2023-10-13

Okay so I’m high, and about 60 seconds ago when I remembered/ thought it was a good idea to journal, I thought I had an amazing opening line.

But unfortunately, what with the aforementioned high-ness it seems to have passed me by.

Today wasn’t a very productive day. I’m stuck in a challenging place where I don’t have the energy or momentum to really be involved in the project. But to get the energy requires the project to have some momentum. And having enough momentum really requires the energy to go and look for some small wins. Somewhere. Literally anything to capitalize upon.

C’est la vie

But at least the highness brings some temporary relief to my usual bitterness and grudges. Earlier the wife scolded me for being an “irresponsible parent” because I was allowing our youngest to eat a cookie. Scratch that. I was eating a cookie. And he asked me nicely for “a cookie”. And you know what I rewarded that young boy by splitting the cookie in half and giving the boy a reward for communicating his needs. It’s still new. It’s still massive progress.

And apparently that makes me the asshole.

No because for the last 10 days I’ve single handedly fed, clothed, washed, got to school and put to bed our boys. And I’m the asshole for not feeding him a cucumber or two along the way. Ah yes, when those boys are grown and talking to their therapist, they’ll very much be “it was the lack of vegetables that did it”

And now I’ve gone and bummed myself out.

I was having a great time until the journaling started.

Alas, there was a YouTube video today that encouraged me to “level up” my journaling by making sure that every day is story worthy. Apparently there is a book to match (“link in the description”) from a world championing of story telling. Because yes, obviously, that’s a thing that has a world championship, don’t ask questions, do the rules require the stories to be in English, shut up brain. Move on. Where were we?

Are yes, story telling. If this were a day would it be worthy of a story. No. This would be, at best, B-roll for a video describing how to get inspiration when you’re stuck.

It’s a tough one.

I have a trusted friend from the recruitment space trying to set me up as a CTO in some brand new, but with funding, start up company. Which to be perfectly frank, sounds pretty much bliss.

I’m. So. Done.

At least with this project. I’m trying hard to find purpose at the moment. Perhaps with this new surge of motivation to diversify into new areas at work.

This last week, between the CNN war room that constantly surrounds me and the self centred-ness of the sick, I have very little interest in directly being more at home and spending more time as the family man.

I spent two days at the office this week. Not because I needed to be but because I craved the attention of other human beings. Notoriety.

I might not be famous. But you know what I feel like hot-shit at the office. People want to listen to what I have to say in the office. People are literally lined up to get wisdom from my limited time and availability.

Meanwhile. Meanwhile, I don’t think I’ve had more than two sentences to my wife since coming back from Mexico. Yesterday the youngest almost got left stranded at daycare because it was decided that I was picking him up from daycare - only it was never communicated to me. It was only because I didn’t trust the rest of them to not mess it up, I intentionally finished my meetings early and came up from my desk at a time when I knew I had enough time to pick up the little guy.

Fuck.

How did we get here?

Did you know that today I volunteered to be a board member of the daycare. I don’t really know what I was thinking.

Yes I do. Why do I lie to myself like that?

The truth is, I feel like I’m missing a sense of community at the moment. And I feel like volunteering will be conflated by the idiots, unmasked, unknown, faceless idiots as doing the right thing.

As being charitable.

As being a good person.

Maybe I’ll effect change. Lord knows, I think that I could do better than most of those other idiots given my intelligence and experience.

Maybe it’s the job. Maybe it’s the conscience. Maybe it’s like that old quote. “That sting your feeling is the ego”.

When I delude myself, I like to think that I’m following the other old adage of “leaving the world a little bit better than you found it”.

But it’s not like Bezos was ever on a school board. But he’s justified it to himself, that his time would be better spent serving his customers.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe I don’t respect my clients sufficiently enough to think that school of my kid shouldn’t take precedence.

I mean obviously, that’s a clear selfish motive. Making the school better obviously benefits my own child. But maybe that, personally, outweighs a few dollars to some companies that are already large enough to be paying for some top shelf consultants.

Oi-Va-Voy

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2023-10-12

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2023-10-14

What distinguishes you from other developers?

I've built data pipelines across 3 continents at petabyte scales, for over 15 years. But the data doesn't matter if we don't solve the human problems first - an AI solution that nobody uses is worthless.

Are the robots going to kill us all?

Not any time soon. At least not in the way that you've got imagined thanks to the Terminator movies. Sure somebody with a DARPA grant is always going to strap a knife/gun/flamethrower on the side of a robot - but just like in Dr.Who - right now, that robot will struggle to even get out of the room, let alone up some stairs.

But AI is going to steal my job, right?

A year ago, the whole world was convinced that AI was going to steal their job. Now, the reality is that most people are thinking 'I wish this POC at work would go a bit faster to scan these PDFs'.

When am I going to get my self-driving car?

Humans are complicated. If we invented driving today - there's NO WAY IN HELL we'd let humans do it. They get distracted. They text their friends. They drink. They make mistakes. But the reality is, all of our streets, cities (and even legal systems) have been built around these limitations. It would be surprisingly easy to build self-driving cars if there were no humans on the road. But today no one wants to take liability. If a self-driving company kills someone, who's responsible? The manufacturer? The insurance company? The software developer?