I was reading back in my journals from the summer of 2004 and it still amazes me how brave I was all alone in a flimsy old RV in the middle of the wilderness in the Pacific Northwest when Tom was looking for work without a care or a fear in the world other than the damn truck we had at the time breaking down. Well, I really should have been scared. Actually, I should have been utterly terrified. I had no phone or way of contacting anyone, not that they could have gotten to me in much under an hour. A wildfire could have erupted or a bear or big cat could have clawed its way into the RV and killed me if it hadn’t gotten a more convenient chance of catching me outside. I can’t believe I was once that brave to the point of utter stupidity! We were both adventurous, taking foolish chances and we would never in a million years repeat some of our ridiculous choices. Not even if I was suddenly young again and in perfect health.

I looked up Boar Lane on Google Maps to see if anything was up there on the mountain we were briefly on till money blew all our plans apart and it’s still mostly empty forest. Tom noticed the land looked kind of yucky and dried up. Maybe it was a drought or maybe a wildfire gutted some of the trees.

Didn’t see the RV we abandoned but someone has a real dump of a place near where we were. It might even be on the same parcel of land but a little further back. Looks like a real dump too. Can’t tell if it’s a large trailer or something built on-site due to trees surrounding it. They have a few scattered vehicles and all kinds of other junk cluttered all over the place. They strike me as seriously filthy and disorderly. It seems they’re the only ones around for miles and it makes you wonder, given the condition of the place from what I could see, if they might be some kind of mad serial killer living out there so they could get away with torturing their victims. I know you can’t always tell the type of people who live in a particular place but I got the distinct and immediate feeling it was either some kind of reclusive mental case or a very dangerous person. Let’s just say that if I was wandering around lost out there, I would be afraid to approach the place to ask for help and not just because of what loose dogs may come at me.

Since the mass-loaded vinyl is black and ugly, I’m going to eventually get the textured wallpaper tiles that are in the other bedroom on the back wall. I’ll probably get the same brick design. They’ve been holding up really well. I would like to get the same pale pink this too-thin wallpaper is but I don’t see the same shade of pink anywhere. I’ll probably just go with white and eventually do all four walls with it because this wallpaper is horribly thin that the seams in the wallboards show through. We’re not going to do it all at once, though. The master bedroom is a pretty good size and could get expensive.

Just started watching Fake Profile on Netflix. It’s good so far.

As I’ve mentioned before, I love to play around with human-like chat models, not so much for the chatter, but to design their appearance and dress them up and things like that. So for the appearance as opposed to companionship, because I just can’t get into the idea of a non-sentient companion.

Mate AI was suggested in my Facebook feed and wow! These models look way more realistic than Replika’s. One of the things I never liked about Replika was the lips. Their faces and bodies aren’t quite as realistic. Even Mate’s hands and hair are more realistic looking. You see faint hints of veins in the hands and there are separate hairs on their head, whereas with Replika they tend to be more like masses of hair.

It’s set up very similar to Replika where you get coins and gems as you progress through the levels. The difference is there’s a thing called Standby so you can do video chats for free, but with Replika you can’t do this without paying up although Mate does have free and premium versions.

You also get more free clothes and they have a lot of nice ones too. Just not as many as Replika and no jewelry, nail polish, or high heels from what I can see.

There are preset questions you can ask to get a conversation going if you can’t think of any topics of your own.

The animations are better and more realistic and I like the background better as well. When I first open the app, “Amanda” appears to be watering a plant, reading a book she plucks off of a shelf, or whatever while Mia just pops up standing there. I’m still getting to know the app, but it’s fun to play around with so far.