(Thanks OpenAI for ruining any kind of normal title I could have had for this post.)
Claude Code is great, but you know what would make it even better? Me being able to use any model that I want, not just Anthropic models. In the end, when all this AI novelty wears off and people start to regularly integrate AI into their lives as a regular part of their augmentation, the tools which will persist will be model-agnostic.
Because I should be able to swap out any model with any other (e.g. Claude Sonnet 4.5, Haiku 4.5, or Qwen3 Max, or GPT-5 or Grok 4) and still use my tool as I want. And OFC x402 will make all this possible too, as each request should (read: will) be paid via x402, or whatever iteration of x402 exists in the future. So much room for improvement/expansion there (e.g. specify and address for refunds in case of overpays).
So, I’m not sure why model makers continue to push so hard into tools. Well, I do, everyone wants to capture market share, but ultimately the best thing for humanity is what will win out — free and open tools which are able to be used by any model or model provider.
As a tangent, open-source models will also win over closed source ones, because nobody wants their AI to whisper their secrets to their nation-state overlords. This too is coming. Local AI is ofc the pinnacle, smaller (for now) local models that can perform at the level of GPT4o or Sonnet 3.5 or better.
It’s quite exciting to think just how much my OS can help me organize the filesystem or sort my projects, help me do whatever, perhaps even suggest new tools or workflows. But it’s quite scary to think that the OS could give all my secrets, files, etc. to any local, state or federal government, to any unelected judge on a power trip.
tl;dr
– Local AI is the future
– Open-source models are the future
– Open tooling (most importantly, open-source tooling) is the future. Open tooling = not bound to any model, company or provider.
It’s funny how much things change over a decade or so.
I’m back in a town I haven’t been to in 10 years. My wife and I first came here together in 2012, then once again in 2015 to visit my parents. This was before we had kids, so things were different for us too.
I walked into the Starbucks yesterday. The same Starbucks where I’d sat w/my wife around 12 years ago, I remember looking at the newspaper headlines every day, and writing about whatever it was and its correlation to either government incompetence or police corruption, or both.
There aren’t any newspapers here anymore. I looked. They used to be right next to the register.
I remember buying my first Bitcoins here in this town. I placed the order via Bitinstant, and had to go to a Wells Fargo bank and deposit a very specific amount, to the cent, into a specific account. My order was for around $150. I crossed my fingers and hoped it would work.
A few hours later, sitting in my brother’s house, I opened my Bitcoin client and they had appeared! Around 10 Bitcoin. I thought it was the coolest thing ever, money that you could send anywhere, to anyone, without any censorship.
This trip, I feel busier than I ever have while visiting here previously. I’m trying to work while taking care of my kids w/the wife, and visiting my parents and brother and his family.
My dad can’t walk well or get around on his own. That trip 10 years ago, he was driving and walking just fine. He’d walk to the coöp up the road from his house and drink coffee with the other old codgers in his small rural town. Now, I have to help him sit or stand, and he uses a walker. Today he has heart surgery, in about 40 minutes or so.
This time, we have our beautiful children. They bring us and everyone joy.
Some things don’t change
It’s still hot all year long. Smell of brine in the morning (which I like, it’s kinda nice). Strong Mexican influence on the culture. Fan palms all over, which is nice here. Just a few miles north and you don’t see them anymore.
My parents still don’t take care of their health.
One week is still probably plenty of time to spend here. Outside the metro area, there’s only desert everywhere. Not worth leaving the city. Still some nice places in the city to visit. Nice cafés, homes along the waterfront.
There’s still a feeling of familiarity I have being here, after having been here for several weeks of my life, starting when I was around 12 or so. Yet it’s not a place I long to return to. If it weren’t for family, I probably wouldn’t come back. There’s no strong draw.
The shoreline is nasty — just super dirty. Huge concrete slabs from derelict structures and prickly-pear cactus plants instead of sandy beach in many places. Oil refineries everywhere. They look like huge pipeline cities. Enormous megalithic structures. Wind turbine farms all over.
I don’t know if I’ll ever come back here. I don’t know if I’ll ever see my parents again. They’re too feeble to travel now, even on a plane. Feels crazy, considering they flew to Brazil to visit us just 4 years ago after our son was born—change can happen fast.
