Personal Posts
Personal Posts about myJourney
Thoughts, Stories & Learnings
Lots of thoughts, ramblings and stories / Many topics on my mind over the years!
A while back I wrote I am the sum of my parts which explains my many dimensions.
You can also view myWork Related Posts here
Top-Performing Stocks: Historical Total Return Comparison
5-Year, 10-Year & 20-Year top Performing Stocks. Historical Total Return Comparison (As of March 2026) Data Note: Sourced from financecharts.com, YCharts, Visual Capitalist, and U.S. News. Returns include reinvested dividends. Exact figures vary slightly by source and measurement date. An update to my previous posts about Stock Performance Great addition. Comparing individual stock “moonshots” to…
My Journey to a Self-Hosted Web Search
For months, I’ve been refining my local AI lab. I had the hardware dialed in—my AMD Ryzen AI processor, 128GB of RAM, running Ollama and Open WebUI like a dream. But I kept hitting the “invisible wall.” Every time I asked my local agents for the morning’s technical headlines or a deep dive into a…
Starting a New Year — A Little Less Invincible
Originally posted on my JorgeDiaries Substack | This is a continuation of the journal of my recovery process, since my previous blog, “Doing Embarrassingly Well”. I sit here finally getting down to write about something I’ve been thinking about for a few days now — the start of a new year in my life. As…
How to Enable Email Sending in Agent Zero (Gmail Setup Guide)
Let your AI assistant send emails on your behalf — in minutes. Agent Zero is a powerful AI framework that can automate tasks, run code, browse the web, and much more. But one capability many users overlook is email sending — and it’s surprisingly easy to set up. This guide walks you through enabling Gmail-based…
Tonto National Forest Off Roading
We went to the Forest Service Tonto National Forest Cave Creek Ranger Station today to find out what we needed to discover the area’s off-road “amenities” So much to explore! Looking forward to it!
Don’t Mess with the Monkeys
A Childhood Memory from a Costa Rica That No Longer Exists Originally Published on my JorgeDiaries Substack here I know this is progress, but on a recent vacation to Costa Rica, I was shocked by how little of the old country remains. You can still catch glimpses of it here and there, but so much…
Who Owns Greenland?
The Surprising Truth About Land, Homes, and Money on the World’s Largest Island I’ve been following the news about Greenland lately and honestly; it’s been wild to watch. I wanted to speak more clearly about what’s actually happening, so I did a little deep dive into the facts. The results of my research were so…
How I Installed Agent Zero After My 2-Week Test
When I first started experimenting with Agent Zero, my goal was to keep everything temporary and isolated. I did not want the container leaving clutter on my computer, and I wanted a setup that could start fresh every time. For the first few days, that worked perfectly. Agent Zero was still new to me, and…
Balancing One-Click Access with Data Privacy
This is part of my continuous learning on my DevLog topic. When managing a private community directory—containing sensitive member details like names, home addresses, and personal emails—the biggest hurdle is access friction. You want your group members (whether they are on Facebook, WhatsApp, or Slack) to click a link and get in instantly. However, standard…
Getting to Know Your AgentZero Setup (After Installation)
You have AgentZero installed and running. Now what? Before you start delegating tasks and building automated workflows, it helps to understand what you actually installed and where everything lives. This guide walks through the file structure, explains how projects work, and shows you where to find the documentation you will inevitably need. What You Actually…
How to Get Amazon Book Reviews in 2026
Amazon reviews are one of the most important parts of book marketing for indie authors. They provide social proof, help readers decide whether to buy, and can improve your book’s visibility on Amazon. But in 2026, Amazon’s anti-manipulation systems are stricter than ever. That means the old shortcuts no longer work, and the wrong move…
Christmas Songs Are Way Younger Than You Think
Every December, it happens like clockwork. You turn on the radio, pour a cup of hot chocolate, and suddenly you’re surrounded by Christmas songs that feel… ancient. Timeless. Like they’ve always existed. Surely these songs must be hundreds of years old, passed down through generations like holiday folklore. Right? Well—surprise —many of the most beloved…
What the Wright Brothers Can Teach Us About AI’s Future
I also wrote a shorter version on my Substack Newsletter From Kitty Hawk to Silicon Valley The departure board at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson flickers with destinations: Seoul, Amsterdam, São Paulo. I’m wedged into a terminal restaurant booth, laptop open, working on an application while my flight boards in forty minutes. On my screen, a local AI…
Moving to GitHub Container Registry (GHCR)
If you’re a developer working with containers, chances are Docker Hub has been your go-to for years. It’s the default, the familiar, and for many, the “it just works” solution for storing and distributing Docker images. But if you’re like me, and vibe coding, Coding Assistants has moved to doing and deploying so many of…
Cave Creek Arizona Business Licensing
Originally posted on 35sites.com -Guide to Cave Creek,AZ Business Licensing Starting a small business can be exciting, but local and state licensing rules can be confusing, especially if you work from home or sell online. If your business is based in Cave Creek, Arizona, this guide explains exactly what licenses you may need, why they are…
What If You Invested $1,000 in the Right Stocks 20 Years Ago?
