This is a running log for the Bilson family, written mostly by the ship’s captain (me). It’s in Facebook-style order to share with those who care what we’re up to these days.
Below are logs from the past six months. See the archive at the bottom of the page to view any log.
In the past week I’ve had the joy of reading the Bible with three people!
First, last Saturday, Mark and I read the first half of Genesis 9. We had a fulfilling conversation about how much God loves humans and wants them to multiply. We reflected how our hearts expand to love all the children we have, and how more children means more love!
Second, during the week Courtney and I read the end of Proverbs, about the rare and treasured woman. We considered what such a treasure might be found, and I was humbled to consider how industrious and full of foresight is my own treasured soulmate.
Third, Amie and I reflected on the calling of Andrew and Peter at the end of the first chapter of John. It was a joyful and emotional experiment to envision myself in the story; hearing John’s message, going after Jesus, his turning and asking “what are you looking for?” Then going to be with him where he’s staying, but running off first to get my brother. I’ve written a song about it actually; perhaps I’ll share it here when I’ve finished.
Unless I can’t get an enrollment exemption, it’s looking likely that I’ll begin a DMM PhD program this Fall! I’m going to take a couple self-paced courses to gear up before I begin; I’m so excited!
I’ve heard from Dr. Blair about PhD next steps! He found Dr. Hutchcraft and learned what he needed about my MBA program. While I’ll need an exception to start a PhD program (no surprise), I can move to the next step: discovering if I can find a sponsor with Ephesiology. I’m stoked that the road continues!
We signed Graham for violin practice this year. He’s expected to practice for at least six minutes five nights a week. Most of those nights we endure an half-hour or more of anger and tears before we can even consider practicing. It breaks Amie’s heart, but she wisely gives Graham and I space to suffer through the feelings.
For example, tonight Graham went straight to anger. He said that he hated the violin, that he wished he’d never been signed up, and later that he hated me too. He didn’t want to hear my encouragement or suggestions about where to begin his practice. Then he wailed for twenty minutes so pitifully that Amie couldn’t resist and came down to see if she could help. Graham ran away to his room to be alone, shouting all the way that he was never going to practice again.
Amie and I bolstered our resolve by talking through Graham’s perspectives and how we’re helping him to persevere. We noted that we’re not forcing him to play the violin and that this is about persevering through difficult emotions, like despair that he’s not perfect as he wants to be and fear about performing in front of his peers.
Graham came back to practice after the four of us played soccer and Amie went to work. He tackled the song with zero hard feelings and beamed with pride that he was getting it, even spending extra time to play it through a few more times and to talk about learning the Star Wars theme song I’d written down for him.
Tomorrow we’ll go through the same thing again. And again and again and again, because this is what it means to persevere in a hard thing. And if Graham is learning to persevere, truthfully I’m learning just as much about perseverance along the way. There’s so much I can learn from Graham in expressing all the pent up fears and disappointments, then getting down to the work anyways.
I’ve been exploring what it will take to start a PhD since last Fall. Since reading Umberto Ecco’s How to Write a Thesis over five years ago, I’ve kept in the back of my mind a curiosity. In what subject would I want to add a brick to the tower of human understanding? It needs to be a subject I can research exhaustively for six plus years without giving up or losing interest.
The subject which has engulfed more of my mental and emotional energy than any other these past thirteen years has been the shape and movement of the Church in the United States. I’ve written some of my thoughts in a kingdom manifesto, and have spent hundreds of hours facilitating DBS studies in a variety of contexts. I would happily invest hundreds more in research, debate and practice. I would prefer to do so in the framework of a PhD program, if I can get my foot in the door.
The boys and I had President’s Day off together. We decided to take a road trip to Devil’s Tower National Monument. The trip was smooth, and it was the most perfect weather, and I’m grateful we were able to do something beyond the ordinary together.
Amie turned me on to the Warriors album. I’ve never watched the movie; just learning the story through Lin-Manuel Miranda, Eisa Davis, Ms. Lauryn Hill and others’ eyes has been richly rewarding.
There are so many memorable moments, but one I’ve been appreciating is the reaction by the Riffs after their leader, Cyrus, is shot in the song Still Breathin’.
“What do you do when they kill everything you believe in, but you’re still breathin’?”
The pain and confusion is visceral, just as it must have been with the early disciples after their leader, Jesus, was put to death by their religious leaders.
Our next Wii game, LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga, came in yesterday. The boys were so excited. They had no idea you could do more than play Wii Sports.
I’ve been so proud of Graham for persisting in his violin practice. Whether he continues after this year or not, he’s exercising the right internal locus muscles. Practicing even when it’s boring, or when mastery feels unattainable, or when you’re not ready to perform before your peers and the test is tomorrow: all of these are bring up strong emotions that he’s experiencing, processing, and moving through. Well done buddy!
I’ve been in Chicago this week at the Performance Trust Fall event. The IT department has been running a hackathon. My contribution on the team was developing a trial MCP server to integrate database access into potential LLM agents. It’s pretty cool when it works.
I’ve also discovered that Anthropic, the makers of Claude, have defined a bunch of MCP servers which can be run on one’s computer to grant access to local files for the LLM. When I’m back on my own machine, I’d like to see if I could get it to consume the original Markdown files that comprise this site.
My reading for this Chicago trip has been Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of our Discontents. Not only ought the subject matter be required reading for any American or American-to-be; her writing is exceptional. She addresses some of the most horrific elements of American history with candor while developing empathy for both ends of the caste system. It’s taken me a few months to start reading this book because of anticipated grief, anger and despair. Yet Wilkerson has crafted a work so great that it pulls no punches yet doesn’t leave one in a puddle on the floor.
LLM chats are replacing my web search usage. When I’m solving a software problem a succinct chat response, complete with an example custom to my situation, is exactly what I used to look for in my search queue. When I’m looking for general information, my browser (Arc) will search 10+ sites and aggregate the answers. That’s how I discovered tickets to The Sound of Music two nights ago, by searching for things to do in Chicago today.
Quality information is a baseline necessity for an LLM to consume, but all that grows from that baseline - summaries, comparisons, compilations, syntheses - can be so quickly and thoroughly accomplished by an LLM that it’s hardly useful anymore. Developers of a public API need to produce accurate documentation, but now an LLM can generate the examples on-the-fly. Theatre events need to be published, but it’s not useful for a human to compile date night ideas.
For my own website, the most valuable content is that which offers a definition or sample of an idea. What I personally benefit from is not those building blocks but the ways that insights spark from synthesis. Ironically, that makes my site’s content mostly useful as a bare repository, with tools on top that bring out its value. I wonder if there’s a way to go backwards; to figure out what building blocks are missing from a more robust final result?
Graham is loving school. So much he can’t sleep at night because he’s so excited to be at school again the next day. He’s making new friends, is over-the-moon about his new writing journal, and has begun violin lessons.
Royal’s confidence at school has been growing. Like Graham before him, his 5 1/2 year old year switched something in his brain. Whereas last year he didn’t care to do lessons, now he’s excited about progressing through the red boxes so he can start on the yellow. He’s also making new friends and getting into less trouble.
Graham caught an enormous rainbow trout fishing off the bridge at Paktola reservoir yesterday morning. It was beyond his fishing pole’s ability to reel in, but we drew the fish over to the bank and I was able to get it into our bucket from there. Graham and Royal are both definitively catch-and-release, so we returned it right after the photo.
