It’s that time of year: Time for an annual reflection. The thought that looms largest in my mind is, “This is my last year in my 30s.” Next year, I’ll be turning 40, which seems surreal. Am I … middle-aged? When did that happen? For the first time in my life, I feel like I’m counting down instead of counting up …

Last year, I titled my update “In Reflection” because I wasn’t sure of my long-term chances surviving leukemia. This year, I’ve added the subtitle “Waypoints and Milestones” to reflect both the permission I’ve given myself to look ahead and the milestones I will achieve—turning 40 being chief among them.¹

Goals for 2026

• Professional Development: In a lot of ways, I feel I’ve reached diminishing returns from reading books. I still read, but I’ve found myself reaching out more to peers in my industry for their insights and advice. For 2026, I intend to work closer with 2-3 of my industry peers to compare notes on how we’re evolving our engineering organizations in the world of AI.
• Deliver three to four more apps with my kids while they’re young. These projects have gotten more interest and engagement from my kids than any remodeling, woodworking, or car repair projects I’ve dragged them into. The goal is to spend time with family.
• Writing: My goal is still to publish 6-10 posts a year. I setup a micro-blog and categories on this site to focus my approach to publishing. In 2025, I read On Writing Well, which I will try and apply to my posts. My favorite suggestions are: earn the reader’s attention, one big idea and succinctness.

Family

I was being a dad. That was my job. And I didn’t have to ask myself “What am I doing here?” … I understood my purpose. –Bob Odenkirk.

The most important accomplishment of 2025, in addition to reaching my two-year in remission milestone, was that my health strengthened enough that I could spend more time with my kids outside. We took several excursions, but I would say the day trip to the New York State Fair was the best of all. Nearly 10 hours on my feet up and down the boulevard with unlimited rides and prizes for all of the kids.

Walking that long was unthinkable even just six months prior; to be able to be present for my kids was the most wonderful family accomplishment of all.

On a more sober note, one of my grandmothers passed away in 2025. This was challenging; the number of people who have known me my entire life seems to shrink with each passing decade. Combined with my own brush with mortality, it’s the strongest reminder I have that family is first, code is ephemeral.

Self

Health is a crown that the healthy wear on their heads, but only the sick can see it. –Al-Shafi’i

The biggest personal accomplishment in 2025 is two years in remission; I claim this—surviving—as my defining achievement. With my long-term prospects improving daily, I’ve been able to focus more on what I want to accomplish with the time I have remaining. One idea has crystalized in my mind about my self-identity as a builder and creator. If this blog is any testament, I really enjoy making things. This clarity of purpose helps me target the types of roles and projects I will pursue in the future.

2025 was also a year of acceleration via AI. It has enabled me to get further than ever before on projects and work, but has also enabled my worse tendency to chase down ideas at the expense of others. I have registered far too many domain names this year in pursuit of future ideas. This year, I really leaned into establishing my Wiglaf Software brand, under which I published Just Cat Mazes a small no-ads maze game I built with my six-year-old. I’m looking forward to building more apps with my kids next year as well.

One thing I left behind in 2025 was OMT Studios. Not only did I discover I don’t enjoy creating YouTube “content,” but a band (https://www.the-harbours.com) reached out about purchasing the domain. I was all too happy to let it go, and I wish them success in their journey.

Engineering

AI is fundamentally changing the way software is written; I plan to shift down and relearn what it takes to ship software and what the expectations are from engineering leaders in an age when code can be continuously generated. I initially experienced AI in 2023-2024 as an error-prone, incoherent code generator. But in the past year, it has proven invaluable to me in expanding my reach and getting more work done.

Learning what does and doesn’t work with AI is critical to my integrity of leading with credibility as an engineering manager. I’m also learning how to mix traditional application development and LLM non-deterministic outputs. What I had previously dismissed as “just” a statistical generation machine can be made far more powerful by stacking prompt guidelines, context, and structured outputs. More on this next year as I find out more myself!

Significant Revisions

• Dec 31st, 2025 Originally published on https://www.jsrowe.com with uid 725A3ECF-1D75-4FBE-8193-B80B82A56996
• Dec 22nd, 2025 Draft Created

Footnotes

Note: Originally a sub section on Journaling, Why Write? that I’ve moved to its own post.

