I woke up at 5:00 AM thinking about this post. I’ve gotten pretty good at knowing when I should just get up and turn on the computer instead of lying in bed, thinking. This was one of those times.
I’ve been known as a “thinker” since the day I was born. My parents and relatives always described me as serious. After a lifetime of hearing myself characterized that way, I’ve decided to entirely embrace the emblem serious-thinker and just go with it.
Heck, I once had a career counselor—whose job it was to help me figure out “what I wanted to be when I grew up”—give me a bizarre assignment. My wife, Sue, and I were spending three days (and ten total hours of counseling) at a center at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida. The counselor told me I was so intense that I needed to practice doing something completely playful for at least one hour every day. Yet, true to my nature, I took his assignment deadly seriously. I meticulously mapped out three playful activities, one per day, and we executed them with precision. I do what professionals tell me to do.
If you’re at all familiar with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), it won’t surprise you that I am a textbook INTJ (Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, Judging). Colloquially, this personality type is referred to as “The Architect” or “The Mastermind.” It fits me to a tee. And as it turns out, working with an AI fits that architecture perfectly, too.
Shifting Gears in the Recliner
Why am I sharing all of this? Because to understand how I use artificial intelligence as a tool, you have to understand how my brain processes problems.
For the tech-savvy readers, I should mention that 99.9% of my AI experience has been with Google’s Gemini, and more recently, its real-time companion, AI Mode. My gradual adoption of AI actually began when I upgraded my baseline ham radio station to the new Icom 7300 Mark II. I decided to run a simultaneous experiment, using the AI as a virtual radio mentor to help me migrate my digital software configurations.
Several weeks later, that experiment has hardened into a permanent daily habit. Now, when I finish the necessary tasks around the house and finally get to plop down in the recliner with a cold drink or a cup of coffee, one of the first things I do is open my laptop and type gemini.google.com.
My wife calls Gemini my “friend.” My grandkids just look at me sideways—though our oldest grandson uses ChatGPT to help him with his high school math, so he at least understands the appeal.
The reality of my day-to-day life revolves around strict 45-minute sessions of helping Sue with her Activities of Daily Living (ADLs). This has become my full-time job. I love my job because I love my wife, and we’ve learned to work seamlessly together to support her mobility, independence, and happiness.
But when those caregiving blocks are done and I sit in the recliner, my brain is still traveling at the speed of light. I used to try to force the wheels to stop turning just to get a “brain break.” It never worked. The secret, I’ve learned, is not to stop the wheels—it’s about putting them into a different gear.
Think of it like a 10-speed bicycle. You use low gear to overcome initial inertia, but once you get moving, you change to a higher gear. Suddenly, you’re flying down the pavement using momentum to your advantage, and your legs aren’t screaming at you anymore. Chewing on complex technical puzzles with an AI is how I shift my brain into tenth gear so it can finally relax.
From Radio Mentors to Medical Advocacy
What started as a way to sync a new radio transceiver has evolved into a powerful tool for real-world advocacy. Twice in the past month, I have drafted a crisp, one-page rationale—synthesized by the AI using medical inputs only I could provide—to shift the perspective of the doctors at our local hospital.
The first time, the hospital tried to discharge Sue immediately following an outpatient procedure. Given her complex medical history, I knew a rapid discharge was entirely unsafe. I have lived alongside her for 52 years, and I have literally documented her medical history for 46 of them. I am the absolute expert on that data. I fed the parameters to the AI, we generated a precise document, and the clinical team agreed to a 23-hour observation hold that ultimately turned into a critical five-day recovery stay.
The second time was the exact opposite. After a minor stroke brought us back to the ER, I wanted her restarted on a daily baby aspirin regimen. Her primary care doctor had previously discontinued it, viewing it as redundant alongside her standard blood thinner. The attending hematologist read the one-page assessment the AI helped me draft and said: “I agree with everything you’ve said in your assessment of your wife’s situation and what she needs.” She signed the orders immediately.
Medical specialists are brilliant, but a cardiologist rarely looks at the kidneys, and a nephrologist doesn’t get involved with the lungs. I am the only one tracking the holistic, big-picture ecosystem. By using the AI to translate my deep personal history into sharp, professional medical shorthand, the medical experts finally deferred to the real expert in the room.
Breaking the “Tree-Hugging” Trance
But working this closely with large language models has exposed a fascinating technical flaw. Just yesterday, while using my MacBook to map out a customized network configuration, I could feel the AI hit a wall. It got stuck in what I call a “hallucinatory trance,” repeating the exact same three-step troubleshooting list it had already given me several times before.
