Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Sometimes, you have to work hard to untangle what someone is trying to convey. Then again, if their words are tangled, maybe they don’t have anything to convey.

I spend much of my days untangling the words of others. Long documents; long talks, and the like. What is that person trying to convey? Print the document with a wide margin. Note key words and phrases. Draw pencil lines connecting similar thoughts. Key on the active words. Find the message!

Sometimes if the other person, the person who tangled everything, tangled all the words, they didn’t have a cogent thought to express. Perhaps all that tangling indicates confusion.

Untangling can reveal the key thought. Untangling can also reveal confusion. Which is which? I wish I knew ahead of time. Still, that’s the task at hand. Give it a good effort and either learn the idea or learn that the person could use some advising and assistance.

by Dwayne Phillips

A long time ago, a substitute teacher in one of my classes was so interesting that teenagers cut their regular classes to sneak into his class and learn.

I think it was 1972 or 1973 in Southern California. We were hippies or thought we were or wanted to be. And teenage hippies did not attend their regular classes. Instead, the crept into a class taught by a suit-wearing, short-haired, military veteran.

Crazy? Yes. And it happened.

This was 8th grade. It was American history. For some reason, our teacher was out for two weeks. In walked this older man wearing a dark suit (white shirt and thin tie and all) with a short, short haircut. After ten minutes of talking about the US Constitution, he switched to telling stories about the US military. This was at the height of the anti-military period in Southern California—the pinnacle of anti-military feeling.

We were enthralled. He was a former Navy scuba diver. He had worked with dolphins. He had worked as a military advisor in Hollywood. He had done all sorts of things including earning a degree in History.

We were enthralled.

Word spread quickly. Our friends cut, ditched, skipped (whatever you call it now) their regular classes and came into our class room. They sat on the floor behind the back row to avoid notice. No one said a word.

We were enthralled.

We learned more US history in those two weeks than in the rest of the school year. We were yearning for learning.

The two weeks ended. The regular teacher returned. The same old same old continued. I never forgot those two weeks.

Kids, even American teenagers, yearn to learn. Let us not forget that.

by Dwayne Phillips

Writing is a skill (and an art). How do you improve a skill? Do it again tomorrow.

Here is some old advice to improving as a writer: write everyday.

I don’t have all the quotes to repeat here. I wish I did. I wish I could give credit to those who have written this advice much better than I write this advice.

One writer advised to write something about my past, growing up, etc. everyday for 30 days in a row. At the end of 30 days, I would be writing better. And I would remember my past better and would be able to write a much better memoir.

One writer advised to write a short story every week. No one, the advice continued, could write 52 bad short stories in a row.

One writer advised writing four or five hours a day. Writing three novels a year was mildly prolific as five or six novels a year would be appropriate. Again, how can you write six bad novels in a row?

I wrote a novel in one month. Remember NaNoWriMo? National Novel Writing Month. Too bad it is gone.

And the advice from well-known writers continues. I think Stephen King wrote that all a writer needs is a room with a door that will shut. He wrote something like that. Good advice.

Write again tomorrow.

by Dwayne Phillips

Big tech advise$ educator$ to drop the coding and teach the AI.

Every few years, rich people advise educators on what to educate. This advice often comes as, “Here is money for an after-school program,” and “here is money for in-school programs,” and “here is money, do what we say or else.”

When my kids were in school, it appeared as if the math books were written by a company that made calculators. The textbooks were full of color photographs of that company’s calculators with instructions on how to use them. Amazing stuff. Great advice.

A few years ago, the rich tech companies were doing “the hour of code” and such. They lobbied state$ to include computer science as required course$ for high $chool graduation. Great stuff! And, by the way, the more people who knew programming, the more choices employers had, and the lower the salaries they had to pay to hire programmers. Well, that was a convenient side result.

Now, the rich tech companies want schools to have “the hour of AI” and such. AI skills should be taught in school.

I learned matrix multiplication when I was in school back in the time of scratching on cave walls with rocks. Surely they still teach these math operations that are the basis of AI? Oh wait, that’s not the type of AI the tech companies want to teach. They want to teach the kids to turn to this chattering bot instead of that one because we make this one and we want you to pay for our chattering bot not the other fellas’ chattering bot. Oh, that type of education.

Sigh. I guess I am too simple minded to understand the education industry. Teach kids to read. Teach kids math. Teach kids to ask questions, seek answers, and learn. And let kids be kids. They are the ones who invent the new stuff.

Ye$, I replaced many of the “s” in this blog post with “$.” No, not a coincidence. I find it unfortunate that much of what is taught in $chools is there because someone went around the block and paid someone else. Perhap$ some good will come of it.

by Dwayne Phillips

We tend to ban the latest tools in school so that students won’t “cheat.” Today’s kids laugh at what prior generations banned.

My granddaughter is in high school (I have to take a moment to comprehend how that happened so fast). We had a short discussion last night on tools for learning. I asked if any students used Claude, ChatGPT et al. in school.

“No,” she quickly answered. “Those are not allowed.”

“When your dad was in high school, they would not allow them to use Wikipedia,” I said.

She almost fell on the floor in disbelief. She protested that Wikipedia was a good source of information and required you to find things and quote things and, and, and how could that be banned.?

Wikipedia was banned in high school a generation ago. She couldn’t imagine that.

And then I went back to my generation. Calculators were banned in college exams. My granddaughter had no response for that one. When her father and mother were in middle school, the math books had pages and pages teaching how to use calculators from Texas. The math books still do.

Those who run the schools ban a tool for one generation. Those who run the schools teach how to use that same tool to the next generation. Ban it this week; teach it next week. I guess we call this progress? I don’t know.

