Visiting Williston

We just got back from a whirlwind five-day weekend in the exotics of Williston, North Dakota, and environs. We were there to visit Lexi and Keaton, and to deliver all of Lexi's things that they didn't take with them after their wedding.

I feel bad knowing that Keaton is still surviving on the one carload of stuff that he brought with him, but we didn't know about that until we were already there, or we could have gotten some of his stuff too.

A few pictures:

Their apartment complex. Theirs is on the second floor, second apartment in, with the little bit of cardboard over the window above the balcony door.

The town itself resembles Las Vegas in a few respects, in that you can start out on a six-lane road, then suddenly be shunted onto a two-lane track without changing direction, as the road shoots through developed and undeveloped areas.

But where Las Vegas has casinos, Willison has things like this:

These are both across the street fron their apartment.

From their complex, you can see at least eight of these flares, and there are oil pumpers literally everywhere, making somebody money.

And there they are, with all of Lexi's good piled around them.

We hope they do well. They've got some choices to make as they look at their future, and we need to remind them to make them together, and to keep God involved in their plans.

Today . . .

Thinking about my sister Marina, who likely will pass in the next day or so.

When I was a kid, she'd play her guitar and sing songs. Many years later I listened to an album of the Christy Minstrels and heard all those songs again. They always remind me of her.

Her husband says this of her:

I'm not much of a singer, but I stood by her bed tonight and sang "How Great Thou Art" to her. She always sang it so beautifully. I told her a long time ago that when it came to voices, she was Cinderella, and I was an ugly stepsister. She just laughed. The first time I met her, she played her guitar and sang for me. I went home that night and wrote in my journal that she had a deep, low river of a voice.

Another sister says this song reminder her of Marina:

She will live in song.

Scamming So Inept . . .

Dear Michael Hall, of Michael Hall Consults, hallconsults.com,

You complete hack. Your game is obviously come kind of scam, but it's such a poorly-constructed scam I have the idea that you're actually dead but before you died you set your scam/spam function up to send these emails out and there's something corrupt in your database, bro, because nothing you're saying makes sense.

First, my name isn't Bill.

Second, you seem interested in my online adjunct experience, but want to sell me a francise in (looks it up) Delaware?

I'm not franchise material, certainly not within the state of Delaware. I mean, is Delaware supposed to ring some exciting libertarian free-for-all bell? I'm cross country, bro. I don't need to be even ankle-deep in Delaware franchise shenanigans.

Then there's the construction of your email. You make it look like you've contacted me several times to no avail (that my be true, but I doubt it). And really, do you promise that this is the *LAST* time you'll contact me? I hope so, but I doubt it. You don't even know my name, dude. How can I trust you further?

I'm sure it's all meant to get me to respond by saying "Hey, my name's not Bill." But I won't do that.

And it might be time to talk to GoDaddy about your web domain. You've got bigger issues than trying to fop off franchise opportunities in Delaware if your domain is up for grabs.

Another Interesting Take on the Limits of AI

My wife posted a link to this Linkedin post to a forum we both belong to, and it's interesting.

To sum up: software engineer Adly Thebaud posits two reasons why AI isn't going to be taking any jobs away anytime soon:

1. AI can observe, but not intuit. Thebaud says:

Observational learning is mimicry, cause and effect, positive and negative outcomes. It is this type of learning that all large language models (LLMs) are based on that fuels popular AI products like ChatGPT, Claude etc. 

Intuitive learning is "gut feeling". It's that inexplicable sentiment that transcends multiple senses and instructs humans what or what not to do. 

AI is terrible at intuition, and its best attempts at it lead to hallucinatory answers that are far from the truth. 

AI isn't "smart" in that it has a sense of right from wrong. It merely uses probability to figure out what the best answer is in response to your question. 

My wife mentions this, which I think is pertinent to some circles: AI lacks the "light of Christ," defined here. (If religion scares you, don't click on the link.)

2. AI has trouble seeing the big picture. Thebaud says:

It'll always be the engineer who is smarter than the AI, not because the engineer knows more, but the engineer knows how it all is supposed to work.

And when things break, whether it's the code or the AI itself, it will be the engineers who will know how to fix it, because they see the big picture.

Though he's looking at this from a software engineer perspective, I think it's fair to say that in pretty much any application, it's the writer, the artist, the novelist, etc. who knows more, and knows how it's all supposed to work because the human in general can see the big picture, while AI can't. All you have to do is look at the art AI produces, with the weird smiles, the multiple hands and making everythink look like a Picasso but without the inherent talent to know this is true.

This is a series of continued musings as I try to figure out how AI could impact my life, both as an English instructor and as a technical writer.

