Blog of James David Williams

I’m making a concerted efforted over the next few months to do more things with people. Part of it is addressing the fact that curling stops during the late spring and summer, but there are other motivations as well. I pitched a few ideas last week, but only a couple took. One of those that did was me hosting brunch after church on Sunday.

I busted out my new muffin pan for the first time, a small victory. I often buy a muffin on Saturday mornings, but it is overkill to make a dozen just for myself. I did leave them in the oven a couple of minutes longer than I would have liked, but cooking times get weird when there are multiple things in the oven and I was simultaneously cooking bacon. I also brought out a venison tenderloin to share because having guests over is something worth celebrating and nothing says celebration more than a choice cut of meat. We rounded out the meal with eggs, strawberries macerated in limoncello (that was an experiment that needs some refinement), mango, and dragon fruit. I was proud of my little spread even if it would not trouble the editors of the Michelin guide.

I was close with my timing and portion estimates with almost everything. The only thing I overshot was the dragon fruit, a little bonus that I picked up a few days prior when I happened to be near the Asian grocery store while doing other things. At least I wasn’t short on anything and the dragon fruit has kept in the refrigerator.

I don’t have the greatest amount of seating in my living room, but there is enough for five to sit comfortably. Yet as normally happens, people congregated in the kitchen as I finished cooking and people chose which juice or syrup to use for their homemade soda. Once everything was ready, people got their plates and we moved to the dining room for the meal and discussion. It was a sprawling conversation, flowing from topic to topic, a far cry from my usual posture of eating alone at that same table. Then I had a nice nap after everyone left as I didn’t feel like walking during the hottest part of the day.

There are new AI tools and features coming out every month or even week that are changing how we go about our workflows. But I’m also working with AI to try to enrich other aspects of my life. I’ve set up two projects for my personal life, and while I am in the earliest stages there have already been a few good results.

One project is called “Cooking.” I envision it as a repository for completed recipes eventually, but that isn’t how I’m starting things out. What I did to start was to feed it all of the sauces, herbs, spices, dry ingredients, etc. that I have in my kitchen. This is kept as something like a running inventory list. Also, the last time I went to the Asian grocery store I asked what 2–3 things I should pick up in order to expand what is possible. I haven’t used any of those things yet, but I will. What I have used it for thus far is something like this: I have x, y, and z vegetables and meat to cook tonight; give me recipe ideas. Then it offers three directions, I choose one, and then we quibble about portion sizes based on how much of the main ingredients I have and then I execute as best I can. I’ve already had to insert system instructions to account for a slow oven and the quirks of my stovetop, but with each round of feedback the results improve a little. It’s definitely not to the point of preparing a full menu card to a crazy high standard, but I am using some of those things I bought with grand ideas but never actually used before.

The other project is called “Books and Media.” It is more ambitious and even newer. The goal is to enable content discovery, whether books, podcasts, television shows, music, or movies, beyond what a Netflix or Spotify algorithm will show me. I’m still building out the base content layer, but I’ve already ordered a few books to read in advance of my big summer trip based on a pattern from the data and some AI recommendations. We’ll see how that works out, but it would be really cool if it works out well. I haven’t really used it yet for anything else, but I’ll probably try out some cross-pollination soon. I expect it will take some refinement but I’m hopeful.

Last week, I was in Tucson for a retreat. It is one of those “work” trips that I get to take as a business owner a couple times a year. It was certainly a productive trip from the perspective of building my business, but that’s not why I’m part of Rhodium. I also would not have chosen to go to southern Arizona on my own volition, but I did get to visit the Saguaro National Park and see plenty of the famous cacti.

Rhodium is a group of people from all over the country (and a few even from outside the US) who are unified by (1) being entrepreneurs and (2) operating digital businesses. They fudge a little on #2 for me as I often represent people buying and selling digital businesses, but they don’t hold it against me too much. It is a group I’ve been a part of for several years and a group to which I attribute a good deal of the growth in business we’ve seen in recent years as it is an incubator and sounding board for me. I also enjoy being around people who understand what it’s like to run a remote-first business and who are working on some really cool projects.

