Weeknote #105 (20260927-20261003)

meta

Spent a good chuck of the week in Austin, for an on-site work training. (Yes, it was training on what you think; no, I’m not gonna talk about it more than that.) It really didn’t feel like visiting “Austin”, because I was out in the north burbs the entire time, other than the time at the airport — it was just like going to some generic upper middle class suburb where it happened to be too damn hot and humid. Back home now, and looking forward to the Oregon fall.

did

  • Sunday was dealing with new kitten things and getting packed
  • Flew Monday, onsite until Thursday afternoon, then I flew back home
  • Thursday afternoon, the office had free flu and COVID jabs, so I got both of those down not too long before heading to the airport
  • Friday, thanks to those jabs, I spent about 18 hours in bed, mostly asleep — luckily I’d planned on taking the day off anyway
  • Uneventful weekend — probably should have gotten out in the yard and done …any work, really. I guess that’s what next weekend is going to be for

read

  • Finished my re-read of Swordheart and just barely cracked open Daggerbound — enjoying being back in this particular 'verse

  • “No Sloptober” (and yes, I realize the irony given how I spent most of this week)

  • “Are LLMs still surprisingly bad at some simple tasks?”

    People are lazy, slapdash, and some third thing to make the rule-of-three. If an answer looks answer-shaped, they’ll accept it. On a simple but boring task, no reasonable human is going to suspect that a superintelligent computer has made a mistake. All the marketing says that these machines are brainier than you - so why bother?

  • “What Would A Serious AI Product Look Like?”

    Here, I will set down a few features that might convince me that an LLM-based product, particularly one focused on research or software development, was actually serious about helping me do useful things with it.

    …followed by an excellent list of things that are completely missing from current tools

  • If you haven’t seen “Claude’s load-bearing seams”, drop everything and go read it right now — just be prepared to need a drink and/or to bang your head against your desk for a bit afterwards

  • Unread bookmark count 170

watched

There are a couple videos out now for the first couple singles off the next Spanish Love Songs album, they’re both bangers, and this might be my most anticipated upcoming release of the year. Reading the lyrics is highly recommended, particularly for the second one:

(If you’re not familiar with SLS, please consume with caution; they can lead to a dangerous combination of melancholic depression and euphoria)

We also got caught up on Ted Lasso. I know some folks in my circles have been underwhelmed by this season, but I’m choosing to focus on the stuff I’ve liked — and overall, I think it’s been okay, really.

photo

New kitty, sittin' pretty

looking forward to

Being home for a while — current plans have my next travel at the beginning of November, and I’m crossing all available appendages that the universe goes along with those plans. Things have been far too randomly last-minute recently.