Using AI as a purchasing tool (Part Three)

The sketchy details I garnered from the contractors and the guidance received through the AI estimate motivated me to go and visit the fence manufacturer located in Provo, one hour drive from Park City. '

I finally understood what the fence contractors were unable to explain about the product, not because they were ignorant, but because that smartly engineered product was precisely marketed by engineers who had no idea how to tell the full story of their wonderful product in ways that fully explained their product working potential.

Then, I realized what the “Park City curse” is, as seen by people who don’t live in our town, but work there all the time and deal with many affluent folks who don’t seem to care about what they’re asked to pay. 

So these contractors are trained by our environment never to hesitate to charge as much as the market will bear. In the process they’re blindsided by the fact that not all of their potential clients are millionaires. They should instead be sensitive to that reality, namely the potential for “real folks” that live among the überrich, and somehow leave the door ajar to invite a request for a discount. 

Let me be clear, by just asking for instance: “What don’t you like about my quote?” or “Is it a cost problem that prevents you from moving forward with the project I presented to you?” If they can easily take advantage of the super rich, good for them, but they clearly end up losing business by scaring the rest of normal people like me and the rest of us...

Using AI as a purchasing tool (Part Two)

In going on line, I identified three or four contractors that I felt could do the job and had reasonably good ratings. I drafted a Request for Quote (RFQ) and sent it to them. The first company that responded sent me an estimator who quickly and erroneously measured the job, showed me some samples and a couple days later sent me his quote. 

It was as high as I expected, maybe even higher, outrageous as most construction bills are these days. I could have bought the material and built the goddamn fence myself, but I felt that I had passed the age for this kind of punishment. 

So I went to some of my favorite AI sources and asked the robot to take the quote apart by describing it in detail and feeding it the PDF file containing the estimate and the company’s conditions. 

It returned a result that pulled apart the cost of that exact type of fence, shortcomings in the offer and the complete labor cost estimate based on an expensive place like Park City at the current working rates. 

It showed me step by step how to negotiate, including what to say and not say, and suggested I aim for a 25% reduction, noting that I would be quite happy if I only could obtain a lesser, 20% discount. 

That’s what I did with the best bid I had received, and after quite a bit of wrangling got to my ultimate target. Thank you AI! Tomorrow I’ll share with you my take away from that first in-depth experience with AI as a negotiator...

Using AI as a purchasing tool (Part One)

Making a large and complicated purchase that includes a chain of components is never clear-cut and often involves various price structures independent of one another. Home building, projects and renovations are such perfect examples that incorporate a multitude of elements and the variability of each one of them.

If not properly handled, they can end up having a huge impact on the final cost of the project especially considering the job uniqueness and its infrequent occurrence. Early this month, I decided to build a 262’ long fence in my backyard. There was a short 45 year-old 89’ wooden fence in the south end of my garden that was totally rotten and ready to fall that I felt needed to be dealt with. 

I didn’t like it that much but was a convenient 3’ tall fence separating my property to that of the neighbor to the south. As always, one thought led to another and “while I was at it” I decided to look for a more encompassing fence, 6’ tall, that would free me of the deer invasion that we’ve suffered since 2020. This is the thought process that initiated the project. 

Tomorrow we’ll see how I turned to AI for the cost estimate….

My trick for falling asleep (Part Two)

My trick for falling asleep sounds so simple that you might say, “It can’t be true!” I’ve challenged it myself by researching deeper into the subject and found that my description of the “hyperactive brain” was spot‑on. Calling it this way is just what clinicians describe as cognitive arousal — the mind generating thoughts, associations, and narratives that keep the nervous system alert. It doesn’t require insomnia; it’s simply a mind that doesn’t downshift easily. 

The way I describe it — thoughts that grow, get loud, and become hurdles — seems to be a very accurate depiction of how mental activity can block the transition into sleep. In fact my breathing technique is not just intuitive, it’s grounded in solid science. The idea of focusing intensely on one’s breathing is essentially a form of attention anchoring, a core mechanism in meditation and in many clinical sleep interventions. 

In fact by giving my mind a single, simple task, I prevent it from spinning up new thoughts and that’s exactly what mindfulness‑based therapies aim for. By moving to slow, attentive breathing I tell my body to shift into a “rest and digest” mode. It makes my heart rate drop, decreases muscle tension, and transitions my brain toward sleep‑friendly rhythms. It also interrupts rumination loops by becoming my sole and unique focus. 