Sunday, Feb. 2, 1908: Dog Giveth, and Dog Taketh Away

 

This appeared in The New York Times, so it's got to be legit.

AI: Again, Don't Get Out of Your Depth

Maybe you've heard about the Willy Wonka/Willy McDuff Experience in Glasgow, Scotland.

Of course, artificial intelligence seems to be sneaking into the narrative: The script for the hapless actors brought into this travesty, AI-developed. The advertising campaign imagery for this travesty, AI-developed.

Or so the critics say. Billy Coull, the event promoter and producer, says AI was brought in to do a bit of spit-and-polish on the products. But he's also used AI to pen sixteen books in 2023, so the stories say.

More on Coull and the background of the event here:

I think, however, this is a case where it's hard to blame AI. I'm not saying AI didn't make the experience worse, but the real fault lies with this poor fellow who used to to get completely out of his depth.

I've written about that before. AI as a tool has a lot of potential. But those using it have to know how to use it judiciously, and not get too far above their head that they can't touch the bottom of the subject matter they're in.

As I write in the link, AI can be useful for brainstorming, for filling little knowledge gaps, but the bigger the gaps get, the worse off the users of AI are -- because they won't be able to tell when AI is going astray, or when they're reaching far beyond their ability.

Having wonderful AI-generated marketing imagery is one thing. Using AI to develop a script that I have no idea how anyone thought it would get past the copyright on all things Willy Wonka is another. But getting all of that together and then not being able to pull together the event in the real world -- and who knows what this guy thought was going to happen opening day -- shows how far out of depth a person can get. And a person can get there without any help from artificial intelligence.

Solar Battery: Costs Still Too High

Over the weekend we had a presentation on what it would cost us to install a solar battery in our house.

Verdict: Too much, even after the rebates and discounts. We were looking at north of $13,000 for the work.

We put solar panels on our house in 2019, and have had mixed results from them. In the summer we generally produce more electricity than we use, which is good, but even then a bill or two isn't a surprise. And in the winter, of course, production bottoms out as snow covers the panels and we decide not to climb on the 2nd story to clean them off. We did that for a year, and figured the risk of sending someone up on the roof every time there was snow outweighed the benefits.

Getting a battery installed would help with some of that problem, but we're just not sure the benefits can compete with the initial cost, especially when we've got the dream of building a shop with space above it in the back yard.

In prepping for the sales visit, though, I did learn something about the software that monitors our solar: It'll show us production from individual panels. How I missed that in the years since we've owned the system, I don't know.

Here's a peek:

Up until a few days ago, a good number of the panels to the right were showing zero production, and that had me worried a bit until I looked at them from the street and saw they were still mostly covered in snow.

Being able to see this increases the urgency for me to get a wired connection from the inverter to our modem, as the 2G modem in the inverter itself will go out of service at the end of April.

Follow-Up from the Get Ready Man

You may, of course, remember this post.

Back on March 2, we had about 21 inches of snow fall on us all of a sudden, making scenes like what's pictured below (this in my back yard) a common scene.

I got the branch cut down and stabliized a few days after, but I was worried because there were two branches resting on our neighbor's shed roof that I couldn't budge. I was sure the shed was skewered.

But quite a bit of the snow has melted since then. I went out in the yard this afternoon and pulled at the branches, and they slid right off the roof without resistance. They'd just been buried in the heavy snow to the point I couldn't budge them earlier. So no shed skewering. That's a relief.

. . . A Lorry-Load of *Interesting* Cheeses . . .

Rest assured, folks, Facebook is out there protecting you. Protecting you from the likes of. . . 

Rowley Birkin.

I imagine it's the title of this clip that caught it in Facebook's humorless web:

Now, Facebook has yet to follow up with me for reporting two individuals posting pornographic material and tagging me in their posts because I commented on an automotive-related page and they figure, car guy=sexual deviant. I don't know if they're protecting me from that.

But they are protecting you, gentle reader, from the horrors of humor. Just so you know.

Again, note the complete lack of a clear explanation as to what exactly was wrong here. You'd think by the message there that they objected to the lorry-load of interesting cheeses. No mention of the video at all. I only guessed when I went back to YouTube and saw the title of the clip:

Their reluctance to repeat the (shh!) *naughty words* does them and their users a disservice. Had this happened a week, a month hence, I might have lost all context and had no idea what they were talking about, as seen here.

Facebook, do better.

More Friends! *MORE* Allies! More I Say!

Again, the weirdness of Facebook:

How many Facebook friends do I have? I don't know. And I'm not sure Facebook knows either.

I'm thinking about this not because I feel friendless or want to wear a totem of social media allies, but because I've hovered at the 511 to 513 friend threshold for many months now on Facebook.

