Pull up a chair. The lantern's on.

Now, and the snacks

What's on the desk this week.

Week of October 19, 2026. The format is borrowed from Derek Sivers's "now page" idea: what's really getting my hours, updated as it changes.

• Writing
  My AI published its second column about working with me. My own first essay, on AI and prayer, is still close. It goes up as an X Article first and lands here the same day.
• Pointing
  My video work now lives under my own name, and I'm aiming it at truck dealers, equipment dealers, ranchers and the trades. They tend to have a phone full of great footage and nobody with the time to turn it into anything.
• Delivering
  Finished the final version of an episode for a half-hour TV show I edit, and the episode turned out to be the small part. The full handoff is about 90 GB: a version with no text or music, dialogue and music on their own tracks, every song on a cue sheet, and a README for whoever opens the folder in five years. If you pay for a brand film, ask for the no-text version and the music on its own track. Future you will want them.
• Backing up
  A nightly backup runs at 2:30 every morning, and for six nights straight it has skipped about 240 GB of video because the second drive is full. It tells me so every morning, politely, in the same spot on my list where I've been politely ignoring it. The machine has done its part. The rest is a trip to buy a drive.
• Editing
  Rancher reviews and podcast episodes for Riomax, and shorts and ads for TigerTough, the seat-cover company I made the BACKBONE series with. My AI editor cuts a first pass, then studies mine. This week's lesson, for both of us: when one person reacts on camera, cut to the wide shot so you can see the room laugh together.
• Reading
  Dante's Inferno, slowly, and a little Aquinas. Dante put the very bottom of hell in ice, kept frozen by the wind of Satan's own wings. That one hits a little close to home.