Talino

Things that broke in 2025

by kmp on 03 January 0 Comment

Let’s recap the top things that broke in 2025 shall we?

But also how we fixed them!

In no particular order because I wasn’t keeping proper track…

Over the range microwave kept tripping after a couple of seconds – didn’t realize how dependent on the microwave we had become… took me back to the early 90s when my visiting cousin asked me where our microwave was and I told her we didn’t have one 🤷‍♀️…
After a few rounds of trouble shooting, finally came across this in YouTube – GE Microwave Keeps Blowing Fuse / Breaker – DIY Fix
What a godsend! Ordered about $16 worth of switches and fuses, had my son take it apart, and voila! Microwave back in business. Got to clean out the innards of the control panel as well. Saved us the trouble of removing and installing a new one, plus the cost of a new one!
Pay attention to the switches, there is one that is slightly different due to the gap size…
Kitchen sink faucet drip drip dripping – ok, maybe a more enterprising person could have replaced a washer or something, but since the sprayer had been long out of commission due to dripping, I figured I would rather just get a new faucet. Thanks again to the boy (a running theme), he was able to replace the new faucet. Saved us a plumber visit! We did have to buy a different hose because some sizing was different, and we had to figure out which was hot and cold by our powers of deduction. I think we have since labeled it… oh and because this new faucet didn’t have a deck mount, and our previous plumber had put in all 3 holes in case we needed them in the future so we ended up getting a soap dispenser to fill in the third hole. However, the hole was just not quite big enough, so we had to get a rounded filer to make it work.
Garage door stopped opening – I think this actually broke in 2024… but we fixed it in 2025! Or should I say the boy did. He paid attention and saw a tag that was still attached telling us how to open it manually, after all this time. 😅
Bidet stopped bideting properly – maybe I should put this to number one because we missed this one quite a bit!!! Again, kudos to the boy. He took it apart, and found that a tube had broken on one end, hence the water just dripping into the void… replaced the hose for about $12…mostly due to shipping costs, and aahhhh….
Dryer started rumbling – okay, we haven’t really fixed this, and we needed to get the garage door open first, so hopefully soon! The boy tried, but perhaps it’s time for a new one. In the meantime, a drying rack and this thingamajig work wonders. Also something zen like about hanging clothes old school. But it would be nice not to have a drying rack in the living room in the middle of winter…
Screen door hinge kaput – had to replace this extra long hinge, this time team work between the boy and his dad. Not being able to go out through the front door? ugh. Luckily, it was solved fairly quickly given our history of procrastination.

Well, those are the ones that come to mind. I’m sure there were many others I’ve already blocked out. The main thing is to keep calm, and figure out a way, and thank the people who share their knowledge… a lot of time, the fixes are simpler than what we imagine. I am also reminded of this book on parenting by Dr. Kenneth Barish – Pride and Joy. Resiliency is one of the key traits we can build in ourselves so we can keep moving forward. Let’s go 2026!

Me, Myself and AI

by kmp on 13 October 0 Comment

Recently, I came across a clip featuring Jim Rohn that led me down a rabbit hole to Napoleon Hill. A common theme in their work: your choices shape your outcomes. And right now, we’re all making a critical choice about AI – do we use it to think less, or think more?

If we want to be lazy, AI will amplify that. If we want to learn and explore more deeply, AI can accelerate that too. The tool doesn’t decide – we do.

Which got me thinking: most conversations about AI focus on what the technology can do. But there’s another variable that matters just as much – where YOU are. Your expertise level, combined with AI’s capability for a specific task, should determine how you work together.

Introducing MAP

Think of human-AI collaboration as a spectrum. Where you position yourself on that spectrum determines how you should allocate your effort.

MAP – Me, AI, Path forward

Me: My expertise level on this specific topic
AI: AI’s capability for this particular task
Path: How we work together – who creates, who reviews, how effort splits

The Challenge: The Risk Zone

Here’s the tricky part – when your expertise is low, you often can’t accurately assess AI’s capability either. This creates a risk zone: AI generates confidently, you can’t spot the mistakes, and you end up with plausible-sounding but potentially wrong outputs.

