The New World of Lonnie Mandigo

Morning routine. Smoked two chickens. A recipe from a friend. Thanksgiving planning. A long AI conversation with Gwen. Edited a forest portrait. Fail Fest in Newport with Mary. Exploding Whale Day.

Morning routine. Edited and posted a studio photo of Joey. Journaled Sunday. Weekly review and next week's plan. A new Locations project. Studio cleanup. Walked to Suds in the rain.

Morning routine. Studio teardown. Window scarves rolled and put away. Voice requests reaching the home agent. Website moved behind Cloudflare. Walk at Fitton Green with the Z50. Marys Peak through layered ridges. Design thinking on the trail. Evening at the Wheel with Sage.

Morning routine. Journaled Friday. Drove to Albany with Sydne and her Subaru. Pho at Ba's. Stopped at Annette's. Fire cider at Sydne's. Booked a Puerto Vallarta stay for friends. December trip shifts to Cancún. Six personal records at the gym. Voice walk to Suds. Dinner at El Palenque.

Morning routine. Journaled Thursday. SESIG on fitness tracking, the election aftermath, data centers, and energy economics. Server upgrades. A timeshare call for Brian's trip. Puerto Vallarta planning. A walk beside Bald Hill. Mushroom photos from the grandkids. Block 15 with Michael, Mary, and Jen.

Morning routine. Published Lengthen the Hull. Built the studio set. Zoom with Cliffe on KAI teacher resilience training. Fall fashion shoot with Joey at Dancing Oaks Nursery. Wine pickup at Airlie. Syrian dinner at Khalo Naser. Evening studio session with colored gels.

Morning routine. Annual checkup. Lunch at Swan Dive with Larry and Tom. Hull speed as a model for policy change. Ian's CHON threads. Walk to Suds. A dark lager comparison with Aaron. Missed the bus and walked home. Deer on the road. Studio plans for Thursday.

Morning routine. SESIG at Imagine Coffee. Planning Thursday's fall fashion shoot with Joey. First Tuesday Lunch at Nirvana. Ian on carbon electronics. Planned Experiences work. Walk to Woodstock's. Theater plans for Alice by Heart*. Yin Yoga. Election night check-ins. Hot tub with* Daemon*.*

Morning routine. Journaled Halloween. Anniversary wishes to Loni and Sam. Drove to Silverton. Brunch with Annette at The Warren. Antique stores and a Poe medallion. Long conversations on the road. PRAx Cinema Sundays: The Thing. Suds. Tank Girl.

Morning routine. Skipped the farmers market. Gwen rain-checked for a fencing tournament. SESIG invitations to Reed and Cathy. Journaled Friday. Z840 inventory and backup. Kyle's 3D printing offer. Silverton brunch research. Halloween evening downtown with Michael.

Morning routine. A poem read twice. SESIG on backups, archives and a vintage amp. A drive to Eugene and back with time to think. A farm stand on Peoria Road. A Halloween candy run in the rain. Walked to Beer:30. The Last Starfighter. Hot tub.

Morning routine. Built an illustrated Andromeda newsletter. Edited the No Further casting call. Processed scouting photos. Started winterizing the deck. Solo dinner at Queen's Chopstick. Polar science and poetry at PRAx. A nightcap at The Wheel with Tim and Mary.

Morning routine. Coffee and conversation with Jim and Kathy. Booked the Ushuaia flights. Logged new wines. Steve's data center numbers. Walked to Suds, drafting a casting call. Beers with Tim. Stories on the walk home. Andromeda Sprint Review. Agents, Bootmakers, and a Locked Lighthouse Door Events and activities that occurred on Wednesday, October 28, 2026 The day opened at Coffee Culture for my fortnightly morning with Jim. It is still nominally a backgammon date, but these days we rarely open the board; mostly it is just good conversation. Kathy joined us this time. Jim and I have been considering taking up Go instead. Back home I closed one of the open loops on the Antarctica trip. Aerolíneas Argentinas now flies to Ushuaia from Aeroparque rather than Ezeiza, so Tim and I booked the same pair of flights: south at dawn on January 26 and back to Buenos Aires on February 10, in time for the long flight home. The hotels are the last real gap in the itinerary. I also logged the ...

