AMTIFY™

≈ The Sweet Smell of Not-Quite-Spring Gardening Is in the Air! ≈ ∞ Basic To Do List to get the Party  Started  😊 ∞ Before and After We “spring forward,” pick up an hour at the end of the day, and all of a sudden we gain an entire season’s worth of gardening ambition. That one hour apparently releases a major endorphin rush along with plans of lush gardens, thriving flowers, and a lawn that looks like it belongs in a magazine instead of… well… my yard. I mentioned in a blog last year that I garden, I’m not a gardener. Th ere’s a difference. Gardeners know what they’re doing. I own a bunch of tools, a couple of shovels, no expectations and a spectacular amount of optimism. The goal is simple, have fun, let the hobby be the reward, and try not to actively make things worse. Dwarf Nandina Firepower Shrub goes from green to red - color all year long With the snow finally melting its way into the ground, we start with the annual Walkaround, the official inspection tour to asse...

  ≈≈ How to Have Your C “AI” K 🍰 and Eat It Too ≈≈ ∞ Teaching Kids to Think in an AI World ∞   “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” Dan Millman.  Back in December, just before the holidays, we posted a couple of blogs about AI and children’s development, specifically the risks presented by AI toys. We talked about privacy, safety, and the slightly unsettling possibility that a stuffed animal might start offering life advice before the child has even learned to say “Mama.” This time I’d like to talk about the other side of the coin: the benefits of AI, the reality of it, and, most importantly, the management of it. Today’s kids will grow up in a world where AI is as ubiquitous as a key fob. So instead of asking whether children should use it, the better question might be how. AI is an extraordinary learning tool. It can explain complicated subjects, help kids explore ideas, and break down informati...

Storms, Generators, and the Mystery of Why We Make Using Better Things Complicated. Up front, some transparency. This blog supports technology that a company we’re affiliated with uses as part of its product. If you buy their product through the links here, we may get a commission. This disclosure is at the end too, but we figured starting with it was the grown-up thing to do. But honestly, this isn’t really about selling anything. It’s about a technology that solves an obvious problem and, for reasons that remain slightly baffling, isn’t encouraged as logic would expect.   A week or so we enjoyed a spectacular blizzard. If you had nowhere to go, and I mean absolutely nowhere, it was beautiful. Peaceful. Snow falling quietly, trees wrapped in white, woods looking like a postcard, fire going in the hearth…basically a scene straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. (I can’t believe I wrote that sentence, I’m not entirely sure what came over me, I apologize.)  Before the storm,...

≈ I Did the Math on Life — and the Results Are a Little Disturbing ≈   ∞ A good reason to start rebuilding respect for each other now ∞ Ok, I know. I’m an idealist. A dreamer. Naïve. Foolish. Possibly the only adult left who still believes the “Reply All” button should be used responsibly. I think no one should suffer. No one should go without food, clothing, shelter, or education. I think life is not a competition. It’s not a reality show where the one standing at the end is the winner. And it’s short. Ridiculously short. Based on my completely unpaid and wildly unverified research, we spend about 30% of our lives sleeping and 70% earning a living, which leaves approximately 0% for actually living. If you make it to 80, congratulations, you’ve technically had zero years of free time. I’m not saying the math checks out, but I ran it by AI and it responded with a confident paragraph and a pie chart, so obviously it’s correct. When I re-calculated using my trusty desk calculator I ...