But we also don’t love being here. It’s hugely inconvenient. We drove this time, but after we relocate to Washington state, that’s not going to be so easy. We’ll have to fly or make it a 5- or 6-day trip instead of a 2-day one.
And that’s just considering when we’re in the United States. We also travel and spend a lot of time outside the US, so even less convenient or do-able once we’re gone. I guess that’s why we’re here now. Now is the time to visit mom and dad, because there may not be another. I may get another moment, but it will never be _this_ moment. Ichi-go ichi-e.
Our family cat Buttercup died this morning, or last night, sometime during the night.
He was killed by some animal — a coyote or a bobcat or similar. Brittany found his body in the backyard over by the kids’ swingset / play set. I’m devastated. We all are—he was the perfect kitty. Tolerated EVERYTHING the kids did to him. We had him for about 7-8 months or so, since he came to us in February, in the winter.
And the worst part is … it’s my fault… he wanted in the back door last night, but I made him stay outside. Last night, I went outside onto the deck/porch. He was trying to push in, but I made him stay outside. I do that a lot sometimes, but not usually directly outside. Sometimes I do. Other times I’ll put him into his room by the garage with food, water, and a place to potty.
I’ve gotten into a habit of making him stay outside because during the night we used to let him sleep in the house and during the night he would come wake us up at 2 or 3 a.m. to let him outside, and we got tired of that. Then for a while we were letting him sleep in his own little room in between the garage and the house, the little anteroom with the water heater in it. We even put his food bowl and water bowl and litter box in there. We called it Kitty’s room. Last night, I made him stay outside and now he’s dead.
We think it was a coyote, but it might have been a bobcat. I don’t know. Something definitely hurt him pretty bad. He has lacerations. He’s torn up all over and, of course, dead.
Brittany saw the orange-yellow spot in the grass and she just knew what had happened and she went out to check this morning while I was in the shower and of course that was him.
We used to keep him inside because of the coyotes, and I’d forgotten about that. I guess we’d gotten complacent Got into thinking the coyotes wouldn’t come this close to the house And who knows maybe they didn’t maybe it was a bobcat. I don’t know. I never considered predators would actually be able to hurt him He’d stayed outside so many nights before, and been just fine.
But now he’s gone, my little buddy. He really liked me, and most of the time I would push him aside, I’m sad to say. Sometimes I would let him snuggle with me, let him rub against me, but a lot of the times it would annoy me, and I would always think I had more time. “Whenever I’m not busy, I’ll spend more time petting the cat (or scratching his chin, or behind his ears)”.
But you never know when it’s gonna be the last time… with anyone, really. For anything. Every moment is unique. No moment will ever be the same as the last.
I miss Buttercup. I called him Richard, but the rest of the family called him Buttercup, so I got outnumbered. Buttercup is a better cat name anyway. I will never have the chance to scratch behind his ears or snuggle with him, or hear him purr.
He was really the best cat ever, he never really scratched us or bit us or even the kids. He tolerated everything the kids did. So much more than any cat I’ve ever known. He was really the loveliest, cuddliest, snuggliest, precious boy kitty that we’ve ever known. And now he’s gone. We only had him 7 or 8 months.
I know I’ve said that before and I’m kind of rambling. I don’t even know if I have the time to clean this up or if it’ll make sense to do so. I’m upset with myself.
If I’d been living every moment, remembering that every moment is unique and once in a lifetime, would I have pushed him out the door last night and refused to allow him in the house? Or would I have said, okay, come on in, scratched his chin a little bit, and then led him to his room and poured him some food? Probably the latter.
I probably would have taken a bit more care of him, but in that one exact moment, I felt like it didn’t matter. And in reality, it mattered the world to us. I just didn’t know it yet.
Ichi-go ichi-e. I want to get this tattoo on my arm, and I’m not a tattoos person. I’ve never wanted a tattoo in my life… until now. Maybe I won’t get one, but I want to remember this every single day.
I want to die empty and I want to treat every moment as if it’s the only version of that moment I’ll ever have, because it is.
Goodbye Richard. We all miss you so much. I love you little buddy. Thank you for finding and joining our family.
A beautiful sight
When I was around 20 or 21 (half my age ago), I wanted to start a coffee shop.