Famous Journal Entries

When I think about my writings, I think about famous journals that have persisted through time.

The First Computer “Bug”

Downloaded from https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/nmah_334663 with companion meta-data.¹

Copper Complaint

Considered the oldest ‘customer complaint’ known.²

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nāṣir

https://web.archive.org/web/20240418012802/https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/ea-nasir-copper-merchant-ur

The Light Has Gone Out—Roosevelt

A more somber entry. But what a tremendous weight a single X on a page represents.

The Birth of an Airline

Just a simple napkin and an idea.

Memoirs and Diaries

Diary of Anne Frank maybe being the most famous. Ernest Shackleton’s Diary of the Quest Expedition, 1921-22 another.

John and Abigail Adams letters come to mind.

Family Roots

So many of the artifacts shown on Family Roots include written document, newspapers and other announcements.

Significant Revisions

• Feb 20th, 2025 Published on https://www.jsrowe.com with uid C518ED2F-8F63-4289-9AFD-0D9CD80EC2A1

Footnotes

It is impossible to write anything about 2024¹ without addressing how traumatically 2023 ended. During November 2023, I underwent an allogenic bone marrow transplant to treat a very aggressive case of leukemia. I was released from the hospital two days before Christmas and, quite frankly, started 2024 living one day at a time.

I owe my second lease on life to the scientific advancements² in treating leukemia. I told myself that I had to live, and while I didn’t get to decide if I lived or died, I do get to decide what to do with today.

Staring My Mortality in the Face

At the start of 2024, it took all of my energy to exist and keep the most basic routines in place. But I promised myself that if I made it through this ordeal, there were some endeavors, big and small, I was going to undertake. Things that I wanted to accomplish if given the chance to live.

Reviewing Goals from 2024

This December, I’m fortunate that I get to look ahead and set goals for 2025. Last December, my only goal was to survive and recover from treatment. Once I achieved roughly four months post-transplant, I set some goals³ for myself to accomplish in 2024.

Self

• 💖 “Live” was my first goal. So far so good. One small gallows-humor project that I completed to poke fun at my situation was creating a personal status page⁴ to track my uptime like a liveness probe.
• 🔨 Create more. So much of life is in the service of others or consumption of other’s creations. Consumption can be great—reading a great book, listening to music, appreciating a piece of art, or watching a thrilling show. But what about my creations? What about what I can build? What can I make for others to enjoy?
• 📈 Recover my strength to be an active father again. After four rounds of chemo and the bone marrow transplant, I could barely go up a flight of stairs without feeling like passing out. Now, at one year in recovery, I am working out again and can walk for almost 90 minutes. I no longer worry about stairs. Having survived, the quote “The greatest wealth is health” really hits home.
• 🏠 Bring together all my previously published thoughts under one roof. I’ve tried publishing on Wordpress, LinkedIn Articles, and Goodreads, but none of those were “mine”; none were home. Hence this site jsrowe.com, which will be my primary vehicle of publication⁵.
• 📝 Write and publish at least two posts a month to https://jsrowe.com. This post makes 22 posts since March of this year, plus the book content I wrote. I would consider this a resounding success and proof that I enjoy doing this.
• 📚 Start reading again. Before COVID, I commuted ~1.5 hours a day, which afforded me ample time to listen to audiobooks, finishing 20-30 of them in a year. When I started working remotely, I dropped this habit completely. My goal was to read two books a month; I don’t think I got much past three books this year. I’m working on it!⁶
• 🍞 Bake a fresh loaf of bread. For years I’ve had a copy of Beard on Bread and the only recipe I’d baked was banana bread. I’ll concede this is a small goal for the year, but I ended up making two wonderful hearty white bread loaves from chapter one of Beard’s book. I won’t say I’m a born-again baker, but just like that one 5k I ran, I am very happy to be able to say I’ve at least tried it once…

Family

While I have shared many details about my personal life online, I am protective of my children’s private lives. So, I’ll summarize that after being in the hospital almost 3 months, one goal for 2024 was to spend meaningful time with my family and friends to let them know I love them.⁷

