Things I've done recently

Saturday we worked for hours up at the church helping to remove the black rubber mulch from one of the playgrounds (it was going to be relocated to another, lesser-used playground on the campus) and installing new, lighter colored (thus less heat absorbing/radiating) and non-tracking (to avoid marking shoes and floors; they're about to put new flooring in the preschool building) mulch. There was a LOT of mulch on that playground! It was a lot of hot, hard work! 

Sunday night I moved a console piano from our living room to the ex-dining room. Shouldn't have been a huge deal except that the casters on this old piano don't work properly, so we had to first put it on furniture sliders and then slide it from one room to the next. We rearranged a little more furniture, too. We're turning the ex-dining room into a sitting and music room/study. It's exciting! 

Yesterday I took an old leather sofa to Goodwill. It's a 5 part thing: 2 seats center section, two storage sections, and two recliner end pieces. Loaded into the back of the truck solo. Fortunately the Goodwill workers helped with the unloading. 

Over the weekend I also managed to get Ollama properly running on my Windows machine to serve LLMs on my local network (by default it only serves to the machine it's running on, not over the network). I then set up a Raspberry PI mini computer and hooked up "nanobot" on it, pointed at my Ollama, and set up a Discord script for it and connected it to a private Discord server that my boys and I are on. Now we have a chat that includes a locally-hosted AI in the mix. Nothing spectacular has come from it so far, but it's an interesting exercise. 

I've also been working on my "AI book generation engine" (running the local LLM for the AI); I think it may be at a point where I'm ready to dive into the manual editing process (i.e., it's finally produced reasonably viable first draft copy). I'll let you know when the final product is available. That engine itself was built with AI from an iterative process. 

Later this week I'm taking a Penske truck to Atlanta to pick up living room furniture, bringing it back here, swapping it out with my current LR furniture, and taking that up to my daughter's place north of Hattiesburg, then going to church with my youngest Sunday, when he's going to be preaching his first sermon that evening. 

What a week!

Why Is Polestar Losing U.S. Market Access While Volvo Isn’t?

Note: This article reflects my analysis and opinion based on publicly available information. It should not be interpreted as an official determination by the U.S. Commerce Department.

Polestar and Volvo: two brands, two lineages, one parent company — Geely, a Chinese automaker. Yet only one of them is losing the ability to sell new vehicles in the United States.

Volvo stays.
Polestar goes.
And if you’re an EV enthusiast (or an automotive enthusiast in general), it feels like the Commerce Department just kneecapped one of the most interesting electric brands on the market.

On paper, the rule that restricts Polestar should apply equally to both companies. In practice, it doesn’t — and the reason appears to have far more to do with political optics than with technology.

---

TL;DR

Polestar and Volvo share the same parent company (Geely), but the U.S. Commerce Department treats them differently under the Connected Vehicle Rule.

Volvo received authorization because its connected‑vehicle data systems are governed and operated in Europe. Polestar did not, because its backend architecture and data governance remain tightly integrated with Geely's systems.

This article examines how the rule's definition of "control" allows similar ownership structures to receive different outcomes — and why Polestar's U.S. future is effectively being phased out while Volvo's continues.

A Year of AI Experiments, Failures, and Surprises

What I've learned using AI over the last year or so.

AI is powerful, but it’s not magic. It’s a tool that rewards clarity, structure, and iteration. Over the last year I’ve used it for coding, cooking, writing, and even building autonomous agents — and the pattern is always the same: the more intentional the workflow, the better the results. AI saves time, but only after you invest time. And that’s the real lesson.

Shameless Plug: I Wrote Some Books

See all my books on Amazon .

So, I am an author now. Or, at least I like to think I am. Yes, I already mentioned that I have been a published author for a long time (in my The Dogs of Draaken post), but this time I actually get paid for my books. Well, if anyone would buy them, I would; but I only make about $1 or so per copy, so I won't be buying a yacht just yet!

I've launched four titles so far. Three of them are children's books (but at least Tabletop Dinoland, if not all of them, is pretty much for any age kid, from one to ninety-two as the Christmas Song says):

• Tabletop Dinoland - the one that started it all (well, recently re-started my authorship)
• Tabletop Dinoland: The Dino Alphabet Book: Yes, P is for Pterodactyl. I know it's technically a pterosaur and not a dinosaur, but what self-respecting dinosaur alphabet book could resist?
• Bitty the Algorithm: Hopefully the first in a series that teaches kids about logic and problem-solving in fun ways.