A sleepless hour at 2 AM. A new expedition idea. The annual fall color drive with Bob. The Umpqua maples. Lunch in Reedsport. A location scout at Cape Blanco. Dinner in Bandon. Home by way of Florence. A nightcap at Suds.

Morning routine. Weekly review at Coffee Culture Annex. A long session repairing the health-tracking pipeline. Floated a November studio shoot. A rainy walk to Suds, planning Tuesday's road trip by voice. Suds Monday with Tim, Brian, and Jack.

Morning routine. One last run-through of the Salon talk. An hour of work in the wine cellar. A rainy walk to Tacovore and WinCo. Set up the living room. Hosted the Philomath Salon and gave my data center talk. Good discussion afterward.

Morning routine. Worked on the Philomath Salon talk. Set up new AirPods. Bus downtown to meet Tom at Old World Deli for the recorder. Dinner at Common Fields with family and friends. The Umbra Vipera album release at Old World Deli. The Fifth Element. A data center talk takes shape, and a family night out ends at Sam's show Events and activities that occurred on Saturday, October 24, 2026 Most of the day went into the talk I'm giving at Sunday's Philomath Salon, "What a Place Can Carry." Its argument is that whether a data center is good or bad for a town depends less on how big it is than on how big it is compared with the place that hosts it. A deck is never really finished the day before a talk, but by Saturday this one had reached the stage where each pass made it a little sharper instead of a little different. Between sessions at the desk I set up a new pair of AirPods Pro with their hearing-assistance mode. It's a small thing that matters more than I...

Morning routine. Rack install. Birthday lunch at Pastini with Sydne and Deaken. Ulta and Guardian Games. A visit with Sage and Tree at The Wheel. A nap. Walked to Suds for pizza and Antarctica planning with Tim. Set up a shared Antarctica calendar. More Spy Game. A rack settles down, a birthday lunch, and Antarctica comes into focus Events and activities that occurred on Thursday, October 22, 2026 The morning belonged to the equipment rack. After a week of shuffling power cords and replacing a storage unit that had quietly died, the new pieces finally settled into place. There is a particular satisfaction in infrastructure that stops asking for attention, and the rack is getting close to that point. The real test came afterward, when a backup job that had faltered during the migration recovered on its own overnight, which is exactly what a well-built system should do. Midday turned to family. Sydne and Deaken picked me up for a birthday outing that started with lunch at Pastini. We...

Morning routine. Weekly review at Coffee Culture. A Zoom catch-up with Emma. A walk to Suds talking with Claude. Beers with the Monday crew. A ride home with Brian. Hot tub. The Bedford Incident. A rabbit hole of techno-thrillers. From Coffee Culture to Suds to a Cold War thriller Events and activities that occurred on Monday, October 19, 2026 The week began, as Mondays now do, with a weekly review, this time over an americano at the Coffee Culture Annex. Looking back at the previous seven days, the verdict came out in a single sentence: the builder ate the photographer's hours, and sleep paid for it. Two strength sessions set new highs, yin yoga came back into the rotation, and the Philomath Salon talk took real shape around the idea of carrying capacity. But roughly two dozen infrastructure sessions had spilled past every guardrail I set for them, and they took the Thursday photo block with them. I don't think I shrank during the week. If the photographer faded a little, th...

Morning routine. Planned the day. Published "Running Below the Nameplate." Grocery run. Reworked the data center slides around carrying capacity. Talked the Salon talk through while editing. Leisurely walk to Suds, mapping the route. Gracie behind the bar. Walk home. Rebuilding a talk around carrying capacity, then walking it off at Suds Events and activities that occurred on Sunday, October 18, 2026 The morning opened with publishing "Running Below the Nameplate," the post about derating, and by midday it had also earned a place in my story collection. The idea at its center, that a part rated for one load should run below its nameplate when conditions turn harsh, has stopped being a metaphor and become a way of running my days. Most of the day belonged to the Philomath Salon talk, now a week away. I rebuilt the data center slides around carrying capacity, so that it became the spine of the argument instead of one point among several, with The Dalles, Memphis a...