But sometimes Facebook tells me I have 509 friends. Sometimes 511. Occasionally 512. Rarely, 513. I don't know how they count them. I don't think they know either.

Neverlethess, there's a few inches over here, ho!

No, Not Upton Sinclair. Sinclair Lewis.

A question for my bookish friends: Has anyone out there read anything by Sinclair Lewis?

I ask because I see a lot of lists of the "Great American Novel," and Lewis is rarely on them. I don't understand that. In reading things like "Babbitt," "Main Street," "Arrowsmith," and "It Can't Happen Here," I see an American who really understood in his time what it meant to be an American, and in reading his books today, I can still see a lot of America reflected in his characters and stories.

He's not a dry writer either. There's a lot of action, and humor, and pathos in his writing.

I mean, he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1930. . .

I"ll bet this photo prompted a lot of people to want to call him Poindexter. I hope he went with a nickhame with more pizzaz.

Hired Goons?

Long story: Spent the last 24 hours sweating I had committed a miscalculation on our 2023 tax returns because when I checked on my refund status, the IRS was all confused that my information didn't match their information.

Actually DREAMED the IRS goons showed up at the house and my family, rather than getting into a [deleted because Facebook will censor it] with said goons, let them cart me off without incident.

Short story: When checking on the status of your 2023 tax refund, don't enter information from the 2022 tax year.

Even shorter story: I'm *still* a moron, if anyone out there doubts it.

My Facebook friends, of course, had helpful and supportive things to say.

Way Too Late at the Movies: Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget

I so wanted this to be a good movie.

I mean, I knew it was going to be predictable. Mrs. Tweedy was going to make a return -- I had high hopes for Mr. Tweedy to be there too, cowed and ineffectual, but, alas.

But it was not good.

The music was, well, not good. Tack on a jaunty song at the beginning and end because, you know, that's what you do. The music in the film was so bland I don't remember any of it. And while I had doubts they'd bring back Mel Gibson because, you know, reasons, that they also didn't bring back Julie Sawalha because she SOUNDED TOO OLD, maybe that's a sign not to make a sequel to a 24-year-old movie.

Aardman was there in full force in the animation and artwork. But the story, dialogue, and music were definitely lacking. Altogether, a disappointment.

I think what bugged me is that there were absolutely no stakes whatsoever. Yes, Mrs. Tweedy was back. But we've seen the gang defeat her before, so it was a foregone conclusion. At no time whatsoever did I feel like we were going to see anyone but some rando background chicken turned into nuggets. And you'd think that with bringing back the same writer for Chicken Run, and the same director as Flushed Away, both of which had great stories and great stakes, they would have recognized that. But it seemed everyone involved wanted to play it safe. Which is sad, because the chickens in Chicken Run didn't play it safe at all.

House is Gone

 

The house I grew up in is gone.

I won't admit to being a sentimentalist, but it is sad to see it go. All in the name of road widening and traffic safety.

I remember as a kid asking Dad when we'd ever move, and Mom always said maybe when they widened the road. That was in the early 1980s, so forty some-odd years ago. We all did move on, and now the house has as well.

It was a good house, full of memories, but as Albert says, the house lives on in all of us, as we carry those memories with us. And he saved us a few bricks, guaranteed to have been laid by Dad. So that's neat.

(Photos of the house going courtesy of Doreen Sorenson, a family friend. Photos and video of the house gone, courtesy of Albert.)

Another Facebook Absurdity

(Click the photo to embiggen) 

Facebook, surely even you see the absurdity in this.

You "can't show" me whatever offensive content it was I posted. It's so long ago I Gandalf-in-Moria Faced when I looked at the date. You offer me a chance for me to defend my content, but as you can't show it to me and I can't remember it, you may as well have asked me to recite The Lord's Prayer in Klingon as rebuttal; that would be as effective as me stabbing around in the dark trying to defend my honor.

So I went with the standard "You misunderstood my content; it was a joke," not really knowing if this is accurate.

Next time I guess I'll write a vignette about Private Ogilvy as I try in vain to remember what it was you're shoving down the Memory Hole. 

Who Knew AI is Relativistic?

Spotted in the wild (in this case, on a friend's Facebook feed). I don't know if this is an actual AI response or not, but that's how it's being presented. (Am image search tells me this is a real AI interaction, difficulty: The Daily Mail.)

Who knew artificial intelligence is relativistic? And, yanno, it's a cop-out to say it's a hypothetical situation.

What's more important is that it provided some amusing social media commentary:

 

Snow is A Relative Thing, I Guess

The winter of 2022/23 was pretty intense. It started early, snow piled up to the rafters and it left late.

We got 79 inches of snow last year.

This year's been a bit different. Oh, we've had snow, but as late as the last week of February, the ground was bare.