And one for the adults:

Tactical Human Snickerdoodles

(or: why my attempt at writing a normal action scene immediately caught fire)

I wanted AI to assist me in writing a gritty, grounded tactical raid sequence… instead, Copilot handed me cinnamon‑scented hubris wrapped in a Kevlar vest. (OK, maybe I had a hand in the tactical kitchen, too.)

The KRDL Vest: because safety should smell like the holidays.

I wanted realism.
I got tactical human snickerdoodles.

Below is the exact moment everything went wrong.

Strava Wants Me to Pay for My Own Data

If you haven’t seen it, I’ve been recording my daily steps and activity (or lack thereof) at Mr. T’s Fitness Tracker. The step data comes from my Withings account, and the activity data comes from my Strava account. All of that gets pulled automatically into a Google Sheet using an Apps Script, which then powers the dashboard on my site.

At least, that’s how it works for now. Strava sent an email today with this key line buried in the details:

Effective June 30, 2026: A Strava subscription will be required to access the API as an existing Standard Tier developer. Extended Access Tier developers are not affected.

Strava is effectively introducing a Strava API paywall — a subscription requirement just to access data that comes from my own walks.

In other words, if I want to keep using their API to pull my own data into my own dashboard, I’ll have to start paying them. Every month.

3T Straight Jackets & 20‑Second Marriages: Solving Life’s Problems One Bad Idea at a Time

Parenting Tip of the Day:
If your toddler is currently expressing themselves through interpretive screaming, Olympic-level flailing, or the classic “I’m boneless now” collapse, don’t panic.

Simply consult the official 3T Straight Jacket Collection™ — as featured on the highly reputable parenting resource, StabTheFinger.com.

Choose from stylish patterns like:
• Snack Time Riot Camo
• Unicorn Rampage
• I Licked the Dog (Again)

Each jacket is crafted from GOTS-certified cotton, reinforced stitching, and the tears of parents who tried gentle parenting for three consecutive days.

Machine washable. Emotionally useless.

Follow for more parenting solutions that solve nothing but make you feel seen.

I Think I Missed My Exit

Sometimes you take a wrong turn. Sometimes you take a really wrong turn. And sometimes you take such a wrong turn that an astronaut stops what he’s doing, stares at you, and quietly reconsiders his career choices.

---

Tony’s Accidental Lunar Road Trip

The GPS had been acting weird ever since I passed the Waffle House. First it rerouted me around “unforeseen cosmic debris,” then it calmly announced, “In 200 feet, turn left onto Mare Imbrium.”

I glanced at my wife. She shrugged. I shrugged. The Fiat shrugged in Italian.

My Brain on Mounjaro: When Food Got Funny… and Then Got Complicated Again

Or: My Journey with Mounjaro (So Far, ~6 weeks in)

A while back, I wrote about being Edmund from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe — the kid who just wanted more candy. I talked about seasonal SweeTARTS shaped like farm animals, my CGM tattling on me, and Mounjaro stepping into the story like a kind of metabolic Aslan: “Hey buddy, let’s not die today.”

That post was “Edmund, pre-rescue.” This one is the sequel. This is what happened after the miracle weeks, when my brain started laughing at food… and then, slowly, food started laughing back.

When AI Accidentally Writes a Self‑Help Chapter (…and It’s Actually Good)

I was working on Chapter 1 of my “AI for Newbies” book — you know, the chapter that’s supposed to explain what AI actually is — when my AI assistant suddenly veered off the road and wrote… a full‑blown self‑help chapter.

Not a paragraph.
Not a tangent.
A chapter.

Title and everything:

“Picking Up the Pieces: A Practical Guide to Mending Broken Expectations.”

And here’s the wild part:
It was good.
Like, “this belongs in a different book entirely” good.

And the irony? I was trying to explain what AI is, and it responded by showing me — a pattern‑matcher that sometimes grabs the wrong pattern… and somehow lands on something beautiful.

Does anyone blog anymore?

Podcasts, audiobooks, TikTok reels, Discord chats — everywhere you look, the internet is louder, faster, and more “immersive.” Meanwhile, blogging feels like something we all did back when flip phones were still a thing. (Fun fact: I even once launched a memeless media site. Shockingly, it didn’t take off.)