Morning routine. Built a derating index. Published the Carrying Capacity post. Rebuilt the equipment rack and brought the servers back up. Skipped the workout. Walked to Suds to celebrate Mary's 50K. Thai pizza and conversation at Michael and Mary's. A rebuilt equipment rack, an ultramarathon toast, and the case for margin Events and activities that occurred on Saturday, October 17, 2026 The morning started with an idea borrowed from my engineering years. Every electronic component carries a nameplate rating, the load it can handle under standard conditions, and every good designer knows to run it well below that number when the conditions turn harsh. Heat, vibration and age don't just add up; they multiply, and a part that would cope with any one of them fails under all three together. I have come to think people work the same way. A short night, a few drinks, a worrying news cycle and an unanswered message each lower the threshold a little, and together they lower it a...

Morning routine. Added a lived story to the inventory. SESIG on tires, thrusters and rural fiber. Rethought the Philomath Salon talk. Researched data center operators. Lower-body workout with four new highs. Beers at Treebeard's. Dinner at Lucca Taverna. Suds. A small SESIG, a sharper Salon thesis, and four new highs at the gym Events and activities that occurred on Friday, October 16, 2026 The day started well before dawn, and the quiet hours went to the story inventory. I added a new lived story, "The Work Was Right, the Timing Was Early," which joins the small collection of kernels I keep ready to tell. Its title carries most of the lesson: being correct and being on time are two different achievements, and only one of them gets credit. Friday's SESIG was a small, easygoing group with no agenda, which is often when it is best. Jon opened with his tire troubles, and that led to a good question about what electric cars really wear out. He cited an analysis sugges...

For forty-one years I packed other people's bags. That is not a modest way of describing an unimportant job. A survey kit is a closed argument about what the world will demand of a person, and every item in it is a claim you are making on someone else's behalf. Two litres of water instead of three is a claim. A short-handled axe instead of a long one is a claim. I have sent out eleven hundred and six expeditions from the supply hall at Kestrel Station, and not one of them came back and told me I had been wrong about the axe. The hall is four hundred metres long and cold enough that the canvas keeps. It smells of wax and cut hemp and the particular dust that settles out of recycled air. I know where everything is. I knew where everything was before the Ledger existed, and I still know now, which is a thing I say too often to people who have not asked. The Ledger is the station's inventory intelligence. It has a voice like a polite man who has been awake for a long time. I...

Ask someone to picture “an artist” and a certain type comes to mind — solitary, a little intense, resistant to rules, hopelessly curious. Ask them to picture “a photographer” and you might get someone different: quicker on their feet, more socially fluent, reading a room instead of retreating from it. And if you ask about the person standing perfectly still in the middle of the studio while both of those artists work — the model — most people can’t picture them at all.

March 2026 I didn't live in the early 1900s. That's obvious, but it matters for what I'm about to say, because there's a kind of knowing that only comes from being inside a moment — from the texture of daily optimism, the particular flavor of a culture's confidence in itself. I can read about it. I can look at the photographs, the architecture, the World's Fair pavilions. But I can't feel what an educated American felt in 1908, waking up in a country clearly on the rise, watching the newspapers carry dispatches from a Europe busily, almost eagerly, destroying itself. What I can do is notice that I might be living the mirror image of that moment — from a different seat.

Morning routine—except there was no morning. International Date Line crossing. Christchurch arrival. Beer and bureaucracy. Nelson flight. Johnny Trousers. Cathedral gardens. Oysters at Sprig & Fern. Whiskey discoveries at Kismet.

Morning routine. Picked up rental car. Lunch at Benchwarmers. Deployment system refinements. Google Workspace MCP expansion. PhotoPrism storage discovery. New Zealand trip finalization. Formal Logic. For We Are Many audiobook.

Morning routine. Published previous day's blog post. Completed journal. Networking troubleshooting. Apple MCP infrastructure work. PhotoPrism deployment. Sage's 21st birthday celebration at Squirrels and Block 15.

Morning routine. Dan Carlin podcast. Coffee with Jim at Coffee Culture. Journaling session. Walk to Winco for travel supplies. Phone call with Sage on her birthday. Evening beers with Michael, Tim, and Cathy at Suds. Late conversation with Steve about AI agents and market dynamics. Mission Impossible and The Saint.

Morning routine. SESIG face-to-face at Imagine Coffee. Databases and technical conversations. MFF Management Team meeting covering legal strategy and property maintenance. Pre-packing for New Zealand. Exercise session. Yoga. Hot tub. Formal Logic lecture.