This is precisely the mechanism that breaks the chain of escalating thoughts. It’s certainly true that your years of meditation help. People who meditate regularly show faster sleep onset, lower nighttime anxiety, better emotional regulation, improved ability to redirect attention. Still that very simple technique is accessible to anyone, even without meditation experience. 

I’m not presenting this approach as a magic cure or a rigid rule. I’m just describing my experience, my struggle, my discovery and my encouragement to others. Finally, I’m not trying to force sleep, I’m just creating the conditions in which sleep can arrive on its own. Of course, much easier said than done!

My trick for falling asleep (Part One)

I’ve always struggled with falling asleep, sometimes in my bed at home, but mostly while flying overnight in planes. It’s not that I suffer from insomnia, but rather a hyperactive brain that doesn’t give me much break except when I meditate, but that’s the result of many years of practice.

No matter what kind of thoughts occupy my little mind, positive, negative, fun, scary or whatever category it falls in, it always grows, gets loud and becomes the big hurdle to my wanting to sleep. 

Still, I believe that I’m finally holding the key to quieting it down and that has to do with intensely observing my breathing to the point that it becomes my sole and unique focus. And it works. I’m sure my meditation practice comes as a great help in making me succeed, but there is no reason for anyone not to try it! 

In the next blog, I will attempt to check if my assumption holds water… or not!

More heat, less Aiguille du Midi...

Mountain erosion is not something new, but it seems to be happening much more frequently as the planet heats up and the permafrost that used to hold together high altitude peaks in the Alps and elsewhere in the world is no longer able to hold massive rock formations together. 

On Wednesday, August 12, 2026, a major rockfall occurred on the north face of the Aiguille du Midi in the Mont Blanc massif above Chamonix, France. Over 500,000 cubic feet of rock broke away at an altitude above 11,800 feet (3,600 meters) in the Mallory area, sending a massive plume of dust and debris down the mountain. 

This summer’s extreme heat waves destabilized high-altitude permafrost and rock walls, triggered safety checks by the Compagnie du Mont-Blanc and followed the closure of the peak's famous ice tunnel due to melting. Other iconic peaks are failing structurally too. 

On the Matterhorn, intense summer heat waves have triggered frequent, erratic rock falls. Mountain guide associations in Switzerland and Italy have repeatedly been forced to suspend guided tours on major routes (like the Hörnligrat ridge) as the traditional frost holding the pathways together is simply liquefying. 

Also, right now, scientists and residents are anxiously monitoring the Spitze Stei rock formation looming over the village of Kandersteg, Switzerland. Through decaying permafrost, the mountainside has been actively losing height and parts of it have been shifting by up to 70 centimeters (2.3 feet) per day during peak summer melt. Geologists estimate that if the unstable formation collapses all at once, it could unleash 500 to 700 million cubic feet of rock, creating a landslide that could dwarf the Blatten disaster of May 2025. 

I guess that in the end, what goes up must always go down! 

The power of curiosity (Part Three)

Of course developing curiosity is good and well but there’s also such a thing as unhealthy curiosity. Seeking answers is not automatically wisdom and can become: 

• A compulsive consumption of information 
• An intrusion into other people's lives 
• A fascination with sensationalism 
• An endless trip into internet rabbit holes 
• Collecting facts without understanding them 
• Constantly looking for novelty and being unable to concentrate 

There’s therefore novelty-seeking and genuine curiosity. Novelty says: “What's new?” Curiosity says: “What's interesting here that I don't yet understand?” The second is much more profound. Finally here might be the greatest benefit to healthy curiosity, it’s one of the best antidotes to certainty.

When we are certain we already know, the investigation stops, but when we say “I wonder…”, the door opens again. That is why I think curiosity and humility are closely related. The curious person implicitly acknowledges: “My picture of reality is incomplete,” and that realization can become increasingly valuable with age. 

If I could reduce the whole idea to one sentence, I might put it this way: Knowledge tells us what we know; curiosity keeps us aware of how much remains to be discovered. This might be one of the reasons why a genuinely curious person can remain young in mind long after seemingly becoming old.