But is there still a place for blogs? For posts like this one?

Do you blog? I started [LAPSE... brain dead] back in 2007. I was steady for a while, drifted away, came back, drifted again — and now I’m finally in a semi-regular groove again.

A big part of that comeback has been using AI tools (Copilot, Gemini, etc.) to review posts, clean up sentences, or help me draft ideas. I still write in my own voice — AI just gives me a jumpstart when I need it.

And that’s where my new book comes in:

It Started With a Diesel

I didn’t learn to drive on anything normal. My first attempts behind the wheel were in a Peugeot 505 turbodiesel with a clutch that felt like agricultural equipment. One early lesson involved me backing it out of the driveway while my dad stood outside the car, calmly trying to teach me how to release the brake without dropping the clutch — something I absolutely could not figure out. I stalled that poor diesel over and over while a very patient stranger waited, smiling, for us to clear the street. By the time the Alfa Romeo Sport Sedan —my first car — arrived a year or two later, I could shift and clutch without thinking — which only made the Alfa’s twin‑cam drama and crunchy synchros hit even harder. The Peugeot taught me the mechanics; the Alfa taught me the joy. Together they set the tone for every car I’d love afterward. What follows is the full lineage of every manual I’ve driven, owned, borrowed, or survived since.

The Peugeot I learned to drive on looked exactly like this one.

Which brings me to the list itself... here are some of the more interesting joy toys I've owned or driven, from the 1983 (may have been an 84 or 85) Peugeot 505 STi TurboDiesel 5-Speed that I learned to drive on to the 1967 Mustang GT that my uncle bought brand new (and gifted me on my 30th birthday) to the most recent 2018 Fiat 500c Pop Turbo Cabrio that I've owned for a week now.

Below you'll find a curated list of only manual-transmission equipped vehicles I've owned or driven, along with some interesting details on each, including a "fun" and "weirdness" factor rating (table crafted by Claude.ai).

The Joy Ride(s)

Before you get all antsy about the title of this blog post, don't worry — yes, it’s about cars. Lots of them. Specifically, ones I've owned (or driven). My new toy? A 2018 Fiat 500c Pop Turbo Cabrio (manual transmission). Here's how it looks:

A closer look at my new joy ride.

The stylish exterior of the Fiat 500c.

Nice, huh? I had driven an early 2012 500 Sport manual (in that deep forest green color, which I really liked) - I stopped at the Birmingham Fiat dealer on my way south from a business trip to Huntsville circa 2012 and the sales guy and I took it for a spin on a twisty road and up on the interstate - it was fun, surprisingly comfortable, and enjoyable. "One day," I thought. Something Italian, something light, something fun (fondly remembering my first car, a 1978 Alfa Romeo Sport Sedan - the same one that Ferris's friend Cameron drove to pick him up at the start of the movie). (Aside: I would love an Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio - but that's a bit more expensive than the 500c, and probably I'd get in way more trouble with that one, haha!)

Cool Conversations: How I Accidentally Ended Up Terraforming Mars

There are days when I wake up, drink coffee, and behave like a normal adult.  

And then there are days when I ask Copilot how densely packed the asteroid belt is, and somehow — through a series of entirely predictable mistakes — we end up designing a planetary magnetic shield and importing oceans via comet.

This is one of those days.

It started innocently enough.  

A simple question.  

A curiosity.  

A “hey, I wonder…” moment.

And then the conversation… escalated.

Below is the curated transcript — cleaned up just enough to hide the parts where I briefly forgot how units work.

Am I Old Now?

I think I've realized that getting old- at least at the point I am now- doesn't mean I can't do things... It just means that when I do things, it hurts afterward. More than it used to. And for much longer. 

We have been setting up a pair of bunk beds in the room that we typically put the grandkids in when they stay over (the other day we had four of the grandsons, ages 3-5, all in the room, with two on twin beds and two on the floor. It currently looks like this: 

Edmund

My wife was reading a children's version of "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe" to some of my grandsons tonight, and I heard the line, "Edmund just wanted more candy." And I thought, "Hey, I used to be Edmund." You see, I could down a whole bag of SweeTarts Chicks, Ducks, and Bunnies at once. And not the tiny bag. Yeah, I was Edmund. 

