Tetris Effect

March 06, 2026 by Adam in Family

I've changed the way I do work.  Instead of typing out code myself, I've switched to working with AI agents to come up with an implementation plan together, then pass the plan on to another AI agent to write and test the code.  It's a huge change and I can feel my brain rewiring itself to adapt to my new world.  Like the early days of Tetris, I find myself having weird AI dreams and thinking in different ways to get things done.

I've also been having a lot of fun making my own software thingies.  I hooked up my newer xbox one kinect that I got last weekend thrifting.  It might have been a flop as a gaming peripheral, but I'm having a ton of fun making RPG props or just weird art.  I told it to make a Minority Report style user interface thing that tracked my hands and let me move windows around on a screen.  Soon enough I was flinging dialog boxes around the tv screen with the flick of a wrist.  Well, mostly flailing around and getting tired - it's probably easier if you're Tom Cruise.

We're all trying to figure out what this new world means for our industry - what skills do we need in this new world, how will we build software, how will the world change.  We had a reorg at work and I'll be with an AI-focused group, so not only will I be using AI more, but building tools for others to use.  What a strange, wild world we live in.

The week was generally good.  Jo and I started some seeds.  Last night we saw an odd but interesting play about bigfoot and family dynamics.

As for the weekend, I had a couple players drop out from the normal Delta Green game, so I'll be running a 1920s Call of Cthulhu one-shot instead.  I'd already gotten it mostly ready, though I've added a few more videos and such to add to the fun.  It'll be a small group, so we'll make some characters and have some fun.

Relaxing at Work

March 02, 2026 by Adam in Family

It was a very full weekend - sitting down for a few hours seems like a nice change of pace. 

Saturday Emma and I started our grand adventure at Smith Family Bookstore, then the library, and finally MECCA.  We returned home tired but with books and art supplies.  After lunch we went out again to a thrift store.  I bought another Kinect, this one with improved tracking - I'll probably vibe code some weird thing for the Delta Green game to entrance and horrify my players.

The day wrapped up watching Death Note with Duncan, Yvonne, and Jo, then wandering upstairs to chat with Emma and try to keep her awake until at least 8 pm.  Her chocolate factory work has her getting up so early these days.

Sunday morning Emma was picked up to go fishing.  Jo and I worked on getting the garden beds ready and planted some peas.  I've been itching to get things started growing - optimistically planning for the future and all that.  I'd also been wanting to clean and power wash the porch.  It took hours, pulling down ivy and moving heavy things around, but it finally got done.  Emma returned from her fishing trip empty handed, but enjoyed the company of her big brother.  

As for fun things, I continue to work on my lovecraftian video game using AI tools.  It's getting crazy good at making changes, testing that it worked, and planning out complicated features.  More and more I feel like I'm a designer rather than a programmer.  I think the same think is starting to happen with my real job, though we still require a lot of accuracy and stability that it's not quite ready for.

Mocha Friday

February 27, 2026 by Adam in Family

It's a misty Friday morning and I've got plenty of mocha left.  The rest of the week has been thankfully uneventful.  Mom and I had tea on Wednesday and chatted a bit.  I keep moving things along incrementally at work, trying to see how much I can get AI to do for me, especially the annoying parts of my job.

I spend my evenings petting kitties, watching shows, doing chores, and prepping for Delta Green.  I made another book cover this morning that turned out beautifully.  I keep cranking out videos - they're still a little rough on the audio quality or weird artifacts, but when they work it's insanely impressive.  Oh, and I keep listening to Dungeon Crawler Carl.  There's clearly something wrong with me.

The weekend is right around the corner.  Emma might come over a little early as they're letting her go earlier now that the Valentine's Day crunch is over.  I've promised her a library trip, long overdue.  She's planning a fishing trip on Sunday with her big brother and his girlfriend.  Hopefully they stay dry and have fun.

Tuesday Update

February 24, 2026 by Adam in Family

It was a good weekend, starting with an amazing Delta Green game on Saturday.  We wrapped up the old group of characters and the last mission, only destroying the universe and resetting things once.  No one died, despite all the shootouts, and the new characters showed up to clean up the mess.  We transitioned to the new Impossible Landscapes campaign and soon we were going over backstories, I handed out postcards, business cards, articles, photographs, and other things to get everyone into the mood.  

