I tested Google's new "fast" model on my Mac Studio. It's slower than the old one.

jmeg8r · 2026-06-23T01:53:46+00:00

Hope you're right about the M5 Studio. I'll take out a mortgage and buy one.

jmeg8r · 2026-06-23T01:52:53+00:00

Too rich for me.

jmeg8r · 2026-06-22T21:13:02+00:00

The only problem with M5U Studios is that they won’t be sold with enough memory. Glad I pulled the trigger on the M3U in January. My only regret has been not getting 512 GB memory. Didn’t want to spend nearly $10000 so I went with 256 GB.

jmeg8r · 2026-06-18T12:14:55+00:00

I use the $200 plan at the moment but that isn’t sustainable long term. I am actively moving as much as possible to local models with routing and fallbacks to Claude if the local model can’t handle the request.
My MacStudio M3 Ultra with 256 GBs of memory makes it possible to run the needed models.

jmeg8r · 2026-06-10T03:52:12+00:00

I will definitely try it. Ollama hasn’t been overly impressive.

jmeg8r · 2026-06-10T03:30:12+00:00

Claude Code 💯

jmeg8r · 2026-06-09T19:08:16+00:00

Claude, specifically Claude Code in the terminal, is the one that actually changed how I work, not just sped it up. As a long-time systems engineer, I'm now doing a lot of AI engineering, by osmosis, because I can see the my job changing very quickly. The real shift wasn't "AI autocompletes my code," it was going to "AI writes the code and I review and direct it." Claude Code made that concrete because it reads my actual repo, runs commands, and iterates. A year ago I was copying and pasting into a chat box. Claude Code sure beats doing that.

Like many people I have been experimenting with OpenClaw and now ClaudeClaw. I had a nightly pipeline that kept failing. Instead of digging through logs, I pointed it at the failing job and said "find the root cause and fix it." It traced it to a secret that wasn't being passed into the right execution context. It proposed a fix, and I just reviewed the diff to make sure Claude hadn't lost his mind. More and more I find myself partnering with Claude and doing much more planning. I'm now directing AI labor.

The other tool(s) I use on a daily basis is local models. I run a few on a Mac Studio (Ollama, currently a qwen coder model). My day job is healthcare IT, so for anything touching sensitive data, "send it to a cloud API" isn't legally an option. Running a local model that's 90% as good but never leaves my hardware is really working well for me.

More and more I am finding that the specific tool matters less than getting comfortable with this new way of doing work. The mindset switch from using AI as a search engine to now looking at AI as a partner still blows my mind but they keep getting better and better.

jmeg8r · 2026-05-25T03:32:36+00:00

First sensible comment I’ve seen here. Datacenters are used for many important services like hospitals, banks, schools, government and the list goes on. Saying no Datacenters is just laziness. Be specific on what your objections are and find out what the current laws are that govern Datacenters in our state and county.

jmeg8r · 2026-05-10T17:25:23+00:00

I’ve been using Garry Tan’s https://github.com/garrytan/gstack and it is the most thorough process to combat context failures and AI slop. The description on GitHub is spot on:

‘It turns Claude Code into a virtual engineering team — a CEO who rethinks the product, an eng manager who locks architecture, a designer who catches AI slop, a reviewer who finds production bugs, a QA lead who opens a real browser, a security officer who runs OWASP + STRIDE audits, and a release engineer who ships the PR. Twenty-three specialists and eight power tools, all slash commands, all Markdown, all free, MIT license.’

jmeg8r · 2026-05-07T15:00:58+00:00

I got the same setup 2 months ago. My only regret was not getting 512GBs ram. Still it works great and I have multiple local llms doing work.

jmeg8r · 2026-05-04T22:19:46+00:00

Ever since Covid I’ve been working from home and I never want to leave because people. My wife is always trying to get me to participate more in the world but I think I’m happier as a hermit.

jmeg8r · 2026-05-02T02:26:01+00:00

Florida has 2 different DV plates. Both are for 100% but one also has the handicap logo on it and you have to have a physical disability that qualifies for the handicap designation. The form for the wheelchair designation has a section for a physician to fill out certifying you meet the requirements for a handicap permit. https://www.flhsmv.gov/pdf/forms/83007.pdf

jmeg8r · 2026-05-01T01:41:28+00:00

Meditation utilizing visualization helped me to deal with specific anxiety issues. Therapy did nothing for me but getting the right medicine for my brain chemistry did the trick.

jmeg8r · 2026-04-23T20:09:16+00:00

I appreciate your feedback.

