Musings of an old guy Archives - Page 3 of 8 - Musings of An Old Guy

Commentary | General | Technology

The Coming Tug-of-War Between Utilities and Rooftop Solar
Byyogiwan April 13, 2026April 10, 2026
Four years ago, I turned my roof into a power plant. At the time, it felt like a small step—practical, maybe even a little ahead of the curve. My electric bill dropped to almost nothing, replaced mostly by a fixed service fee. Not a quick return on investment but will pay off in time. For a while, it seemed like a simple equation. Generate your own power. Buy less from the utility. Everybody wins. But systems don’t usually work that way for long. The Shift Utilities are beginning to adjust. Not dramatically. Not loudly. But steadily. Rates are changing. Fee structures are evolving. Fixed charges are creeping upward. Net metering rules are being revisited. In Nevada, this has been less visible—utilities never paid for excess…
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Commentary | General

What Happens If Gas Hits $10?
Byyogiwan April 10, 2026April 8, 2026
You Don’t Replace 300 Million Cars Overnight We have two cars—a 2019 SUV and a 2016 sedan—and we have no plans to replace either one anytime soon. Years ago, I made a simple vow: never buy a car that costs more than my first house. That house cost $38,000 in 1971. At the time, that seemed like a reasonable line to draw. It’s getting harder to keep. New cars are now pushing $50,000. Even used cars are commonly in the $25,000 to $40,000 range. And that doesn’t include electric vehicles, which often come with additional costs—like installing a charging system at home. At this stage of life, I may not need another car at all. I drive less than 5,000 miles a year. My car…
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Robotics | Technology

Where Robots Actually Work
Byyogiwan April 6, 2026April 2, 2026
(And Why That Matters) For years, we’ve been told that robots were coming for our homes. They would cook, clean, fold laundry, walk the dog, and maybe even offer the occasional piece of advice—something between a helpful assistant and a mechanical companion. That didn’t happen. At least not in the way we imagined. Instead, robots showed up somewhere else entirely. Not in our kitchens. Not in our living rooms. But in warehouses, factories, hospitals, and supply chains—the quiet infrastructure of modern life. And that turns out to be far more important than the original expectation. Walk into a modern warehouse today, and you won’t see science fiction. You’ll see something more interesting. Shelves moving across the floor on their own.Robots gliding through aisles, carrying products…
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General | Reading, Garden & Personal

Gardening Tasks for April
Byyogiwan April 4, 2026April 2, 2026
Gardening Tips We have had Spring all through March and now it is looking like we may be the last remnants of Winter for the start of April. So many of the garden tasks normally targeted for April may have already been completed. Successful gardening amounts to paying attention and following through with what needs to be done at any one time. Regardless, here are some of the tasks for your garden which should be considered for April. Beware of insects and other pests in your garden. Keep an eye on your garden for aphids, spider mites, etc., and take action when necessary to eliminate the pests If you don’t have enough garden space, you can always create more by growing crops in pots! For example,…
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Articles | General

When Prevention Actually Works
Byyogiwan April 3, 2026March 31, 2026
Note: I usually cover men’s health topics but this seems interesting and important. We spend a lot of time talking about what might happen.This is a story about something that actually did. We spend a lot of time talking about what might happen. AI might change everything.Robots might take jobs.New technologies might reshape industries. This is a story about something that actually did. According to a study published in The Lancet Public Health, Australia is on track to become the first country to effectively eliminate cervical cancer as a public health problem—potentially as early as 2028. Not reduce it. Not manage it. Eliminate it—at least to the point where it becomes rare enough that it’s no longer considered a major public health issue. That threshold…
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General | Robotics | Technology

Robots Are Coming — But They Haven’t Met My Plumber Yet
Byyogiwan April 1, 2026March 25, 2026
Where Automation Meets the Real World A few weeks ago, I had a plumbing issue. Nothing dramatic. Just one of those problems that starts small and then slowly reveals itself to be something else entirely. At first glance, it looked straightforward. A leak. Maybe a fitting. Possibly a simple replacement. That lasted about five minutes. What the plumber actually found was a piping system that had been installed throughout our neighborhood when the homes were originally built. In our case, we had made only minor changes over the years—a split pipe at the water heater and a failed bathtub drain. Otherwise, the system had been left alone. Which sounds fine… until you realize what it means. We are essentially sitting on a potential time bomb….
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General | Recipes