The solution isn’t to avoid AI as a beginner. It’s to use it differently. If you’re in the risk zone, either:

Bring in expert reviewers to evaluate AI output
Invest time building foundational knowledge first
Use AI as a coach on YOUR work rather than having it create for you

How Expertise Changes Everything

This reframes how we think about AI productivity benefits:

Novices benefit most from AI as coach:

You create, AI reviews and challenges your thinking
You’re building the cognitive muscle memory
AI spots gaps you missed, asks clarifying questions
Lower productivity boost, but you’re learning

Experts benefit most from AI as player:

AI creates first drafts, you apply strategic judgment
You can quickly assess quality and catch errors
AI handles execution, you provide direction
Higher productivity boost because you can evaluate effectively

There will always be human-AI collaboration no matter your expertise level – but the nature of that collaboration should shift based on where you are.

The Intentional Choice

The key is to pause before each AI interaction and MAP where you are:

Me: What’s my expertise level on this specific topic?
AI: What’s AI’s capability for this particular task?
Path: Given those two positions, how should I split effort between creation and review?

Your position isn’t fixed – you might be an expert using AI as a player in your domain, while being a novice who needs AI as a coach when learning something new. Same person, same day, different positions on the spectrum.

The goal isn’t to always be in one zone or another. It’s to be conscious about where you are, so you can make the intentional choice: use AI to help you think more, not less.

Me, AI, Path forward

Are we human? Or are we AI?

by kmp on 25 September 0 Comment

As AI tools become standard in our workflows, the question isn’t whether to use them, but how to use them thoughtfully. Too many people are treating AI like the Staples easy button – throw in a request, get an answer, move on. But that’s missing the real opportunity.

Had the privilege to lead a session on AI as Your Work Coach to over 500+ colleagues recently and introduced a new framework “CARE” to embed more thought into our interactions with Copilot or your Gen AI tool of choice.

Context is key – give your Gen AI tool the download. Without context, it’s like asking Copilot to bring you dinner. Sure, it will give you something that is “dinner”, but will it satisfy you?
Ask – prompting your Gen AI to ask you clarifying questions when your ask is still fairly ambiguous or more high stakes.
Responsible – ask Gen AI to reflect on your request and ask you the relevant questions regarding potential impacts, risks and ethical considerations first before responding.
Expectations – what is it that you expect for dinner that would actually make you happy? Tell it the quality, format, tone, and approach you want, with examples of what good looks like.

Think of the interaction between Gen AI and yourself as the relationship between a coach and a player, depending on your expertise on the topic.

Novices: You’re the player, AI is the coach

You do the work, AI guides and corrects
AI says “try this approach” or “what about this risk you missed?”
You’re building the muscle memory of thinking and understanding the topic

Experts: AI is the player, you’re the coach

AI does the initial execution, you direct strategy
You say “take this angle” or “that’s off track, adjust here”
You’re leveraging your experience and expertise to guide AI’s capabilities

This progression matters because it gets to the heart of a bigger question: how do we use AI to amplify our thinking without losing our ability to think critically? These two recent podcasts explore exactly this tension…

Next time you’re about to use AI, pause and ask: where am I on this spectrum for this particular task? Am I building expertise that needs the struggle, or leveraging expertise that can direct the work?

illustration of an arrow as a spectrum — Early learners: You play, AI coaches. Experts: AI plays, you coach.

Curation vs Creation and Control

by kmp on 24 May 0 Comment

A couple of weeks ago, I got back to listening to Beyond the Prompt episodes with Jeremy Utley and Henrik Werdelin. While there are many highlights, the episode with Blair Vermette stood out. And it has to do with curating the content AI gives you versus controlling it and expecting AI to create something perfect on your behalf. We need to bring something to the party too!

