I believe there is a middle ground when it comes to AI. It is possible to see the value it can provide while also being aware of the harms it promotes, such as devaluing human input and the theft that many AI companies engaged in to build their models. I believe we should advocate for ethical use of AI models and seek to provide fair compensation to those who have been harmed by it.

Ever been caught off guard by a change in schedule that ruined your plans? Ever felt a surge of unfairness mixed with annoyance and the reluctance to confront it due to the fear of being labelled a complainer?

While I agree that the worst effects of AI are ahead of us, I do not agree that the concerns I have about AI are not valid. I got so annoyed at this article in Writers Digest that I had to comment on it.

Deciding to quit is tough for me. I was raised to believe that winners never quit. But in just the last few years I’ve realized that quitting things that aren’t working works for me.

I never used to like the phrase “it is what it is.” It seemed like something people would say when they were dismissing my very real anger or frustration. Or something they would say when they were trying to pretend they weren’t feeling anger or frustration themselves. I know now that the reason I didn’t like the phrase was because I didn’t understand it. I hadn’t truly lived it. Along came 2020.

I’ve known this for a while. I first learned it when I was writing a test for my TEFL students. I had to figure out questions that were hard enough to demonstrate that they understood the material, but not so hard that they would be completely demoralized. I also had to make sure the questions were on the material the students legitimately should know, and not just on English language in general.

“I give you my word, as a Spaniard.” “No good. I’ve known too many Spaniards.” This was the exchange Inigo and Wesley said to one another after Inigo had cut the rope and Wesley continued climbing up the Cliffs of Insanity in the movie “The Princess Bride.” Inigo wanted a chance to fight the man in black, and he didn’t want to wait. But Wesley did not want to be betrayed by a Spaniard.

Insurance to cover what they won’t cover This is fucked up. My insurance company wants me to pay them gap insurance for a gap in the insurance they are selling me. What is gap insurance you ask? Gap insurance is insurance that covers you if your car breaks down soon after you buy it. Your car insurance won’t cover your expenses if your brand new car gets totaled immediately after you buy it.

Mark and I got a Christmas box from a relative who can’t be bothered to remember our last name. We’ve been married for 18+ years, and we both changed our name when we married. We combined the letters of both our last names into a new last name because we wanted to represent the blending of our lives in a more tangible way than just merging the linens and sharing the bills.

I was watching this TEDx video: Margaret Heffernan “Dare to Disagree” and it really made me think. https://www.ted.com/talks/margaret_heffernan_dare_to_disagree One of the reasons I suspect I was laid off from About.com was because I had the temerity to disagree with staff. I would point out bugs and flaws in their code or design. I had discussions with both editors and senior executives about how the site could be improved and what I thought was going wrong and right.

My son and I love Legos. He loves to build them, and I love to help. Plus I love the different scenes you can build and I’m especially impressed with the Hobbit and LoTR sets. We just bought the Smaug set and had a blast putting it together. Now Smaug can fight the Indominus Rex from Jurassic World and we’ll finally know which is more powerful—dragons or dinosaurs. When we bought the Smaug set, we were sent a survey asking us what we thought of the purchase process.

Or, How T-Mobile Gave Me Something to Be Mad At, When I Needed to Be Angry tl;dr Today I was getting frustrated with my (lack of) connectivity in the back of my parents’ house and so I decided to check out T-Mobile’s site to see how much it would cost to turn my iPhone 6 into a mobile hot spot for the month. This was not easy. In fact, I still don’t know how much that would cost for sure.

I get a lot of PR requests in email. Most of them I delete, periodically I consider doing a review or article about it, and every once in a while some PR person sends me something so stupid I just have to respond. This week I got a request to review a new “app for Moms.” This is stupid mostly because they sent it to me at my About.com address—where I write about web design and HTML.

I know, I know, they need more money, the stamps cost more, they are offering more services, Saturday delivery is going away, no it’s not, yes it is. But seriously! What is UP with them? I was very excited when they announced more tracking. It’s great to think that I might get a notice when a package is coming. When I do tracking with UPS and FedEx, I get a listing of where my package is almost up to the minute.

[caption id=“attachment_771” align=“alignleft” width=“150”] This site displayed in a minimalist theme - very different from my last theme - and probably from my next theme. Click to view larger.[/caption] I’ve been trying out a bunch of new themes and frameworks lately, in an effort to determine what would be easiest for both me and my clients to use. In fact, this site is demonstrating that right now. Although I suspect as soon as I get some free time, I’m going to be changing it, probably drastically.

