Working Up

Working Up in Project Management, Systems Engineering, Technology, and Writing

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AI Didn’t Write This

July 30th, 2026 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips I guess we live in an age where we have to state this, even though many disbelieve. If the grammar is too good, AI must have written it. If the style has changed, AI must have written it. If fill-in-the-blank, AI must have written it. It is possible to write with good […]

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Tags: Artificial Intelligence · Communication · Technology · Tools · Trust · Writing

Text Processing Software, Please

July 23rd, 2026 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips All the pieces are here. Let’s have one download, install, and run. This is what I want: one piece of software that reads the text files on my computer (.docx, etc.), answers questions about them, writes output to a file, and I can do all the copy-and-paste I want. pandoc seems to […]

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Tags: Cloud Computing · Computing · Language · Software · Technology

Lazy Writers

July 20th, 2026 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Writers can write more than we do. Is this lazy? And, by the way, lazy was the worst thing in the world according to my mother, so that comments stings. Writers in 2026 are for the most part lazy. — Dean Wesley Smith Mr. Smith’s comment stings. According to my mother, there […]

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Tags: Accountability · Research · Technology · Tools · Writing

Changing Technology, Changing Practice

July 13th, 2026 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Technology changes. Practice changes with the technology. Nothing new here, but it requires me to change. Aargh. Sometimes I don’t like that. There was a time when Xerox machines didn’t work as well as they do now. I guess I should call them copy machines instead of Xerox machines. There was a […]

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Tags: Adapting · Change · Management · Practice · Technology

AI? Give Me an Ice Cream Cone or a Honey Bun

June 22nd, 2026 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips AI is a tool to be used by those who provide ice cream cones and honey buns. Lose sight of that and advance at your peril. Who is going to be the winner in all this AI competition? Who is going to be the loser in this? After all, avoiding losing is […]

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Tags: Artificial Intelligence · Coffee · Concepts · Customer · Expertise · Management · Technology

Which Way? Big or Little

June 18th, 2026 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Which way is AI going? The big datacenter or on my little laptop computer? We seem to be at some fork in the road regarding artificial intelligence. The big (colossal) datacenters are rising from the farmlands of America. Big, bigger, and even bigger. If the price doesn’t run into the hundreds of […]

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Tags: Artificial Intelligence · Choose · Cloud Computing · Computing · Management · Technology

Hardware is the New Software

May 28th, 2026 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips The world of computing has turned upside down. In 2001, Marc Andreesen noticed and noted, “Software is eating the world.” Here I am to notice and note, “Hardware is the new software.” Everyone wants to buy computer hardware. Prices of computer hardware are shooting upwards as demand far exceeds supply. If you […]

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Tags: Computing · Hardware · Management · Money · Software · Technology

The Next N Word(s)

May 21st, 2026 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips These chattering bots merely predict the next N word(s). Software has been doing this for many years—nothing new here. In the 1990s (yes, 30 years ago, I am that old), word processors started guessing what word we were trying to type. Some called that “auto complete.” It was nice. Not perfect, but […]

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Tags: Analysis · Artificial Intelligence · Computing · Programming · Technology · Writing

I Could Have Written a Program

May 7th, 2026 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips I just had a chattering bot filter through layers upon layers of a spreadsheet and provide the answer. After a moment, I realized I could have written a simple program to do that, but that was true for me, not everyone. I just solved a problem with data presented in a spreadsheet. […]

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Tags: Artificial Intelligence · Computing · Programming · Technology

Where Did All the Programmers Go?

March 30th, 2026 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips History repeats itself as the computer can be fully occupied by the efforts of just a few programmers. There was a time in computing history when there were few programmers. The computers weren’t powerful. A couple of programmers could keep a big computer busy all the time. Then the computers became more […]

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Tags: Cloud Computing · Computing · Jobs · Programming · Technology