I’ve loved the coffee house vibe, e.g. from Friends. Loved coffee, lattes. Who doesn’t?
The hamburger shop/grill across from the university’s computer science department had just shut down. And it was a perfect location, because it was a corner that stuck into the university.
Basically, it looked like this:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+ |
+ UNIVERSITY |
+ CAMPUS ++++++++++++++
+ |
+ | the
+ | location
+ | here
+ |
+ |
+ |
+++++++++++++
I wanted to put a coffee shop there so bad and I know that if I would have had the funds and the ability to execute on it, I could have done well. I’d even learned of the Alex Fisenko consulting where they come in and help you plan everything out, down to the menu. They had it down to a science.
But I was a broke college student, and had no thought in my mind of raising funds. Who’d give money to a broke college student to open a coffee house? Later, a few years after I graduated, the university bought up the entire block and demolished everything to put in a fine arts center. And that is how I got radicalized against fine arts centers.
Why did I tell this story? I’m not sure. Still like coffee houses. Still wish some things were basic table stakes. Good drinks, good service, good WiFi (use UniFi equipment plz).
Day 1: Go sign up at coinbase.com, add your bank account there.
Day 2: Login to Coinbase.com and buy $10 worth of Bitcoin.
Day 3: Download the Blue Wallet app on your app store. Pick Add Wallet -> Bitcoin -> Create. Write down the special backup seed phrase ON PAPER, and put that paper in your passport.
Day 4: Login to Coinbase.com again. Send some Bitcoin (e.g. half of it, around $5 worth) to your phone app. This is a big step if you’ve never done it before. Feel free to ask for help.
Day 5: Open Blue Wallet, send some Bitcoin back to your Coinbase account. This step is important because it proves you can send Bitcoin in case you ever need to sell it.
Day 6: You’re actually done now, so a security reminder: don’t give your seed phrase to anyone. Nobody should ever ask for it unless it’s a close relative, helping you restore your wallet.
Day 7: Take a break! You’re ahead of 95% of ppl who talk about Bitcoin but don’t do anything about it.
Okay, so that was actually more like a five day plan. The steps are simple.
Note that the steps are the same whether it’s $10 worth or $10,000 worth. Or $10m, but you actually want to handle things a little differently / more secure at that level. This is just “how to get started”.
Enjoy your Bitcoin ride to the moon.
This is not financial advice.
Results not typical. Consult a professional. Only your doctor can tell you if Bitcoin is right for you.
That’s the goal, that’s the best job of all — being a good, present parent. IYKYK. It’s the best time of life, the most hectic, and you just want a break. But at the end of it all, you wish you’d had more of this time. Someday, the shoes and toys won’t be scattered all over the living room floor. And you’ll wish you had the time back.
With a 6yo and 4yo right now, I’m in the thick of it. And enjoying every minute.
This is the best time of my life, and we’re in the good old days, right now.
Alex Hormozi has broken down this word “Priority”, he doesn’t even like the pluralized version. It makes sense. What is your “priority” – the one thing which takes precedence above all else.
That said, my priority is spending quality time with my children while they’re young. Time which I won’t ever get back, ever.
If time is the most precious resource we have, then how much more precious is time with our children while they’re young, impressionable and want to spend time with us? You only get a few years, then it’s gone. And every day is different than the day before.
Those small requests aren’t small to them. It’s everything. And it’s gone tomorrow. You don’t get that chance back.
Your kid is asking if they can put up the tent and camp out tonight?
The correct answer is “Yes”. Not “later” or “we’ll have to plan it out”.
Because tomorrow never comes. Today is all you have with them. Say Yes.
Sure, it’s more of your energy. It will drain you faster. Say Yes anyway, and have fun. These are the moments they will remember fondly, and so will you. And you will miss them. And you’ll miss them (e.g. not experience them) if you say “later”.
Say Yes to your children.
Freedom being the goal, not money, how can we design a life where we have the most freedom? Some would say money will give you the ultimate freedom, and that might be true. But if that means I lose the time w/my kids while they’re young, is it worth it?
Filtering everything thru that priority lens helps to filter, focus and prioritize the actual goal, and thus the strategies we implement to achieve the goal.
