The Tech Savvy Admin
quiet morning rain
the tranquility of clouds
this day beginning
It’s a rainy morning in greater Seattle, which I have a certain fondness for. Memories of dark, calm coffee shops with a book, or a new magazine, and time. It sometimes didn’t feel as beautiful as I can now see. Time brings wisdom, I guess.
I often listen to these AI-generated tracks. I find them soothing. Many of the videos, though, are wild in their AI mistakes/hallucinations. I’ve seen boats and airplanes zooming backwards, people walking through walls, each other, all kinds of things. At least once, a person launched upwards into the air, up into the sky. Now, this one below is interesting as the subject remains pretty still (he is supposed to be a whirling dervish, though), but this cloud of sand billows out from his stationary feet. Besides that, I find the colors rich and vibrant, the details nice, but the billowing sand is…odd.
Anyway, I hope your Wednesday was fantastic and that your June is off to a good start.
I just watched this video and it got me thinking about the future of tech. One of the key things they point out is how many of the AI prognosticators are now so walking so much of it back. Companies are hiring back some of those laid off. The drive to push everyone into using AI for everything is hitting up against costs, as tokens are no longer free, or subsidized. Anyway, check it out! It’s only about 10 minutes long.
I’ve written about AI before, and about how the current costs are not the true costs. That much of the operational costs of AI have been underwritten by investors. And that’s not tenable. I’ve been seeing more and more articles about these costs being passed long to users. I’m seeing companies burn through yearly token budgets in the first quarter of the year. I’m seeing companies pull back on the requirement to use AI. Yeah, the hype seems to be waning.
So, are you seeing the same signs? Let me know what you’re seeing.
Happy Friday, everyone! And it’s a long weekend…Monday being Memorial Day and all.
I find this old bit from Ren and Stimpy to be joyfully nerdy and, thus, delightfully obnoxious, in a dad joke sort of way.
Anyway, I hope you have a wonderful, refreshing, and joy-inducing weekend.
The writer of the piece below is someone I’ve known a LONG time. I’ve always delighted in Addy’s creativity and thoughtfulness. She wrote this post last year, but I just found out it was published in a print version of Flaunt magazine. I’m quite proud of her!
I don’t want to give too much away, but this post is a personal look at trauma and recovery with a poetic bent.
So, without further ado, please follow my recommendation and give her a read.
Justice for late summer, using fish to tell the future, and giving yourself permission to move on. Read on Substack
This made me laugh louder than I should admit:
This hits far too close to home.
For those of you who haven’t needed to mess around in a computer’s BIOS, it’s a clunky and awkward…and inconsistent process, where manufacturers’ processes can vary widely. On boot, you hit one of the function keys, often F2, but sometimes F10, F6, or F8. And you generally have to spam the key to get it to take. It’s been a long-standing annoyance of mine.
Anyway, happy Monday, everyone! I hope your week meets, no, exceeds your expectations.
There’s an adage about “death by a thousand paper cuts”. Well, that’s akin to what I’ve been dealing with for some time now. The GOP (ostensibly) has been burying me in a barrage of texts. Here’s one from today that’s pretty amusing, actually.
I mean, in order to fix the fact YOU are sending me “too many messages”, I NEED to click on a link from a spammer/scammer? Um, no. There is no way in hell I’m clicking on a link from these folks. Jeez!
What might not be clear is that I never signed up for these. They’re often addressed to “friend”, and sometimes reference a zip code that’s in the greater Seattle area, but is not close to mine. This is the last org I want anything to do with. When they first started coming in, I did what the message says and replied “stop”. That only increased the message count. Currently, I’m averaging between 30 (the exact number from yesterday) and 50. To say 900-1,000 text messages a month is disruptive is quite the understatement. I’m glad that I have unlimited texts.
At first, I assumed that it was a mistake. That “friend” had signed up but mistyped their phone number. But, really, would you blast someone you liked like this? Or maybe someone thought this would be funny, someone who knows me. However, this has started to feel more like harassment. It’s surreal to get so many MAGA messages. Even if I were aligned with them, exploding my phone seems counterproductive. If I were pro-Trump, I would imagine getting a spam message every couple of minutes would cause me to rethink that. As it is, it is growing my dislike for the Republican Party.
What’s weirder is that bulk SMS isn’t free. I mark them as spam and block each one, and my spam filter is doing a modest job blocking them. Yet, since each one comes from a different phone number, lots slip through. Ugh!
I’m unsure what I want to do going forward. I guess, in the end, it’s a first-world problem. Though it’s annoying, it’s not like I’m getting direct, threatening messages. It’s annoying and disruptive. I am missing important messages that get buried in the sea of garbage. I am going to explore options, but am not likely to contact an attorney or law enforcement, as I see there’s a high likelihood that it’s NOT the formal GOP establishment. I mean, it’s a dumb way to spend money. But, man, I really hope these people go out of business soon.
shortly after dusk
the trees embracing silence:
birdsong before dawn
Today, May 6th, is Sigmund Freud’s birthday. So, call your Mother!
Yeah, I know how wrong this is….
flowing over stars
moonlight's gentle grace flows down
caressing my eyes
Though I’ve been writing lately, I’ve been having issues with uploading images in WordPress (I do post to Bluesky and Instagram a fair amount, too). Well, using anything other than the browser. I tried both with my iPad and my Pixel: nope. Sigh…these issues do make me want to explore a WordPress alternative. There are so many options nowadays: Wix, Squarespace, Substack…the list is impressive. For me, these options are all proprietary. As one of my core principles is that I don’t want to hand over that kind of control to a company. I can lose access to my content for any of a number of reasons, from financial to company governance. It’s the same methodology for why I won’t just go solely on a social media platform. In a similar vein, I deeply value using open source tools. WordPress is one, and Joomla is another. I could port everything over to a hand-coded static site as well. The ultimate in freedom, really. That would most likely mean that posting remotely would be impossible. So, here we go.
So, that’s where I am. Are you using WordPress? Or some other tool? And what sort of tools are you using to maintain and build your community?