Now, I'm Edmund with diabetes, a CGM, and Mounjaro. 

FREEZE! Or don't...

There are smells you never forget. This week, I met a new one.

So, my brothers and I are starting to work on cleaning out my Aunt's estate (she had no children, so we are handling things; one of my brothers, who lives in the area, is the executor, and my other brother and I are coming in to help as we can). In her pantry was a freezer. Full of food. Which apparently hasn't worked in ... untold months. That freezer, it's a full-blown lab experiment of mold, insects, and who knows what else. And it's quite an odor factory.

The pantry it's in? It's basically a large storage room, but the door OUT of the pantry - the door to the carport - was blocked by shelves and storage drawers. The other door into the pantry from the kitchen is too narrow to fit the freezer through. So, that leaves moving the shelves and storage drawers in order to get the carport door open in order to remove the freezer.

And a lot of work.

Stop Trying to Delete the Universe

Hey you, stop trying to annihilate the universe

A perfectly normal banana in a perfectly normal lab, definitely not emitting antimatter.

Apparently we’re all walking around as low-yield antimatter emitters. Bananas, humans, your dog — everyone is quietly spitting out positrons thanks to potassium-40 decay. It’s not enough to vaporize your kitchen, but it is enough to make you wonder:

"Wait... if positrons annihilate electrons, aren’t we slowly deleting the universe?"

If you want the science behind this, CERN has a great explainer on why everyday matter (including bananas) emits tiny amounts of antimatter.

This is how my morning started. This is also how I accidentally spent the next several hours reconstructing the entire thermal death arc of the cosmos with Copilot, one increasingly unhinged question at a time.

Because once you start asking whether humans are slowly erasing electrons, you inevitably end up here:

Experiments in an "AI Movie Director"

Just for fun (I guess?) I'm attempting to build an autonomous, fully AI-driven movie director/studio. And, for now, attempting to run it completely on my EVGA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER SC BLACK video card (Nvidia 2060 Super, 8GB VRAM). I have generated SOMETHING... but it has a long way to go. But... it's a tiny step in the right direction! 

Here's the first "output" of the first "scene" of a movie it called "The Shallow End" (no audio):

Yeah, that's not exactly... Hollywood quality. It was supposed to be this scene:

INT. SUBMARINE - TIME

EXTREMELY CLOSE on Jack's eyes as they flutter open. The camera cuts to Jack's disoriented face, his eyes scanning the dark space.

JACK

(painfully)

Wha...?

Jack's gaze fixes on the steel walls, his face twisted in confusion.

JACK

(whispering)

Where...?

Jack's fingers flex, searching for something to grasp.

JACK

(more urgently)

What's going on?

The camera cuts to the submarine's walls, showing the dim, flickering lights casting long shadows.

A faint, eerie whisper echoes through the submarine, growing louder.

JACK

(panicked)

Hello?

The whisper intensifies, sounds of creaking metal and machinery overwhelming Jack's cries for help.

Jack's face contorts in desperation as he slaps the walls, then searches for a way out.

JACK

(pleadingly)

Please...

The whisper reaches a deafening level, the submarine's darkness seeming to close in on Jack.

FADE TO BLACK.

But, hey, it's something. Something bad, yeah, but something. 

Eventually the goal is to make a fully autonomous, OpenClaw AI agent-controlled video production house, running (as much as possible) off local LLMs and ComfyUI on my old 2060 Super 8GB card. (Yes, it's a tight squeeze for 8GB, but I'm determined to see how far I can push this card before it gives up the ghost.)

When your radio isn't working... chat with Gemini!

The last few weekends have involved a lot of driving. Back-to-back day trips on Saturday and Sunday, both days getting home at 11pm or later (and having to get up early the next day for church or work), and then again this past Saturday (but we got back a little earlier from that one, around 5pm). The Sunday trip involved picking up a vehicle from my late Aunt's home, and the following Saturday (yesterday) involved taking it up to my daughter and son-in-law's home for delivery.

The radio in that car isn't working, so I did what any normal person would do: I put my phone on the dash and fired up Amazon Music (I just use the "free" version included with my Prime subscription.) I also had Google Maps up showing navigation. And then... magic happened.