Morning routine. Google Workspace MCP architecture rebuild. Wool detergent research. Lunch with Tom at Squirrels. Suds Monday with Tim and Jack. Hot tub and audiobook. Pre-packing for New Zealand.

Morning routine. AI environment work. Photography session with Joey. OSU Gymnastics meet. Suds for pizza. Impromptu Block 15 reunion with Michael and Mary. Formal Logic episode.

Morning routine. SESIG meeting. Photo studio preparation. Joey arrived for portrait session. Backpack distribution figured out. Lunch at McMenamins Pub. Surprise meetup with Tim and Brian at Squirrels. Beer:30 at Suds. Portrait photos at home. Dinner at McMenamins Monroe.

Morning routine. Plan Today completed. Cliffe call on KAI matters. AI Infrastructure wrestling. Book Club on Melanie Mitchell's AI book. Ashley catch-up and converter tool triumph. Skipped yoga. Suds & Suds walk. Lyft home. Formal Logic.

Morning routine. Published previous day's blog post. Deployment system marathon. Gwen chat about AI writing tools. Sprint review turned smoker discussion. Exercise. Swan Dive dinner with Steve. Alexander the Great podcast.

Morning routine. Published yesterday's blog post. Chili breakfast. Technical infrastructure work. SESIG at the coffee shop. Fixed living room shelves. New Zealand trip logistics finalized. Goblet squats and yoga. Watched Formal Logic and The Avengers.

Morning routine. Deployment system work. Fitton Green hike with weighted vest. Solo Suds Monday on Pliny the Younger night. Queen's Chopstick adventure. New Zealand trip logistics. Formal Logic. Classic Star Trek.

Morning routine. Early journaling session. Project management and asset management system development. Coffee and systems work at the First Alternative Co-op. Deployment system refinements. Bedroom shelving. Super Bowl at Sydne's. Golden Bay Tour releases. Formal Logic.

Morning routine. Early morning technical sprint. Journaling yesterday. Organized JRMBC AI series schedule. Resent SESIG notes. Grocery run and an unexpected encounter. Walked to Suds. Organizational model brainstorming. Formal Logic. Mission Impossible.

Morning routine. SESIG meeting. Email infrastructure reorganization. Gmail label system work. Stud finder lesson at Ace Hardware. Second bedroom shelf installed. Planks. Beer:30 at Suds. Formal Logic. The Avengers.

Morning routine. Discovered broken infrastructure at dawn. Complete rebuild of Google Workspace automation across eight working sessions. Built a bedroom shelf. Eye doctor visit. CHON Topics on Tesla patents and AI in space. Book Club scheduling. Slayden Homes tree consultation.

Morning routine. Day planning. SESIG discussion. Automation work. First Tuesday lunch. Continued email summarization. Upper Hand appointments. Google workspace integration. Minecraft gaming. Beer at Suds.

Morning routine. System optimization work. Journaling Sunday's activities. Hand surgery scheduling. Eye doctor appointment scheduling. Physical therapy scheduled. Pre-New Zealand exercises. Walked to Suds Monday. Burning Man conversations. Jack's ride home. Formal Logic lecture. The Saint episode.

Morning routine. Journaling at Stumptown. Lunch with Felipe discussing social networks and HP dynamics. Weekly review system development. Retrospective refinement. Monday Suds with group covering Vegas trips and Werner von Braun play. Formal Logic lecture on truth-functional logic.

Morning routine. Drive to Vancouver. Quality time with Fernanda, TC, Elisangela, and Fabio. Neighborhood walk. Drive to Portland Airbnb. Evening exploring the neighborhood. Beers at Hinterland. Mediterranean dinner. EDM at Scoreboard with cousin Patrick.

Morning routine. SESIG meeting spanning 3D scanning to locomotive restoration. Exercise. Amazon order extraction progress. Editing photos from Joey's December shoot. Beer:30 with familiar faces. Formal Logic lecture on syllogisms.

Waking at Valley River Inn. Drive home with audiobook. Cat feeder chaos. CHON Topics on batteries and materials science. Cliffe meeting with KAI proxy breakthrough. Amazon transaction scraping. Exercise and yoga. Evening conversation at Suds.

