Field Notes

Or: When your tools only work if you’re the one carrying them and using them Scene It’s December 2025. I’m looking at five CSV exports of my own site (representing five individual, but interlinked tables) trying to explain to an AI why the bidirectional relationships aren’t broken when the data says they are. The AI…

A field note on mission preservation and the ethical obligation of the operator. When you ask questions that reveal painful truths, you have an obligation to leave people with their dignity. Schemas make that possible. Scene Bay St. Louis, Mississippi – Late 2005 The Mississippi coast after Katrina. Local pastor running food and supply distribution…

Why external elicitation reveals what self-review cannot Trying something new (let me know if it works for you). Moving forward, field notes on this site follow a three-part structure: Scene (the experience), Break (the friction or realization), Schema (the extracted pattern and application). Most of our attention stays fixed on the surface of an event….

Ground Truthing Wireless Coverage Through CW Drive Testing The Contact Event: Reality vs. The Propagation Model Between late 2005 and early 2007, I was pulled into a problem that felt immediately familiar (wireless coverage modeling is not the same thing as wireless coverage reality). RF engineers had already built propagation models for a distributed antenna…

Governance, hype cycles, and the vocabulary that quietly runs the world The short version We usually experience technology waves from the surface. But as practitioners, we have to see the layer underneath: the rules and incentives that determine where the wave actually lands. This is the “Magic Eye” moment of governance (when the random noise…

Scene I am watching capable adults in a room full of useful information. These are not beginners. They are smart, experienced people who can execute under pressure. And yet, the learning stops cold on two phrases that sound harmless: “I already know that.” “I disagree.” Both are socially acceptable ways to end a conversation without…

From Spectral Signatures to Ground Truth (The 2002 Revelation) My formal training was designed for the Strategic Peak of research. As a GIS and remote sensing scientist, I was taught to observe the world from a distance. I used satellite imagery to model wildland fire behavior. I could calculate spectral signatures and build complex spatial…

In parochial school, we were supposed to carry a notepad and record our assignments. If you were inspected without it, you received a demerit. I never kept the notepad. I forgot one assignment in seven years. I remember it because it was so rare. Seventh grade science fair. We drew numbers 1-30 for presentation order….

The term “Operator” has been co-opted by tactical aesthetics. But its true value isn’t found in gear or martial skill. It’s found in the relationship to Contact with Reality – the interface between intent and a resisting system. Operator (def): One who possesses the technical mastery to maintain system uptime when the environment is resisting….

Or: What Rock Climbing Taught Me About How All My Work Actually Functions The Realization I was writing about bouldering recently. How practicing hard moves close to the ground lets you build muscle memory and recognition so that when you encounter similar patterns 40 feet up, your body knows what to do without conscious analysis….