ChatGPT is full of shit and that’s okay. I wish I had something profound to say, but it wasn’t a big deal. It did take nine drafts, a hardware failure with multiple SSD swaps, and five thousand words to work out how to say “🤷 no biggie”. When I began using ChatGPT I recognized it could become unavailable like any other internet service does. Outages happen, corporate priorities transmogrify, enshittification happens.
I am curious how LLM/AI has affected my cognition and behaviors. Many animals learn to adapt pretty quickly; humans are no different. I’m pretty sure there’s going to be some adaptations found in my own behavior. Here’s the pocket notebook for my experiment. Figure 1: AI Free 72 pocket notebook In this notebook I’ll write down every question I had for AI, every urge to reach for AI, and whatever else I noticed about myself during these 24 hours.
GitLab emailed me about a failed Let’s Encrypt renewal. Had to press the Retry button to encourage GitLab’s LE stack to do its thing. This has happened a couple times but not a big deal. It reminded me to check up on my winny.tech GitLab namespace and see what my last post was all back on October 12, 2025. 8½ months ago. I’ve been focused on keeping the proverbial boat afloat.
Figure 1: Biked & camped 100 miles (160 km) from Milwaukee to Manitowoc in 36 hours It’s been a tumultuous year. It took a multitude of drafts to complete this short piece. I felt demoralized when authoring this post. Then I reviewed my 2023 in review post and it put my frustration in perspective: Life is pain and joy. It’s an undulation of anguish one day, blissful peace the next.
Figure 1: Dietmar Rabich CC BY-SA 4.0 (link) Things that I achieved this year. Exercise. I was going 3 times a week to the gym. Now I’m working out at home about once a week. A no-processed-foods diet. Occasional respite from some health issues. I’m not dieing so that’s pretty cool. Remained self-employed. Even after many project transitions including firing a toxic client. Worked with some new technologies including Love2d, Fennel, Angular 3, Next.
During these interesting times, I figure it would be a good idea to describe how I’ve been keeping myself busy, bugs I’ve fixed, and some of the daily tasks/routines that keep my day structured. For context: I moved house on the weekend of March 21st, which is a couple weeks before the Covid-19 fiasco became a front-and-center concern for my geographical region. I am finishing my undergrad in computer science — this is my last semester.