QBaR Code Vault

So, I did it again. I created another Google Play Store app! This one is a cool little QR code scanner. Why? I mean, you can scan QR codes and barcodes using your phone's camera just as easily, right? Yes, you can. But... this app has a neat little "scanning" bar that moves up and down while you scan your QR codes! Ha. But really, it does a few things that I don't think your camera can do for you:

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.

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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.)