As with almost every conference right now, there was plenty of conversation around AI. The difference is that almost everyone in the room has been using Claude Code for several months now and several people are working with it for hours each day. It’s the whole “if you’re the smartest person in the room, then you’re in the wrong room” thing. I definitely took some things home with me as I continue to build infrastructure and tools for our little law firm. At this point, I’ve also been in the group long enough that we’re familiar with each other’s lives and every meeting is meeting with friends I get to see in person twice a year. Some of the best moments were those spent around the fire at night telling the sorts of crazy stories that you can only share with people you’ve known for a while and with whom you have been through some travails.

The resort itself was something of a fever dream. It is about half an hour away from downtown and the university. It has two golf courses, manicured lawns on the grounds, and plenty of flowers. It is set against the backdrop of the Catalina foothills, but the whole area is the Sonoran Desert. It was lovely but felt incongruous. For one of the group activities and since we were staying at a golf resort, we had a drive, pitch, and putt contest with some handicaps. It was the first time I’d picked up a golf club in years. I also won the overall competition; it’s not exactly a golfing crowd.

As I mentioned in last week’s post, I spent a few days in Kentucky towards the end of last week to partake in the spring turkey season. Measured in terms of harvest, the trip was unsuccessful. On less tangible metrics, though, it was a metaphorical shot in the arm. There is something calming and peaceful about sitting beside a field as the darkness fades into a clear dawn. It is made better when you hear an owl calling in the fading darkness. Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo in their distinct rhythm. And there was an owl on the first morning. It’s also nice when you’re in a spot without cell reception, though that was only the case on one of the four mornings. It’s even better when the stillness is broken not just my tweeting birds but also by the distinctive gobble-gobble-gobble of a tom turkey, but that was a rarer sound than I’d hoped it would be.

I didn’t raise a shotgun to fire during any of my four mornings in the field. The birds weren’t very vocal once on the ground and the only birds that I could legally harvest that I saw never came close enough to contemplate a shot. On the first morning I did have a couple of deer walk between me and the decoys and a hen walk past at close range, but all I did was watch. I was with Dad for most of the mornings, with him having already taken a bird on opening morning. We didn’t talk much; you never really do when you’re in the field. But those times have always been some of my favorites, going back even to my childhood. It’s probably that more than anything else that gets me riled up whenever people disparage hunting. They just don’t know what they’ve missed.

In returning back to North Carolina, I was forced to take a detour along winding roads I hadn’t driven in many years. It was a fitting end to a few days in Eastern Kentucky to traverse those roads and go through the Cumberland Gap. I won’t take that route with any regularity if the interstates are all open, but having a little more time directly in those hills was good this time. Then it was a short turnaround with laundry and the like before I left again, but more about this current trip next week when it’s through.

This week was the final week of my spring curling season. While there is a pickup round next Monday, I’ll be on an airplane and so will miss it. I didn’t play my best game of the season this week (that was last week) and failed to execute on my final rock of the season, but I played well overall and we cruised to victory in the final week for a top half finish. It is a slightly bittersweet thing to take my broom home for the summer, but I’ll find some alternative activity for a few months to fill my Monday evenings until the humidity relents a little in the late summer.

When this newsletter goes out, I will either have finished or will still be out for a morning turkey hunt. I haven’t been for a few years and I’ve missed it, so I made a long drive in order to sit for a few quiet mornings and try to garner some action. More on that next week. This was a great chance for a change in scenery regardless, even if I’m going to have other changes in scenery in each of the next two weeks also for work-related travel. I’ve been getting restless, so much so that even on my drive I listened to an audiobook recounting one of the great journeys taken during the age of discovery some five hundred years ago. This certainly won’t be an unplug-for-several-days situation, but at least I’ll be able to spend my free time in the woods for a few days as opposed to just walking on paved trails or watching television.

Friday to Sunday, in recognition of the days leading up to and of Easter itself, I kept my laptop on my office desk and my office door closed. It is not something I allow myself to do often, taking multiple days away from the computer like that, but it was so refreshing.

