Happy New Year! We had a quiet holiday season in Napa, enjoying time with family and friends. The new year kicked off with a home renovation project—flooring and painting work has started, so Julie and I are bunking at Kaitlin's grandmother's place for about a month while the work finishes and dust settles.

I have a not-a-theme for 2026.

1. 🚘 Where I've Been Traveling

I did an overnighter down near Livermore to play back-to-back 18s at the magical Poppy Ridge.

Friend Greg visited near the end of the year for some wine, quality Napa food, and boardgames.

Julie and I spent last weekend up in Tahoe with Napa family. We mostly stayed close to the cabin, enjoying casual snow time with Rory - sledding, snowballs, skiing. Julie and I don't see the white stuff much these days so was a real treat to experience it with him.

2. 📖 What I've Been Reading

Articles

1. My brain continues to be pre-occupied by the impact of AI on computer science education and professional software development. Latest reads include How To Not Be Replaced by AI, New Year, New AI, New Me, and The Bet On Juniors Just Got Better.
2. Always a sucker for lists: Best movies so far this century
3. If you think it is unfair for old folks to complain about the younger generations, consider how we talk about boomers these days: Against Against Boomers
4. Markdown is how I write 99% of my prose these days, and what I have my students write in for most of their prose assignments. Want to learn more? Read How Markdown took over the world.
5. Check out Sailing Rigs for some educational sailing humor
6. I stop and play golf in western Nebraska whenever we drive through and the courses are still open. This is a great Nebraska Sandhills Golf Guide from The Fried Egg.
7. With all the crap going on in Minnesota right now, good to remember Protesters' Rights and a reminder to Call a Murder a Murder.

Books

1. Finished The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay (thanks Karen) and moved right on to listening to Tandia.
2. Started Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman. A wildly inventive LitRPG where the apocalypse is a televised dungeon crawl. Surprisingly fun and darkly humorous.

3. 🍿 What I've Been Watching

TV Shows

1. Finished The Last Thing He Told Me; was pretty good. Nice to see Jennifer Garner outside of a Capital One commercial.
2. Finally watched the original season of The Night Manager and thoroughly loved it. Second season queued up.
3. Continuing Stranger Things season 5 with Julie. The nostalgia machine keeps rolling. Kate Bush queued up in Apple Music.

Movies

1. Song Sung Blue was a delightful documentary about Lightning and Thunder, a Milwaukee husband-and-wife Neil Diamond tribute act. Heartwarming and bittersweet. We saw it at a theater—always nice to get out for a movie.
2. Finished A Walk in the Sun, the 1945 WWII film following a platoon through the Italian countryside. Perfect companion viewing for my Salerno '43 and Italy '43' wargaming.
3. Train Dreams was cinematically beautiful, an OK movie.
4. Sorry, Baby on HBO, very good and sad dark comedy.
5. The obligatory National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation rewatch. Still holds up.
6. Holiday Hallmark roundup: Holiday Touchdown: A Bills Love Story was fun for football fans, A Newport Christmas had lovely period costumes and time travel hilarity.

4. 🎶 What I've Been Listening To

Music

1. The highlight of the month was our album club pick: Mellencamp's Scarecrow. Album club companion Jim (and wife Jill) and I were both at the Little 500 concert in the spring of 1986 that was part of this tour; this was about 20 years before we would meet. To cap it off, the Cutters won the race that year. The album holds up start to finish; my top pick will always be "Minutes to Memories."
2. Some indy rock picks in heavy rotation for me: Lucy Dacus' Forever is a Feeling, Geese's Getting Killed, and assorted tracks from Jesse Welles (thanks Matt).

5. 🎮 What I've Been Playing

Boardgames

1. Wargames on Vassal continue: wrapped up a BCS Arracourt campaign with Allen (only to start a rematch) and Holland '44 with Doug. John and I started a campaign game of Italy '43.
2. A bunch of in-person games over the holidays:
   • Azul: Summer Pavilion
   • Mistborn: The Deckbuilding Game
   • Terraforming Mars
   • Vantage
   • The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring – Trick-Taking Game
   • Undaunted: Stalingrad
   • Viticulture: Tuscany Essential Edition
   • Agricola
   • Cascadia
   • Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor

Videogames

1. Hades II, still. I'm almost ready to move on. Almost.

6. 🏗️ What I'm Attempting

1. After playing Undaunted: Stalingrad with Greg we both lamented that there's no Vassal module available for it to allow us to continue our campaign remotely. So I've decided to build one. Should be ready in a week or two.
2. I did an experiment to see if an LLM can be a viable hex-and-counter wargame opponent. It cannot (yet).
3. In January I started weekly guitar lessons, online via live video. This has been good for me, forcing me to learn some skills that are easy to neglect without this accountability.
4. I stopped using Streaks as part of rejiggering my personal workflows during my annual planning, swapping in a different but necessary app: Due: The Superfast Reminder App

Enjoy your winter time wherever you are. Go Hoosiers!

-Chris