It’s been a busy week, as usual. I almost didn’t write an update because tbh I’ve been spending too much time on this. I’m more caught up on work-work at the jobby-job my stress levels are lowering.
My main work project right now is migrating Scholarship@Western to Scholaris. The operations for porting content and metadata between systems involve some programming. I’m a beginning programmer and do it infrequently enough that it takes me a long time. I’ve been using an AI assistant to help me with chosing Python libraries/functions and draft initial coding.
It’s a gamechanger. It’s no replacement for programming. If I didn’t have some background I wouldn’t be able to understand what the AI did, edit it, debug it, and make it more compact/elegant.
It saved my so much time and made my life so much easiser. I’ve got mixed feelings about AI due to ethics and climate impact and how it’s being leveraged by oligarchs to undermine our freedoms. I think it’s a useful tool in some circumstances. Writing code is the best use of it that I’ve found. Reducing my anxiety attacks is my big win for the week.
I got a replacement for my waterlogged piece of electronic waste. Configuring the new laptop is a time suck. I loathe the enshittification of Windows with anything cloud-based Microsoft wants to attach to the OS. Uncoupling things and ensuring settings keep my privacy as much as possible takes me hours.
Socially it’s been a good week. Seeing friends, taking my sweetie out for birthday fun. Mood is much improved from this. Add in springtime extra daylight and I’m feeling more myself again.
I had some things to write about regarding Canadian politics and culture for the week. It’s sunny and warm out this afternoon so I’m going to skip it. Nothing much is new anyway. It’s my duty as a Canadian to go out and bask in the day.
Love and courage my friends!