Our fence was crushed in several places today when one of the big trees next door decided to end its vertical existence. No animals, children, or adults were harmed in the creation of these photos. But there was a lot of adrenaline spewing about. [caption id=“attachment_704” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”] fence #1 taken out by the base of the tree[/caption] [caption id=“attachment_706” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”] middle of the tree took out the fence on the other side of the pasture[/caption] [caption id=“attachment_705” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”] The top of the tree takes out the playset[/caption]

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of answering a survey about health care. Normally, when I get those types of robo-dialed call-center calls, I wait for the person on the line to say “Hello,” but for whatever reason, I said hello first. And then, when asked if I’d be willing to do a survey, I uncharacteristically said “yes.” It was interesting to take the survey both because of what I know about health care and my opinions on it.

So, for some reason my blog has gotten targeted by comment spammers just recently. The comments on this blog are (were!) moderated so none of the lame attempts to spam my site were getting through. But I still had to deal with getting dozens of notifications a day. I received 48 new comments to moderate in just 12 hours. So I turned comments off. Who knows, I might turn them on again at a future date.

So, I’ve had an iPad since the first day the iPad 1 came out. And I’ve been reading books in the Kindle reader for iPad almost that long. I am a long-time book reader. In fact, when I got the iPad I didn’t think that ebooks would hold that much of a draw for me. After all, I love the feel of a good book in my hand, the smell of the glue holding the perfect binding of the paperbacks together, the crispness of the pages, yes, even the jolt awake when the hardback falls into my face while reading in bed.

So, this morning we got back from our shopping trip and walk and I brought in the grocery bag (in my reusable wolf bag) and the cat carrier we are using to transport our new puppy in. [caption id=“attachment_456” align=“aligncenter” width=“300” caption=“Stormageddon the day after we got her”][/caption] I thought about being lazy and just put the kennel down and thought, “No, I’ll put it away right now, so it’s not cluttering up the kitchen.

I know, I’ve ranted in here about email before, but seriously, the messages I receive sometimes send me around the bend. In the last week or so I’ve had the following (paraphrased) gems: One man asked me for some help in building a complex website. He sent his first message on day 1 and when I hadn’t had a chance to answer it, he sent it again on day 2. I finally responded to his question suggesting an answer and that if he had more specific questions, he should post them to my forum.

It’s stupid how I fall for giveaways so often. When the reality is that they are done solely so that the blog or site owner can get more readers and more comments. They have no interest in you as a person, and are most likely going to give their products away to people they know (either IRL or because they’ve posted lots of times before). They may also give away to people who write the most “heartwarming” response.

I was reading an article yesterday about how facial recognition is getting so good that there are apps being built for cellphones that can identify random strangers from photos (taken as you walk along with your cell phone). The article was bemoaning the fact that this was a “further invasion of our privacy” and that pretty soon nothing we do would be private. I then moved on to another article that talked about how Google(?

I was hoping for a long morning alone with my writing. But instead I got to help clean up a flooded bathroom and attempt to fix the washing machine that hit it’s planned obsolescence date today. Mark thinks the pump cracked. We bought an expensive washer 3 years ago thinking naively that if we paid a lot for a good brand it would last longer than the cheaper model we’d bought 3 years before that.

Our current process with our son goes like this: wake up between 7am and 8:30am play hard all morning lie down around noon for around 15 minutes, but don’t fall asleep play hard all afternoon until about 4pm fall asleep hard, and nap for an hour to two hours play hard until mom is exhausted (any time after 10pm) and then lie in bed fighting with her because he’s not tired at all 8 hours of sleep is barely enough for me, and I’m not convinced it’s enough for him.

The most common complaint I see about content farms is that they serve up lousy information written by under-paid (or non-paid) writers. I can join the ranks of people who will tell you of the lousy results they found on eHow (or insert your other favorite content farm to bash) here. Yes, I don’t like doing a search for “how to build a web page” and getting a result that says, essentially: step 1.

I got an email yesterday from someone who wrote (paraphrased): “I read your top 10 list of best web editors, and it was interesting. I use ___ editor, and I was wondering if there was a better one than it available.” Really? The editor he mentioned was not on the list. I honestly don’t know what to tell him. I mean, seriously, if his editor was not on the list (and it does qualify to be on that list - it’s free and it’s for Windows), then chances are, I believe that all ten editors on that list are better than the one he named.

