It’s the new year, and I’m sick. My parents-in-law have been visiting and either they or the toddler coming home from daycare brought a pretty bad strain of something. First the father-in-law had a cough and a fever. Then the toddler got a fever and was lethargic for days.
Then my wife got sick with the fever. Then, I got the fever and also the worst sore throat I’ve ever experienced. I couldn’t fall asleep because swallowing saliva felt like knives.
Thankfully that seems past now, although I still have an annoying cough.
A thing I’ve been experimenting with recently is to ask three different chatbots the same questions, treating them almost like a council of advisors. Right now the “council” consists of ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, all free tier. My wife likes DeepSeek, but three is already a lot to copy and paste to for every question.
Anyway, my experiences so far are that they are generally yes men who generally agree with and come up with justifications for just about any idea I have, with some obvious exceptions when the idea is just blatantly foolish.
Interestingly, while ChatGPT and Gemini tend to offer very similar advice, Claude sometimes breaks ranks and offers more skeptical, critical advice. That I actually found pretty interesting.
Also, Gemini sometimes comes up with unique ideas or solutions that the other two don’t mention, such as using the Sunshine and Moonlight streaming software to solve the issue of wanting to play PC games on the 4k projector in the basement by streaming them from my office machine.
I had originally been trying to figure out how to fix an old PC I have with an ancient i7-3770 CPU and a 2080 Ti GPU, and whether it made more sense to buy a new PC and put the 2080 Ti in it.
The chatbots, particularly Claude, were actually very useful for helping me troubleshoot these computer problems, letting me fix an Nvidia driver issue in Ubuntu that was preventing me from starting up the computer.
My main reasons for tinkering with PCs again was that I had gotten my wife Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 for Christmas, and was thinking she’d prefer playing it on the couch with the 4k projector rather than in my office on my main computer.
I also had aspirations to introduce her to D&D by way of Baldur’s Gate 3 split screen co-op, which also would be nice on the projector.
Also, if I could salvage the 2080 Ti, I’d be able to use it for ML experiments as well.
I spent a lot of time looking at store stock on the local computer store website and trying to discuss with my council what options made the most sense. Alas, I picked an awful time to look at PCs as RAM prices have skyrocketed due to AI demand.
I was too sick to go to the store, so I watched as the ones I was considering got sold out. In the end I decided this wasn’t worth throwing like $1000-$2000 CAD at given my use cases were so limited, and my wife seemed okay with just playing in my office.
Nevertheless, I wasted a ton of time researching options and being told the relative merits of each by my ever agreeable chatbot council.
The old PC still has some issues where I have to literally open up the case and unplug and plug back in some power connectors every time I wanted to boot it up. The power supply is over a decade old, and I’m not sure if the GPU itself is actually not damaged too. It might be a lost cause at this point.
My wife actually got me the Magic: The Gathering Bloomburrow Commander decks for Christmas. We’d played with the Bloomburrow starter preconstructed decks earlier when I first introduced her to the game. She liked how cute the Bloomburrow setting is. Imagine rabbit knights and otter wizards doing battle. It’s probably the cutest Magic set since maybe Lorwyn, possibly cuter.
Alas, it’s really hard to find time to play with my wife. Her job is plenty stressful and she works A LOT. More reason why the gaming on the projector idea needs to be as convenient as possible.
We used to play Stardew Valley on the projector via the Switch. But that was 1080p. Apparently, 4k is much nicer even with a game like that. Though, I can just hook up my laptop to the projector if I want something like that.
And streaming from my office computer to the projector through my laptop for a game like Expedition 33 does actually work and looks and sounds glorious. It’s just a hassle to set up and potentially laggy.
And, again, my wife barely has time to play anyway…
I’m really not sure where I’m going with this ramble. I’m still sick, so I’m typing this on my phone in bed instead of at my computer in my office and man, this is a slow way to write.
It seems like I’m very easily distracted with random rabbit holes or nerdsniped by whatever thing happens to capture my attention. Obsession and flow state. Strange.
Anyways, all this is to say not much is actually happening in my life right now.
I finally got winter tires after much prodding from my wife. I had driven over two decades on all-seasons, but now that I have a kid that I have to take to daycare through snowstorms, I shouldn’t risk it anymore. So far the difference has been noticeable.
I regret procrastinating on getting the flu shot. I haven’t been this sick in a long time…
At least we can look forward to the next season of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End this year. My wife suggested we watch the first season when it was still airing. As a former otaku, it impressed a lot. A strong recommend if you are at all into anime and/or high fantasy.
In other news, the toddler is adorable and learning words fast. He also is very silly. He invented the “no no song”, which is basically going “no no no no” to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.
He also likes to go turn light switches and fans on and off over and over, as well as go up and down the stairs, again, over and over, either climbing or by getting me or whoever to carry him. We have a basement and three floors, so this gets arduous.
He also likes me to read certain books over and over. We joke the characters are trapped in a time loop. Graham turns two… again!
He also sometimes says his own name a lot, which kinda reminded my wife of a Pokemon.
I’m still on the bed right now, listening to the joyful shouts of the toddler and the laughter of the grandparents from the third floor.
Anyways, time to put the toddler to bed. Life goes on.
