The twitch in my eye is the result of an outdated prescription, or from reading too much online at work, I’ve decided. The reading has been on artificial intelligence, training machine models to learn unsupervised through clusters of computers tied together through nodes. Deep learning comes when machines transfer an insight from one scenario to another through layers, a deep neural network. Learning, then, can be viewed as cause and effect aimed at a hypothesis, or for making predictions.

It was around this time last year we were in Washington, DC at a Microsoft conference I made plans to fly to Germany that August. Eberhard and my mom were going back to the Austrian Alps, an annual trip they make to honor Eberhard’s friend he used to guide with who suicided himself, Eberhard says.

But I messed up the passport renewal process and my passport came the day after I was supposed to fly out and had to cancel my trip, and wound up hiking the Olympics instead. And I made plans for a business trip to Europe that October but had to cancel that also for reasons outside my control. So we compensated by booking a month-long trip to Germany in December, but it set our oldest daughter back in school, creating a precedent of absences and low grades we attribute to that. And things went sideways at work while I was gone that set into motion my leaving this past April. But the firm we hired to cover for me in December wound up being the same one I just joined.

Today, I got my trip to the Austrian Alps approved for this August and feel like I can start looking forward to it now. It will be Brad, Eberhard, and me: my mom’s not going, but hasn’t told Eberhard yet (she only has one lung now and doesn’t really like hiking).

When I got home, the dog shook and whimpered like she was trying to tell me something and Dawn says, she wants a walk. And so I changed, and around the block I thought of all this cause and effect, and wonder now if the dog knows she can get me to walk her, by whimpering like that.

Categories: Memoir, technology, travel

Tags: artificial intelligence, Austrian Alps, causality, cause and effect, deep learning, journal writing, machine learning, transfer learning, William Pearse writer