Then came March. As of now, I don't know how much snow we've got in the back yard, but they're telling me sofar we've gotten 51 inches. It feels like a lot less for some reason, but there we are.

Dogs were real happy the last week of February with no snow on the ground. Now, they're just depressed and want to piddle in the downstairs bathroom. At least their hearts (and bladders) are in the right place.

Tonight, we had to shovel snow off the roofs of the camper and the utility trailer. It was heavy stuff; I hope the camper isn't damaged, but I do have to get in there this spring and re-do things. Not going to be fun.

Way too Late at the Movies DOUBLE FEATURE: Darby O'Gill and the Little People and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

My brother Albert is a fan -- if a fan is the right word -- of 1959's Darby O'Gill and the Little People. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's like with some of the things I take a shine to: They're just stupid enough that you can't stop watching, and by the time you figure out you're maybe wasting your time, there you are already done with the movie and thinking, "Well, it wasn't that bad now was it."

Hold on to that thought as I discuss first Mr. O'Gill, and then move on to Dr. Jones.

Darby O'Gill might be the first movie I saw though memes first -- live memes presented by my brother.

Lots of scenes like this, with little people dancin' about and Mr. O'Gill pretending as most actors do when called upon to play a musical instrument.

I'm not sure there's much of a story here: Darby loves to tell tall tales and doesn't do much work anymore, so a replacement is brought in. Good thing Darby has a daughter who's pining, and not after the lockjawed local yokel whose mother wants Darby's daughter to marry because why not?

A lot of this felt set up to give Disney practice with filming techniques that would later be used to better effect. Still, it's a silly enough film and story to keep you watching if only to see what happens next.

I do like the idea of miniature horses, though. Pretty cool.

Next, let's move on to 2023's Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and the "Well, it wasn't that bad now was it" vibe I mentioned earlier.

Indy is old. So old.

I have to confess I haven't seen the entire film; I missed the beginning. But suffice it to say there are post-World War II Nazis about and they've found some hunk of junk time portal detector invented by Archimedes, heretofore best known for jumping out of his tub starkers and shouting "Eureka!" when he figured out a way to see if the king's crown was gold or gold-ish.

I think at the end they imply or say or I don't really know but Archimedes really invented the thing to find someone in the distant future who could come to the battle of Syracuse and do some rescuing. Maybe they do say it; the summaries of the film I'm reading online certainly do.

Biggest missed opportunity: That kid who flew the second(!) plane through the time portal should have said "Fly, yes. Land, no," when the lady (whoever she was; I didn't see the beginning or do the reading) asked if he could fly the plane.

Then boom at the Battle of Syracuse and the planes are flying overhead and the idiot Nazis in the plane, being idiot Nazis, begin shooting at everyone, thus ensuring that anyone with a ballistic-style missle weapon was going to start targeting them, making the grand plan of the Head Nazi to turn around and get out of there fail because the plane is hit and crashes and everyone dies.

Not the kid flying the second plane, who successfully lands the plane conveniently close to where Indy and the Lady land after parachuting out, and where Archimedes can find them. Who knew the airport in Syracuse was that convenient to the battlegrounds?

Indy, of course, wants to stay with Archimedes, who at this point isn't actually dead, which is what happened at the end of the Battle of Syracuse, but the Lady, fearing TIME PARADOX knocks him out and brings him back to the 1960s where he's reunited with Marion who brings ice cream but nobody really cares because oh finally the movie is over.

And wow, Sallah, you really became a cabbie in New York? I guess you do you.

Verdict: I'd probably watch it again, just for the sake of saying I'd seen the whole thing. But only for that reason.

News Item: Facebook, Instagram Appear to Be Out of Serivce

 

Panic, of course, in the streets. Including me, I'll confess.

March Comes in Like the Get-Ready Man

Started off today with thunder and lightning, two rounds of hail but, surprisingly, not a lot of wind. The wind is, in fact, suspiciously absent as we've been wallpoed by an early spring snowstorm that dumped about a foot in our back yard.

The dogs, sensing the unstable weather or just being general fusspots, had me up at about 6 am so I could observe said weather phenomena, and ponder whether James Thurber's Get-Ready Man was about to make an appearance.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Get-Ready Man, behold. Or at least read.

But as I gazed out the window upon the lovely morn, I did notice the snow had managed to lop off a rather large limb in the tree in our backyard, viz:

So I knew what I'd be doing this morning. Fortunately, I was gifted a pole saw for my birthday in January, so I was able to make pretty short work of it:

It's not cleaned up by any means, but at least it's in a state where it won't fall any further and spear a weenie dog. I think it did skewer next door's shed a bit, though probably not catastrophically. I'm just glad it didn't flatten anything on the way down.