What I've been doing 001

I’ve never thought about writing life updates on the zine, because I wanted to keep it focused on ideas. But life gets busy, and the idea posts slowed down. And anyway, almost nobody reads this, so I have nothing to lose.

It’s been hard to focus on the content I want to post. I plan to write about using AI in your writing. It’s only scary if you can’t take criticism, and it’s useful as long as you don’t let it lead the narrative or wash out your opinions, more or less using it as what it was designed to be: a tool. I also plan to post more short stories, but it will take a while. In the meantime, this is what happened.

I’ve been more focused at work than I used to be, and I’ve spent more hours there. My job title keeps getting longer: manual tester, leading expert, security champion, and now system engineer. I didn’t go looking for any of them, and I’m not especially proud of them either. If anything, they’re a display of the ADHD, or proof that I’ve become a jack of all trades, master of none. Still, I want to find a balance, so I don’t lose the old half, the management side of things, in favor of the new.

My dog, Elmer, got sick, and that took time and focus. He pukes daily and we don’t know why. The vet doesn’t know either, and the lab work is fine. We’ve tried changing his food, liver meds, proton pump inhibitors (the funny part is that I’ve had similar problems), but he still pukes acid or bile, depending on the day. He’s eating, playing and acting normal, but once a day he pukes a bit.

We also started planning our wedding for next summer. It’s getting close and there’s still a lot to do, even if it’s atypical and small, only 30 people. No restaurant, just cabins. We’ll spend a weekend there. It’s more fun (and actually cheaper) to invite only the people you like and spend a whole weekend together.

I’ve also had thoughts about weddings in general. I dislike traditional ones, especially in the Balkans. Why invite hundreds of people, people you don’t want to spend time with or don’t even talk to: old classmates, relatives you forgot about? And for what? The envelopes of cash they bring? That’s stupid. Anyway, the thing that’s slowly killing me is the decorations.

What else happened? I integrated the build into a whole system. I call it HAL MARK 1. There was a 0, but it went unused. This one is focused on what I actually need: metrics for projects, health stuff, money and so on. Heck, I don’t even have a homepage, and I don’t need one. Everything in it is something I actually open. Maybe I’ll talk about it separately in the future.

So that’s it: work, a sick dog, a wedding and HAL MARK 1. The AI article, the short stories and the HAL MARK 1 piece are still coming. Whether there will be a 002, I don’t know.