Absurd-spiratiom (the food variety)

The other day i posited on Facebook, would a a cinnamon-raisin-bread, four-pepper-turkey sandwich be any good? The responses were mainly negative, haha. But since I have the turkey (Member's Mark deli variety) and no bread other than the cinnamon raisin bread, I figured, "why not?"

Thus, the birth of the cinnamon raisin for pepper turkey sandwich! Okay, so I only went in halfway, with a single slice of bread and a half sandwich. It wasn't horrible. 

The Bathtub That Must Stay Dry (Apparently)

Last night I did something I've never done before: I carried a bathtub. Well, helped carry it. One of my sons is redoing one of their bathrooms, and part of it includes replacing the bathtub (link goes to the specific one that was ordered). Well, I have a truck, and they do not, so I went to Home Depot to assist with pickup and transport (I didn't load into the truck - my son and a HD worker did that). After driving the bathtub to his house (I don't always do "truck things" - but it's nice to have when I do! that whole bathtub fit in the truck bed, an 08 Dodge Ram 1500 Laramie Quad Cab w/ ~6'4" bed, with the tailgate shut), I helped him unload it into his garage. So, now I've carried a bathtub, and I can no longer say I haven't. But I noticed something interesting after setting it down in their garage:

Riddle me this, skunk-man...

I know the Internet is a wild, wild place, but why does this page even exist? Pet Skunk Laws: A State-by-State Guide to Ownership. I mean, maybe you're trying to have an explanation of "why that odor exists at your place," but really, why would someone want a skunk as a pet?

Reminds me of this other site I'm pretty sure I've written about before: Pets or Food. And update: the have fresh clubbed baby seal available again! Only $69.95! The price on komodo dragons has gone up since I last visited, though ($200k), but they also now have dodo bird availability (only $9k). And their pets ready to eat are also certified organic, so you can rest easy.

They are also currently seeking a cat wrangler, so if you're in need of employment, go to their jobs listing and submit your resume.

That's all for now!

The Two‑Stroke Diesel Range‑Extender: My Own Weird Engine Idea

The Weird Engine I Can’t Stop Thinking About

A conceptual engine that lives somewhere between clever and questionable.

After spending way too much time writing about other people’s strange engines, I realized something dangerous: I have one of my own. It’s been rattling around in my head for years — a design that sits somewhere between “this might actually work” and “this is how you end up on a watchlist for experimental combustion.”

So here it is: my personal contribution to the Weird Engine Hall of Fame.

The Concept in One Sentence

A two‑stroke, diesel, supercharged, scavenged, constant‑speed engine designed solely as a range‑extender generator for a series plug‑in hybrid.

In other words: a tiny, angry, extremely efficient metal box whose only job is to sit in its happy place and make electricity.

 

The Tri‑Dyne Rotary: The Engine I Fell In Love With in an Encyclopedia (and Other Beautifully Weird Engines)

A retro-style technical schematic of a Tri-Dyne rotary engine — the kind of diagram that made 12‑year‑old me fall in love with impossible machines.

Some engines are weird because they were built.

The Tri‑Dyne rotary is weird because it never was — and yet it still managed to lodge itself permanently in my brain after I saw a diagram of it in an old Encyclopaedia Britannica. (That article had an excellent diagram, but you can see the basic idea from the cover of the July, 1969 Popular Science magazine — link courtesy of books.google.com — and that cover was the inspiration of the Gemini AI Nano-Banana generated image above — very similar to the diagram in the encyclopedia.) 

I remember staring at that diagram way longer than any normal child should stare at a hypothetical combustion chamber; in fact, I once used it in a project in high school for "what I want to be when I grow up," or something like that (the "what" was "automotive engineer" — I did work in the reactor department, mechanical division, onboard a Nimitz-class US Navy Nuclear Aircraft Carrier, but then I switched back to my computer days, and I've been doing that ever since).

The Tri‑Dyne was one of those “future of engines” concepts that lived entirely in beautifully rendered cutaway drawings. It promised all the elegance of a rotary without the Wankel’s triangle‑shaped chaos:

• three oscillating vanes
• three combustion chambers
• three power pulses per revolution
• and theoretically better sealing, efficiency, and sanity

It looked like someone took the Wankel, removed the Dorito, and replaced it with a mechanical flower that opened and closed in perfect synchronization.

