Posts

Showing posts from April 1, 2018

Upper Peninsula Michigan and Auction Win Outcomes

Image
I was up in Wisconsin and the UP (upper peninsula) in Michigan. It was a lot of driving after launching/landing in Appleton WI. I got an item off the bucket list by driving across the "Mighty Mac". Altough it was built in the late '50s. It is still the longest suspension span in the Northern hemisphere. It is a crazy long bridge with a crazy long suspension span. It was good to see the bridge in context of the seemingly endless forests of Northern Wisconsin and Michigan. The culture in the two haves of Michigan are noticibly different as you might expect. Great time meeting with folks both in WI and MI. The tractor I won in auction, seems to have paid off. This time I beat the odds. It was a really good deal. I have the "no-key, non-running, may have hydraulic problems, unknown hours" -auction win, running well with minimal cost and time. I have some more tweaks, maintenance and minor fixes but the major risks are gone.
We can do better than meeting spec http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2018/04/we-can-do-better-than-meeting-spec.html Well, that's over. Google AI now sounds indistinguishable from a human. And it'll only get more nuanced and more flexible. It can read aloud better than you can. Which means that anything that's ever been written can be perfectly read to you. Which means that anything a computer figures out or computes can be delivered to you with audio quality that meets spec. That's what AI keeps doing... things we said were impossible. Most of us shrugged when computers could drill holes or assemble machines with more accuracy and speed than a person can. And we avoided the topic when we discovered that computers could read x-rays with great skill as well. But now, it ought to make you shudder to discover that something as basic as speech is now better than the typical human's. Any speed, fully customized, in clear tones with great pronunciation...
Image
It looks like this may be my next partial ownership plane, a Piper Arrow 2. It is categorized as a complex aircraft and it what I need to get my commercial licence which is still the goal. That will bring our fleet to 4 planes. We had an aviation BBQ Saturday. It is always fun to meet pilots around the area. It is amazing how people are interconnected. We had a nice Easter. We went to church and had a nice Easter Breakfast at church afterwards. We took a bike ride and hike and cooked out. The weather is great. I have travel plans for for Nashville, Budapest and Germany. We also have some possible very cool vacation destinations figured out.