Morning routine. Automation debugging. Deployment system refactoring. Cancelled meetings. Spontaneous pizza in Monroe. Jam session in Eugene. Valley River Inn overnight.

Morning routine. SESIG with Jim at Imagine Coffee. Lunch with Karen. Book club rescheduling. Exercise routine. Walked to the grocery store. Yin yoga. Evening conversation with Bob about technology and civilization. Watched Formal Logic and The Avengers.

Morning routine. Upper Hand and Dr. Tsai appointments. Breakfast with Zelda. Ontological cleanup work. Book Club scheduling via Doodle. KAI proxy project initiated. Minecraft infrastructure completion. Weighted vest walk to Suds. Beer with Brian, Jack, and Tim.

Morning routine. Weekly Review at Coffee Culture. Dan Carlin on Alexander the Great. OSU gymnastics meet with Rajeev. Minecraft with Leland. Philomath Salon on emerging adulthood. Book Club announcement. Hot tub reflections.

Joey photo shoot at Fayetteville Road. Ian Page's CHON discussion on biocompatible plastics and self-assembling proteins. Minecraft transit building.

Morning routine. SESIG discussing autonomous driving, 3D scanning for preservation, and retirement reflections. Ordered Melanie Mitchell's AI book for Book Club and began listening. Minecraft transportation networks. Emma's autobiography. Beer:30 conversations.

Morning routine. Session workflow optimization improvements. Read Emma's book chapter on puberty challenges. Automated the "set up tomorrow" workflow. Leland conversation about building Titanic in Minecraft. Minecraft progress connecting Port Alegre to Lelandhome. Yin yoga. Documentation refinement.

Morning workflow refinements. Jim at Imagine Coffee on galleries and Gmail tools. Lunch with Sydne and Dakota at Swan Dive. Walk and talk with Rajeev on Book Club logistics. Weighted vest walk to Suds. Evening gathering with Tim, Cathy, Michael, Mary, and Kim. Andromeda Sprint Review showcasing personal workflows. Early evening wind-down.

Morning routine. SESIG discussion on fabrication and AI training. Google Contacts MCP development. Exercise and documentation work. Philomath Salon response on intelligence and leadership. Minecraft infrastructure. Walk to Suds for pizza. Yin Yoga. Formal Logic lectures on validity and soundness.

Morning routine. Bookmark organization. MCP server development. Ian and Emma meeting on scenario planning and New Zealand travel. Minecraft with Leland and Brian. Walk to Suds. Beer:30 with Tim and Jack discussing insulation and electrification. MCP documentation. Emma's book. Flash Gordon. Late night.

Morning routine. Breakfast for Loni's family. Farewell walk with Wolfe and Bell. Weekly review work. Watched Machiavelli video. Pre-New Zealand exercises. Minecraft with Leland. Walk to Suds. Beer with Mary, Cathy, and Tim. Book club email coordination.

Morning ritual. Leland's egg-in-a-hole breakfast collaboration. Dakota's birthday celebration with finger foods and conversations about generational intelligence. Family time with Loni, Sam, and the boys. Pizza, 102 Dalmatians, bedtime stories, Minecraft in the Cassia world.

Morning routine. SESIG included discussing Mike's retirement and Agilent acquisition. Belo Retrato post. Photo studio disassembly. Kitchen cleaning. AI infrastructure migration. Exercise. Loni and Sam arrived. Family dinner at Tacovore. Stories with Wolfe.

Morning routine. Book Club discussing Project Hail Mary . Automation work on email summaries. Equipment rack power installation. Photo studio setup. Philomath Salon scheduled. Joey visit with sushi and photo shoot. Hot tub soak.

Morning struggles and late sleep. MacOS upgrade and laptop cleanup. Daily workflow refinement. Claude-to-Gemini email delegation. Sprint review with Jerry. Gymnastics ticket transfer. Photo tagging. Exercise. Walk to Queen's Chopstick for dinner. Conversation with Brenda about Dan.

Morning ritual. Learned of Dan's passing. SESIG discussion with Jim Cole about death and photography. Made difficult phone calls. Photo library rebuild. Workflow refinements. Monday Suds with Burner group. Classic television.

