From Broken to Building

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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.

When debugging becomes redesign and travel prep begins in earnest

Events and activities that occurred on Monday, February 16, 2026

The day began early with a focused dive into rebuilding the Google Workspace MCP architecture from essentially scratch. What started as debugging session transformed into a comprehensive seven-session marathon, taking the system from a broken state to 64 functional tools across four MCP servers. The breakthrough came from discovering a critical limitation in the MCP SDK—only one decorator allowed per server—which had been causing Calendar tools to silently overwrite each other. Implementing a unified dispatcher pattern, modeled after the working Gmail implementation, finally brought everything online.

Random mushroom picture
Between technical sessions, domestic rhythms continued. Laundry processing prompted research into wool detergents, leading to an Amazon order for The Laundress wool products. Eggs boiled, becoming egg salad on toast for a late breakfast. The morning's podcast accompaniment during the shower was a Sunrise Life conversation with the model Aim—background audio while preparing for the day.

Lunch at Squirrels with Tom brought updates on his work with a rare plant preservation organization and news about Donna's ongoing eye issues with a difficult surgeon. The conversation touched on Nick as well, weaving personal updates through the meal.

The afternoon shifted to Suds Monday, driving over to meet Tim and Jack for the weekly gathering. The social rhythm provided counterbalance to the day's technical intensity. Back home afterward, the wrestling match with the Workspace MCP continued—each small victory building toward the larger goal.

A different kind of preparation occupied the evening: New Zealand trip planning moved into concrete logistics. With departure now six days away, the session focused on medication packing—calculating 21 days of supplies (19 travel plus a two-day buffer), working through the pill box system with one active seven-day box and a refill box holding 14 doses of each medication.

The day's final technical push brought the Session Initiation project forward with a complete MCP Configuration Management Interface—five shell scripts providing full CRUD operations for Claude Desktop configurations. The symbolic link architecture principle emerged clearly: client devices should link to deployed configurations rather than copying files, ensuring automatic change propagation.

The hot tub offered its usual transition, For We Are Many playing through the nearby speaker while the body unwound. Some pre-packing preceded sleep, the physical preparation beginning to match the mental shift toward departure.

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