You know I had to bring it up 😀

I’ve been playing on the OpenAI website when time permits, and I’ve been doing some looking/research at how it affects cybersecurity. It’s not all fun and games.

My oldest and I were talking Saturday night about ChatGPT. Some of our conversation made me think.

I’ve used it to outline blog posts and novellas. It’s just not great at giving information sometimes. I saw an interesting article on Medium talking through a top level of how it works.

My son was concerned that AI gives too much of an advantage to hackers, and not enough help to those who work in cybersecurity. I’ve done a lot of reading that suggests it can help with detecting attacks.

I’m not sure which is true, and which is the best answer right now. I need to do much more research.

Either way my son said something that reminded me of the quote from Jurassic Park that I have to the right. One of the programmers behind ChatGPT says he regrets creating it. It’s too late to go back. Just because you can program something like this doesn’t mean you should.

Last Saturday (5/13) my daughter graduated high school. Two days earlier, my youngest has his 8th grade promotion.

He’s in high school. She doesn’t know what she wants to do. She tried to do cosmetology and culinary at the local Votech, but didn’t get into either program. She’ll probably just keep working at the grocery store and try again next year.

She will be going to the SkillsUSA national competition again this year for sublimation. She got the gold in the state competition. I’m so proud of her. We got a message from my step-son’s best friend yesterday saying her brother would be proud of her. I agree.

We are trying to get my husband’s car going again. We have been down to 1 car for months. It’s been rough since I have been working at the high school where my kids have gone, and my husband works second shift.

He bought a 1994 Z28, but it wasn’t worth what he paid for it. It’s had a lot of problems. Then he hit a raccoon with it, which made things worse.

I’ve been not doing as much for Blue Star Mothers as I was. Between driving my husband and daughter to work, and my writing, I just haven’t been up to it. The president of the chapter called me yesterday to ask what was going on.

How to explain that I still have days that I struggle with my step-son’s death. Everyone seems to think I should be through the worst, but it doesn’t work that way.

How to explain that I’m looking for writing jobs online and really don’t have a lot of extra time. I mean I have books published, but I need more money coming in.

Either way, I’ll get through it. It just means taking one day at a time.

Laterness

50 Weird Trends Boomers Will Remember but Millennials Think Are a Joke (msn.com)

I happened to notice something on MSN today. The title of the article caught my attention. I figured it was things from the 60’s and 70’s.

Nope, it’s all 80’s trends.

That’s not Boomers, that’s GenX. You know, the forgotten generation. Everyone forgets about GenX & GenZ when they’re talking. It’s all Millennials and Boomers. (Funny, even GenX and GenZ are showing up as misspelled per Grammarly. GenY is the suggested replacement.)

I just have to roll my eyes at articles like this. Seriously, things like Pet Rocks, Punk Bands and bright/outrageous makeup, those are all 80’s trends. When GenX were teen to mid-twenties.

I am starting to do okay more often. I have weeks where I still mourn. I know I always will. Something will pop up, and I’ll have a rough day. (Last week was one of those times. A picture popped up on my Facebook memories, and the comments were all a conversation between my step-son and myself.)

It will never get easy, though it will be easier. I’m working to remind myself that there’s nothing we could have done.

I’m forcing myself to write more. That seems to help. Even if I’m not writing anything related to him.

I have decided that I’m going to have a character by his name in one of my upcoming romance novels. I just haven’t found the right story yet.

In the meantime, I have a lot going on this week.

Thursday, my youngest has his 8th grade promotion.

Friday, he’s been invited to a birthday party.

Saturday, my daughter has her high school graduation.

And without thinking, I set the due date for my next romance novella as by Thursday at midnight GMT (about 7 CST). I’d better get writing. I think I have about 12 chapters left, but only about 6,000 words. These are all short reads, 15,000 words or less.

Laterness.

Life seems more like a roller coaster lately, though I want to get off. The last couple of weeks, I’ve been struggling with grief again.

I know this is a long process, and some days are almost normal. Then I hear a song on the radio or see something that makes me think of my step-son and it all starts over again.

When someone asks how we’re doing it brings everything to the surface. I know they mean well, so I basically just tell them we have ups and downs.

My husband has been so angry since it happened. It’s made it rough at home at times because we start arguing because I won’t put up with it.

I’ve got a job that I really like, but right now I’m making less in one month than I used to make in a week. On the one hand, I don’t want to leave, but on the other, I’m struggling to find any more bills that I can reduce. I have 2 loans that I really need to refinance or something.

I’ve started another blog talking about how to manage stress and anxiety. I need to get more posts up. It’s hard to want to write sometimes right now.

I’ve suddenly started getting marketing texts and emails asking if I’m interested in web design services.

First, I am a designer and developer. Maybe my site isn’t the best design, but it’s my playbox and I am working on another design already since I wasn’t entirely happy with this one

Second, do not text someone without getting their permission to market to them through text. Everytime I get an unsolicited text, I block and mark as spam. That will seriously start looking bad for your company when multiple people do this.