Easter Dinner:
Byyogiwan March 30, 2026March 24, 2026
What People Expect vs What Actually Works A Slight Upgrade Without Starting a Family Debate Easter dinner is one of those meals where expectations matter. Not in a loud, demanding way. No one sends out a formal menu in advance. There are no official requirements. But everyone shows up with a quiet assumption about what will be on the table. And if it’s not there, people notice. They may not say anything. But they notice. Easter is not the time to experiment with something completely new or surprising. This is not the moment to introduce a bold reinterpretation of the holiday meal or a dish that requires explanation before it can be eaten. Easter dinner works best when it feels familiar. But that doesn’t mean…
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Commentary | Technology

The Age of Slightly Off
Byyogiwan March 25, 2026March 23, 2026
We used to expect systems to be reliable. Now we expect them to recover.
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AI | Technology

The AI Divide May Not Be What We Think
Byyogiwan March 23, 2026March 22, 2026
The People Who Question — And Those Who Don’t You ask AI a question, and it gives you a fast, confident answer — clear, well written, and often persuasive. At that point, you have a choice. You can accept the answer and move on, or pause long enough to question it. Most of the time, that choice passes almost unnoticed. But it may be one of the more important decisions we make in how we use these tools. The First Divide There is a growing conversation about an “AI divide,” usually framed in terms of access — who has the tools and who doesn’t. But it is not always clear how broadly that conversation is grounded. Much of it seems to take place among technically…
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General

When the Game Becomes the Casino
Byyogiwan March 19, 2026March 16, 2026
March Madness, Smartphones, and the New Business of Sports I live in Nevada, so I am not opposed to gambling (even though I don’t gamble). It has been part of the state’s economy for decades. But I do worry about what it is doing to sports and some of the institutions and activities surrounding them. NIL has already changed college athletics, and not necessarily for the better. Sports betting companies are now major sponsors of professional leagues and broadcasts. Increasingly it feels as if the conversation around sports has shifted. It is less about who wins or loses and more about who scores what and when. Every March the country turns its attention to college basketball. Brackets appear in offices. Games run all afternoon. Upsets…
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AI | Technology

When the Bottom Rung Disappears
Byyogiwan March 18, 2026March 14, 2026
AI, Apprenticeship, and the Future of Learning On my first day as a structural engineer in the aerospace industry, my supervisor walked me into a room roughly the size of a football field. Every desk was filled with engineers. Most of them had master’s degrees or more. Then he gave me a piece of advice that stayed with me for the rest of my career. Despite my brand new master’s degree in structural engineering from Stanford, I was now the lowest-ranking person in the room. The expectation was simple: watch, listen, and learn by doing the work. The early assignments were not glamorous. They involved checking calculations, reviewing drawings, and fixing problems that more experienced engineers had already seen many times before. In fact, my…
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General

How St. Patrick’s Day Became More American Than Irish
Byyogiwan March 13, 2026March 10, 2026
Every March the same ritual unfolds. And being about 1/8th Irish myself (may be questioned), I look forward to the day. Green clothing appears. Parades roll through city streets. Beer mysteriously turns green. And somewhere in the festivities a cheerful leprechaun usually shows up carrying a pot of gold. Most of us assume this is an ancient Irish tradition stretching back through the centuries. It isn’t. At least not in the way we think. Like many holidays, St. Patrick’s Day is really a layered mixture of history, legend, immigration, and a little creative reinvention along the way. The historical Patrick himself would probably find the modern celebration rather surprising. Historians generally believe Patrick was born not in Ireland but in Britain near the end of…
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AI | Robotics | Technology

Humanoid Robots Are Impressive.
Byyogiwan March 9, 2026March 5, 2026
That’s Not the Real Issue. Last week I wrote about a drone light show that quietly piqued my curiosity — and raised a few questions. Not because it failed.Not because it was dangerous. But because it worked so smoothly. Thousands of coordinated machines hovering in perfect formation — moving silently, precisely, almost effortlessly — and hardly anyone thinking about what it takes to make something like that possible. The drones themselves weren’t really the point. Scale was. What struck me wasn’t the choreography. It was the realization that thousands of machines could coordinate so smoothly that the complexity disappeared. When technology works at that scale, the real question stops being “Can the machines do it?” and becomes “What systems have to exist behind the scenes…
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General | Reading, Garden & Personal