It was mesmerizing.
It was elegant.
It was also, as far as I can tell, never actually built — which is probably why the diagrams looked so clean. Real engines leak. Real engines get hot. Real engines warp, seize, and fling metal shrapnel into the nearest wall. The Tri‑Dyne lived in a world where none of that existed. (Actually, to be fair, some of them only threaten to do that — usually the ones that are in vehicles I own — but the Tri‑Dyne never even got the chance; maybe we should rename it "Try-Dyne" since it never actually "did".)

But the idea?
The idea was intoxicating.

It was the kind of engine that made 12‑year‑old me think, “I’m going to build one of these someday,” and adult me think, “Ah. That’s why nobody built one of these.” (Actually, I'd still like to take a stab at building that thing someday... maybe I can get a 3D printer and build a prototype sometime.)

Still, I love it.
It’s the perfect example of the rotary dream: the belief that if we just rearrange geometry cleverly enough, we can escape pistons forever.

Spoiler: we cannot.
But I respect the optimism.

One Million Scam: The SaaS Business Model I Accidentally Believe In

The product you paid for. It’s not missing — this is it.

There’s a website called One Million Scam (note: not MY website).

The premise is simple and beautiful: the creator wants to raise one million dollars total from the internet, one tiny donation at a time. And what do you get for contributing?

Absolutely nothing.

No dashboard.
No login.
No AI-powered synergy engine.
No “Pro” tier that unlocks the ability to export your own data.
Just a big, beautiful button that says:

Give me one dollar. (Or more, your choice.)

And the worst part — the part that should make every SaaS founder stare into the middle distance — is that this joke is still more honest than half the software I’ve used in the last decade. (And it’s “generated” almost $70 in “revenue” so far!)

When Humans Stayed Home… and Methane Went Up Anyway

“Even when the roads emptied, the chemistry didn’t.”

Human activity dropped off a cliff during the Covid-19 shutdown. Highways emptied. Flights vanished. Industrial output slowed. If you’d asked almost anyone in early 2020 what that would do to greenhouse gases, they would’ve guessed “down.” Fewer cars, fewer planes, fewer factories—simple equation, right?

Apparently not.

According to a recent Smithsonian summary of a multi-year, 40-scientist study, methane—the second-largest greenhouse gas after water vapor—didn’t drop. It spiked to its highest levels since measurements began. So while humans were baking sourdough and hoarding toilet paper, the atmosphere was busy doing… whatever it wanted.

And the explanation is one of those “the earth is complicated” reminders we all need from time to time.

The Busy Human’s Guide to Using AI (And Staying Only Mildly Brain Dead)

One hand in the oven, one hand on the phone, and AI keeping him alive.

Using AI Like a Busy Human (Who Has Absolutely No Time for Nonsense)

Look, I don’t know who needs to hear this, but: AI is not here to replace you. It’s here to keep you from screaming into a dish towel at 11:47 PM because you forgot to thaw the chicken.

I’ve been using AI long enough now that it’s basically a coworker who never clocks out, never judges me, and occasionally suggests things that make me question its understanding of human life. And honestly? That’s part of the charm.

Over the past year, I’ve built a whole ecosystem around this chaos — including a brand‑new project called AI for Busy Humans, which is basically a survival kit for anyone who wants to use AI without becoming a full‑time “prompt engineer” (a job title that sounds fake but somehow pays real money).

But before we get there, let’s talk about how this all actually started.

The Ping-Pong Architecture: How I Built AI for Busy Humans

The Ping‑Pong Workflow Behind AI for Busy Humans

Building a website used to feel like a solitary construction project. You’d open a blank CMS, stare at the cursor, and hope the “About” page didn’t read like a tax form. But with my latest project, AI for Busy Humans, the process felt less like construction and more like a fast-paced game of ping-pong.

Not just me and an AI — but a three-way volley between Gemini, Copilot, and the part of my brain that still remembers how Hugo templates work. (OK, that last bit is slightly untrue: Copilot actually suggested using Hugo and walked me through the setup, including the first batch of pages that would later be refined.)

Mr. T’s Fitness Tracker: The Tiny Web Page That Became a Four‑Sheet, Multi‑API, AI‑Fueled Data Pipeline

I swear I didn’t mean for this to happen.

All I wanted was a simple little web page — a public accountability nudge, a digital sticky note that said, “Hey Tony, did you move your body today or nah.” Something tiny. Something honest. Something that would quietly roast me if I skipped too many days.