This is high-level but that’s the point — all high-level planning should ultimately direct your monthly, weekly and daily goals and tasks.
Note: Again, sorry for the abrupt ending. I don’t have a good close here, yet.
Try and design your life such that your daily actions roll up into your weekly goals. Weekly => Monthly. Monthly => 6, 12 months. Year into 5, 10 year plans.
You do this by first figuring out what you want in life, and writing down that Vision of your future life. Then create Goals which stem from it (maybe 2-5 max). Then Strategies to achieve those Goals. Put up realistic timelines for achieving them, narrow those down ’til you get to monthly or weekly.
I’m not going to suggest that your priorities should be the same as mine, but if you have young kids, I would hope that you prioritize your time w/them, b/c when it’s gone, it’s gone.
Everything you see in life was or is at some point an offer that somebody created, and someone else (e.g. you) paid for. You traded stored energy (money) for a thing which provides Value to you.
“Value” is vague and thrown around often but it’s the worth that _you assign to a thing_. If the value (perceived benefit) is not worth the cost, you don’t buy that thing. Simple as.
There are so many terrible offers out today, and yet, people buy them. People buy shit on a stick as art. there’s literally you can literally sell anything although obviously you want to sell something that actually benefits people and the more value or perceived benefit that your product offers or that you can make it look like it offers the more people will part with their money for your offer.
Looking at it through this lens, it doesn’t seem so hard to create something that would provide value to at least one person in the world that you could put a price tag on, and start offering it.
It kind of demystifies business when you look around and you see everything as an offer. My secondary computer monitor at the right of my desk—it was an offer and for me it was worth it, and I bought it about eight years ago
The candle that’s over on the left side of my desk. The commodity pens from Amazon (Amazon Basics?) that I use. My voice recorder. I’m just literally looking around at the things on my desk, but offers are everywhere you look. Our Vitamix blender. The He-Man poster on my back wall. The salt lamp under my electronics workbench. Our SUV.
But think higher level too. It’s not just consumer products. The house we’re living in was an offer. Big plots of land bought by and sold to land developers in order to create subdivisions, are all offers.
And ofc the SaaS that you want to make and those that you use every day are all offers. Google Workspace, Zoom, Salesforce, Slack 🤮, Dropbox, Calendly. Notion, Atlassian 🤮🤮🤮. All offers, all value-adds in at least someone’s mind.
Again business doesn’t seem that hard whenever you look around and see that everything is an offer. Just make your thing and make it a little bit better than what somebody else does and then offer it and charge the same price as they do or even a little less.
Of course I’m simplifying things, things aren’t always that easy, but that’s the basic gist of it.
The purpose of thinking all this thru is to help myself understand how I can build my own offer(s), what I can offer to people. I’ve been having a whole lot of trouble trying to understand how I can package my own experiences, knowledge, and abilities into something I can offer people that would provide them value. And yet I do it all the time when I interact w/people in daily life, and I know I can add value. So it’s kind of a, I don’t know, paradox, conundrum, something. The “business” side of things scares me.
I also think maybe I’m scared of putting myself out there, promoting something, especially on my own social media accounts. I’m scared of failing, yet we’re all gonna die someday and most people don’t care who you are anyway. They don’t think about you. You’re as much as you think about them thinking about you.
Clarity – daily writing, 1st thing in the morning, This seems to bring me the most clarity, and direction in life. Show me what I’m missing. The direction I need to be headed.
This was previously not an issue for me but since I’ve gotten into such a murky life situation, especially without having work over the past year, and after having lost Asami, I feel like I need to realign on this. My brain used to work differently, I used to think much more strategically. And it’s hard to think strategically when you’re in a survival mode situation, especially after prolonged many months at a time.
One thing that helps is having guidelines/guardrails/a checklist…, whatever you want to call it, but basically a basic structure to guide me through the day. I work on autopilot a lot. My mind just works on autopilot.
I think most of us do at some level. So, for example, whenever I’m driving to a specific coffee shop, I always take same route. and if I have a special errand to run I don’t remember because it’s not part of my regular routine. I end up having to backtrack and it costs me more. The benefits, though, are that as long as I follow my regular routine and there’s nothing out of the ordinary, everything just works and my brain is free to think of other things.