The action shifted to New York City and the mystery of a missing woman in a strange apartment where she'd apparently attached strange objects to the wall of her apartment and disappeared.  So far they've been cataloging the strange items and I hand interesting things to the player.  At one point one person was reading a demonology book they'd bought at a nearby occult bookstore, another was looking at a police report, and another was checking his notes.  Another time they kept replaying the signal from a mysterious WWII radio.  It was great.

Sunday was more relaxed, with Yvonne, Emma, and I heading out to thrift stores.  I picked up some various treasures that I'll probably turn into game props.  We wandered home to collapse and chill for the rest of the day.  I've been playing quite a bit of Mewgenics, a cat battling game that shouldn't be as good as it is.

Monday started at work, moving forward a couple of my big projects.  After my run and lunch I got a call from mom wanting to be picked up from her woman's group.  I drove over and she was dizzy and sweaty and nauseous.  Jo joined us and helped with all the things I couldn't quite manage.

Mom didn't want an ambulance, so we went to urgent care and they immediately saw her.  The EKG was normal but her blood pressure was high, so we drove out to McKenzie-Willamette.  Once again they saw her quickly, things seemed normal, and we settled in to wait for tests.  Seraph and Robbie joined us and we mostly chatted.  The consensus was that there wasn't an immediate issue and cut us loose, so I drove mom home to lay down and get some sleep.

I'll check in this morning, but hopefully she's feeling better today.  I'm a little tuckered after the excitement and have some work to catch up on, but it should be fine.  It's "Return to Office" day for many of my coworkers, so they'll be wandering around not getting much done, I suspect.

Mocha Friday

February 20, 2026 by Adam in Family

Emma brought home a giant bag of the chocolate Euphoria uses - it was considered expired or stale or something.  I added some to my mocha for the first time today and it's absolutely delicious.  There's barely any sugar, so it's very savory and extremely chocolately.  It's certainly perking up my day.

I hit some work milestones this week, finally checking in the code for a couple big projects.  It's a day of learning, so I'm hoping to play around with some new AI tools I've been wanting to play with.  It's wild how quickly technology has been changing lately.

The week has generally been good.  Had tea with mom.  Went to Laughing Planet for date night.  D&D Tuesday night went well.  I started playing a cat battling and breeding computer game called Mewgenics.  I can't stop listening to Dungeon Crawler Carl.

My most fun has been prepping for Saturday's Delta Green game.  I ended up making a bunch of book covers for the in-game books, along with a folded bookmark the players can open (for a cost) that describes the consequences of studying the book.  There's something so satisfying handing a physical thing to a player and let them ooh and aah over the details.

Tuesday Work Week Start

February 17, 2026 by Adam in Family

Having the extra day over the weekend was nice, though I don't feel I did anything particularly useful.

Emma came over Friday afternoon and we hung out as usual.  Since Saturday was Valentine's Day, though we don't really celebrate it I made crepes with strawberries and whip cream along with a "Happy Whatever" day card.  It was well received.  Next up was a library trip and since Emma was feeling really worn out and maybe a little sick, I hung out on the couch while she slept with the kitties on top of her.

I'd woken up in the middle of the night with an idea for a game - mixing public domain detectives from the 1920s with Lovecraftian themes set in Miskatonic University.  I whipped up concept art, a bunch of planning documents, and by Sunday morning I told copilot to build the thing.  There's something magical about a web application being created from thin air.  It wasn't quite right for the first pass, but soon enough it had come together and I was able to get into an area, start a dialog, and see the character portraits.

Emma went to the beach with her mom, so I puttered around with the game for most of the day, occasionally doing useful things.  My oldest kid called and the two of us hiked to the top of Spencer's Butte, chatting about his new job and life in general.  We ran into his old Japanese teacher on the way up, which was cool.  Eventually we got to the top where the mist opened up into a sea of clouds with an amazing view.

