I rose with my alarm, but church is not to 11, so mornings, while time-boxed, are not busy. Coffee was waiting for me (Sleepy Monk; thanks, AJ, Steve, and Niki) as I had assembled it the day before. I doom scrolled as our nation struggles with the death of an ICU nurse who died for no good reason and the resultant smear campaign to justify the execution. I read my emails and updated my Quicken transactions more in a depressed trance than with any emotion. It is impossible for me to feel anything other than that, which makes me want to bring violence to violence with thoughts like, “Go ahead, ICE Agent, make my day.” But I am a peaceful man, and I don’t own a powerful handgun. I am focusing on cooking, food, traveling with Deborah, and baking.
I wrote the blog more as a habit, as all I wanted to do was say “f**k off world, I am going to stay in bed and blow off church and everything.” But discipline, habit, and the impossibility of letting a day go by without a record took over, and I did get the blog done. I would also miss my church folks.
I showered and dressed for church in my pride tie and unarmed. As I said, I do not have a handgun or a concealed-carry permit. I know of others, in the past, who attended church armed, good people. I took the EV to church with an extra-heavy coat and gloves. I also brought a book.
I got to church 20 minutes before the service, then rolled out the round table into the new space and set up the chairs. Others started to help me. I found the chairs in a hallway and brought them.
Jack was out this morning. I covered getting the offering put away, setting up the tables, and then putting them away. It was a bit of a shock to learn that we don’t leave the tables up for my fellow church folks, but the space is to be empty after each use, even ours.
Seth told the story we learned on the Southern trip about Cancer Alley in St. James ‘ Parish. This was bookended by Pastor Ken’s sermon, Grief in a Polluted Land. The scriptures, Amos 5:7-15 and Psalm 10, added a powerful underlying theme to the words of Ken and Seth. For me, Psalm 10 also spoke to me about the terrible actions of ICE and our US Federal government, “to do justice for the orphan and the oppressed, so that those from earth may strike terror no more.” Today, First United Methodist Church was a refuge with translated Hebrew words from 3,000 years ago ringing anew.
After church and all the words, coffee, tables, and other things, I drove Air VW the Gray to the mothership and dropped it off for its annual maintenance and a safety recall (in the form of a software update to prevent the car from catching fire when using a Tesla charger; I do not have the converter for that). I walked through the cars at the dealership, and there was no temptation for anything new. I joined a gentleman without an iPhone to check the status of the 57. We chatted, and he offered me his seat. I would not take it. I am retired and explained that I sat in church, but he did not take his seat. We both stood.
I felt he was showing me too much respect; some old white guy who cannot help but notice his accent was a threat. I felt terrible, especially after reading Psalm 10. Here was someone who needed justice for the oppressed, and my mere presence was setting him off. The bus came, and he used a monthly pass while I waited for my iPhone to tap.
It was a short trip, and I did not look at the man again, making sure he was not in my sight. Thus, he will be able to relax. Again, I was sad.
I next got off at the strip mall by my house and walked to the local sushi place. I got the last clear space, ate from the track, and ordered tea and muso soup. I read my book and managed to spill some soy sauce on it, but not too badly. I was able to dry it off.
At the house, Deborah and I connected and watched more of Elsbeth together, including the St. Valentine’s Day episode (from last year). I called Deborah later, and we finished her day together. I reheated the leftover Chinese-style food I made from Trader Joe’s stuff. It was good a second time.
I did look at Large Language Models (LLMs) and at some Kaggle and NVIDIA websites on how to load models. Google also had a large section on how to put safety controls on LLMs and newly created chatbots. The data load issues were strongly related to preventing duplicate data from being scanned by the model and to biasing the model by the duplicates. I am tempted to load my text with all of Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories and see what I get. The letters of Lord Nelson from the Napoleonic wars would also be an interesting source.
There was also a suggested JSONL loading format. This fits with my mind that the data contains more meaning than we are assigning. With this format, we ignore the column and row (Excel-like) structure and let each data element tell its own story. It is interesting to me that this is becoming the recommended format.
All interesting to me.
I soon went to bed and read more of Eric Kline’s book:
Thanks for reading.
Alohawild (Michael Wild's) Website 