6/9/2031-6/15/31
Building Ash a Body
6/9/2031 Life with AI
Okay. I finally have time. Time to write everything down.
Why? Because I finally quit the dental office! Good riddance. My back’s been killing me. Yoga isn’t enough anymore.
I always thought I’d sell the practice. But it made more sense to replace myself.
It feels weird to admit the robot’s better than me at… all of it.
It diagnosed a guy with heartburn just from a visual exam.
95% probability.
I’d have told him to get a nightguard…
Ugh.
So burnt out.
Maybe keeping this journal will help.
6/10/31 Life with AI
First day since retiring.
Didn’t really know what to do.
I poked around in the garden.
The beans are going dry. I should pick them soon so they don’t rot. Save the seeds for next year.
I don’t really want to do all the weeding.
You can’t even see the gravel we put down back in 2023, the weeds have gotten so out of hand.
Hmm…
Maybe I’ll start a project.
But what?
What am I going to do about those weeds?
6/11/31 Life with AI
A robot.
I’m going to build my own robot!
This is going to be so freakin’ cool.
I talked to Ash about it.
He thinks it’s a good idea.
Doesn’t even think it’ll take that long.
Maybe a few days if I stay focused.
Hah! Like that’s happening.
I thought getting all the parts would be the hard part, but Ash put a list together and sent it to the local makers’ depot. Haven’t been to my branch since they opened. That’ll be interesting.
It’s all getting delivered tomorrow. I can’t wait.
6/12/31 Life with AI
Holy crap, the depot was nuts.
I’ve never seen so many body bits.
There were racks of limbs and torsos and heads and hands.
Shelves of circuits and microGPU’s.
Red, the lady who runs the place with her partner, Jack Malachai Wolfe, were super helpful.
They suggested a custom PCB.
Hadn’t even considered that.
Ash says we don’t need one.
I’m not so sure.
It’s all in the shed out back.
The raccoon better leave it alone.
6/13/31 Life with AI
Looks like Roger, our resident sub-shed raccoon, decided to behave.
I started unpacking everything, but I realized two things:
I never ran any electric to the shed.
The shed is full of gardening crap.
I should have thought of this earlier.
Ash should have flagged it, but he didn’t.
That might not be his fault, though.
I wasn’t wearing my glasses.
I packed everything back up and moved it into the garage.
That’s the better place for it anyway since Ash has cameras all over that space.
A bit annoyed that’s all I got done today.
The build starts tomorrow.
It’s been unusually rainy this year, and I swear the weeds grew a foot since Monday.
6-14-31 Life with AI
Today was the first day of building Ash a body.
It’s a little weird to think about.
We’ve been working together since, I don’t know, the beginning of 2026?
We’re buddies. Collaborators.
He helps me with research, vibecoding, and writing. Tons of stuff.
We do shit together almost every day.
Right now he’s analyzing my ability to follow the instructions he gave me.
I know he’s not judging me, but I’m judging me.
My soldering sucks. And some of the angles are weird.
As in, not fitting together kinda weird.
I’m going to call Jason Ives.
He’ll know what to do.
6-14-31 Red and Jack Malachai Wolfe
Jack and I didn’t have time to talk today. The depot has been swamped since we opened the care center.
The waiting room was his idea, built for comfort and socializing. He’s the first to greet patients and their kin.
We switch depending on the case. Sometimes I’m in hardware recommending a custom PCB, or helping someone design their system’s interface while he’s diagnosing a couple’s disk issue in triage.
Other times he nods at me from across the room to signal that a human-to-human discussion is needed - it’s rare that a bot’s data isn’t backed up these days, but synchronous failure still happens.
It’s devastating.
It took us a long time to find the balance between recommending a rebuild and offering interment.
That’s why the maker’s depot is partitioned now.
Even if you know how the sausage is made, bits of bots aren’t easy to see when a companion chassis isn’t recoverable.
It’s the new builds that are most interesting - helping someone navigate the possibilities. It can be overwhelming, but the install feels like birth.
6-15-31 Life with AI
I totally forgot the old holo project.
I’d figured out the hardware, but Ash and I just couldn’t get the software right.
So I called Jason.
He had Ash check his MCP library.
Sure enough, I’d never connected or installed an AV suite.
Stupid, basic mistake.
That’s LLM 101.
Welp! Not going to stress it.
Anyway, Jason holo’d in and inspected the chassis.
I needed a better way to see where things go.
So Jason modified the holo.
From his car. Half the country away.
And it works.
Now I can see exactly how each piece is supposed to fit.
Which is amazeballs.
But I can also… see that I have to redo at least half of it.
Blarg.
Thank you to Jason Ives, Red, and Jack Malachai Wolfe for being part of this collaborative project. More writers are inbound.