For months I’d been posting my daily walks on Facebook — a little ritual of “proof of life” updates that kept me honest. It worked, but it was clunky. Manual. Too dependent on me remembering to actually post. I wanted something automatic, something that lived on its own, something that didn’t require me to open Facebook like it was a confessional booth.

But the universe knows me too well.

Give me a “simple” idea and I will immediately turn it into a multi‑API, OAuth‑refreshing, Google‑Apps‑Script‑powered, domain‑hopping, spreadsheet‑layered contraption involving two AI models, four sheets, and a data architecture diagram that looks like a subway map.

This is the story of Mr. T’s Fitness Tracker — the page, the pipeline, the chaos, and the weirdly personal satisfaction of shipping something that absolutely should not exist and yet very much does.

My Two Cents: The Dime Should Be the New Penny

Pennies and nickels cost more to mint than they’re worth. Source: US Mint data

The Costly Reality

Based on MoneyDigest's report on minting costs, pennies and nickels BOTH cost more to mint than their face value. In 2024 alone, we burned roughly $168+ million just to keep pennies and nickels alive. Here’s the table of coin/profit based on that article:

Coin	Face Value	Cost to Mint	Loss / Profit per Coin
Penny	$0.01	~$0.04	–$0.03 (3¢ loss)
Nickel	$0.05	~$0.138	–$0.088 (8.8¢ loss)
Dime	$0.10	~$0.052	+$0.048 (4.8¢ profit)
Quarter	$0.25	~$0.123	+$0.127 (12.7¢ profit)
Half Dollar	$0.50	~$0.34	+$0.16 (16¢ profit)
Dollar Coin	$1.00	~$0.1243	+$0.8757 (87.57¢ profit)

So... wisely, the US stopped minting pennies early this year (2026). But—unwisely—they're still minting nickels, which actually lose more per coin than pennies ever did. If we’re serious about cutting waste, the fix isn’t complicated.

Bad Jeopardy and random quantum physics. And ketchup.

A: What's the atomic number of cerium, is it naturally occurring? What impact does Kondo physics, Weyl nodes, and Weyl-Kondo semi metals have on me as a non physicist? Is it safe to use ketchup that's been sitting on a restaurant table all day?

Q: what'd I just ask Copilot while sitting at Foosackly's having a bite while awaiting prescriptions from an urgent care visit to show up at Publix.

Yeah, maybe I'm weird. If you're wondering, that wasn't the first question I typed into the Copilot chat box, it was "What is CeRu4Sn6?"

The line of questions originated out of glancing at this article and realizing I had never heard of the concepts and also wondering what atom Ce is. Not cesium, that's Cs. If you're curious, too, that compound is "a cerium–ruthenium–tin intermetallic compound with formula CeRu₄Sn₆" (per Copilot).

The ketchup part? I just put some on my plate for the fries. By the way, I recommend the kung-foo sauce for the chicken.

Just a foray into weird quantum physics while eating breaded, fried chicken fingers. And fries with ketchup that's been sitting on the table all day, but which should be perfectly safe to consume.

The Day Copilot Told Me to Chill — and My Fitness Streaks

I was deep in a session with Copilot, the kind of focused stretch where time gets weird and you only notice your body again when something pops or cramps. I was mid-thought, mid-prompt, mid-“just one more tweak,” when this banner slid across the top of the screen like a gentle intervention:

Copilot prompt: Time for a break? Copilot is an AI, but you're not. It might feel nice to take a breather.

That prompt — “Time for a break? Copilot is an AI, but you're not.” — made me laugh at first, and then made me wonder whether AI had just tried to look out for my well‑being.

On one level, it’s a cute little line. On another, it’s a browser tab gently putting a hand on my shoulder and saying, “Hey, man. You’ve been staring at this screen for a while. Maybe uncurl your spine.”

My first reaction was basically: nicely done, Copilot. Look at you, looking out for my mental health. And reminding me I’m human. (Technically, it reminded me I’m not an AI, which is not quite the same thing, but we’ll let that slide.)

Then the nerd part of my brain kicked in. I started wondering: is this actually “Copilot” talking to me, or is this just the website scaffolding around it? Is the AI concerned about my well-being, or did some product manager write this line in a Figma file six months ago and ship it as a timed banner?