There are three projects I started this year that I have found tremendous joy in, intend to continue for years to come, and wish to share here:

• 📷 Print Pictures and Make Albums: Using the mobile app Shutterfly for free 4×6 pictures,⁸ I went through many years of family photos, printing and writing short notes on the back of each before filing them in picture albums. These now sit in my living room, and the kids have fun just looking at them from time to time. I will often order multiples of one photo as my kids like to have “real” photos in their rooms. Doing this 3-4 times a year seems to yield a manageable 30-ish photos to file away.
• 📝 Journal of Letters: In addition to this public website, I keep personal written journals for myself. In the spirit of a “letter to my unborn child,” when something special, meaningful, or impactful happens on any given day, I write a letter to the future. These letters aren’t long or meant to be read anytime soon, but one day when I’m gone, I hope they are a way to reflect and remember the time we spent together. When I was in the hospital, I realized I had said “I love you” every day, but my voice might’ve been silenced by cancer. This project is a memento for the future.
• 🖼 Art Portfolio: This was probably easiest with my little kids, but all of them are creators and I try to find a piece of work to include in an art portfolio, often with a note of context. I also created three “galleries” in my house to celebrate my kids’ creations and accomplishments. My encounter with cancer really shattered my belief that I would be around to raise my kids until they no longer needed me.

Ambition

While I’ve been fortunate to apply my collegiate training in relevant employment, I’ve tried my hand at various self-employment ventures since high school and always felt a desire to formally organize as a business. I’d previously operated as a county-level Doing-Business-As (DBA); this evolved into the formation of Rowe Innovations, LLC in New York State to support some of my personal ambitions and projects I completed in 2024 and have planned for 2025.

In addition to the blog posts, I thought I would write two books, one technical and one about my cancer treatment. The former ended up being AI Primer for Business Leaders; the latter was too emotionally heavy to complete this year. To read more about my experience self-publishing, click here.

With the formation of my LLC, I also filed trademarks and DBAs on two additional concepts I’ve been incubating for a while: Wiglaf Software⁹ and OMT Studios. I formed these brands to better organize and market my work on various projects; having clear “company” boundaries allows me to wear many hats while completing work. For example, one of my goals this year was to learn more about AWS cloud infrastructure and GitHub actions; I was able to accomplish this goal by doing all of the work for this site as an “engineer” of Wiglaf Software.

I also had on my list to participate in vendor contract negotiations and learn more about running a software engineering organization from a fiscal perspective. I’ve had several opportunities to do this, both with my employer and my newly formed LLC, and count this as accomplished.

Goals for 2025

The maths of cancer survival say that by having made it one year, I’m much more likely to make it another. So in the spirit of positivity, here are some goals for 2025 that I share with you to hold myself accountable.¹⁰

Self

• Complete writing and publish my memoir about my cancer diagnosis and treatment, working title Blasted: A Life Turned Upside Down by Leukemia.¹¹
• Continue the above detailed projects for my family and publish writings online.
• Continue to improve my health both with physical and cardiovascular fitness as well as putting all of the trauma around cancer treatment behind me.

Family

• Recover my strength to take my family on a small weekend trip. This is my biggest family goal. We are fortunate to have many great state parks nearby in NY, and several amusement parks. If we take just two or three trips in the summer of 2025, I’ll consider that a success.
• Build a better shoe system for my back door. This has plagued me since I bought my house—too many shoes and not enough storage. I don’t like the various benches/racks I’ve purchased, so it’s time to make something myself. Before cancer, I enjoyed many a DIY project, but in the past 18 months, I just didn’t have the strength to do such things.

Ambition

• Successfully launch some major initiatives at the startup I work at into the marketplace and ideally participate in an IPO event. This is my primary BHAG.¹² While so much of this is very much out of my control, as an engineer, I believe that if I can build it, good things will follow.
• Continue to learn more about running a software engineering organization, both with my employer and with my LLC. My kids are always bugging me to buy iPad games, so I fancy that with the help of Anthropic/OpenAI, I can build apps for my kids in the same spirit as a father 50 years ago would make toys from blocks of wood. My goal here is to publish one or two apps on the Apple App Store via Wiglaf Software™ and evaluate this experience.
• I’d like to figure out what I’m going to do (if anything) with OMT Studios™ as a brand. I did complete one YouTube video last year; I have ideas for one or two more, so we’ll see if that strikes a chord.

