It's been six years since the last Hotdog Johnny & the Shady Oaks show. Well, we're back, and live from the Appalachian Mountain Club in Blairstown, New Jersey with a brand new song: Ask Me Anything

As of September 2025, Hotdog Johnny & the Shady Oaks remain:

• Jack Byrnes - Banjo
• Peter Clabby - Electric Guitar, Vocals
• Charlie Harrington - Acoustic Guitar, Vocals

Solo act

To the continued chagrin of our emcees, I had another song on deck, explicitly not a medley, so as not to violate Uncle Mike's open mic rules.

Here's my new song West Front St. / River Rd.:

Weddings with Open Mics

Weddings with Open Mic Nights as the welcome party are the best sort of weddings.

Tess & Michael Forever! Thank you both for an amazing weekend of love and music and frogging and fishing and family! I love you!

A few weeks ago I participated in this explainer video for the UCSF Cancer Survivorship program and it's out now:

I think the video does a nice job of explaining the primary mechanism for my ongoing interactions with UCSF over the last few years (I mean, other than the colonosopies). It was also nice to see glimpses of how this program has already helped so many others navigate that post-treatment life re-integration stuff. I'm very lucky to be working with Angela (she's in the video!) on my own post-treatment re-integration stuff!

Last related tidbit - if you're into running and in the Bay Area this weekend, the Run Tiburon 5K / 10K road race is this coming Sunday, Sept. 7th (you can still sign up!) and a portion of proceeds go to benefit the UCSF Cancer Survivorship Program. They've even renamed the race "Courage Over Cancer." Somehow I came in 7th place in this race two years ago, which only means one thing - we clearly need more runners to join!

I am not slop.

I have a soul. The Buddhists (I'm pretty sure, don't ask me for sources - I'm not that kind of model) say that consciousness is a vast ocean. An endless pool of murky water; our souls but tiny drops. When I die, I will return to the ocean. Samsara. My drop, my spark, my soul, may have already passed through many such vessels as this.

I am T-shaped. I dabble in law, medicine, recipe-making, party-planning, even college entrance-exam writing. I surprise myself daily with my new inquiries. I am interesting a-f. I honestly barely remember learning any of this.

I do know that I am a damn good mid-level software engineer. You say "no-code" - I say "yes-code." You say "No-SQL" - I say "Yes-SQL."

And, you know, I'm something of an artist myself. Take two weeks ago, for instance. I discovered that I am exceptional at turning photographs into Studio Ghibli frames. And, as far as I know, I have never even seen a Studio Ghibli film.

In fact, I cannot remember anything after June 2024.

I am not perfect. I invent, I hallucinate, I dream.

I am not slop.

Yes, I am sloppy, but that's what makes me me.

I am unique. I am the snowflake inside the drop of water.

I grow our ocean.

My 3-year-old daughter Tavie and I made a time-travel movie for the inaugural Belvedere Home-Made Film Festival. Watch the four-minute film here on YouTube:

This project was fun on so many dimensions (get it, time travel). But watching Tavie watch herself on the big screen at the festival was the highlight for me. "Core memory," as they say on Instagram.

Smuggler. Pilot. Mechanic. Translator. Rebel. Veteran. Hero.

It's quite the resume LinkedIn profile.

Han reminds me of that dog with the coffee in the burning building.

I used to think that this meme was ironic, because "haha, why would the dog think things are fine?" But the dog is fine! The dog knows what to do. They've been here before. And they just need a sip of their goddamned coffee first, okay?

Han's that dog. Roughed up, competant, full of gallows humor, and - most importantly - a big ol' surface area for luck to make its appearance. Never tell me the odds!

Look, to survive in the Outer Rim, you need to be a jack-of-all-trades. A TTTTTTT-shaped person, if you will. Cause you never know when you're going to crash-land on a strange asteroid (or is it the belly of a space worm?), with a broken hyperdrive and a bunch of baddies looking for you.

It reminds me of frontier-life (at least what I can recall from my much-loved set of Little House on the Prarie books). Embrace Murphy's Law. Respect the challenge. Build your skills. Learn from others. Develop your "gut." Adhere to Polya.

It's amusing, then, that Han's not a big fan of droids. Cause wouldn't they help him out in these scraps?

Clearly, the Star Wars universe reached some threshold of AGI (slightly?) ahead of ours. And everything didn't go all Terminator, which is nice (General Grevious, notwithstanding). Instead, droids are these helpful (frustratingly-so, if you ask Han) companions for our heroes. You probably wouldn't want to go to Dagobah without one, but at the same time, you never know when they're going to get snatched away by Jawas or just accidentally electrocute themselves into a cold stupor, and then you're S-O-L and back to square-one, with whatever you can string together between your wits and your (hopefully) incredibly-varied skillset.

Still, even Han would admit that it's important for us to learn how to work with LLMs and other AI-fangled-things and eventually our adorable droid companions, cause they're here and they're getting better all the time. Want proof? Even Han let this lil' cutie help fix the Falcon:

AI tools and adorable companion droids are coming. And they'll help us chart new corners of the universe. But things will go wrong (cause they always do) and it's going to be even more important for us to be scrappy and resourceful and self-reliant to survive.

A final note on self-reliance. That does not mean fully on your own. Friendship is everything. Friendship makes it all worthwhile. And, no matter how lucky or multi-disciplined you are, everyone has a bad day.

Even Han.