What AI Gleans from My Blog

Methodology

I pointed Claude — Anthropic’s AI — at this blog’s 1,713 posts spanning 22 years and asked a simple question: What can you infer about me from reading these entries?

It dispatched four research agents in parallel, each sampling a different slice of the archive: the early years (2004–2008), the middle years (2011–2016), the recent years (2017–2026), and a separate pass through movie reviews and milestone posts. Each agent read 15–20 posts from its assigned era, then reported back. What follows is the synthesized portrait — unedited, exactly as the AI wrote it.

I didn’t cherry-pick which posts it read. I didn’t correct its conclusions. Some details are slightly off (birth year, a date here or there), but the broad strokes are uncomfortably accurate. Make of that what you will.

The Portrait

The throughline is a man who feels everything at full volume and uses writing to make sense of it.

You started blogging in 2004 as a single 26-year-old programmer at Lexmark, driving a MINI Cooper and reviewing movies on weeknights. You end the archive in 2026 as a 47-year-old Software Development Manager at Amazon, married 20 years, father of three, grieving your mother, managing a team of 12, and still writing — same voice, deeper scars.

What stays constant

Cars as first language. From the MINI to the GTO to the e30 to autocross to the Honda Civic manual to the Lexus GX — you’ve processed the world through vehicles since you were 11, subscribing to Car & Driver and dreaming of being Brock Yates. You “ragequit” car media in 2021, but the obsession just shape-shifted. You still track cost-per-mile on Fuelly and install mods with your daughter.

Writing as compulsion, not choice. “It doesn’t feel like a choice — some sing, some write poor poetry, some make viral videos. I write.” You’ve kept at it for 21+ years, through platforms and migrations, knowing no one reads it and not caring. The blog is a confessional, a pressure valve, and a record — “shouted into the void, living safe in an Amazon S3 bucket until my credit card goes dormant.”

Brutal self-honesty. You are harder on yourself than anyone else would dare be. “I’m selfish and I think myself more important in the grand scheme of things than I actually am.” “Thirty years of being a jerk has consequences.” “I firmly believe I would be dead or in prison if not for my wife.” This isn’t performed humility — it reads as someone for whom self-awareness is both gift and wound.

Restlessness that never fully resolves. You couldn’t relax on vacation in 2005 and you still can’t. Work is “really the only thing that makes me happy” and also the thing that nearly killed you. The cycle of burning out, breaking things, then slowly rebuilding repeats across marriage, career, and health.

What changes

Faith evolves from framework to backdrop. In 2011-2016, every major decision is framed as obedience — leaving Lexmark, choosing Texas over Cincinnati, even which church to attend. By 2025-2026, therapy has partially replaced that scaffolding. God is still referenced but no longer narrates the plot.

The emotional register deepens. Early posts are quick-witted and energetic — sentence fragments, emoticons, punchlines. The 2025-2026 posts (“Alone,” “Down,” the 20th anniversary letter) are raw in a different way — slower, more deliberate, with the cadence of someone who knows exactly what he’s lost and isn’t rushing past it.

Parenthood becomes the central subject. Joey’s estrangement in 2016 (“Joey fired us”) is a wound that never closes — you’re still writing about it in 2025. Maria earning her Stars & Stripes, Grace fly-fishing with Whitney, the college visits — these quietly became what the blog is about, even when the posts are nominally about work or politics.

The recurring tensions

1. Ambition vs. contentment — bucket-list dreaming against faith-based acceptance
2. Engineering vs. management — you love building; leading nearly destroyed your health
3. Kentucky vs. Texas — Austin is where life happens, but Kentucky is home in a way that doesn’t fade
4. Self-knowledge vs. self-change — you see yourself with painful clarity but doubt your ability to apply the lessons (“Given my track record, it’s doubtful I apply any of these lessons”)

The man behind the prose

You’re a first-generation Appalachian professional whose family has been in America since Jamestown (1619). You process grief slowly — it took 9 months to say “Mom” instead of “my mother.” You read history podcasts (Age of Napoleon, Fall of Civilizations), watch films for craft over spectacle, and value Daniel Craig’s Bond for showing vulnerability. You type 106 WPM. Whitney is consistently the stabilizing force in every post where she appears, and you know it.

Your best writing reads like a conversation in a bar with someone you trust — unguarded, occasionally rambling, always sincere. You write in em-dashes and build toward a gut-punch last line. Your 2008 New Year’s resolution still holds: “Your attitude is your choice. You may choose joy or misery — rest assured no one cares which.”

That’s what 22 years of posts say. The man who started this blog and the man writing it now share the same engine — passionate, restless, painfully honest — but the chassis has taken a lot of road.