A Final Reflection

With everything that’s happened this past 18 months, I reflect on a moral I took from Man’s Search for Meaning that a person with a sufficient “why” can endure much trauma to live for tomorrow. At our core, our most inalienable freedom is to choose our response to external stimuli.

Here’s to choosing the future. Onward!

Significant Revisions

• Dec 24th, 2024 Originally published on https://www.jsrowe.com with uid AA4B5BBF-8F0D-4F80-B68A-7C80B92317A8
• Dec 16th, 2024 Draft Created

Footnotes

This post is a recollection of some poetry and metaphors from movies/songs that I think about from time to time. Definitely not my typical post. I write it down thinking I might add to it over time, but even if don’t, I enjoyed reminiscing.

Robert Frost

I discovered Robert Frost in high school via the occasional English assignment of analyzing a small piece of literature. I can’t remember what grade I first read Robert Frost’s two most famous works “The Road Not Taken” and “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening,” but I think of them as my life reaches some form of mid-halfway.

To me the conclusion of “The Road Not Taken” reflects on the road that diverges in the woods and the choice of one path over another. As I reflect on some of my own life decisions, I realize that at the moment of deciding there is only so far imagination can carry you down one path or the other. I live today the culmination of countless decisions large and small driving me forward. Sigh not and embrace the future.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The other Frost poem I greatly enjoy is “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening.” I grew up in Texas, no snow, and something about the visual image of being alone in the quiet of the snow really appealed to me—and the promises to keep to myself, the promises to move forward before I sleep.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

The lesson I take is that in approaching life, minimize regrets¹.

Rosebud

In high school, my grandmother shared her love of movies with me by taking me to Paramount Theatre and by watching old films on Turner Classic Movies². One of those classic movies was Citizen Kane. I didn’t know it was considered a classic when I watched it. The movie starts with those in Kane’s circle wondering what his final word, “rosebud,” meant. None would guess that it was his childhood symbolized by a sled.

I think about what my “rosebud” is—what are the things I hold dear and cherish? American culture especially seems to hype up the new car, the bigger house, the high-status job. Of course my children are my greatest project, but I see that as a temporal assignment, albeit a long one. What are my personal creations and experiences that I hold dear? This site is in its own way a rosebud, from the very first post in 2010³ to the itch to write something every night. In a lot of ways, it feels illogical how much fun I have doing this even to an audience of 1.⁴

The reflection for me is: In a world of consumption, what am I creating?

“Vienna” by Billy Joel

But you know that when the truth is told That you can get what you want or you can just get old You’re gonna kick off before you even get halfway through, ooh When will you realize? Vienna waits for you

There are a lot of great songs that fit with the motif of “words that I carry,” but this one really captures a belief I picked up early in high school.⁵ There are a few decisions that have an outsized impact on your life; decisions that either take years to make or years to undo. Where you’re born in life is decided for you, but in early adulthood, you make decisions like where to live, what to study, marriage, kids, careers. The span of five short years brings an impossible list of things to figure out. The good news is that nothing is permanent and you can get what you want or you can just get old.

Warren Buffet has a famous speech he gives about only having “20 investments” to make. With the constraints of time and focus, making really good decisions in those investments will deliver the best outcome for one’s self.

Time will pass, age will come. But what will you make of it?

Theodore Roosevelt

Roosevelt has been attributed amazing quotes and was a prolific writer⁶ of his time. When I think to myself the risks of self-publication and the critic, I think of Roosevelt’s speech “Citizenship in a Republic”.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Significant Revisions

• Dec 9th, 2024 Originally published on https://www.jsrowe.com with uid 937E118A-95F1-4388-BDE5-1098335E51FD
• Nov 24th, 2024 Draft created

Footnotes

November 18 marked a new accomplishment in my life: I’ve self-published a book, AI Primer For Business Leaders. I’ve always enjoyed reading and writing, and had penciled onto my bucket list “publish something one day.” I figured that with the right topic and work/life expertise, I could compile enough thoughts to complete a small work. With the explosion of generative AI, I saw a topic that I felt suited to write about that also had a sparce collection of books published about it. Before, whenever I wanted to research something, I was able to find definitive books that provided valuable insights.