I also filled in the time with some activities, both new and old. On Friday morning, I went for a longer hike along a lakefront loop for just short of six miles and then had a southern style brunch in one of the small towns that form exurbs of the Triangle. I’d done this loop before and while I wasn’t thrilled that I had to pay a park entrance fee this time it was still a nice walk under the trees, especially once I was on the extended loop where there weren’t any other people. Friday evening brought a church service and then a few hours with my small group hosted by a couple of the group members at their house, during which time I received a lesson in what constitutes “girl dinner.”

Saturday, I ventured to Cary to try a Laotian restaurant for lunch. It was good but not good enough to displace my regular Thai restaurant, especially given the travel time involved. It does have a great location, though, as I went on a quick stroll through the Downtown Cary Park afterwards. Then I met a friend for a beer in the afternoon to catch up as we’ve had discordant schedules the past few months. The weather was great too.

Sunday morning started before dawn as I attended my first sunrise Easter service. I followed that with volunteering with the first graders in the next service. They’re always a high energy bunch but we have fun. Most of them were coming off of spring break, so they were even more active than normal. Nobody got too dirty working on the craft and everyone was smiling throughout, so it was a success. I followed this with what was for me a spur-of-the-moment brunch, as I was invited during conversation on the lawn after the service. This meant I got to meet a few more children and play indoor basketball and work on puzzles with them into the early afternoon. It all combined to make for a restorative few days and plant a few seeds of questions in my mind.

From a weather perspective, this was certainly true this year. The temperatures have crept into the low 80s and skies have been clear and blue. It’s very much pollen season, though we did get one good soaking to clear the worst of it late last week. It has been wonderful walking weather and I’ve made more use of the neighborhood trails than was possible earlier in the year. It helps that the days are getting longer too.

The adage has also proven true from a work perspective. We’re finally clearing some of the backlog that we’ve carried through the first quarter of the year. This is also a vacation week, albeit not for me, so that has naturally resulted in fewer meetings and emails. This is a week more of managing the closing process for transactions as opposed to drafting and negotiating documents, a calmer time in the overall deal cycle, and several transactions have all tracked through their timelines at roughly the same clip.

Mind you, there is another wave of transactions coming, but this time is allowing me to improve our client workflows. With every iteration, we get a little bit better. It does feel like a treadmill sometimes, trying to improve things, but that’s still better than the alternative.

Not a ton happened in the past week, so I’m going to return to the prior week for this week’s post. In addition to having family visiting, it was also the club spiel at the Triangle Curling Club. This is an intra-club tournament and something of a club championship, albeit with a slightly different format than a true club championship would have. This was my third year participating. Each year, I’ve played with people I’d never met before. My first two years, though, this was by happenstance of being on what I call the orphan team as my team was made up of the last people on the signup list who were still looking for teammates. That is hardly the way to build a competitive team. This year, the organizers were much more thoughtful about that aspect of the process and made it such that everyone entered as an individual or couple so that every team would be a mixed up bunch. Not only did this make for a more balanced field as the rosters were hand chosen by the organizers based on experience, but it saved me from having to scramble at the end to find a team. It also achieved the stated goal, which was to make it less intimidating for newer members to sign up to participate.

My team consisted of a brand new curler at lead, me at vice, and two of the most experienced curlers in the club as second and skip. They also happen to be married and the grandparents of one of the children I interact with when I volunteer at church. I found out about that last part during the weekend. Our first game was on Friday afternoon. This was the game when I had a cheering section of visiting family, at least for the first half of the game until the children got restive and everyone headed back to their hotel. They said they had a good time, and I think the adults did. I’m not sure the kids really understood much, though, but I enjoyed them being there and seeing them through the glass anyway.

