Bad Tech

What technology would you be better off without, why?

Daily writing prompt

There are a lot of technological breakthroughs that are just plain dumb. The big one that comes to mind for me right now is what we laughably call Artificial Intelligence. It is just a language model combined with a Google search. You ask a question, it searches the web, and then the language model summarizes the search results in a way that makes it look like an uncreative person wrote it out for you. That is not artificial intelligence. No need to worry about Skynet at all. We could definitely do without it.

Self driving cars are dumb too. They only work if you are okay with killing your neighbors. Once I would have thought that no one in their right mind would be okay with killing their neighbors in exchange for a tiny reduction in inconvenience. Then we lived through the Covid-19 pandemic and clearly learned otherwise. Self driving cars is a technology that is probably 10 years away from being perfected. Unfortunately it will still be 10 years away 10 years from now, and it will still be 10 years away 20 years from now. You see the trend? It’s dumb, we don’t need it.

I’d like to add chemical and biological and nuclear weapons to the list of technologies we don’t need, but unfortunately the research into these evil nightmares has also lead to some positives. That probe that flew by Pluto a few years ago? It had a nuclear powered drive system. We wouldn’t have that without the effin’ bomb. It’s disgusting and painful but that’s how it happened. It sucks but I don’t want to say we can do without nuclear power when it brings us to other worlds. Am I a hypocrite? Probably, yes. Shit.

A.I. though… that’s just plain dumb.

To Do List

It’s Saturday. Jen is going to be working today so I will be fending for myself. I’m going to Vermont tomorrow to take my step son to a UMass Lowell vs Vermont NCAA Hockey game so I have to get all of the stuff I need to do this weekend done today.

It’s time for a to do list, babie! Yes!

  • Do my 40 minutes of exercise and eat breakfast. Gotta start the day off on the right foot.
  • Our bathroom tub is a disaster of mildew and soap scum and a partially clogged drain. Clean it!
  • Put together a desk for the new home office work space.
  • Go to BestBuy and curbside pickup two orders of stuff for the new home office work space.
  • Go grocery shopping.
  • Clean the cats’ litter boxes.
  • PLAY YOUR FRIGGIN’ GUITAR!
  • CALL YOUR FATHER!

There. That’s a good list of things that need to be accomplished today. Let’s see how many we can get to before bed time tonight.

Weekend Project

I mentioned in a post a few days ago (so… like… 100 posts back… I post waaaaaaay to much) that I am going to set up a new office space in one of the kids’ rooms. I am going to put together a new desk and a work-from-home workstation to use with my work-issued laptop. I was also thinking of putting a personal machine in there just for schnitzengiggles. I figured it would be a windows box and I could put some games on it or something. Mostly it would just be used for youtube, but who knows.

Today I had a crazy idea.

If I am going to have a desktop machine that isn’t a Mac (I am 100% a Mac user outside of work)… why not a duel boot with a version of Linux? Debian or Ubuntu? Something like that?

That could be fun, right? Get a little swagger for my Computer Science degree going? Yeah… we’ll have to look into that more once everything is setup and running.

A Good Day for Genesis Fans

Today is a good day for fans of people who used to be in Genesis.

Peter Gabriel’s first album of new original material in 45000 years has finally been released. It’s called i/o. He’s been releasing it one song at a time for the past year, but the whole thing is out now and it’s pretty freakin’ magical. Is it as good as So or his third record? No. It’s good though.

I knew that one was coming, but I didn’t know about this one. Steve Hackett released a single today. It’s called People of the Smoke. I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet but it’s on my to do list for today. I knew he had an album on the way sometime relatively soon, but I didn’t know there would be a single out today. Excellent!

This coincidence is making me wonder what Anthony Phillips is doing today. I wonder…

The Most Difficult Decision

What’s the hardest decision you’ve ever had to make? Why?

Daily writing prompt

Nope. Not going there. It’s way too soon. I’ll tell you what but I won’t tell you why. That will have to do.

First, we had to put a DNR order into place for my mother. DNR stands for Do Not Resuscitate. If you don’t know what that is then Google it. I don’t have the heart to explain.

Next, when the hospital could do no more to treat her, we had to move her to Hospice. That included instructions to do nothing beyond making her comfortable. That easily topped the DNR as the hardest decision. It was literally decided to make her comfortable in her last days before she died. It took a lot longer than we thought it would, and every day was utter torture right up until the end.

Okay. That’s way more than I was planning to share. That’s enough. I’m sorry.