As I started collecting whitepapers and articles, I thought that I could address a niche at the intersection of business leadership and technical acumen—which, ironically, was an early business objective on my resume (when those were in vogue). I took this rough idea of a series of blog posts on the topic¹ and wrote around 10k words in one weekend. I felt like with a little more work, I could make a small primer on everything I’ve observed in the AI marketplace over the past year. Like many things e-commercialized, the basic building blocks of self-publication can be purchased online; a set of 10 ISBNs can be yours for the low price of $295. Assign some metadata, a title, and boom—you’re on your way. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The Rest of the Story

Even after completing what I’ve learned to call my “manuscript,” there’s so much more that goes into a book: title research, cover art, author bio, front matter, back matter, copyright page, layout, formatting—how about copyright management? And on and on the list goes. If publishing short thoughts on this blog is a manifestation of quickly typed-out ideas, then writing AI Primer for Business Leaders was the backwoods illicit process of turning mash into whiskey. Did my efforts result in white lightning? Well I sure had fun making it.

Having reached the finish line and reflecting on my self-publication² journey, there are a few things that I wish I had known before starting. As my contribution to the world wide web thoughts on the matter, here are the things that I would tell anyone who might ask.

Timeline

Whatever I was thinking it would take to write and publish a book, I was wrong. I think I had initially thought I would start writing in May and publish in June. A few weeks to write the content and gosh, how long could it take to upload some files to get the book online? After all, in college, I had spent many a term writing 8–12-page papers without any generative AI at all. How hard could writing a book be? I suppose if you take the direct approach of doing everything yourself, self-publishing could be accomplished in a month, but how good would the final product be? Would it look like a book and blend in among its peers?

The other thing is, I wanted feedback from my peers and friends. The world of generative AI was moving so quickly in 2023/2024—new models were released almost weekly; it was tough to keep my examples relevant and my text up to date. I decided to back away from some of the nuanced analysis of model behavior that I felt was well covered by whitepapers³ and instead focus on building a baseline understanding for my readers of how the coming wave of Generative AI worked. I replaced statistical analysis with metaphor-building and moved much of the conversation examples to an appendix.

Then there was the back and forth of each of these exchanges and reviews. Even at the very short 18k words that the final manuscript ended up being, every read through took me at least 45-90 min depending on what I was reviewing, and generally, it would take a friend or reader or editing review roughly a week to turn around new revisions. As the writer and coordinator, I had to prioritize feedback loops such that any one reviewer wasn’t reading a restructured book.

Ultimately, after spending about three months writing and editing in the summer, I ended up publishing in mid-November. The additional timeline encompassed all of the new things I learned about book publishing including title pages, copyright law, copyright pages, ISBN/barcodes, layout design, and cover design.

All the Bells and Whistles

In hindsight, it would become apparent to me that I dove into the core writing aspect of the book too quickly. I had neglected one of the best lessons from a great writing coach: an outline. In early drafts, the first set of chapters read just as a series of blog posts, wholly independent and sharing only the theme of my personal experience with generative AIs like ChatGPT. There was no guiding thread through the book nor foundational information established for anyone not familiar with the industry.

In addition to breaking away from the “fun” part of writing about the intersection of generative AI and business leadership were all the supplemental materials needed to go along with the book. There was the book description, the book summary, back jacket summary, author bio. Oh, better have a website, and what is your plan for promoting and surfacing the book? Should I add it to LinkedIn? What about every publishing site that allows for an author page? And even a headshot! Which book categories would this title fit into? There were a ton of decisions to be made that I had no clue about whatsoever.

Fortunately, I partnered with Judy of SkillBites, who helped me navigate many of these questions and more. It was important to me that my book feel like a “real book” with all the components of a published work. Everything from the trim size to the little flourishes on the chapter pages were thanks to her and her team.

Expectations

Honestly, I knew at the beginning that this would truly be a journey for myself, a self-adventure to match a self-publication. I am not expecting more than handful of sales, but I wanted to see if I would enjoy the process and if I would do another one. Yes—I will.