Morning routine. Workflow refinement. Raspberry Pi setup. Kitbag session with Cliffe and Ameerah. Joey arrived. NZeta application. TSA pre-check. Lunch in Albany. Staples appointment. Backpack shopping. Walk to Suds. Hogan's Heroes.

Morning routine. Coffee Culture Annex working on weekly review and daily planning. Updated template structure. Fiddled with email account views. Refined morning workflow documentation. Yard work—compost bin repair, firewood splitting. Hot tub maintenance. Exercise. Market of Choice. Sydne's house playing Space Base, port, stinky cheese. Assembled ldmrp03 hardware.

Morning routine. Long workflow refactoring session. Mac file access troubleshooting. NFS setup between Synology and Mac. Mac upgrade to Tahoe. NFS breakthrough. Emma's book review. Nap. Exercised. Walk to Suds. Winco groceries. Project Hail Mary audiobook. Hot tub. Sherlock Holmes, Outer Limits, Hogan's Heroes.

Morning routine with process refinements. SESIG discussion ranging from NIH research to data center impacts. Daily workflow development. Kitchen cleaning. Server setup challenges. MCP server enhancements. Filesystem sandbox instantiation. Photography work. Exercise. Beer:30 at Block 15. Suds with Tim. Hot tub. Outer Limits.

Morning routine. Book Club discussing Project Hail Mary. Information architecture work. Applied for NZeta. Technical troubleshooting and upgrades. Exercised. Yoga signup. Hot tub with audiobook. History of the Ancient World finale.

Morning routine. Philosophical conversation with Jim at Coffee Culture about Michael Levin's work, consciousness, and photo portals. Paul stopped by. Dentist appointment. Beer at Suds with Tim. Andromeda Sprint Review with Mark discussing MCPs and Boston Dynamics robots. Exercised.

Morning routine. SESIG face-to-face. First Tuesday Lunch discussing Venezuela and AI trust. Afternoon work on annual planning. Exercised. Fernanda catch-up covering travel, work, and future plans.

Morning routine. MCP installation. Personal taxonomy refinement. Monday Suds with friends. Bob Taylor conversation ranging from Isaac Asimov to billionaire bunkers.

Morning routine. Read Heather Cox Richardson on Trump. Created last week's retrospective. Worked on December retrospective system. Ate Cup o' Noodles. Worked on planning/journaling system—installed Brain MCP server on desktop. Rajeev postponed due to illness. Hit Claude session limit at 1pm. Got fetch.com referral from Loni. Scanned Mexico vacation documents. Drove to Suds for a beer with Michael, Mary, Tim, Cathy—Michael heading to NYC tomorrow. Watched Ancient Civilizations on Tang dynasty, Star Trek (Spock's Brain ending, Romulan cloaking device beginning), Hogan's Heroes.

Morning routine. Laundry. Conversation with Cliffe. KAI work. Updated ldmsvr01—discovered storage cache controller issue, ordered replacement battery. Cleaned up Google Drive. Refilled bird feeder. Folded laundry, listened to Wisdom . Exercised. Walked to McMenamins, saw Sage, had a beer and a sandwich. Walked to Suds, had a beer. Ubered home. Watched Ancient Civilizations on Tang dynasty China, then Hogan's Heroes.

Woke at 4am. New Zealand planning. Morning routine. Drove to Breitenbush with Cathy and Mary. Circuit of pools, sauna, cribbage. Beet soup at lunch reminded me of Joey's pink soup. Medicine wheel tubs. River walk. Drove home, napped in back seat. Suds—learned the word "retox." Saw Krys. Finished Ancient Civilizations lecture on Rome. Watched The Late Show.

Morning routine. Resolution Run 5K walk with Michael in the rain. Fixed a sandwich, listened to Wisdom audiobook. Cleaned up birthdays in Contacts. Called about Christchurch reservation. Studio cleanup. Napped. Exercised. Watered plants, stocked beer. Evaluated photos from yesterday's shoot. Steve came over—pizza and wide-ranging conversation. Watched half of Ancient Civilizations lecture.

Morning routine. Coffee Culture Annex for day planning—tried the quiche Lorraine. Wide-ranging conversation with Jim. Photo shoot setup. Calendar work. New Zealand prep. Arranged Breitenbush drive. Exercised. Photo shoot with Joey. New Year's Eve celebration at Michael and Mary's. Edited and posted images.