Category: Daily Life

For years, I’ve begged the children to trim the vines from the trees while I’ve procrastinated doing it myself. I finally removed vines from on of the trees and it looks so much better. I’m excited to continue and cleared 3 more trees today.

“Cleared” and “removed” are inaccurate. I use an Ax my son gave me for Christmas and chop thru the vine about 3 feet high and then at the ground to remove the bottom 2-3 feet of vine. I am very careful to not damage the bark.

I actually got on the rowing machine. I was interrupted so it wasn’t as long as intended but it was something. It was a start!

Glad you asked. It didn’t. Hold me accountable. I do have an 8 mile hike planned for Saturday.

I’ve been at this for decades and I still don’t have an answer to that question asked of every 8 year old.

Quit asking people what they want to be when they grown up. Quit trying to make them define their life purpose. Instead, ask them what do they want to do. If money were no object, what would you be doing with your time right now?

In my twenties, I enjoyed exercising. I would wake at 4am and be at Court South at 5am with the morning crowd waiting for the doors to open. I’d use the dry sauna, stretch, run the track, use the free weights, sometimes swim and other times play racquetball then finish in the steam-room and possibly ride my bike to work. I never felt better. Then life got in the way.

I also used to stretch 20-30 minutes in the morning and again in the evenings. I loved my flexibility. At one point, I gave many of my friends and family a Go set and a stretching book by Bob Anderson which was basically the only stretching book at the time because yoga had not taken off and there was no yoga section in the bookstores.

I lament letting myself go. So tomorrow, April 12, 2023, I begin a journey to get in shape. I invite your commentary and suggestions knowing that I am very limited on time and regularly do not have access to a car. I do have access to a rowing machine and a chest strap heart rate monitor. Let’s get me to drop 20 to 30 pounds, add on muscle and tone, and make my body lean again.

It is 8:24pm. I have 3 hours of computer work left to do. I have to cook dinner. And there is a third thing I am completely forgetting. This is why you see “cooking at midnight” posts of Facebook.

Me. I am all my obstacles.

We have a young mother who walks in front of our house with her stroller several times a day. Annie, the golden retriever, always barks at her.

This morning I let the dog out for a walk, off leash, and just happened to go out in the yard with her. I see stroller mom approaching so I begin to place myself between stroller mom and Annie. And I say, “Don’t you do it.” I see a gleam in Annie’s eye and assume she is about to bolt so I quicken my step, slip on the grass, land palm down on our gravel driveway and roll onto my back as I complete my fall. Then a sweet voice says, “Are you okay?” And I reply, “Yup. She’s going to come visit you.”

Annie instead of running in a scary charge as normal hesitantly walks toward stroller mom while glancing my way then comes back to me.

Clearly my life needs more scotch.

When I stated that I will be nose down in work today, I was not issuing you a challenge. You can back off a little and allow me to get things done. Thank you.

Well, I’d planned on doing 8 hours of work between 8pm and midnight. I also had 2-4 hours of a personal project to do in that time. And cook dinner. And there were about 3 hours of other things I’m not even listing. But of course, a client site decided to just quit working so instead of doing anything I planned for this evening, I’ve been scratching my head of a very unusual problem. But I think I’ve gotten to the bottom of it. Now to actually fix it.

When time and money have permitted, I’ve been early adopter of technology. I’ve been toying around with the GPT-3 AI (artificial intelligence). Today I’m stepping up into GPT-4 and basically replacing search engines with AI. Instead of defaulting to Google or DuckDuckGo, I’m going straight to GPT-4. I will be using GPT-4 as a tool instead of a toy. My plan is to document the journey when appropriate. For instance, I’ll use it not to write blog entries but to create writing prompts. I’ll use it not to make my meals for me (obviously we aren’t quite there yet) but to help me plan my menus (“I have this that and the other thing in the pantry. Please plan a breakfast lunch and dinner menu for the next 3 days using only the available ingredients. In addition to the menu, create the step by step recipe for each meal. Be sure to adhere to current nutritional recommendation for 4 people of ages ___, __, __, and ___. Each meal should include an entree and at least one side dish.”). I’ll use it not to do my work for me but as a peer programmer to minimize the research needed for my job. For example, the other evening I had an error in one of my side projects. The AI found the error and offered a correction in 30 seconds. On the other hand, I asked the AI for an Excel spreadsheet formula and it completely botched the formula. You still need to have skills and know what your are doing. AI is a tool to assist in your life and work. It will give you a leg up and an advantage over those not adopting it. You do not have to worry about being replaced by AI…yet.