After we missed a few shots in our second game, my team fell into the C bracket. It is not intuitive (other than everyone starting in the A bracket), but the D bracket is really what determines who finishes third. The B bracket is made up of those who lost their first games, but some of them fall into the C bracket also. While AI might be involved now, the complexity of these things still gives some indication of the sorts of people who tend to be curlers. Our second game on Saturday was a comfortable victory and then I went home to rest for the potential slog ahead. And by a slog I mean we ended up playing three games on Sunday, the second and third of which were a double header in the afternoon and evening. I’m not going to complain about reaching a final and playing six games in the tournament, but I didn’t execute in that final game. Almost no one else on either team did either, and that made for an anticlimactic end to the weekend. I expect that part of the format will be changed next year as it affected more than one of the finals. I’ve also not performed as well in my couple of outings since the club spiel. Next week is a bye week, though, so I’ll be refreshed for the last few weeks of the season before the humidity comes.

Last week was spring break for my school-age cousins. It was too cold for them to go to the beach but the family still wanted to take them somewhere for a few days. So that meant that I had eight guests for a few days last week on about a week’s notice. I don’t have enough beds for eight other people so they stayed at a hotel nearby, but I had a fun few days of family time.

They arrived on Wednesday afternoon, and after I gave everyone a quick tour of my house and I finished my workday we trekked to one of the craziest urban parks I’ve ever seen. This was not my first trip to the Downtown Cary Park, but it was the first time I’d visited with children. They loved it, each enjoying a different part of the play area that suited their age. We followed this up with barbecue and plenty of macaroni and cheese for the kids.

Thursday was colder and it rained most of the day, so the original plan got scrapped and I went with them to a park much closer to my house so that they could play in the morning before the storm hit. My guests then spent several hours shopping at the mall before we ate pizza and had ice cream downtown in what turned into a cold evening. Red velvet was the hit flavor, but I stuck to vanilla as is my custom.

Then on Friday, I worked through the morning (meaning I missed the continuation of the shopping spree) before meeting everyone for their first ever curling game in the afternoon. It was the opening game for me in the annual intra-club tournament. While the adults had watched curling during the Olympics and I’d prepped them some, the children had little idea what was going on as they’d only ever seen hockey as a game played on ice. It meant that I received some very funny videos later, but I couldn’t hear them through the glass while I was playing. Then I worked a little more before meeting everyone again for hamburgers or chicken tenders and then for gelato at a place that was on the back side of a strip mall and that I’d never heard of before. While I probably won’t go again as I prefer the more established local ice cream places, there was a steady stream of people going in and out the whole time we were there. My family left on Saturday morning and the remainder of the weekend (starting at 8:30 A.M.) was dedicated to curling, but that may be next week’s post.

This year, I’ve taken a plunge into vibe coding and have really sunk my teeth into a few projects. First I built a few tools to do specific tasks, both administrative-type items and discrete parts of our legal workflow. Then I’ve taken on a more ambitious task to construct a custom backend for the law firm. The administrative tools became features, we’ve migrated into a centralized tool for tracking everything, and there is a reports dashboard in place that shows me the information I want to see. We’re also making some significant upgrades to our project management type work that will save time and mental energy once completed and will be responsive to a number of client requests we’ve received in recent months.

Right now, though, while almost all of the bones of my initial vision are in place, only parts of the system are working as intended. At the start basically nothing worked correctly, and that was frustrating and disappointing. As I’ve never developed software before this, I’d never dealt with the period of bug fixes that is an integral part of the process. I also wasn’t building in a sandbox but with our actual workplace, something that isn’t best practices but there were backups of everything and guardrails in place so I took the risk. Almost every day, for several weeks now, I’ve made bug fixes. Some days it’s just a couple of things that went wrong; other days it’s entire functions that broke. It seems like we’ve turned a corner, but some of the most ambitious features are the ones that still have kinks that need to be worked out. Nobody talked about this part when vibe coding first became all the rage.

While it will never be enterprise-grade software, it is already making certain things easier and will improve our operations and expand our capabilities even more once fully built out. Building this has also forced me to learn things like how to set up a virtual cloud server and engage in systems thinking in a manner I’ve enjoyed. I’m unlikely to stop building things once this project is in a sufficiently good place; I already have ideas for what could come next. Yes, it is a little addictive. But only when things work. It’s very frustrating when they don’t, and that’s why this stage is called integration hell.