to embrace the new, native Bases. There's been some pain along the way but all my Bases look good and are easier to maintain. Enjoying the Card layout for some of my note databases.

Julie and I have some adventures ahead: an overnight in San Francisco, a Thanksgiving trip to Las Vegas, and perhaps a short camping trip to Pinnacles National Park. See you next month.

-Chris