·

Riley & Grogu

This little monster is now 9 months old. To say the least he has change my life – our lives.

We brought him home when he was 9 weeks old. We did this because we wanted him with us during the window of time when he’d bond most strongly with us. The first 3 months were rough. We’d never had a dog before, either of us. So here we were with a puppy that needed ALL the training, no experience, and a backyard that turned into a mud pit when it rained.

My wife enrolled him in the Great Puppy Day School at the What a Great Dog training center here in town. They were amazing. He is very smart, and requires very little instruction. It helped a lot. Potty training was all on us, and it was tough.

Now, months later, he is indeed becoming a great dog. Sweet, good natured, quiet (an anomaly apparently with shelties).

Tonight he picked up his Grogu toy and hopped up on this air bed with it.

We love him.

·

AI

I have not delved into the AI stuff much at all. A few months ago I played with an AI art generator until my free tries ran out. I have not used any of the others. When I was doing the art thing I very much wonder what online resources had been evaluated and remixed to create the images produced. I have to think they came from somewhere. Or maybe “everywhere”?

The slurping-in of people’s creative output by these systems is kind of troubling. Even being as ignorant of this stuff as I am, I have to say my immediate reaction is to hate it.

I have stopped posting video to Youtube. I am considering making all my Vimeo videos “unlisted” or “private” from here on out. I’m even thinking about making all my stuff here on CL require a log-in to view, or something like that. I realize this is a meaningless gesture given the nature of this issue, but really it is only a “gesture.” I just really don’t want to feed this beast even my own little collection of thoughts, images, and sounds.

·

Doing the unthinkable

Well, not really unthinkable. I’ve thought if it many times, and done it many times.

I am getting rid of most of my books. In fact, I just did it. Over the weekend I boxed up 90% of my books, and today at work I donated them to the library, which will sell them either in the book sale or via a vendor who sells our nonfiction donations for a good price and splits the money with the Friends of the library (so it eventually benefits the library, just like the in-building book sale does).

I had a lot of books sitting there, taking up space in my office, doing nothing. I kept a few books about skateboarding. I’m a skateboarder. They are inspiring to me and to some extent represent who I am. I’m not the other things.

It feels good to be rid of them.