Tuesday, April 21, 2026

Tuesday: Middle School Move up

Tonight we had middle school move up night.  Joshua had his first band concert.  There's a chance it will be his last too...he's having a hard time deciding between Spanish and band next year.


After the concert Joshua elected to go around to all the stations by himself and get his card stamped.  I felt a little bad for not joining him, but he wanted to go by himself and I have a good idea of what will happen next year since Joshua is the second child.

Monday, April 20, 2026

Periodically: rocks in the house

Periodically we have rocks in the house.  They don't talk, but they do move a little bit and they can often follow simple instructions.

The frequency that these rocks show up has gone down a bit in the last few years, but it also happens more than I would expect.

 

Saturday, April 18, 2026

Saturday: storms

We've had a lot of storms recently and Horizon doesn't like them.  He usually hides behind a toilet.  Last night we found him under the sink, but he did seem rather relaxed there when I checked on him.


We also had Lego group tonight, although I'm not sure much was done with Legos tonight.  The kids played outside quite a bit on the trampoline and ghost in the graveyard and the food was delicious.  It was just a really nice night.

Friday, April 17, 2026

Friday: Vox Machina

I've been watching Critical Role's first season, Vox Machina, in which "a bunch of nerdy voice actors get together and play Dungeons and Dragons."  

It is hilarious.  A bit crass sometimes, language I don't love sometimes, but besides that I find myself laughing regularly.  I don't laugh at shows very often, so this has been an interesting experiance.

Today's funny was when the giant couldn't remember if the group was going to "at dawn we fight" or "at dawn we plan".  Everyone else immediately jumped on this with the fact that no one would say "at dawn we plan".  They also suggested a whole bunch of other options: "at dawn we quorum", "at dawn we rise and make a plan", and it continued throughout the rest of the episode.

Wednesday, April 15, 2026

Wednesday: vindicated

I don't use AI very often.  What tends to happen is I'll try something I think is rather straightforward and it will fail completely.  This leads me to not use it as often.

There are some things I've asked of it that work.

The other day though, I asked it to do something that I thought was very simple.  It needed to look through a table on Wikipedia and return the image URL.  It would not work.  It just made up links that looked very realistic.  

Ben uses AI on a more regular basis, so he gave it a try.  Not because I needed the information anymore, but because I wanted to know what I was doing wrong.  Well, Ben tried pretty hard and couldn't get it.  It turns out that part of the reason was that Wikipedia was blocking the AI generator.

I was rather relieved.  I was glad that it actually didn't work and it wasn't just me.

Tuesday, April 14, 2026

Tuesday: tired

I've been staying up too late.  Then today was a busy day - I didn't really stop until 9pm and I am exhausted.  I should go to bed but that involves getting ready for bed.

Monday, April 13, 2026

Monday: ready player 1

I finished Ready Player 1 (for the second time) last night.  Ready Player 2 is out and the library hold just became available. It has been several years since I read the first one, so I wanted to read it again and refresh my memory.  Again, it was an excellent book. 

However. 

I found my excitement to start reading it a bit lower than normal each time I picked it up.  Their world is having problems due to an energy crisis that kicked off a cascade of bad things.  It feels just a little too close to home with recent current events and caused the book to be depressing in an unexpected way.