Harvest Comforts and the Not-So-Last Barbecue Every September, I hear the same phrase: “It’s the last barbecue of the year.” Somewhere else, maybe. Here in Reno, we usually get good grilling weather well through October, sometimes beyond. That means September isn’t a farewell to barbecue — it’s an opportunity. The overlap of late-summer produce and…
Artificial intelligence (AI) –Part 2 Every new technology sparks the same fear: that the machine will take over. When calculators arrived in classrooms, some worried students would never learn math again. When spreadsheets hit the office, people thought accountants were finished. When search engines matured, teachers fretted that research would be reduced to typing a…
Part 2: Learning to Learn — Dexterity, Data, and the Objective Question Think about a baby tying shoelaces. At first it’s fumbled, uneven, and sometimes impossible. But after enough tries, the skill “clicks.” What’s remarkable is not just the act of tying shoes — it’s the ability to generalize that learning. The same hand–eye coordination…
Giants vs. Dodgers For most of this season, the Giants’ bullpen has been talked about as a strength — maybe even the one part of the roster that could tilt close games in San Francisco’s favor. That reputation didn’t survive this week’s series with the Dodgers. In three games, the Giants gave up 23 runs…
Artificial Intelligence — Part 1 Artificial Intelligence. The phrase conjures up images of machines plotting in secret, or maybe a Hollywood scene where the glowing computer screen suddenly talks back. But behind the hype, the breakthroughs, and the sometimes breathless headlines, AI is not sorcery. It’s not “alive.” It’s not a new species waiting to…
What We Thought vs. What We Got (revisited) The Robot in Your Imagination vs. the One in Your Kitchen Part 1 Say the word “robot” and the pictures in our heads arrive by decade. For some of us, it’s Rosie from The Jetsons—a wise‑cracking housekeeper with a full calendar and a faster comeback. A little…
Continued Thoughts from One Year of Blogging What I Learned and What I’ll Do Next I started this blog for me. It gives me a reason to chase ideas, put thoughts in order, and—on good days—make sense of the world out loud. I figured that if I published steadily and let posts ripple to Facebook,…
Mostly borrowed from HGTV Plant Fall Annuals Watch for pansies at your favorite plant shopping spot and pick up enough to fill pots and planting beds. Fall-planted pansies stage a flower show all autumn long in most regions. In warmer zones, pansies deliver fresh-faced color through winter. Ideal temperatures for flower development are nights in the 40s…
Why AI Feels Overhyped Now— and How It Still Reshapes the Next Decade I’ve watched a few revolutions roll through: mainframes to PCs, dial-up to broadband, brick-and-mortar to dot-com. The pattern isn’t mysterious anymore. New tech shows up, excitement explodes, money rushes in, and for a while it looks like the future is arriving on…