Also, I would be lying if I omitted the role of my own ego in the mix. So much of our digital world fades and expires within years. Even my own domain, this content, would cease on one missed domain renewal. GitHub, where this source material is hosted, might have a much longer lifespan, but by making a printed book, copyrighting it, adding metadata to Bowker and IngramSpark, and sending my copies to a few libraries, I’ve kicked my name a little further into the future.

Perhaps an AI model in the future will be able to answer for my kids, “Who was James Rowe, my father, writer, and engineer?”

I guess here is a glimpse into the future: I’ve been using ChatGPT for almost 1.5 years and its memory feature is pretty good even if it suffers from recency bias.

James: Who is James Rowe and what has he done?

ChatGPT: James Rowe is a software engineering manager based in upstate New York, leading REST API and frontend/mobile teams. He’s writing AI Primer for Business Leaders and exploring side projects like an iPhone skiing game. A hands-on DIY enthusiast, James is active in community work, values sustainability, and prioritizes family life as a devoted father of four.

Postscript

I really like the advice for authors that Seth put together.

There were many sources of inspiration⁴ for this project, but of particular note, I thank Will Larson for his many posts on writing: QR codes in books, publishing, and thoughts on writing.

I think my biggest regret in this project is not writing more. I got so focused on writing a “primer,” which I felt meant it needed to be really short. I guess the consolation prize is that for a brief moment I was the “#1 New release” in Amazon’s “Two-Hour Computers & Technology Short Reads” category.

Significant Revisions

• Nov 22nd, 2024 Originally published on https://www.jsrowe.com with uid 44EC4119-0A57-4B89-8B56-A09315A3B0F5
• Aug 24th, 2024 Draft created

Footnotes

Originally, I hadn’t intended to publish anything online about my cancer, but I was inspired by XKCD Cancer Comics to share parts of my survivor’s journey. Besides, I think about cancer a lot¹, and this site is called “James’s Thoughts”…

Slice of life

At my local library² is a tree slab on display. You’ve seen them before. A cross-section of a local felled tree two or three hundred years old. The passage of time marked by growth rings; the stressful years hidden, invisible until the very end.³.

I took this picture around four months after my most recent discharge from the hospital⁴. At the time, I did not know if my treatment was effective—if I had achieved remission (I had)—but as I stared at the tree, I felt a connection. A metaphor for my current state. This tree was once living, breathing, standing tall all while carrying the scars of challenging times within.

The Scar I Carry

My cancer and subsequent treatments have left invisible scars on my life as well. Many of my physical symptoms have subsided. My appearance has been restored with another year of growth. But on the inside—after a brief moment of exposure—are all the signs of distress and turmoil.

During my chemo treatment, my nails developed a “fracture point”: a scar marking when all my cells turned over, most pronounced on my thumbs. Here I compare notes with the tree. This scar here—what did you see? Was it hard? What lessons did you learn?

If you can move forward, so can I⁵.

Significant Revisions

• Jun 19th, 2024 Originally published on https://www.jsrowe.com with uid 4F750A7F-4294-4BBE-9C9E-341BB0DEDCAB
• Jun 13th, 2024 Came back to this placeholder and completed draft
• May 13th, 2024 commit this draft idea for later

Footnotes

“You never know the last time you pick up your kid” - Jay on Modern Family S11E14¹

A picture of young James

Here is a young me. Proudly holding one of my the stuffed animals from my childhood. This and a snowman stayed around with me I think all the way through college and maybe made it into my kids hands at some point. The bulls were big in the 90s, trust me.

Crayons at an estate sale

I bought a couple boxes of crayons² for $1 at an estate stale and noticed a name. And I think about the above quote or some variation of it I’ve seen on the interwebs. So many things in life happen a ‘last’ time and in the moment we’re not always aware of that fact.

J.c. James, whats the moral here

Cherish the time you have. There will be more firsts, but there will also be lasts. And yes, even this project will have one last _post. Just don’t know when that’ll be right this minute.

