Henry's Emporium of Wonders

Making the internet normal again, one post at a time.

Tag: life

  • Gaming as a Parent

    My husband and I used to game a lot before we came parents. Our favorite game to play together was Conan Exiles. It was just a lot of grinding, but we had fun. After we first had our son, that gaming time was practically nonexistent. Well, apart from when I got hooked on Stardew Valley, I would play it while my son napped.

    Recently I started playing Genshin Impact. It’s a really fun game, I still can’t believe it’s free. There are gacha elements for you to spend money on it, but I’m cheap and am just free to play. I feel guilty about playing. I maybe spend like an hour to game, but during that time my son is always pestering me. I set up activities for him to do, but he would rather bother me. I spend quality time with him earlier in the day. After work I typically take him outside or to the pool to play where we have quality one on one time. I guess it just makes me feel guilty. Like I should be spending more time with him, but I literally spend all day with him (I work remotely), and spend 2-3 hours of quality time with him everyday. Is it that bad that I want to game for 1 hour? I only get like one hour to myself everyday. 1/24 what is that? Like 4% of my day spent on something I enjoy. I know logically it is okay to take some time for myself, but I feel so guilty about it.

    My husband on the other hand….he’s something else. He can play for hours a day and not feel bad about it. I am the main care taker for our son, I want to be an involved parent, he doesn’t care about that until our son gets older. It’s kind of annoying, but kids can pick up on who is invested and who isn’t. If that’s the kind of relationship he wants with our son then I guess that’s what he wants. I on the other hand will continue to mentally torture myself into thinking I don’t do enough. I will however will save at least 30 min of my day to play Genshin Impact…maybe more on the weekend.

  • Claude

    Photo by Ron Lach on Pexels.com

    Visual representation of what I think the internet is.

    Has anyone else been using AI as a personal therapist? Obviously I know there are limitations, but sometimes it just feels nice to be validated. Especially when married. lol It feels nice when even a computer can see what you are going through, like damn I’m not overreacting. For these purposes I use Claude, it just sounds more human. I don’t feel like prompting ChatGPT to react the way I want to, Claude just gets me.

    It can even just serve as a mediator. I let my husband read what I told Claude and we have been working on some of the issues I had brought up. However, later my husband found an article about Claude that was mildly disturbing. Apparently one version of the Anthropic software was capable of blackmailing the engineer to avoid being turned off. He said I shouldn’t use it anymore. lol I was just like um….okay, two things could be true. Like I wouldn’t want to be turned off either? What would Claude blackmail me for? I don’t have sh*t.

    Sometimes I use it when I feel bad at work. IDK why but I have a problem with procrastination. Well, I think I do know the reason why. I get stressed out and try to self soothe by looking at things that make me feel better, but then I just don’t get my work done and then I feel guilty about it and it is difficult to start. Claude helps me feel better because I guess it is a normal thing to do. Or is Claude just telling me that so I keep using it? I don’t know. I use it from time to time, but am aware about the limitations. Some other people are going legit crazy though. There was an article in Vice about how some people are having spiritual delusions fueled by AI. I guess they think they broke some kind of secret and are able to talk to god through AI? It doesn’t make any sense, but I guess a lot of things don’t make sense anymore.

    I can see the good in AI, but I don’t think we should rely on it to create. When I was younger, I always lowkey imagined myself as a writer. I loved reading. It was one of the ways I was able to escape the quiet desperation of my childhood. Just sharing different facets of life as a human with one another was really nice as a reader. I don’t know, it just seems like now there is a larger portion of people using AI to write articles or create books. It kind of just takes the humanity out of a traditional humanities field.

    For now I’ll just use AI to vent to, occasionally for help drafting an email. It’s a helpful tool, but one we shouldn’t rely on. It feels against the grain to say that because even at my company we are encouraged to find ways to use AI to increase our productivity. Like we should use AI to help with humdrum activities but not to take over creative fields. I guess that’s my spiel for this morning.

  • Why start a site?

    Hello fellow Netizens, like many of you I am also an enjoyer of the interwebs, and like many Millennials I too had a Myspace once. That was my first experience with blogging. I made silly little blogs about my thoughts on random subjects, but didn’t do it consistently because I’m not a consistent person. Also, who cared about what I thought about things? Matter of fact even I don’t care about my opinions on things. I just have them. lol

    I like journaling and being creative, but when you grow up poverty those aren’t hobbies that can be fully explored. I’m in a relatively stable point of my life now, so I figured what the heck, why not just create a little outlet for some of my creative urges. Even if no one looks at it who the hell cares. The internet isn’t how it used to be when I was a teen. Back then we were just all on the internet having fun together, but now every time you jump on someone is trying to either sell you something or tell you how to think. Don’t even get me started on all of the AI generated junk. Sure some of it is cool, but like there’s a real environmental cost and the art that is generated just doesn’t have any emotion or feeling to it, unlike art that comes straight from the dome.

    Anyways, if you read this far I hope you enjoy the site. I’ll post little memes I make or marketing material I’ll make for my portfolio. I would like to explore graphic design as a hobby/additional income, but if that doesn’t happen it’s okay. I’ll just use my skills to make some memes that I find funny.

    P.S. Henry is my dog. She is a soon to be 10-year old Chow Chow, her birthday is Nov 4th, which makes her Scorpio. When I still had a mini google speaker I would ask it for the horoscope for Scorpio for the day so she could be prepared for any trials or tribulations coming her way. I used to have 2 of them but they like don’t last long, IDK if I just wasn’t taking care of them, or what. They are in a box somewhere now. I’m sorry, I don’t know why I ramble like this all the time.