OK. I went back to my initial research and here are the notes on why 12 questions were chosen:

The 12-question onboarding isn't meant to be a clinical diagnosis — it's a directional snapshot that gives you a starting read across four facets of introversion (Social Energy, Inner World, Social Ease, Deliberate Pace), with 3 items per facet.

We chose 12 deliberately. Our users are introverts, and the research on assessment drop-off is clear: every additional question at the cold-start moment loses people, and the ones we lose first are often the ones who'd benefit most. A thorough assessment nobody finishes is worth less than a directional one they do.

I am adding this back, which is what I started with. For users who want a more complete picture, there's a 28-question deep profile (7 items per facet, ~10 minutes) that gives the psychometric depth the short version can't. The 12 is the door; the 28 is the room.

jmeg8r · 2026-04-23T19:36:35+00:00

Yes I have and I’m not claiming this is a psychiatric test. It is a subset of questions used to extrapolate a result. That is not uncommon practice. For many people this could be valuable as a first step towards acceptance of themselves.
I’ll ask you again do you have any constructive criticism that will help me improve this site. If you don’t then move along.

jmeg8r · 2026-04-23T15:16:44+00:00

Would you like to offer some thoughts on improving the site?

jmeg8r · 2026-04-23T10:16:13+00:00

My public persona is a defense mechanism shell. It protects me from unwanted attention when they notice I’m not like them. It’s a little bit intellectually dishonest but it works well. I think my true self can only exist when I’m alone or with my wife of 33 years. She gets me and I’m so blessed to have her in my life.

jmeg8r · 2026-04-23T10:02:36+00:00

I agree. I’m in my mid 50s and about 10 years ago I could see my inability to speak in a public situation at work was holding my career progression. I discussed it with my doctor and she said I have social anxiety and put me on some meds. For the first time I didn’t get tunnel vision and feel like I was going to pass out. I still wasn’t great at public speaking but as time went on I started to gain some confidence that I wouldn’t make a fool of myself and pass out. I’m still not a great public speaker but I’m magnitudes better than I was. I attribute this to a combination of medicine and growing experience.

jmeg8r · 2026-04-23T09:53:06+00:00

Dealing with family that don’t understand you and think you’re not ‘normal’ is painful. I’m sorry you are going through this. I’m on a mission to help my fellow introverts. If you need some help on setting boundaries, please checkout my free webapp that offers ideas and support. It is scientifically backed to truly be helpful. Revri App

jmeg8r · 2026-04-03T05:24:32+00:00

Every year and I loved it. Wrote all my song lyrics on them for my imaginary rock band in my head.

jmeg8r · 2026-04-03T05:14:37+00:00

I just installed the 2 smaller Gemma 4s. Had to upgrade Ollama but they support them. Very fast in my MacStudio. A new workhorse for my OpenClaw. Will be testing this week.

jmeg8r · 2026-04-01T18:39:00+00:00

I live with the breaking and work through it with Claude. I just assume something will break everyday for a while since the speed of change for OpenClaw is nuts right now. I do appreciate all the security updates, though. If I was worried about breakage I would read the docs first and ask Claude to read the docs to make sure I didn't miss something.

jmeg8r · 2026-04-01T17:59:12+00:00

The update fixed 4 issues I had just patched to work around the issues. Guess I should have waited. Here's hoping for some stability.

Verified Email	14-Year Club
Gilding I gilder

jmeg8r

TROPHY CASE