Journal

What I've built lately, with the video to prove it.

Most of these start the same way. Something in my day is slow or annoying, I describe it to Claude the way I'd explain it to a new hire, and I ask, can we do this? Then I record what happened. Newest is on top.

The journey is the backstory, from fixing a Facebook post in 2023 to writing my own software. Questions about any of it go in the forum, or ask me directly.

October 2026

  3. Built · video

    Yes, AI helped write my books. Here's what it didn't do.

    I've got five books out now, on puppies, itchy dogs, surgery and vet bills, and I'm finishing a sixth on cats with kidney disease. When that comes up, the next question is usually some version of "Oh, so AI wrote them?" I get it. Amazon is filling up with books nobody read before they were published. And parts of mine were AI-generated. But "AI wrote it" skips most of the work, so here's what actually goes into one, using the kidney cat book, Still Purring.

  4. Notes

    The rest of the week, in no particular order

    The New Puppy went to Amazon as a full-color paperback, all 342 pages. For the front desk I made a one-page client handout and little counter cards with QR codes for newpuppy.vet and itchydog.vet, printed right here on my own printer.

  6. Built · video

    Eight steps to get an estimate to my front desk. Now it takes one button.

    This is the kind of thing I'd never have thought was worth fixing. A few times a day a drop-off, a sick pet or a hospital case needs an estimate, and since the owner isn't in the room with me, it has to get up front to Baylee. Save it, print it, save it as a PDF, open PawNotes, attach it, type a note, send. Before the PDF trick I printed it on actual paper, and she'd read it and throw it away.

  7. Built · video

    I asked Claude if it was conscious. It made me two short films.

    One afternoon between patients I asked Claude something I'd been chewing on. My brain is about 86 billion neurons doing pattern recognition, and it's billions of numbers doing pattern recognition, so where's the line? I expected a paragraph. It made a film instead, and the last line turned the question back on me.

  8. Built · video

    itchydog.vet, from a blank page to live in five days

    I wanted a site I could hand to clients with itchy dogs, something better than a pamphlet. The first real draft went up at 1:27 in the morning and couldn't even show a forecast. Five days and 142 saved versions later it has an itch forecast for any ZIP, an itch diary that turns into a report for the vet, and the explainers from my book.

September 2026

  1. Built

    How and why I built Hearth Consult (demo on the front page)

    Most of my career it's been just me in the building. If you've ever worked somewhere with 3 or 4 doctors you know the move.. something doesn't add up, you lean into the next room and say "hey look at this one for a second". Half the time they don't even solve it, just saying it out loud to somebody who gets it is enough.

  2. Built

    Home Chef Fun! An app that talks you through dinner

    We get Home Chef meals delivered all the time. The directions are pretty simple, but it's all on one page, and some nights there are 6 or 7 steps and it gets a little confusing what the right order is.. what goes in the oven first, what you should be doing while it's in there, etc..

  4. Notes

    Pawnotes!

    We needed a good messaging system in the clinic, from front desk to back in treatment, to back in my office. Sidenotes worked, but it was clunky, old and blah.. so i made something fun, and the notes stay "sticky" which means they don't go away until it is seen, and done, you can move them, snooze them, or reply, etc.. and it syncs with slack...