Significant Revisions

• May 27th, 2024 Originally published on https://www.jsrowe.com with uid 7D3CFD4B-F3ED-473A-9F1C-2A71E16ADD7E

Footnotes

In my early days on the internet (mid-late 1990s), I don’t recall joining any large social sites. I think the biggest social networks I could fathom were GeoCities and Yahoo! Games, where I created some rudimentary html pages and played hearts, respectively.

This post “Who Am I (Online)?” was mostly inspired by xkcd 2363 Message Boards, wherein a daughter finds her mom via an old message board and posts on her twenty-year-old thread. So here are some breadcrumbs for the future.

My First Username

zeus_ruler_1

Prevailing wisdom(?) circa late 1990s was to create a memorable username without identifying information. I want to say this was in 1997/1998 (7th grade?), at which time, according to the Pew, the internet already had ~150 million users.

I was taking a mythology course in middle school and decided to use Zeus as a moniker. I landed on a combination of “Zeus is ruler number 1” because so many other combinations were already taken. I used this moniker well into high school on a variety of sites but primarily Yahoo! Games and as an email address (zeus_ruler_1@yahoo.com).

Out of curiosity, I tried to perform a password reset at Yahoo, and it seems that at some point I had a jump.net email address I have no recollection of.

Yahoo, Not Hotmail or AOL?

I think that for a lot of people, RoadRunner (which later became Time Warner Cable and is now Spectrum) was their first email address; that or possibly Hotmail or AOL. I speculate that during this time, my first email provider was either Hotmail or Roadrunner. I tried password recovering to no avail. I would guess I used “jrowe@austin.rr.com,” but who knows. I definitely remember getting the AOL CDs in the mail.

AIM/AOL Messenger

For AOL Instant Messenger, I remember trying to find something with my name in it and settling on “jamesthe3000th” out of frustration at how many combinations of “James” were already taken. I used this handle for a number of years into college.

I also used MSN Messenger and ICQ, but I don’t remember what my handles were.

Battle.net/Blizzard

In high school and college, I spent time playing Diablo and World of Warcraft on Battle.net. I tried to see what emails I had registered, but again no luck. For many of my character names on these online RPGs, I signed up as “sirsparhawk” after the knight Sparhawk in the David Eddings books. No points granted for my character class of choice.

Joining Gmail

My first Gmail account was my full name. I didn’t get in during the beta, but would have signed up in the 2005-2008 timeframe. This was the first time I remember people using their full names when signing up for a service. But that could be confabulation. I’ve deleted several Gmail accounts along the way because of various different frustrations with data privacy and just a general desire to try other services, but at this point, I’m back to Gmail.

Somehow, evidence of this still exists in my GitHub settings.

RIT Assigned ID

In college, I was assigned the user ID “jsr6720,” and this moniker has stuck with me in some form to date. I’ve had to adjust the prefix to satisfy some sites’ username restrictions, but I would guess most combinations are me. Not quite the bellow of “2-4-6-0-1”, but it’s mine.

My First Online Blog

https://txcowboycoder.wordpress.com

At my first job, I kept finding interesting things I wanted to share and published them on my now user/password locked txcowboycoder site. I had created a Gravatar as well. No clue what happened to all these logins over time.

It looks like I had also registered the domain codedeputy.com for some short period of time—likely with Bluehost or 1and1 hosting? I would find out later that “Cowboy Coding” was considered a derogatory software development practice, and I felt like the domain codedeputy.com read as “Coded Eputy.” Oh well, it would be practice for the future.

I tried to extend this online “brand” to contribute on Stack Overflow, but I only submitted a few answers before a bad experience turned me away.¹

Significant Revisions

• Jan 18th, 2025 Promoted from _archive to _posts folder.
• Jan 10th, 2025 Decided to dust this off and edit it.
• May 21st, 2024 Originally published on https://www.jsrowe.com with uid E13E92A6-8DE8-466E-9FE3-D1A8BA02909E Immediately filed in _archive as it was fun to reminisce, but nothing I want to publish. But also all mostly public information.

Footnotes

“Be yourself, everyone else is already taken.” –Oscar Wilde

What Counts as Writing?

