David Eisinger

Journal > Dispatch #39 (May 2026)

Posted 2026-05-12 under #dispatch

Man, what a month. Rich with the stuff of life. THICK. High highs (Nev’s first ballet recital, an incredible trip to Asheville), low lows (the death of our next door neighbor Joel, a major health scare – don’t worry, everyone’s alright). Impossible to capture the feeling of it as I sit here, and frankly it feels silly to document all the dumb stuff I get into alongside the heavy shit, but I’m committed to this project. Let’s go.

We headed down to Lake Norman for Easter weekend. Good to get some time with our little nephew Sully, who’s just a few months younger than Nico. I ran the Tar Heel 10 Miler (result, certificate), which went okay. Happy enough with my overall time at sub-9 minutes/mile, but I thought I might do a little better until I hit the final climb.

Between the race and an ill-fated outing to see the Savannah Bananas, we spent a good bit of time in Chapel Hill, where Claire went to school. Neat for her to be able to show the kids around. I sort of take for granted that we live where I went to college (though the main campus is rather separate and not somewhere we ever go).

Asheville

At the end of the month, we headed to Asheville for our company’s annual gathering, which was awesome. We took over The Restoration hotel right in the heart of the city. I did a live performance of my song Asperitas, which was well-received and something I’ve never done before. And we unveiled the project we built as part of the hackathon in February, which went over so well it gets its own section below.

After the rest of the company departed, my parents (bless them) brought the kids out, and we got to take them around the city for a few days. Highlights included the Asheville Museum of Science, WNC Nature Center, and Highland Brewing.

Mystery Project

Right, so in February, I pitched this concept of a 3D-printed name tag tied to a digital product that would encourage people to connect in real life. I worked with a team to build a prototype, but the mechanics still needed fleshing out and the name tag/keychain thing needed refinement. In the subsequent months, my coworker Steven continued iterating on the keychain, eventually getting to a slick design featuring a print-in-place hinge and embedded magnets.

About a week before the event, I decided to get serious about the digital updates. I worked with Codex to overhaul the character/inventory system, replacing the AI-generated avatars with a character builder based on the LPC Spritesheet Character Generator so that people could equip the items they picked up and have that reflected on their avatar. And I added the concept of “item tags,” standalone AprilTags that I 3D printed that could then be associated with items.

The game was a big hit. The keychains were distributed in everyone’s welcome bags along with a little explainer card. People were already playing when we got to Asheville (which was a relief as we’d never done a full end-to-end test). We created new items throughout the event (Daft Punk Helmet, Grogu, etc.), associated them with the item tags, and had a lot of fun hiding them at the different event locations. Major props to Claire for running with that side of things.

I don’t know if we’ll revisit this concept or if it’ll be a one-time thing. I definitely need to write a comprehensive post about it. Look for that next month.

Gridfinity

Still having a blast with the 3D printer. My latest obsession is the Gridfinity organization system, printing little bins for all of our stuff.

If you’re into this sort of thing, check out this desktop organizer set and this wall system you can connect to a Gridfinity base with this adapter (and a ton of little magnets).

Deck Project

Finally, we’re in the early stages of replacing our rotted-out deck with a screened-in porch. We met with an architect who showed us some sketches:

Exciting stuff! This month’s looking busy, but I’m feeling relatively unencumbered with all of those obligations out of the way. Looking forward to getting back into music and kicking off the summer with a trip to the lake for Memorial Day and the Running of the Bulls 8K in downtown Durham.

This Month

• Adventure: Lake for Memorial Day; Running of the Bulls
• Project: make some new music
• Skill: I’ve been having a lot of fun finger drumming on my sampler while ChatGPT does my job for me – might try to incorporate that into the new piece

Reading & Listening

• Fiction: Every Tool’s a Hammer, Adam Savage
• Non-fiction: Operation Bounce House, Matt Dinniman
• Music: Ecology Division, Bastard Jazz Compilations

Links

• Optimism is not a personality flaw (via)

  Whoever can list the most reasons something won’t work gets treated as the smartest person in the room. If you say “I think this could go well,” you get ~the look. That slight tilt of the head. Optimism is treated like a belief in astrology. Pessimism reads as intelligence now. Optimism reads as naivety. This has gotten so baked into educated Western culture that most people don’t notice they’re doing it. But it’s toxic, all the same.

• Vibe coding and agentic engineering are getting closer than I’d like

  There are a whole bunch of reasons I’m not scared that my career as a software engineer is over now that computers can write their own code, partly because these things are amplifiers of existing experience. If you know what you’re doing, you can run so much faster with them.

• Open Source Gave Me Everything Until I Had Nothing Left to Give - Kenneth Reitz (via)

  I wish someone had told me this when I was twenty-three and staying up for three days straight because the code was flowing so beautifully. The code was beautiful. I was in trouble.