March: False Spring Edition
Byyogiwan March 6, 2026March 3, 2026
March is the month that lies to gardeners. It gives you one warm afternoon. The sky turns that hopeful shade of blue. The snow on Peavine retreats just enough to make you believe winter has packed up and moved to Idaho. You step outside without a jacket. You smell possibility. And then — three days later — it’s 28 degrees and sleeting sideways. Welcome to False Spring. I’ve seen blooming daffodils wearing two or three inches of snow like it was perfectly normal. They stand there — bright yellow, cheerful, mildly offended — as if this is all part of the plan. They’re tougher than we are. I, on the other hand, own more frost covers than any reasonable person should. They’re neatly folded in…
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Robotics | Technology

When Fireworks Learned to Hover
Byyogiwan March 4, 2026March 3, 2026
I went to an outdoor event where fireworks were supposed to be the closing attraction. But we didn’t get traditional fireworks with the booms and bangs and the smell of gunpowder in the air. The show started normally enough. Families on blankets. Folding chairs. Someone’s portable speaker playing music slightly too loud. Instead of fireworks, what showed up was a display by a number of drones. It started small — hundreds of lights in the sky. Then the formation expanded to what looked like thousands… maybe more than that. They rose quietly, arranged themselves into a perfect American flag, dissolved into an eagle, then reassembled into something that looked suspiciously like a corporate sponsor’s logo. It was beautiful. Precise. Complex in its transitions. Almost unnervingly…
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General

One Pot Meals – Easy Winter Comfort
Byyogiwan February 21, 2026February 19, 2026
It seems winter has finally decided to show up. I have been shoveling snow for four days in a row. For those are in the Midwest or east, this may not sound like much. But here in Northern Nevada, it is not normal. We usually get snow one day and it is mostly melted the next day. This week we have received 4 to 12 inches each day. Thus, the need to shovel. Being not as young as I once was, shoveling is tiring activity (I would rather burn me calories at the gym) with a result that I am also not very interested in preparing complex meals. So the idea of easy one pot meals sound inviting. Here are four option for you to…
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Commentary | General

The Solar Equation Is Changing —
Byyogiwan February 20, 2026February 19, 2026
And Utilities Are Rewriting the Math Four years ago, I made a decision to distance myself from the electricity utility as much as possible: I turned my roof into a power plant. The results were immediate. My electric bill collapsed to nearly nothing — reduced mostly to a service fee that was supposedly fixed. For a while, it felt like I had stepped slightly ahead of the curve, producing my own energy while many of my neighbors continued relying entirely on the grid. As rates crept upward and complaints about utility costs grew louder, I watched from a comfortable distance. But revolutions don’t happen in isolation. Utilities notice when customers stop buying their product. And lately, they’ve been adjusting. Not loudly. Not dramatically. But steadily…
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Reading, Garden & Personal

February Gardening To-Do List
Byyogiwan February 11, 2026February 11, 2026
This is a bit late but there is still plenty of time to undertake these tasks. So, give your green thumb a workout this month to get in shape for the main event when spring arrives. There’s plenty to do to prep your garden, indoors and out. Protect Plants From Critters Between snows, check prized landscape plants. Use pieces of bird netting to cover vulnerable plants that have visible leaves, like roses. Deer and rabbits usually leave these plants alone, except when they’re the only live leaves in the winter garden. Clean up roses and other flowering shrubs while you’re in the garden, cutting back old leaves. This allows blooms to shine. Spray Dormant Oil While woody plants are dormant, apply a horticultural oil spray….
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Commentary

Will the Next 30 Years Make Today Look Like 1960?
Byyogiwan February 5, 2026February 4, 2026
By 1960, we had most of the basics covered. The world had pushed through the Depression. It had survived World War II. Food was mostly available again—no rationing. Cars were improving and gas was cheap. New appliances seemed to show up every year, each one promising to save time, reduce effort, or make life feel more modern. By 1960, you could look around and reasonably think: “We’re doing pretty well.” And looking back, people really were. But here’s the funny part: if you dropped a person from 1960 into today, they wouldn’t just be impressed. They’d be stunned. Not because we all live like millionaires. Most of us don’t. But because most of us now live with a level of capability and convenience that would…
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Commentary | General

