In my professional world, a Program is the superset of many related Projects. We even have the role of Program Manager to oversee the long term progress of a Program that can span multiple teams and organizations to ensure something gets done. Over the past year, the big Program for me has been a kitchen refresh. I am told it is not a remodel as we did not take it down to bare studs, but I promise you the distinction does not seem to be much cheaper.

Some random thoughts on AI, or more specifically the LLM implementation of AI:

If you are not familiar with Kyle Kinane, you must spend the full eight minutes listening to his story of a man bringing a bag of pancakes onto a flight.

From Austin Kleon’s wonderful weekly newsletter, a link to his post, Lean on Me by Bill Withers. The quote within that resonates with me:

What is masculinity in the modern world? It is an interesting question as it leads to a lot of uncomfortable skepticism around your motivation. Am I implying men are victims in the feminist world today? No. What I am implying is that thankfully we have progressed with feminism, but in putting our focus there, we have lost a clear definition of what it means to be masculine. The reason I find the question particularly interesting is that most every definition I have heard could reasonably be applied to women. Does the question even matter? It seems it might as boys are falling way behind in many metrics and there are a lot of poor quality men out there (just ask your single friends).

I have been on a quest to build my running capabilities over the past 18 months. I finally succumbed to a second running injury, my left heal in the form of plantar fascitis. It is not fun and it is taking much longer to recover than I had hoped. Luckily I am at the point where I am able to run again, but really should give it a full day of recovery to let my foot bounce back - so to speak. This is not inspiring to me when I am most motivated by working towards a challenge. Where does this leave me besides trying to get back to where I was? My old love, biking.

This site and how it is hosted is inspired by Derek Sivers. I know of him from his book Anything You Want, which I highly recommend. He gives a very detailed set of instructions for breaking away from the big tech universe and to host your own thing on your own terms. It involves a fair amount of terminal, but I am happy to spend any time I can in the terminal.

Every summer will be hotter than the last. This is likely due to global climate change and my failing memories. This early summer has already resulted in grumpy teens in their southern rooms. They sit over the garage and one room in particular runs much warmer than everywhere else by about four degrees. The room has an attic access through the closet and a lot of warm air radiates from the attic space. The goal of this project is to cool the room down.

I read part one of The Godfather, but decided to abandon the rest of the book. The movie portrays the book really well, in fact almost exactly. The dialogue is nearly word for word. I think it is a testament to how well both are crafted. This leads me to wonder, why am I even reading the book if I get nothing new out of it? So I decided to move on.