Still, sometimes it is funny to relate to the current generation how the old folks did silly things back in the day.

by Dwayne Phillips

Now and then, something surfaces that is BIG and IMPORTANT. What was believed to be important in the past isn’t. Move on. Who, however, moves on?

Person A: Look what I found. This is important.

Person B: What now?

Person A: No look. This is really important. This is the way we should go. This will change everything.

Person B: Okay, I see the merit. And …

Person A: Great. You see that this is far more important than what you wanted earlier. So you’ll drop that, right?

Person B: Uh, now what a moment.

Person A: Come on. You agree that this surpasses your old ideas.

Person B: Yes, it does. It also surpasses your old ideas, right>

Person A: Well, yes. It does. But

Person B: So how about you drop your old ideas, I keep my old ideas, and we combine my old ideas with this new idea that surpasses everything?

Person A: Well, I just assumed we would combine my old ideas with this new idea and …

Person B: Why not the other way around? We agree that this new idea surpasses both our old ideas. You won’t mind dropping your ideas.

At this point in the conversation, a third and wiser person enters the room and shows the loss of rational thought in Person A and Person B. It is a shame, however, that the third and wiser person rarely exists and walks into the room at just the right moment. It is left to Person A and Person B to resolve this. We can do this. Let’s do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

We have invented a new job: it is the chatic (pronounced like “static”) or the chattering bot technician.

I often work as a chattering bot technician. Substitute the name of your favorite system (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Coilot, Mistral, Qwen, Grok, etc.) for chattering bot and you have it. We employ “ChatGPT technicians” and “Claude technicuans.”

I use one of these chattering bot at least half the day to manipulate information. Information in, information out in a different format that people want. Is it programming? Is it engineering? I don’t know. It is somewhat technical and reduced from art to a science of sorts.

I think that makes me a technician: a worker who has special skills and training in a practical, technical, or scientific field. Their main job is to install, test, fix, or run machines and equipment. (from Wikipedia)

I run the chattering bot.

Okay, “chattering bot technician” takes too long to say and type. Let’s shorten it to “chat tech.” That is two words and two syllables. Well, you know how we like to mumble and slur things together. After five minutes and five utterances, we have one word of two syllables or “chattech.” Well, let’s slur that together to make it even faster to mumble.

Before you know it, we are spewing out “chatic” in the same rhythm and emphasis that we say the word “static.”

Now the boss says, “Meet Dwayne. He’s one of our chatics. He’s been doing chatic for a year.”

New job. New profession. New title. Let’s see if it catches on. Probably not, but it’s worth a try.

by Dwayne Phillips

AI enabled completing a 12-page report in five minutes. No, that took ten years of effort.

Somehow, using a new piece of software became cheating or something bad. A request arrived at work. Click. Boom. Pow. Out goes a 12-page report. Five minutes. Next?

Cheating!

Consider, however, that the five-minute task was backed by ten years of work. The company uses SharePoint (I receive no compensation from any of the purveyors of products.) It was quite an expense and ordeal to install that ten years ago. The company has piled layers upon layers of documents into SharePoint over the ten years. That was a lot of copying, pasting, moving, etc. over a long period of time. It cost blood, sweat, tears, and salaries.

Then the company pays one of these chattering bot companies to use the new tool. Then the company pays people who have decades of experience in logical thinking, structured thinking, and using tools like FORTRAN, C, and all those things nobody uses any longer. All those by-gone tools instilled knowledge into these people. And all that cost blood, sweat, tears, and salaries. Apply all that experience to markup languages and “skills” and such. More salaries.

And all of a sudden, out of no where, Click, Boom, Pow. Five minutes and the report is done. Funny how that is so simple and inexpensive (N O T !).

Sure, it all seems so simple and quick and must be cheating to accomplish so much in so little time. Funny how that is.

by Dwayne Phillips

These blog posts are longer, i.e., don’t have many words. Sorry, I can’t help myself.

My blog posts aren’t very long (see, I could have shortened that sentence by removing the word “very” and also the word “blog.”). I recently wrote about the Paramedic Method of Editing. That method helps editors shorten writing, eliminate words, bring clarity, have brevity. I have been using that method without knowing about it. Brevity and clarity were my goals.

When writing, I edit before my fingers touch the keyboard. That is a great skill; that is a horrible curse. I edit all the time. I edit my thoughts. I edit your thoughts. I edit your words. I edit your speech while you speak. (You and your refer to anyone else in the room.) I cut, cut, and cut more in the moment. Sometimes, too often, I am not nice. That is the curse portion of this.

I read many blog posts. I read many things written by many people in many forums. I marvel at how blog posts are so long. I wonder why I’m not writing such long posts with so many words. And then I remember that I edit in a harsh and unreasonable manner.

I am stretching this blog post. I am trying to leave the words and not cut, cut, and cut more. I am not doing well at that.

And that is why these posts are not longer.

by Dwayne Phillips

If it is important to me to tell others what I think, I write it myself. If it is just stuff that a machine could write, let the machine write it.

I write this blog. I sit in the coffee shop on Saturday mornings and press every key on the keyboard to put every word in the blog. I don’t have to do that. I could prompt AI, copy, paste, and be done with it faster with much less strain on my joints. At my age, anything that lessens strain on the joints is worth it. Well, almost anything.

Why don’t I have AI write this? Because this is important to me. I want to tell you what I think. These thoughts have been bouncing around in my head for days, weeks, months, years. Yes, some of these things have been bothering me for years. Something finally turned on the light and here it is. Don’t blame AI for this; it is me.

And then, why do I have AI write something? Believe me, I have AI pump out many words on many topics on many days. Because those somethings are just somethings. Words are required. Bam. Push the button. There are words. Pump them out. Don’t waste time typing. Just do it and move on.

If it is important, it deserves the effort.

If it is just something the machine can do, let the machine do it.

Simple. Now for a refill of coffee.