Month: March 2025

The Third Term

I keep hearing “jokes” (and now more serious statements) about Trump’s third term & how they’ve got ways to achieve it … I think there are:

  1. Run as VP – I’m sure they’d call it something else to avoid “insulting” dude, but this has the advantage of all the campaigning and fund raising fun. Pres steps down, VP assumes presidency. Wasn’t elected as president, and I’m sure there would be a lot of legal challenges to clarify the generally accepted belief that a former president cannot be VP. But it’s going to end up as a court decision.
  2. Get voted in as speaker of the house – risks not winning the house, but you were absolutely not elected to the office of president. And I don’t see anything in the constitution or law that explicitly states a two term president cannot be in the line of succession.
  3. Have a cohort run on the “I do what he tells me to” platform. I’ve long thought we could start to move away from representative democracy to technology-facilitated direct democracy by having candidates run on the platform of a platform that allows constituents to vote on every bill. I, your so-called representative, will vote in whatever way the voters say to vote. There’s no law about how elected officials make decisions – both taking input from direct voting of the masses or just doing whatever the cannot-run-for-office-again former president says are your decision.

Now, if I were trying to be a three-term president, I might combine #3 with being elected as speaker of the house. Now I control two branches of the government — legislation isn’t coming to the floor unless I OK it, and I tell the acting president to sign it.

Maple Syrup – Second Boil

We had another week of overnight freezes that extended the maple season – got about 40 gallons of maple sap and 10 gallons of walnut sap. We boiled it all in a single day, and finished it this morning. We added another 3/4 of a gallon of maple syrup and a little over a pint of walnut syrup. Half of the buckets have been collected. We’ve got more buckets, taps, and ratchet straps to collect … but maple season is over for 2025.

All restaurants are Taco Bell

There’s a scene in the movie Demolition Man where the lead character is being rewarded for his heroic life saving feats with … dinner at Taco Bell. Which he kind of questions – it’s food, but it’s not exactly the first place you think of for the “just saved the leader of our society” dinner. Except all restaurants are Taco Bell. I guess the name applies to anything from a quick takeaway meal to an exquisite fine dining establishment. Similarly, I posit that eventually, “all developers are lead developers”.

I’ve been thinking about how prolific use of AI in development is going to change the job. It’s not like the system replaces the developer – you still need someone to guide development. To ensure it meets the business needs. To make sure the AI’s code isn’t terrible (OK, not terrible but I’ve seen some out there solutions generated). To integrate, test, and generally serve as the lead developer.

I see people going from being a dev to a lead dev whose “team” is the AI. This change might be great for someone with some experience who is ready to be a lead dev. It gives you the opportunity to manage a team without having to talk someone into the management title change. Without additional headcount.

But it certainly seems like it changes what “entry level” looks like coming into the field. I’m sure Uni will change to teach more of this … But, as it stands today, people coming out with CS or programming degrees are woefully unprepared for the way development jobs are working. 

And I think more project management experience will be needed – how to efficiently guide your “AI team” to a reasonable solution. Playing around a bit, but a poorly thought out session incurred almost a hundred dollars in usage. Do some planning, craft well thought out prompts, and we got down to about five bucks. I don’t see much focus on AI efficiency … right now! It’s all new and the costs are obfuscated. But I see this becoming a major performance metric in the future. 

Daffodils Sprouting

I remember hearing that maple sap should be running when the daffodils sprout … I guess our daffodils were late this year. The daffodils we planted along the driveway are sprouting up, and we found new daffodils at the farm house.