Additionally, AI tends to gift you with something you didn’t quite ask for. What do you do now? Get frustrated, try again or give up some control? Or embrace it and see where it takes you?

ps. I discovered these podcasts are also on YouTube. Still, I find I prefer the audio-only version—perhaps it helps me keeps me focused on listening and not getting distracted by the composition of the visuals.

person listening to podcast — Copilot’s gift

Boring Makes Your Data AI-Ready (Write it Down part 3)

by kmp on 30 March 0 Comment

As GenAI starts taking ground at work, how does an organization make its vast amounts of data useful?

When I first started using GenAI, my first thought was we can skip the fancy visualizations and go straight to asking our questions directly with GenAI. However this would require data to be organized, consistently labeled, and cleaned up. Easier said than done. Plus GenAI would need an assistant to actually do proper calculations.

So let’s start with an org’s existing linguistic data, its knowledge base that defines a company.

Back to basics – text first

Cleaning up, organizing and ensuring that the information is clear and readable. Fancy graphics, flat pdfs, animated presentations are not going to help. With GenAI, text is where it’s at. Is it good for a screen reader? Can we manually highlight the text? Then let’s go!

Yes, boring stuff. Yet it’s the boring stuff that makes GenAI so useful. Manufacturing documents for example usually follow a template, with headers, and clearly laid out text. The qualities that make a document accessible are what make it an asset for GenAI. So start organizing your documents, clean out obsolete, incorrect, draft versions. Take heed from the document-driven functions of your company. Lay it out clearly. And on the surface, it seems tedious, yet when you get into it, it triggers your mind to start understanding the content more. Once you’re organized, it frees you to think more clearly on to other topics. It allows you and others to access information easily, including GenAI. Writing it down and organization as liberation.

For example, at a manufacturing plant, try standardizing equipment maintenance logs. Boring? Absolutely. But this allows the maintenance team to ask GenAI “Which machines had bearing failures in the past six months?” instead of digging through spreadsheets. AI excels at finding patterns in simple, well-organized text and data.

Building bridges

With your documents and data organized, the next step is creating access points. Think about how GenAI will interact with your data. Creating simple indices, metadata tags, and consistent naming conventions is crucial. Your HR handbook, financial reports, and product specs might all live in different systems, and GenAI needs a coherent way to find and interpret them.

The question determines the answer

And while GenAI keeps improving, humans are necessary to provide the oversight, knowledge and experience. The key is teaching the team to ask good questions, not just expecting the AI to deliver insights unprompted.

Your AI should have an access badge too

Not all your company data is or should be accessible to all employees, which means your AI should follow the same model.

Good for AI, good for humans

Not surprising, organizing for AI benefits humans too. Clear document structures, consistent naming, and accessible information repositories make life easier for everyone. New employees onboard faster when they can ask basic questions to GenAI.

Start!

Somewhere in your org, there’s already a team or individual who maintains well-structured documents. See how well GenAI can assist in these areas, and spread those learnings.

person typing on a keyboard — Write it down!

Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence

by kmp on 23 February 0 Comment

Thank you to this post from Nicholas Thompson (The Atlantic) to share the Vatican’s view on Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence –

https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2025/01/28/0083/01166.html#ing

It is a most insightful, meaningful and comprehensive collection of thoughts on what AI means for serving human dignity and the common good, and the roles all of us play in designing the future.

And while you can use AI to digest this essay for you, I would encourage you to take time and read it with full human capabilities.

…human dignity and the common good must never be violated for the sake of efficiency, for “technological developments that do not lead to an improvement in the quality of life of all humanity, but on the contrary, aggravate inequalities and conflicts, can never count as true progress.” Instead, AI should be put “at the service of another type of progress, one which is healthier, more human, more social, more integral.

Therefore, the ends and the means used in a given application of AI, as well as the overall vision it incorporates, must all be evaluated to ensure they respect human dignity and promote the common good.

Saint John Paul II observed that “humanity now has instruments of unprecedented power: we can turn this world into a garden, or reduce it to a pile of rubble.”

Which world are you working towards?

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