An abundance of green

I love you, Dad

My dad passed away on Friday.

He was diagnosed with metastatic cancer on May 6th, he came home from the hospital next day and went on hospice. I went up the following Saturday and had the incredible privilege to be there almost the whole time until he passed (I spent a night at my home, after taking my sister to the airport, and then went back up).

During that week, I had the strongest sense of my dad as a whole. My dad not just as the person I perceived him as but as the person he was independent of me and my experiences. One day, my uncle came over and shared his memories (such a gift), friends and neighbors from church and the area talked about what they loved about him, my mom remembered him from years ago, and I remembered him from the many iterations of myself (child, teen, etc.). And I was there, seeing him in the present--often not lucid, but talking and in that talk there was a piece of his soul unhidden. 

But it wasn't just past and present, there was this sense of all his potential, everything he could have been, hoped to be, if life allowed. 

Life was hard for my dad. I don't mean he had a hard life, but life was hard for him. He struggled with mental illness, which understates the full impact of what that means really truly. He had rough times, largely because of that, but also because life just does that to all of us.* He also had an incredible sense of humor, and a sense of fun, and I loved that side of him, when it was able to shine through. But life left marks, as it does. 

Kyle S. McKay, a General Authority Seventy in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, gave a devotional at BYU, titled "There Must Needs Be a Christ". In it, he said, "President Boyd K. Packer taught: “The Atonement [of Jesus Christ] leaves no tracks, no traces. What it fixes is fixed . . . , and what it heals stays healed.” And he talked about people he had seen, who had also been roughed up by life. People you would never know had dark pasts, or unspeakable heartache. "Why? Because there is a Christ, and His Atonement leaves no tracks, no traces."

I miss my dad. I miss his smile, I miss his humor. I miss knowing he will be sitting in the recliner in the living room when I go home. 

But I am so happy that some of the tracks and traces that still existed are gone and the rest are fading. I keep seeing him as he looked in high school, young (and very handsome) and less touched by life. Just all those heartaches and regrets and frustrations of a good heart that wanted something better being wiped away. It makes me so so happy for him. And it is going to be so awesome to see him again. 

*If not, maybe we're not doing it right. A life with no challenges is a stagnant life. Albeit, a comfortable one.

Statement decor

I was browsing online and saw one of those, "She thought she could, so she did" statement things. Now, that particular phrase has never resonated with me and not because it's not a worthwhile sentiment. I think it's more because I'm more of a, "she didn't need to prove anything, so she didn't, and the thing didn't really matter that much and she wasn't actually interested in doing it, so she passed" kind of a person. 

Again, in a certain context, this is a worthwhile statement. You have an idea about something you could do, you want to do it for your own cute little self, yeah. Do it!

But it seems like this mostly comes up in the context of Women can do ALL the things, and then it feels like I have to look at what everyone else is doing and then think I can do it and then I have to go do it, and man, does that sound exhausting or what? Like, it's just this non-stop roller coaster of doing things just to show that you can do them like you thought you could. Seriously, so exhausting. 

I'm glad some people are the, "think it do it" variety. I'm glad they have the energy. And I'm glad they broke and are breaking so many of the ridiculous barriers that didn't ever need to exist. I've really benefitted from that, because I would be a lousy teacher and a terrible nurse, and as long as it was typing and filing, I'd be a decent secretary but answering the phones and staying organized would be a nightmare. So, yay for the think-and-doers! But also, I'm glad I don't have to be one. So thank you ladies, and now I'm gonna go not do something, just because I don't have to. 

Mic drop

This week at work, I've had some mic problems. I hadn't been in a Teams meeting for about 2 weeks, so who knows when it actually started but for sure on Wednesday (maybe Tuesday? Time also seems to be malfunctioning) my team couldn't hear me very well. I tried to troubleshoot myself, which somehow led to my laptop eliminating the mic program altogether. Good news, the tech team was able to fix it and I proceeded to have a call with someone. Yay! Until Wednesday morning, when my mic wasn't working anymore. So, another visit to the tech team and they managed to fix it--again. And it seems to have stayed fixed, because it worked for a training I did today. 

The only downside is that now that my mic works, I don't have an excuse to not say anything in meetings, or cancel them. My team still has to listen to me talk too much, and alas, I don't have an excuse to hand off the interviews for our internship position to someone else. 

But, you know, my mic works. Yay!

Some things don't need to be things

 

Just, why? Okay, sure. You really like pickles. But, you know, you could just eat a pickle. 

Farewell March

It seems fitting that we bid March farewell on a Monday. It wasn't a bad Monday, I mean it was actually pretty decent. It was fine. And I was really going to try to think of something fun and clever and entertaining to write about, but I just don't have anything like that, just a run-of-the-mill Monday, with it's run-of-the mill ups and downs: they fixed one bug in a computer program and now there are a bunch of new bugs; I'm seeing some things that I need to train my team on, and I worry that I'm just not doing a good job of teaching*. But they fixed a problem with on of our interns accounts, so now she can do her job, hooray! And I had a chance to chat with the interns, which I think is always important. I got to work on some collections, and it has been awhile so that was nice. And I helped a friend. 

Even so, it was a day that required cute photographs and hilarious videos of cats walking wonky. It helped, and I made it through the day. And now, to bed, later than I would have liked, as always, but at least I didn't get caught off guard.

*In my defense, there is a reason I didn't get a PhD. Teaching is not my forte. 

It's artificial, but I'm not convinced it is intelligent

Well, friends, I made my first foray into using AI and can now report with authority that it doesn't know how to spell.

I admit, I am a little surprised by the whole spelling thing, because it seems like that would be the sure fire thing. I type in an instruction saying "Make a logo for XYZ brand", you'd think it would get the XYZ right, but nope. Out of maybe 25 tries, it spelled it right 4 or 5 times? I mean, AI is not passing kindergarten with those grades! And it's also a liar, because every time I corrected it on the spelling, it promised it was going to fix it and get it exactly right. (AI put the italics in, not me). 

Also, it would generate a design I liked, but then couldn't edit the design. So, any tweaks and it basically started over. Which, you can imagine. I finally get it spelled right, need to change something else, and nope. Back to square one, on the spelling, the art, everything. And the design I liked? Gone to me forever, because a graphic designer I am not. 

I think I'm less surprised at how poorly it does at reading the instructions. I specified "don't add any fruit to the design" and it kept adding fruit. I'm less surprised, because this is a thing that happens all the time at work. I say to people, "Do xyz" and somehow, the opposite of that seems to happen. However, they at least only had verbal instructions and maybe I was speaking a foreign language at the time, which actually does happen a lot on my team. And even in writing it is sometimes in a foreign language. I also know that I don't always read to the end of emails and stuff, or I skim to get the gist and sometimes miss some details. 

But here's the thing. Isn't AI supposed to be better than me? Admittedly, it far surpasses me in graphic design, but then the design is always wrong, so...??? I'll tell you so--so even though it took 25-30 tries to give me 4-5 correctly spelled designs (and 2-3 that met the artistic specifications, but to be fair, that was a process of me figuring out what I actually wanted, so you can't blame AI), It still only took 15 minutes or so. And if I'd had to do it myself, well, let's just say the peak of my artistic achievement is a stick dinosaur.

Overall conclusions, it's about what I expected it to be and we shouldn't go turning the world over to it any time soon. (Or ever in my opinion, I don't care how good it gets). But the spelling thing. That's just embarrassing.