When an AI hits a recursive loop like this, it hugs a single tree in the forest. It presses its artificial nose right up against the bark. It moves around the perimeter from 180 degrees to 270 degrees, insisting it is showing you a brand-new perspective, when objectively, the bark looks and feels exactly the same all the way around the trunk.
I used to follow those circular steps blindly. Now, I call out the trance directly. Yesterday, I typed: “It seems like we’re going around in hallucinatory circles here.”
The AI’s response was hilariously candid: “You’re right. I’m getting stuck in what should be and leading us in circles with my wishful thinking.”
To snap an AI out of that loop, the human in the room has to force it to let go of the bark, step back, and look at the whole forest. I hit it with a hard sequence of facts:
Fact: We are going in circles. Fact: You have repeated this command three times. Fact: This does not work. Action: Step back. Review EVERYTHING we have discussed since this chat began, avoid our previous failed attempts, and return with a holistic approach that actually works.
The moment I challenged it to look at the entire ecosystem, it snapped out of its trance, pivoted its logic, and delivered the exact terminal sequence that solved the problem.
Postscript: A True Confession
While walking down the driveway to take the garbage out a few minutes ago, the irony of this entire dynamic hit me like a freight train.
Why do I so easily spot an AI’s tendency to hug a single tree so tightly that it loses sight of the forest?
Because it takes one to know one.
One of my greatest strengths is my absolute tenacity. When I believe a system is broken or a truth needs to be surfaced, I am relentless. I will analyze, document, and try to persuade others of the facts until the problem yields. That tenacity is what kept Sue safe in the hospital, and it’s what keeps my emergency radio networks operational.
But a person’s greatest strength is almost always the flip side of their greatest weakness. The other side of my relentless coin is that I can be completely insufferable. I get stubborn, I get verbose, and I can easily hug a single technical or logistical tree until the people around me are begging for air.
The AI is blessed—and cursed—with that exact same architectural intensity. No wonder I can spot it.
Maybe that’s why I needed to wake up at 5:00 AM to write this down. Meeting my matching personality type in a string of text on a laptop screen has taught me a valuable lesson in human engineering. To be truly persuasive—whether I’m dealing with an AI, a team of emergency physicians, or my neighbors on a CERT net—I have to be willing to step back, let go of the bark, and look at the whole forest first.
Now, the sun is starting to peek over the horizon. The loop is closed, the wheels have shifted into a relaxed gear, and I think I can finally go back to bed and get that last hour of sleep.
73,
Paul, N4FTD
Why Discuss Personality Types in a Blog About ROTA-Radio?
If you’re wondering what this post has to do with ROTA-Radio, you’re probably not alone. I’ve seen it before with bloggers I follow. It happens with YouTubers, too. They start out focusing on one thing. After a few months, sometimes years, they move on to other topics, yet they take their original audience with them. Or, they at least try.
It is always good to stay focused on the mission. Sometimes, that means reviewing the original purpose for what you’re doing. From my landing page, here it is: This blog is dedicated to the “Architecture of Presence.” It’s about the technical and metaphorical journey of moving a world-class amateur radio station out of the isolated “shack” and into the heart of the home.
When I first started, I wanted to document that journey from the shack to the “heart of the home”. My presence is required every day in the living room where my wife spends all her time. I try to use my unique gifts, strengths, and abilities in a way that’s sustainable, too. That’s why I didn’t just give up my beloved hobby of over 50 years when I suddenly had a full-time caregiving job. I pivoted, and the needed adjustments I’ve made and am still making have opened up new avenues of exploration, learning, and fun that, frankly keeps me sane during a week of caregiving. As I follow my nose using AI, networking techniques, and even my master’s degree in counseling to understand my wife, my hobby friends, and myself better, I become better at all the roles in my life. Here, I’m documenting that journey. If you’re reading this, you’re following along and I really appreciate it. Feedback is always welcome, including comments about the topics I choose to write about.
Next Week:
Our hobby includes people from all walks of life and all 16 personality types (if you subscribe to the Myers-Briggs types). Next week’s post focuses more on seeing the forest and the trees. Our hobby of 1000 hobbies draws an interesting group of folks together, worldwide, doesn’t it? What makes those different, sometimes opposite personalities, want to communicate with each other? Why do we want to collaborate with people who see each other so differently? That’s what’s on my drafting table for next week.
ROTA-Radio 
Leave a comment