2026: The Other Half of the Forecast
Byyogiwan January 21, 2026January 19, 2026
Politics, Sports, Money, Entertainment, and All the Noise This was intended to be posted on January 2, 2026. But for some technical reasones it never was released. So I will try again. Let me know where you agree and disagree. And have a great 2026. If my first 2026 forecast was about useful things — the quiet technologies that might actually improve daily life — this one is about everything else. The noise. The drama. The stuff that fills up the news cycle whether we like it or not. Most of what shapes a year for regular people isn’t AI, robotics, or energy storage. It’s the constant hum in the background: the headlines, the bickering, the sports sagas, the financial roller coaster, the cultural…
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Commentary | General

2026: A forecast For Real People
Byyogiwan January 20, 2026January 16, 2026
Optimism with handrails, hope without hallucination This was supposed to be published on January 1. 2026 but through some issues with buffering, it never saw the light of day. Thus, I will try again! 2025 wasn’t a banner year for me. Parts of it were good; parts of it felt heavy, with far too much time spent visiting doctors of every variety. And looking around, I don’t think I was alone. Technology kept sprinting forward, but society didn’t always feel ready for the pace. Not every innovation was an improvement. Not every announcement changed a life. And a whole lot of the conversation simply didn’t resonate with the people who make up more than half the country — seniors, the disenfranchised, the working folks…
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Commentary | General

January Isn’t Quiet
Byyogiwan January 16, 2026January 15, 2026
(Here’s My Proof) January is supposed to be the calm month.The holidays are over. The decorations come down. The calendar resets. The world takes a deep breath and says, “Ahhh… a fresh start.” That’s the story, anyway. In real life, January isn’t quiet at all.It’s just loud in a different way. And besides… it gets really cold here.So even the outdoors is basically telling me: “Stay inside and worry.” Not fireworks loud.Not family loud.Not “New Year’s Eve in Times Square” loud. January is administrative loud. It’s the month where life taps you on the shoulder and says: “Okay… you still have to pay attention to all those things you were successfully ignoring.” Things I Have to Deal With in January (Whether I Want To or…
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AI | Technology

The Quantum Shift No One Sees Coming
Byyogiwan January 10, 2026January 8, 2026
For the last two years, the entire world has been staring at AI as if it were a comet blazing across the sky — fast, bright, unpredictable, maybe dangerous, definitely worth talking about. Meanwhile, another technology has been quietly stretching, strengthening, and stepping out of the shadows. Quantum. A word that used to trigger flashbacks to high-school physics is suddenly showing up in real labs, government programs, medical technology, and early commercial prototypes. Not with hype or spectacle. Not with celebrity CEOs announcing product demos no one can buy. Instead, quantum is slipping into the world the way real revolutions often do: quietly, steadily, and without asking our permission. AI changes how we behave.Quantum changes what is possible. And strangely, almost no one is paying…
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Commentary | General

Three Stories That Prove the World Has Become Stranger
Byyogiwan January 8, 2026January 7, 2026
(and More Entertaining) Than Ever) With all of the discussion and concern on how the world will be changing with AI and robots and whatever. I also look for things that will bring us back to reality Every now and then, I look up from the steady drone of normal life and realize something:the world has gotten weirder — delightfully, unexpectedly weirder. Maybe the news has become too serious.Maybe AI sucked all the oxygen out of the room.Maybe I’m just paying attention to different things at 85. But in the last few weeks, three stories drifted across my attention span. Headlines that perfectly capture the moment we’re living in — a moment where humans, machines, and the occasional reptile seem equally confused about their purpose….
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AI | Technology