Now for something lighter, I saw an article on Medium talking about why so many sites look the same. They had a link in that article to a site called Web Design Museum, with samples of designs from 1991 through 2006. Some of the ones from the early 2000’s look similar to the ones we designed when I worked for a web host in Branson, MO. It was kinda cool to look at all the changes.

webdesignmuseum.org

So may numbers to block. I’ve gotten 3 spam calls today and it’s only 10 am.

https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start?s=09

I was looking through Twitter this morning and found a link to this post/Substack.

She’s put into words some of what has been going through my mind with the slow implosion of Twitter.

I’ve been on BBSs, usenet groups, MUDs, MUSHs, MMORPGs, it seems like people just move from one to another as things change.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the friends I’ve made in these places. Obviously ApocMUD & GeoCities, but others, like Asheron’s Call and EverQuest. There was at least one chat room in the late 90’s that I don’t remember the name, but the group was ‘Bored @ Werk’ and one Usenet group two years earlier where one person always talked about his Siamese fighting fish. That’s where I first learned about Heisenberg’s Uncertainty principle, though I’m not sure why I never heard it of in my college courses.

I knew about Livejournal, just didn’t see the point when I could make a new page on my website to write what I wanted. That was one advantage of working for a webhost.

Though it’s sad that Twitter is imploding, its where I’ve met more like minded people. Again I’m not limited by geography.

Not being limited by geography is why I liked the Internet in the first place. I could meet people while being at home with my son, and later his sister and brother. I didn’t have to go to bars where I wasn’t comfortable. I could talk to people from the comfort of my own home.

I still wonder about people that I met and wish them well. There are too many to mention. Some knew me as Sharleone, some as Karal, Danica or Dani and some as Silverymoon.

I have been listening to a podcast lately. I got way behind on this podcast, and am slowly catching up.

One of the episodes from Dec 2020 was about the Constitution Center. https://constitutioncenter.org/

This site has an interactive version of the constitution, allowing you to learn what each section says. The work was done by both the Federalist Society and a liberal group (I think the American Constitution Society).

The podcast episode can be found at https://www.iheart.com/podcast/stuff-you-missed-in-history-cl-21124503/episode/interview-kerry-sautner-of-the-national-75244901

I found the episode to be fascinating.

We are still dealing with the after effects of my step-son’s death.

We need his social security number to get a death certificate, but we can’t find his card anywhere. We are going to have to go to the social security office in Monday to see if they can give it to us. All we have is a scan of his birth certificate, so it’ll be interesting.

After that, we need to get a probate lawyer. He was living in his grandmother’s house, which was still in probate from her death in February. His mother died last December. So, it’s going to be a complicated situation.

I don’t know what’ll happen, but I can’t just leave the house empty. It needs to be cleaned out and either sold or put in someone’s name. He has brothers, but his 2 half brothers on his mother’s side are both in jail. It’s possible that we’ll need to sell the house and give the money to his brothers somehow.

I just don’t know. Since their mother is dead, and she once asked me to make sure her kids were taken care of. Of course, that was before they were all 18 and the other 2 in jail.

I’ve started writing to my step-son in a journal, trying to work through my feelings of guilt. I wonder if he knew how much he was loved. I never said it after he became a teenager. I would give him hugs, but not so much as he got older.

I try not to think about how much pain he was in. I’m not sure how the holidays will go. I know it’s going to be rough, I may just need to make an extra pecan pie and give it away. We always had to make 2 because he’d eat more than half of one on his own.

I’m also going to have to find pork belly somewhere. That was another thing we’d have to rush if we wanted to get any. He loved it.

I’m trying to remember the funny things, like when we had a yellow orb spider on the front porch, that I left alone so it would eat the mosquitoes. He was afraid of spiders so he spray painted it.

We have his Rubik’s cubes. I’m going to have to learn how to solve the ball one, and the one that has different size blocks that stick out until it’s solved.

I’m trying to remember the good times. Like the trips we took. I can’t find any pictures of him from our trip to Vermont in 2018, but he was there.

I’m going to miss taking a selfie of my me with my mom or sister with him photobombing.

Right now, it’s still one day at a time. It was hard to do the memorial video and the obituary, but those were up to me because my husband isn’t computer literate.

The next fun thing is to figure out how to pay for the rest of the funeral home charges, on top of the insurance deductible for hitting a deer last week in my Jeep.

We lost my stepson on Thursday. None of us even knew how bad things were for him. All I can think about right now is how much pain he must have been in, and how I failed him.

His mother died last year, and his grandmother died in February. I was the only mother figure he had left and I just didn’t see it.

I know that people with depression are really good at hiding their true self. I’ve been there, but I’m still struggling not to blame myself.

If you ever feel like no one cares, know that there is someone out there who cares deeply and wants to help you.

I need to finish writing the book I’m working on. It’s a struggle right now because my focus is shot. But I don’t think Amazon will let me push it back again.

Anyway I have to get going on actual work. Laterness.

I finally updated the site, but I have a couple of things I need to change. I’m not sure how I feel about it yet, so I’ll give it a couple of days. If it doesn’t grow on me, I’ll update it again.

School started back today. Both of my kids are happy to be in school. I guess they take after me.

I spent the day not getting much done, so I get to go to bed and do it all again tomorrow. Sounds fun, doesn’t it?

Anyway, it’s late and I’m tired. Laterness and g’nite.