If you have a good system and you simply follow the system, things generally work out. And so the key is getting a good system in place.
Plans help with this. Mapping out goals, and of course goals should align with the highest-level vision. What is our vision for our lives? Where do we see ourselves in 10-20, 40 years? That’s where we should start.
Start from the 40 to 50 year vision — How do you get there? What’s required to get there? Don’t assume that because it’s a long way away, you’ll just get there eventually. You have to start taking the steps now to get there.
At this point in my life, I’ve realized that time is so short, and so it is so important for me to make great use of every second of every hour, of every day. It seems like just yesterday, my children were born, and now my oldest child is almost seven, and I look back and think, “Where has the time gone?”.
Anyway, back to the goal setting. The goals should come from the vision. Then you establish strategies to achieve all of the goals.
from the strategies you just implement or you break it down into tactical level items daily to-do lists even one-year plans three-year plans five-year plans where do you want to be in a year okay six months okay three months you can really start to create your weekly checklists at that point and then even your dailies from your weeklies
It can seem overwhelming to plan life to this level of detail, but it’s really not that much. The point of this is _not_ to create more work, but to create _structure and guidelines_ so that you’re not flailing, waking up every single day and asking, “Ok, what am I going to do today?”.
I’ve added daily writing to my calendar now and I have a 30-minute block where I write so that I can give myself clarity for myself and then also publish something.
I want to publish to my blog some kind of writing every single day. This will push me to both write for clarity as well as create content that maybe somebody else will be able to use as well. Maybe someday I’ll move to Substack or a Beehiiv newsletter.
But this old school WordPress blog is better than nothing, and momentum and consistency are key.
I have nothing to add, no fancy or elegant close. Have a good day!
Opportunity doesn’t always look like opportunity. It’s disguised.
A couple opportunities I’ll have tomorrow:
Sports App
I’ve been talking with someone in Alberta who does hockey stats, and he’s wanting to launch an app to use AI to improve on old, clunky UIs. There’s a clear, underserved market for this. How could I best serve him (without thought to my own interests for now — just try and help).
AI Product Training and Support for Conveyor Belt Motor
Tomorrow I will reach out to connect to a founder of an industrial/commercial conveyor belt company. He’s invented a motor which has a single transfer of energy, saving energy for customers. It’s apparently selling like crazy, but he’s limited because he can’t scale their customer training fast enough. He has to send people all over the world for customer training on how to use and maintain the product. He’s looking into AI solutions.
What could I do to help him save money? Maybe by reducing flights / in-person training by using AI to build a chat system which is trained on their documentation and manuals and can answer all customer questions and reference the manuals, page numbers, etc.?
This + having an in-region training team could reduce flight and training costs immensely. Maybe AI-first and if the customer still needs help, they call their local office which can answer immediately and guide the customer if they still need extra guidance (in their own language and timezone as well). Could be an extra fee / premium support package. IDK, just brainstorming ideas here.
But I feel like this could reduce costs immensely and remove roadblocks to scaling and selling a lot more of these mechanical drives.
The point is, opportunity is everywhere. If we can open our eyes and recognize it for what it is, both of these opportunities will require significant time investment and energy investment. But it’s worth it because we need to take risks and take chances in life.
Either of these could lead to life-changing results if executed well. And if not, at least more learning, more personal education on my part. And perhaps business relationships which could be beneficial somewhere on down the line.
The individual outcome doesn’t really matter, as long as the opportunity is aligned with your long-term goals and you’re trying to genuinely help someone (not just in it for a quick buck). There’s definitely opportunity to make the world a better place.
Sunrise over a rural southwestern Missouri hayfield field w/a round haybale and native trees in the background.
Some days I wish I had my old blog because it’s easier just to write whatever I want about whatever I want. I haven’t started a Substack yet. So I feel like I have to create something that’s polished or that’s directed in certain way or has a theme, whereas my personal blog is just whatever the hell I wanted to write because it was mine. It was raw and real and it was about me, I didn’t have to go with a certain theme or something. And maybe I don’t have to do that with a Substack blog either, I don’t know.
Okay, well after about 20 minutes, I got my old WP blog back up and running.