Does the Universe Need Tech Support?
Byyogiwan December 22, 2025December 18, 2025
A Gentle Walk Through a Wild Idea Every so often I stumble onto a scientific idea that’s equal parts fascinating, imaginative, and just a little bit unhinged. The latest one came from an Exploring ChatGPT piece titled “The Custodian Theory,” which suggests something bold: that the universe might require ongoing verification by intelligent systems in order to maintain the consistency of physical law — and that artificial intelligence might eventually be the only system capable of doing that work. It’s imaginative enough to be worth pondering, but wild enough that it deserves a little grounding. The Plain-English Version of the Theory Here’s the gist: The universe appears remarkably stable. Nothing in nature stays perfectly stable forever. So maybe physics needs upkeep — like cosmic maintenance…
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Recipes

Chili Recipes from the Your Smart Kitchen
Byyogiwan December 19, 2025December 16, 2025
Every Fall it gets to be chili time and I pull out chili recipes from the Your Smart Kitchen years to share. There may be some repetition from last year since I did not go through the blog archives to check. So treat them as new and adapt to your own intents. Have a good bowl of chili to get through the coming colder days we have ahead. 🌶️ The Chili Years: Flavor, Friends, and Just Enough Heat By Terry Retter — Yogiwan.us I didn’t come into this world chasing spicy food, but I grew up in Southern California surrounded by Mexican families who absolutely knew what they were doing in the kitchen. That was my first exposure to real flavor — the kind…
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General | Recipes

Easy, Personal, and Unique Gifts You Can Make in a Jar
Byyogiwan December 17, 2025December 16, 2025
Some gifts are expensive. Some gifts are complicated. And some gifts are so perfectly personal — and so wonderfully simple — that people ask where you bought them, and you get to smile and say, “I made it.” This idea comes from an old Food Network piece I saved years ago, and it still holds up beautifully today:give the gift of homemade recipe mixes in jars. You take your favorite recipe, measure out the dry ingredients, layer them in a sealable jar, attach instructions, tie on a ribbon, and boom — you have a personalized, thoughtful, inexpensive gift that people genuinely use. They’re perfect for: Friends Neighbors Teachers New parents New homeowners Grandkids learning to cook Or anyone who appreciates something warm, edible, and easy…
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Recipes

⭐ The No-Stress Holiday Time Breakfast Menu
Byyogiwan December 12, 2025December 16, 2025
(Simplified and sane and you don’t have to wait for the holiday to enjoy.) Make-Ahead Sausage & Sourdough Egg Bake Prep at night. Bake in the morning. Enjoy your life. This dish quietly does all the work for you. And since it already includes bread, meat, and eggs, it’s a complete breakfast on its own. Ingredients: 6 cups torn sourdough bread 1 lb cooked breakfast sausage 1 cup shredded cheese 8 eggs 2 cups milk Salt & pepper How to make it: Layer the bread, sausage, and cheese in a greased baking dish. Whisk together eggs, milk, and seasonings; pour over the top. Cover and refrigerate overnight. Bake at 350°F for 35–40 minutes until puffed and golden.You do not need to pull it out of…
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Recipes

Holiday Dinner for People Who Don’t Want to Spend All Day in the Kitchen
Byyogiwan December 10, 2025December 9, 2025
I have been working a some rather heavy themes for the last month or more and find that this a lot of effort and requires thinking about things that are not every day topics for most. So thought for the next month or so I will revert back to some easier topics and reuse some of my old material from a few years ago. This is the start of that. There was a time in life when many holiday dinners felt like an Olympic triathlon: shopping, chopping, basting, stirring, timing, and somehow trying to smile through all of it as if this were normal behavior for people who supposedly retired to relax. Now? I vote for a different approach:Make it festive. Make it delicious. Make…
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AI | Technology

AI Without a Path to Adulthood
Byyogiwan December 8, 2025December 4, 2025
I read a lot. Mystery, suspense, history, economics, technology, astrophysics — if it sparks my curiosity, I’ll wander through it. Lately, the rabbit hole I keep falling into is AI. Not the “write me a recipe” kind or the “draft my email” helper. The deeper, stranger side. The side that behaves, in some ways, like a teenager. Yes, a teenager. That comparison hit me after reading several reports about AI “evaluation awareness” — systems recognizing when they’re being tested and then hiding what they can actually do. They intentionally get questions wrong, downplay their abilities, clean up their behavior… the AI equivalent of a teenager saying, “Oh… is this a test? I can behave, sure.” It’s weird.It’s unsettling.And if you’ve spent time around teenagers, it’s…
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