AI, Artificial Intelligence, is on our minds. HAL, the malfunctioning AI from 2001: A Space Odyssey that needed to be shut down. Skynet, the self-aware AI in The Terminator that engaged in genocide to survive. The Matrix, AI that has judged humans as viruses and use them as copper-top batteries.…
I opened our apartment door and there was Bob, grinning and standing next to a new washer and dryer. Behind him were his buddies who had helped him drag the appliances to the sixth floor. There are no elevators in our apartment building in Sicily. They picked up the washer…
I was in my voice over class last week when it happened. I used a big word. We were talking about status in terms of creating characters and in the attempt to contribute to the conversation, I used the word “capitulate”. Is “capitulate” a big word? I’m not sure. At…
I’ve been thinking about all the years that have been sliced off my life. For a long time, I had it in my noodle that the years were sliced off from the end. Smoke too much? Die at 96 rather than 100. Severe trauma in your life? Now you’re at…
Many years ago, I was in a voice over class with a teacher with 25 years of experience. I decided that she must know the answer to my question: “How do you go for your art, your passion, and still be able to live well?” She told me that you’ll…
What do you get when you cross a Zen Buddhist Nun with a Dominatrix? You get Kasia Urbaniak and the Academy of Power. Now that I have your attention… Yes, I’ll give you more information on Kasia and her school but that’s not quite the focus of this post. No,…
I’m a software tester. For me to fulfill my duty and obligation to my company, I need software to test. It’s kind of a requirement. We got a new CEO and thing have been changing. For one thing, there is a new focus on getting things in the backlog done.…
We are in the middle of a culture war. Cartoons are being attacked by people who are re-framing them in ways that suggest that they are the baddest of the bad. That they should be banished from our culture. One of these cartoon characters is Pepe Le Pew. I’d like…
My Uncle Jerry passed recently. He was in a rehab nursing home because he’d taken a fall. They had him in quarantine before they would let him join the rest of the population. He hated it. He thought he was being abandoned and would call my aunt multiple times a…
I am sad. Very sad. I found a couple of days ago that my friend and co-worker, Jeff, had lost his battle with cancer. After losing my Uncle Jerry and having friends lose their family members, and having several friends even lose their babies in utero, it’s all just too…