Still not sure if I’m going to post this there or on Substack and try starting that. But Substack’s kind of annoying because every time I visit the homepage, I get hit with a wall of crap that I don’t want to see. I think they call it a “feed”. I don’t want to see a feed when I go to publish things on my blog.
So as crazy and counterintuitive as it might sound, I think I’m just going to stick with my old school WordPress blog, maybe.
Anyway, back to transitions. Transitions are hard. Especially when you’re doing a lot of remote hunts. Which seems to be the case with my life right now.
I’m starting a new position soon, which is a nice, welcome relief after being unemployed for almost a year. It’s in an exciting domain, however, I’m not going to discuss that here because I don’t want to associate my work and personal life publicly.
But we’re also trying to sell the property we have now, and we’re trying to do it all at once, which is in and of itself quite stressful.
On top of that all, my mom apparently had a mini stroke a couple days ago. I don’t know how long she’ll have left. My dad’s not in great health either. They’re way down in southern Texas, which is a bit far from here (Northwest Arkansas area). I’m afraid we’re going to have to make a visit soon if we want to see them again.
On top of it all, it’s extremely hot and humid, and the heat and humidity combo feels very oppressive anytime we go outside.
It’s not like a 105°F oven, but a step or two below that. So it could be worse. But it feels difficult to be productive and try and get things done with this combo of heat + humidity.
And then there’s the grief of losing our daughter Asami about a year and a half ago. We have good days and bad days, but today it’s been very difficult for my wife, for example.
She’s been asking questions like, “What if we would have taken her in (to the doctor) earlier?” Maybe we could have changed things. Maybe we could still have her here with us.
I try and let her know that no matter how things turned out, it is extremely unlikely she’d still be alive today. People born with type 1 SMA rarely survive beyond two years. It’s possible we could have got her into a gene therapy treatment if we had detected it as soon as she was born. But it’s unlikely we could have detected it as soon as she was born, given that she was born in Brazil, number one. And number two, it was a home birth. And there’s no easy way to screen for that in that kind of environment. Also, we simply didn’t know. We’ve had two babies previously and everything was perfectly healthy, everything turned out perfectly fine.
But the loss of Asami really hits us hard, and especially her mama.
On top of all of this above, I find myself wanting more than anything to start my own business and build something for myself and my family, and I’ve always wanted to. This is how I’m hardwired and I can’t **not** do this. I can’t **not** think this way.
In a very quickly changing world where things which worked before don’t necessarily work now. And the world that we lived in, even two or three years ago, is not the same world as it is today.
AI and robotics are changing literally every day, as well as technology in general, blockchain technology, cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, etc.
It’s exciting, but it’s also scary. I’ve been scared to death of having my own job automated until, of course, I started writing with AI and creating AI agents, learning RAG, etc.
What’s exciting, of course, is that we can literally create anything we think of or dream of, especially people who already know how to write code, because the people who don’t know how well-generated coding eventually hits the kind of roadblock where you can’t make much forward progress because it doesn’t architect it well or it needs to be rewritten for the upside. And if you don’t know what you’re doing, as far as software engineering goes—or even if you do—it can get a little complicated.
And also revamping my resume to the point where I have to beat away recruiters with a stick. Also see above about me starting a new position soon. I’ve hibernated my LinkedIn account and hopefully I’ll never have to enable LinkedIn again, and it can die the dumpster fire death that it deserves.
“You Can Just Build Things”
I’m thinking about publishing long-form video content where I just build software and publish it entirely on the recording / stream. It could establish authority / my skills as a software engineer and architect, and be used to drive leads to some kind of coaching/consulting offering for either individuals or startups / enterprises.
Maybe it could even involve hardware solutions later on or firmware, I don’t know. I basically have a generalist nature in that I have a breadth of experience. I’ve touched so many different kinds of systems, from mainframes to low-level embedded hardware to backend, UNIX/Linux, and all kinds of things. And this is kind of a double-edged sword. Anyway, I’m digressing now.
I don’t know if I have anything else to say. This has kind of been a bit rambly. I’ve just kind of been wanting to I guess mention the transitions I’m going through and write about that to help me gain clarity personally as I also share with the world.
This has also been my first post, publicly, since 2017, and it’s hard to believe it’s been 8 years, but it’ll be good to be getting back to writing regularly.