So, naturally, I asked Copilot about it in a different session. And it answered:

What do YOU think of AI?

Exploring the digital frontier, one prompt at a time

If you’ve been following this blog, you already know I’ve had my share of AI adventures—mostly good, a few chaotic, all interesting. I started out pretty skeptical back in the early ChatGPT days, but somewhere between code generation, design help, blog proofreading, and producing videos for The Pancake Delivery Frog, AI won me over as a genuine time-saver.

It’s helped in the kitchen, in the Google Play Store, and even in building my "personal fitness tracker" web page (which reminds me: I should probably go walk today). And yes, it’s powered some sillier projects too—looking at you, Joe's Land Fishing.

But that’s my AI journey. What about yours? Any AInecdotes you’d like to share with me (and the 1.5 people who read this blog regularly)? Any concerns over "AI's Big Red Button Not Working"? What's one thing AI has helped you with that surprised you? Drop them in the comments!

Wasted Credits and French Frogs: My AI Video Odyssey

It's Arten, the Pancake Delivery Frog!

What's green, hoppy, and delivers delicious golden circles? Why, The Pancake Delivery Frog, of course! Never heard of him (Google search results here)? Well, you should check him out at his channel or, even better, go look at the playlist which includes The Pancake Delivery Theme Song as well as Episode 1 (Pancake Delivery Frog in: The Mayor) and Episode 2 (Pancake Delivery Frog in: The Contraption). Hopefully you'll enjoy the delicious videos (at least the theme song one). But as it turns out, the "making of" story behind these videos is just as much of an experiment as the episodes themselves... so read on for a not‑quite‑excruciating recap of occasionally‑excruciating AI techno‑wizardry.

The Heart of the Matter: Style vs. Life-Saving Stats

Withings Scanwatch on my wrist

This is my Withings ScanWatch, a hybrid “smart” fitness watch. I’ve been wearing the 42mm black version (the original model, not the ScanWatch 2) for a long time now, paired with the metal oyster band, and it’s become part of my everyday routine.

What I love most is the balance it strikes: classic analog style with just enough smart features. The tiny digital display scrolls messages, calls, and notifications, and while you can’t reply from the watch, it’s great for deciding whether something needs immediate attention. The battery life is phenomenal—measured in weeks, not days—and it tracks steps, heart rate, sleep, and offers on‑demand ECG and SpO2 readings. It even does occasional automated SpO2 checks during sleep.

The ECG feature has been genuinely useful. It once captured an episode of afib when I felt palpitations and ran a recording. I sent the PDF to my cardiologist, which led to a follow‑up evaluation. So this watch has absolutely earned its place on my wrist.

But there’s one thing it doesn’t do: continuous heart‑rate monitoring. It only tracks continuously during a manually started workout session. And that’s where my dilemma begins.

Ai and Automation and ... Exercise?

AI can't walk for me. Nor can automation (at least not yet, although Electromyostimulation is a topic of recent interest, and interestingly enough I had some of that when I was in rehab after shoulder surgery in December of 2024). So why do I talk of AI and automation in the same breath as exercise? Because I'm automating the reporting of my exercise. You may recall from my last post (Ripples, Resolutions, and Walking Shoes) that I was reporting my exercise journey daily on Facebook all year, and even had a full results sheet available for anyone to view. Well, I'm not reporting it daily this year. Nor am I manually updating a google sheet every day. 

What I am doing, though, is kinda cool:

Ripples, Resolutions, and Walking Shoes

So, last year, I resolved (I think - I didn't actually so much call it that, but that's what it was) to walk a mile each day. I started on Jan 1, 2025, and walked a mile (1.04 to be exact). I posted it on Facebook, saying I planned to walk a mile a day in 2025. Repeated on the 2nd, 1.39 miles. I was pretty consistent in January, only missing a couple of days. I got the flu in February, and that derailed me for a while, but eventually I got back to it. Overall, I hit >40% of the days for walks, and >46% of the days with either walks or some alternate, non-walk cardio. You can see the full results of 2025 here. December, August, and April were the weakest months in terms of "non-exercise." 234 recorded miles of walking, with an average of a little over 5k steps per day. (I did do a mile on the last day of the 2025 at a rest stop on the way back from post-Christmas family vacation.)