The IRL Update - Where did I go, What happened to Fiver and AI Shenanigans

The last 5 weeks have been Shenanigans. Things went sideways when our boy Fiver broke a leg. We have no idea how this happened, but it did. It was a bad break that required surgery. 

Of course, this happened a day before we planned to go to Lake George and a week before my daughter Catherine was going to move out. Neither could be canceled, so Catherine got him to the vet for an assessment while we went off on vacation. The break required some screws and plates, something the local vet was not able to do. The other option was amputation, again, something the local vet wasn't equipped to do. 

I said the local vet couldn't do this or that like that is a bad thing. It wasn't. They were able to get us to the appropriate animal hospital, coordinate appointments, and stabilize him with medication for comfort. They were awesome. 

As soon as my wife and I got back from Lake George, Catherine and Jen packed up Fiver and drove to the closest animal hospital that could do the surgery: Cornell University Exotic Pet Hospital. They did an amazing job. Fiver spent the week at their facility before coming home. 

During this time, I managed to get the garden ready. As you can see from the image, Fiver gets a daily pile of fresh herbs. He was not happy with the cage at first, but he got used to it. It's more like a cage in a pen. The whole area is about 8 feet long and six feet wide, with a small dog crate inside. There is nothing stopping the cats from getting in there to visit their buddy, and Fiver is smart enough to get out. But he doesn't feel like escaping right now. We don't lock him in the crate unless he is traveling, and he uses it as a bedroom. 

I know virtually everyone in the world has rabbits outside their homes, but what makes all rabbits "exotic" is the equipment and resources necessary to provide care. Our vet can't do surgeries on rabbits, especially a giant rabbit. They don't have much call for it. Dogs and cats have surgery all of the time, perhaps many times a day. They are equipped for those procedures because of the frequency of the need. Also, it's relatively cheap because of the frequency; the volume creates a built-in subsidy for that care. For that reason, getting a dog or cat neutered or spayed is super cheap. In case you were wondering, that cost us over $500 for Fiver, and it had nothing to do with his extraordinary size. 

Think twice before you buy a rabbit. They really are exotic. 

The garden is tied to Fiver. We grow a lot of food for him. This year, I used AI for planning the garden. It helped me schedule when to start seeds, what to grow, how to arrange plants, etc. It could tell me what sort of things were safe for rabbits or bad for them. This is a big help as Fiver broke his leg at the exact moment all of these tasks were due. 

One of the drawbacks of AI like Gemini and ChatGPT is the lack of persistent memory. From the user's perspective, every new chat is a blank slate. You can schedule events in Calendar or Gmail, and make lists in Keep, but it isn't the same as having a little avatar waiting for you. Creating an account allows you to access prior chats, and both services have a persistent memory of what has gone before, but it's really weird. 

For example, when the LLM updates or the interface changes, I have to remind the AI to stop calling me "Phil". I know who I am. The other odd thing is, sometimes the language model will dredge up information and fixate on a couple of random bits, often in the form of "safety warnings". 

For example, it is aware that I like wine and I have diabetes. Out of the blue, it will suggest alcohol treatment centers or a better doctor. Thanks. It's conflating my purchasing wine for birthdays and holiday gifts with actual consumption. I do 3 wine tastings a year, and I use AI to keep a running tab of what my preferences, those of my wife, and family members and friends I buy gifts for, so it is kind of understandable that it thinks I drink a lot. 

In my last post, I mentioned that AI fixated on 4 characters from my Castle Amber Sessions. I asked it to find many of the misspellings I made in those posts. However, it also noticed that the names Lance, Gabby, Khouri, and Dorian appear more often than not and locked on to them when I asked it to simulate the statues interacting with the party. 

One of the more perplexing things is the name Rakshasa. Both AI and my spellchecker are horrible at correcting typos of this name. I am fixing that today, without the help of AI. I write using my 1999 iBook, and all of the text exported from there is fine, but when I throw it in Blogger, Gemini and the built-in spellchecker go nuts. 

In my next post, I will detail what the party received from the Statues. Right after I fix the Rakshasa issue... manually. 

These IRL updates won't be shared on social media because they are outside the genre of games, so if you like these posts, click that follow button or try Campaign Wiki, which gathers blog posts for you.