Chris Brooks

What I’m Playing

• Advanced Squad Leader – my weekly session with Doug. We are using tanks, guns, and soon motorcycles and cavalry!
• Combat Commander: Europe – my semi-regular session with a friend who is soon to go active duty in the Army.
• Triumph & Tragedy – A teaching session with two newcomers to this game. It was a big enough hit that we scheduled another session where we’ll be able to play through the full game.

What I’m Watching

• Sing Street – Julie pointed me to this and I loved it. If you are a product of the 1980s and MTV you will love it too.
• Shooter – Satisfies my Jack Bauer 24 fix, and easy to watch while I’m working on football tasks. The acting isn’t great (I think Ryan Phillipe has made his career on his looks and charisma) but the plot is fun.

What I’m Reading

• I read Something New as part of a project I’m working on with Standard Ebooks (my GitHub repo). I chose the book to work on from the wanted list and it should be ready for publication within a week or two. The book is a fun, quick read. Hint: wait until I release it for free on the Standard Ebooks site if you want to read it!
• I listened to the Steve Jobs biography and it was fun to learn more about his life and the different stages of his career. I remember vividly the Apple II release (and playing / programming with it non-stop at my friend’s house), the Macintosh commercial (and using it in 1984–1985 when I worked on the school newspaper), and even the NeXT computer (I worked on a physician’s workstation on the yet-to-be-released NeXT as a senior project in college).

What I’m Contemplating

• Return of the city-state – A good reminder that our notion of a nation-state is a human construct and extremely new in human history.
• You Are the Product – If you are spending significant time on Facebook, this article is a good reminder that you are essentially writing checks to the company on a daily basis. Your time and attention are worth something, right?

What I’m Listening To

• The Times They Are a-Changin’ – This was Steve Jobs’ favorite album (and Bob Dylan was his favorite musician) so I wanted to give it a re-listen. I’ve generally stuck to Highway 61, Blood on the Tracks, and Blonde on Blonde so this was a nice change of pace.

What an amazing day they had – Army 4th quarter comeback vs Buffalo and together time after to tour campus

What I’m Contemplating

• This Email From Elon Musk to Tesla Employees Describes What Great Communication Looks Like – Love, love this and even used in a talk I gave tonight to the Rose City Software Quality Engineers about the role of managers in an agile software environment.
• Our 6 Must Reads for Scaling Yourself as a Leader
• What I Hear When You Tell Me Your Company Doesn’t Do Meetings – Yep: “don’t do meetings” usually means “we don’t know how to do meetings well.”

What I’m Playing

I had a great long weekend of gaming with Greg (and father-in-law David).

• San Juan – Played in a bar while watching the Army / Fordham football game. Always up for this.
• Jet Set – First time playing this game by a local designer. Good, light fun; close to Ticket to Ride in complexity.
• Viticulture – Probably my favorite Euro game of the past 5 years. Taught this to David and he seemed to enjoy it.
• Band of Brothers: Screaming Eagles – David and I played this a year ago so it is officially an annual tradition.
• Custom Heroes – First play for me, wacky climbing card game where the cards morph throughout the game.
• Innovation – Two plays over the weekend. I like playing just the basic set.
• Isle of Trains – New game for me, didn’t like it much at the start but got better. You are building a train and completing delivery contracts.

What I’m Reading

• Finished reading A Great Place to Have a War: America in Laos and the Birth of a Military CIA – A bit too much depth and “inside baseball” on our presence in Laos, but I enjoyed it as far as I went (about 2/3 of the way through it). Summary: we didn’t just screw over Cambodia and Vietnam in the 60s and 70s, but also Laos!
• Finished reading Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, and it was even better than The Black Swan. It resonated with me in such an organic way: we need to construct systems and our lives that embrace and incorporate stress and even malfunction. It is how we get better and learn to minimize the downside of catastrophe.

What I’m Listening To

• Astral Weeks – I’m not sure why I wanted to listen to this again, but it has recently become my “focus music” for doing work. Van Morrison is my James Joyce, and I can even claim to get through the entire album.
• Mr. Misunderstood – I don’t know why I wanted to listen to this country album, but I did and liked it. And a double reference to Jeff Tweedy in the title track!

How I’m Optimizing

• Staying Fit With No Gym in Sight – I’m taking some of this to heart as I transition away from half-marathon training. The air quality has been so atrocious around here that I’ve been reluctant to run anyway, and there are some good ideas in here that are working for me. Doing more push-up sets every day, more squats with my heavy kettle bell.
• Tim Ferriss: Mr. Money Mustache — Living Beautifully on $25–27K Per Year
• Michael Kitces – The 4% Rule and Financial Planning for Early Retirement – The math behind some of the advice I gave to Jacob and Matthew.

Greg and Chris