I'd like to say I accomplished a long list of useful things on Monday, but mostly I puttered, played games, did laundry, ran on the treadmill, and fiddled about.  Not all days have to be powerhouses of accomplishment, I suppose.

Mocha Friday

February 13, 2026 by Adam in Family

It's been a busy but productive week.  I was asked by my director to create a video for her to send to others on the leadership team, so apparently the AI thing I demoed a couple weeks ago was moderately impressive.  I've made a surprising number of videos for my job - I keep running into the house to get my good microphone.

Jo's been sick this week with a cold, and Duncan's a little blah, though I think Yvonne and I are finally back to normal.  The most interesting thing I've done all week is that I ended up creating a ton of AI generated videos for my upcoming D&D game.  There's something magical about watching a character come to life and hopefully it gives a little spark to the campaign.  I worry a little about overdoing it - it's a game, not friends watching an animated D&D movie.

I have another surprise three day weekend coming up.  As usual, I've made a long list of things I want to accomplish.  Some are fun, some are practical, and we'll see how far I get on all my projects.  I'm still listening to the Dungeon Crawler Carl audiobooks, so I weirdly have a desire to power wash the patio for hours and see how it ends.

D&D Videos

February 12, 2026 by Adam in Adam's Games

I've been having a good time making little video clips for the various NPCs the players meet in my Dungeons and Dragons game.  I've got still images for them, but it's getting easy enough to make videos with lipsynched voices that I've made a half dozen in the last couple days.  I'm really liking the way they're turning out.

Crafty Weekend

February 09, 2026 by Adam in Family

Since Delta Green was sadly cancelled, I ended up doing various craft projects, though admittedly most were for various roleplaying games.  Emma and I went to MECCA Saturday after breakfast and the library, returning with way too many treasures.  Emma had a major find of over a dozen hand-painted tiles for $1 each - apparently they're worth $20 each, so she cleaned them up and packed them up for future use.  I returned with cool paper, bookmaking supplies, scraps of leather, yarn for Jo, and other assorted cool things.

When we got home Emma and Jo helped me dye a bunch of white leather, and we created a book cover.  I used the cricut to make a stencil for the symbol on the front and after a couple days we had a book prop for an upcoming game.

I also printed the first half of a giant popcorn bucket for the Iron Lung movie.  Apparently one of her coworkers wanted one.  It ended up being immense and I quickly burned through a spool.  The second part isn't going as well, but I'm hoping it's somewhat optional.

I also prepped for the upcoming D&D game, plus put together my usual website/images/movie prep site for a Call of Cthulhu game.  It's like a 1920s Delta Green, but with flappers, gangsters, and archeologist types fighting Lovecraftian horrors.  If I ever have someone cancel I can run that instead.  Otherwise I feel sad not being able to terrorize my family members frequently enough.

Cold Week

February 06, 2026 by Adam in Family

Yvonne and I have both had colds this week - she ended up skipping her day in the Emergency Department as part of her EMT program.  I think she's mostly better now.  I never got too bad, but I've been feeling a little slow and grumpy and mostly want to fiddle around with personal projects and do nothing particularly important.

Sadly Delta Green was cancelled tomorrow, and with Valentine's Day we get to push it out a couple more weeks.  I'm bummed, and think I'll start making some one-shots of something or another if one person can't make it.  The D&D group had a session on Tuesday after a delay and I think they're so excited to play more that we're going again next week to make up for the delay.

As for me, I've been slogging through work, trying to finish up one project and start up another.  When I'm not working, I've been putting together props and notes for the upcoming Delta Green campaign.  I think I'm going to try to make a book for the game, though the bookbinding part is a little tricky.  Theoretically the cricut does leather debossing and I'd love to see if I can pull that off.

We had a meeting with the property management company that will manage the farm rental yesterday.  It went well, though it's clear there's still a long list of things to be done in the next few months.  I'm trying to gird my loins to assist as my older kid steps away from the project - hopefully it works out okay.

No big plans for the weekend.  I might see if Emma and her big brother might go for another wilderness adventure with me.  He's starting a new job doing landscaping next week, though fortunately his hours seem pretty normal.  I'm just excited about things like health insurance that come with it.