Studio Work and Book Club

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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.

From Book Club discussions to photo studio work

Events and activities that occurred on Wednesday, January 15, 2026

The Book Club gathered for the concluding discussion of Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary, ranging through questions of courage and cowardice in Ryland's choices. The conversation explored whether staying with his children demonstrated cowardice or practical wisdom, and how advanced civilizations should approach sharing knowledge with less developed ones. The group appreciated Weir's optimistic message that diverse people can work together for positive outcomes. Plans emerged for transitioning to Melanie Mitchell's Thinking Person's Guide to AI as the next selection, with Rajeev moderating and the meeting time shifting to evenings to accommodate schedules. A March matinee showing of the Hail Mary movie adaptation became part of the planning.

Technical work filled the morning with continued frustrations around Claude's capacity limitations and the challenge of optimizing token counts. The solution emerged through teaching Claude to delegate email summarization responsibilities to Gemini, which handles those tasks more effectively. By day's end, the automated email summarization workflow reached completion—tomorrow morning will reveal whether the delegation approach works as intended.

Small infrastructure improvements accumulated: power installation on the equipment rack, photo studio setup completion, framing a 13x19 print that might benefit from non-glare protective covering—an order went out to test that hypothesis. A Philomath Salon scheduled for January 25th. Jerry's call touched on attorney options and her Idaho license progress. Scott wasn't available for the scheduled meeting but confirmed availability next month.

From the shoot
Joey arrived about an hour late in the evening. The visit took us to Sada for sushi, then home for a photo shoot using the newly configured studio.

The hot tub provided transition space between the technical puzzles of the day and evening wind-down, letting the automation challenges settle into clearer perspective while the body unwound from desk work.

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