When he was 11 years old (he is now 34), my son came from an afternoon’s playdate at a friend’s house af, and told us over dinner to invest in Google. That was when way back when google was just a search engine and I was helping companies trying to keep the internet out of…
Updating Docker Containers
You can manage many devices using docker remotely with Portainer. However Portainer does not have the ability to check if there are updates and actually update containers within Docker. Up until a few months ago, there was a script which I have used for years to do this called: watchtower. Unfortunately, watchtower is not being…
Taming Your Knowledge: Choosing the Right Tool
In an era of information overload, finding the right home for your thoughts is more important than ever. Whether you are building a Second Brain, managing complex projects, or simply looking to organize your digital life, the market is flooded with options. I have been trying to organize information since the dawn of time, testing…
The Two Worlds of Search: Web Results vs. Vector Databases
To understand how to build a truly effective AI agent, you must first acknowledge the core constraint of the Large Language Model (LLM) itself. “LLMs are ‘frozen’ in time as of their training data (The Training Cut-off).” Think of an LLM as a massive, read-only database. During its “training” phase, it reads a significant portion…
The Day Payroll Almost Didn’t Happen
“Are we getting paid today?” Originally Published on my JorgeDiaries Substack here In my early 20s, I worked for a company that delivered “timeshare computing.” This was long before Software as a Service (SaaS) was a buzzword. We installed physical terminals at client sites and connected them back to our servers via modems. It was…
Understanding LLM Mixture of Experts (MoE)
When you hear about the latest large language models (LLMs)—like GPT-4, Claude, or Gemini—it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by their sheer scale. These models contain billions, sometimes trillions, of parameters. This incredible size is what gives them their broad capabilities—from writing code and summarizing texts to answering complex questions and creating poetry. But that scale…
The Thinking Power of Claude Sonnet 4.5
A while ago, I was working on a tool to get my personal WordPress sites to backup to HTM. Learning the limits of Vibe Coding and specifically the capabilities of different LLMs. It started as a simple project, but with all of the things to consider (WordPress, templates, and everything that WordPress thoughts at the…
Gumroad vs. Patreon: A Quick Comparison
In today’s digital economy, content creators are always searching for efficient ways to monetize their work. Gumroad and Patreon are two popular platforms that enable creators to turn their passions into income streams. Both support one-time payments and recurring revenue, but they emphasize different models and experiences, so it’s important to understand how they compare….
Accenture’s Big AI Shift: Tough Cuts Now, Brighter Future Ahead
The announcement of Accenture’s layoffs of over 11,000 employees was made public on September 28, 2025. This move is part of a strategic AI-focused restructuring program aimed at aligning the workforce with the company’s AI-driven future. CEO Julie Sweet outlined the plan during an earnings call CNBC, 2025-09-26. Why the Layoffs Happened: Closing the Skills Gap CEO Julie Sweet has been clear: these changes are about skills. Accenture is…
OneNote – The New Old Name
Starting October 14, 2025, Microsoft will end support for OneNote for Windows 10, making it read-only. The ONLY officially supported version moving forward is simply called OneNote—no year or edition attached. Previously known as “OneNote 2016,” this desktop app is included with Microsoft 365, Office 2019, Office 2021, and Office 2024, and is also available…
Embracing New Skills: Navigating the Evolving Landscape of Work with AI
As we continue to witness the rapid transformation of industries through the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), it becomes increasingly critical for professionals to adopt new skills. This shift not only improves efficiency but also drives us toward higher value activities by reducing time spent on “work about work.” It’s a journey towards specialization, where…
Build Log: Creating a Custom AI Research Agent
Author: Jorge Pereira Date: August 2025 Tech Stack: n8n (Docker), Ollama, Open WebUI, JavaScript/HTML, Windows 11 The Vision The goal was to build an autonomous “Deep Research” agent capable of performing real-time web searches and returning professional, high-quality Markdown reports. I wanted a tool that behaved like Perplexity but lived in my own home lab…
Git Lite: Managing Large Repos and the Multi-Remote Secret
How to keep your laptop lean while syncing to the NAS and GitHub A while back I wrote Managing my Dev Codebase and Workflow, where I shared how I use my NAS as a central hub for my dev work. But as any hobbyist knows, once you start using Git seriously, you hit a snag:…