I decided last Thursday to take some time off from my About.com site (and clearly I still am…) because I was tired of HTML editors, didn’t want to talk CSS, wasn’t interested in updating old pages, wanted to finish a project for my art class, and was upset about a change in pay and how they tried to spin it to make it sound like it was chocolate-coated bad news. (It’s not really that bad of news, it’s just annoying how staff feels the need to spin things.

I’ve been using Norton Antivirus (NAV) for a long time. Honestly. And not because I worked for Symantec for 9 years. I used it even before I worked there. And I continue to use it even though I don’t work there any longer. But let me tell you, every day, often many times a day, I’m annoyed by this software. I’ve even gone as far as finding a new product that I’m considering switching to as soon as my definitions expire (in a month or so).

I’m hot, which is a nice change from the whole of June, where we had fall weather, but still, hot is no fun. Because it’s hot I’m furious that the post office can’t seem to mail my post cards. I’ve sent the below postcard twice already. And yes, i’ve added new stamps to it. And this is one of three that the postal carrier can’t seem to grasp DOESN’T need to go here.

Memo to self: if you’re going to send a ranting email to a mailing list, it’s best to find out if the person you’re ranting about is also on that list… [[forehead slap]]

I have a form on my site asking for people to define what they feel a webmaster is. It asks: “Share your thoughts. What is a webmaster?” And I received this reply: “Title: Webmaster description…OMG I just read several responses to what others opinion are regarding what a webmaster is and quite frankly, the grammar, spelling, and English are deplorable. If one cannot master the fundamentals of communication, then the game is over.

It’s really hard to not feel like everyone in the universe is greedy for more more more when most of the apps that I used regularly on the iPhone have new, bigger iPad brethren that cost more, a lot more. I’m starting to think that apps that are universal will get an extra star from me, or maybe that apps that have an iPhone version that is cheaper than the iPad version would lose a star (or half a star?

If you’re asking me a question, and I reply saying “I don’t understand what you mean by this word.” Don’t reply saying “I just need information about the same word.” Last week I got an email that read: I am a college student and I am having my thesis right now. I would like to propose a topic regarding CMS and my thesis should use an algorithm. Do you know any algorithms used for CMS?

So, I love my iPad, don’t get me wrong. I love it so much that I set up all my email to go there as a way to stay curent and up-to-date with my mail even when I’m not at the “big-big-computer” as Jaryth calls it. But holy spam insanity, Batman! All of my accounts have spam filters on them at the server level. And they work at about 3 different effectiveness levels:

I have been writing for the Web since 1995, and you’d think I would know by now not to engage the loonies, but every month or so I still attempt to interact with them. Today’s email gem was from a woman who found a typo/spelling error on my blog. A simple way to report a spelling error is to write: “I found a typo or spelling error on your site” and then point out the word and the URL where it was found.

So Mark found some analysis of possible prices for upcoming iPad apps and they are insane!! apparently they appear to be planning to charge anywhere from 2 to 4 times more for an iPad app as for the same app on the iPhone. TUAW is falling down by not reporting on this (or not asking in their interviews). They posted a “first look” at Polyhedra XL which I have the iPhone version.

I was reading TUAW this morning, and they were talking about the Apple.com site and how some people were reporting that the Downloads section was gone. In a nutshell their article was just saying that no, it’s not, it’s just not on the navigation now because they needed room for an iPad tab. My favorite quote from the article* was: “Fortunately you can easily locate the downloads section simply by typing the word “downloads” into the search box.

I’m currently reading Booklife and one thing that he mentions is the idea that school literature programs have made people bad readers. At first I was somewhat taken aback by this assertion, but as I read more about what his premise was, I started to agree with him. In a nutshell: in literature classes in high school and college we are taught to read literature with an eye towards what is not written.

I’m currently reading Booklife by Jeff Vandermeer. One of the first chapters talks about Twitter and he says that he doesn’t really like Twitter because it “fragments [his] attention”. Like him, I don’t find Twitter all that friendly. Many of the people I used to chat with on Twitter now have so many people in their timeline that they never even see my posts. And I’ve never had the experience of asking a question or for help and getting more than a minimal response and often a snarky, negative one.

Why do medical practitioners insist on treating their customers as cogs in a machine? Some offices use random numbers, others use parts of your social security number, and still others use your birth date. But what about something that is unique to me and I’m used to responding to, know by heart, and makes me feel like a person rather than a computer? I know this is going out on a limb, but maybe my NAME?