Hi there AI, won’t you be my friend?

Slept well enough and got up, rather stiffly after yesterday’s gym session, took a couple of Tylenol, showered, and started work on the New Zealand stuff. What I am doing at the moment could be done by a trained chimpanzee: it consists of entering Best Practices and Expert Opinions into a database. Thankfully there is a bit of writing to be done.
 
I’m currently uploading podcasts/videos from a leadership guru onto the site, a guy called Skot Waldron. While I usually believe, sincerely, that anyone who spells his name Skot should be instantly ignored, he is actually quite engaging and, whisper it quietly, I am learning quite a lot. Among the précis-ed videos from today were two at which I initially rolled my eyes, and then pricked up my ears as the talks went on.
 
The first was with a business consultant who was talking about love in the workplace. No, not that kind of love – that is on a different website. Nor the kind of love I was dreading (the clap-hands, happy-chappy sort). This was about “agape” – and the bloke speaking actually referenced the ancient Greek culture and how agape was more about loving in the terms of driving the other to be the best he or she could be. This, having in my own career worked under several ‘leaders’ who thought Agape was just a sort of cocktail, came as a refreshing thought. It was all stored away and uploaded under “servant leadership”.
 
The second was about Empathic AI. Again, eye rolling and WTF do I have to listen to this for. Thankfully, instead of a Silicon Valley Musk wannabe, the podcast was with a Brit called Minter Nathaniel Dial or Nathaniel Dial Minter or Dial Nathaniel Minter for a good time. Actually, come to think of it, it was Nathanial Minter Dial. He cut to the chase pretty quickly. His main thrust, if you dialled Nathaniel Minter you’ll know what I mean, was that human beings have become completely unempathetic ourselves – indeed, he called this the Age of Narcissism, in which hardly anyone listens to learn (and here, I thought back to my contact with the VIA Rail employee yesterday). His idea was that AI is coded to do what it is told – and it can provide the empathy that humans need to develop. He hoped the lack of empathy in humans was merely generational, but in case it isn’t, well, AI is there to help. It helped that he delivers his theories in anecdotal form – he is also a film maker – and by the end, I was ready to get on my coat, walk down the road, and find some AI with which I could be friends.
 
But, rather than do that, I got my coat, walked down the road, and went to physio with Yousuf at FRST. I was actually quite excited to do this, as last time I had come out without pain. The use of the TENS machine and some massage had really helped. And it was similar – if not quite so good – this time. Whisper it quietly, but I might be onto a winner here. The only issue, as always, is the cost.
 
Mid-afternoon, I bundled Ottawacker Jr. into the car and we set off for the bright lights of Alexandria, home of the Glengarry Hearts U13 boys’ team, against which he had been called up to play (not alone, you will understand). It was raining heavily by this time – and the rain carried on for the 90 minutes we were driving, until we reached Alexandria; then, it increased in tempo. As we sat in the car, I had the prospect of standing in the pouring rain for 80 minutes, watching boys slipping and sliding in a mud bath, all the while contemplating the return journey on which Ottawacker Jr. would be sitting, mud-caked and sodden, complaining he was hungry. I had told him to have a snack and bring a change of clothes, but this had merely been brushed off as a paternal demand too far. “I’ll be fine, dad, it’s only a bit of rain.” Unlike me, he has not had to play St. Bonaventure’s U16 team in the cup after a downpour in mid-February, so he doesn’t know the meaning of cold. Admittedly, it is August… but the paternal desire to let him experience life’s miseries won out, and now, as always, I would be paying the price for it.
 
Shortly after these thoughts, he got out to kick a ball around (we were 20 minutes early). Ignoring the admonitions of “you’re not getting back in the car once you are soaked”, he got out of the car and got soaked. Then there was a knock on the window. The groundsman had told him the game had been shifted to another venue… I scrawled through the phone but found no messages on the useless TeamSnap app – so got out of the car and went to interrogate the man further. He was right – they had moved the game to another field (at the incredibly named Glengarry Sports Palace, home of the Billy Gebbie Arena); we had to find it, let other people know, and hope after all this that the game was still on.
 
It was – and they were still playing outside in the rain. Despite the farcical attempts at playing in the mud and the massive puddles (there were life buoys scattered around the pitch in case of near drownings), the game was quite enjoyable. Except for the parents, that is – who were vocally criticizing the young referee for her decisions. These were parents from the team Ottawacker Jr. was playing for, which made it worse. I hadn’t seen this at the Internationals before, and really wasn’t impressed. Thankfully Ottawacker Jr. didn’t make a peep – and I let him know in no uncertain terms what I thought of them on the drive back. It marred a good 4-0 away win.
 
So, wet and miserable, we stopped at a fast-food place in Casselman and had a burger and fries. Then drove home, got some of the mud off the upholstery, and sent him off to bed at 10pm via a hot shower.