Call it a memoir, journal, diary, or even a memo pad. (Do GitHub commit messages count?) Writing is the very essence of an idea wrought to life. The smallest scribed note can persist through history in both humorous and unintended ways.¹

What is it about humans that resulted in the one of our ancestors to raise a hand and leave their mark? Was it their rock? Their home? Were they bored? Consumed in ritual? For the lulz?

Why Do I Write?

I write as a means of reflection, thinking, relaxation and planning. By writing, I can clarify my thoughts; I write for the joy of writing, and rewriting, and ultimately publishing some small subset of those thoughts for others.

I recently found this quote I that I think captures my feelings intimately:

Writing a blog on your own site is a way to escape all of that(social platforms). Plus your words build up over time. That’s unique. Nobody else values your words like you do. – Matt Webb

So What Is This Site?

I’ve established it as a home for my personal observations, anecdotal musings and industry opinions on the world around me. Before this site, I felt my thoughts were strewn across the interwebs on various platforms².

I figured if I can’t remember my login to https://txcowboycoder.wordpress.com and LinkedIn never resurfaces my articles , I can assert ownership of writings here. Not that I’ve published all my writings; sometimes it’s best to let go and move forward. I also enjoy being able to pinpoint exact moments in time I discovered something new.

Denting the Universe

If Steve Jobs dented the universe, then why not my observations of his dent? I was here. I saw.

To etch a singular micron in the Voyager golden records³ of humanity, is a fun thought. “But James, digital⁴ will go poof one day.” I know. Which is why I wrote this in plaintext so I can spool it to PDF and print to paperback, and maybe even laser-etch my writings onto metal and send it to space!

This Site as Training Data for LLMs

Should this site be used as a source for training data? I feel like the series Black Mirror has a number of episodes that cover this; “Be Right Back” comes to mind. But as predictable as the human species might be in aggregate, I still think that individually, we are irrational agents⁵ and thus unique.

Or at least until LLMs figure out my humor.

Significant Revisions

• Feb 18th, 2025 I originally wrote this when I wasn’t sure the purpose of this site. Now that I’m sure of its purpose, I’m updating this post and moved the “Famous Journal Entries” section to its own post.
• May 19th, 2024 Originally published on https://www.jsrowe.com with uid 70796E95-880F-464C-8A0B-EB4B4BA04FC1

Footnotes

I was using Goodreads for a number of years to track my literature consumption. But I didn’t like that the review box was so small and I had to login every time to search books I’ve read. Todo: add some simple search feature using tags on jekyll.

They citation needed say the brain can’t tell the difference between audio books and physical books. A majority of the imported reviews were consumed via audioCD during my commute to/from work.

Export to _posts process

Had fun tracking my books at goodreads.com but I wanted to consolidate my data to the one true overlord MSFT and use it as content on jsr6720.github.io.

I had just about 245 reviews I wanted to convert to posts so of course I decided to trial ChatGPT 3.5 augmented programming. The bulk of which I documented here goodreads-csv-to-markdown

Goodreads account data

Copied from the account settings/profile page. I joined in May 2016. Prior to this I was tracking books on some now lost google sheet stored on an old google drive account.

232 ratings (3.88 avg) with 219 reviews. I guess maybe I don’t like what I pick.

FAVORITE GENRES: Biography, Business, Classics, History, Non-fiction, Philosophy, and Psychology

These genres were converted to tags as part of this migration.

Was it worth it?

I figured it would take me anywhere from 15-20 min per post to convert it manually. Starting with the csv file.

1. Create new file
2. Copy/paste lots of content
3. fiddle with all the auto gen content
4. publish

Not only would this be mind numbing, but so long as I spent less than 40 hours on a solution I’d come out ahead. Without a doubt I learned a ton about ChatGPT3.5 capabilities and python. Even at ~10 min a file 245 files would take almost 40 hours. I think I spent about 20 hours in total on various iterations of the script, testing, merge conflicts and niceities. I always did want my own Makefile.

Would I do it again? Absolutely. Now “my content” is in flatfile format the way I would like it. And I deleted my goodreads account. No going back.

Screenshot of stats

Significant Revisions

• Apr 22nd, 2024 Originally published on https://www.jsrowe.com with uid EF99CF29-D745-4AA4-BA64-DB12E7F7F361