How good is AI at creating a quick, one-page biography of you? (ANSWER: Pretty good)

I asked Google Gemini to produce "an image showing someone using artificial intelligence to create a bio about themselves." For some reason it gave this woman three hands, but I did like the inclusion of the two cats.

When Yahoo and Google launched back in the 1990s, one of the first things many people did was search their own names to see what information about them was available online.

Googling yourself was de rigeur.

Now we're in the age of artificial intelligence and it's still interesting to find out what our digital overlords know about us.

Here's an interesting exercise you can try. Go to an AI platform like perplexity.ai (it's free, but you'll have to register) and prompt it with something like "Create a bio for <YOUR NAME> of <CITY WHERE YOU LIVE>."

In seconds, it will take what it can find about you and create a pretty professional-sounding bio. And from what I've seen, a fairly accurate one, too.

I'll give you two examples. First, here's what Perplexity wrote about my wife:

Terry Tennant of Wickliffe, Ohio is a longtime community-focused resident known for her dedication to local schools, the arts, and public service.​

Community roots

• Terry lives in Wickliffe, Ohio and is originally from the community, reflecting deep roots in the city and surrounding area.​

• Over the years she has been involved with local organizations and families in Wickliffe, often connected to school and youth activities.​

Professional background

• Terry previously worked as a Circulation Clerk at the Wickliffe Public Library, where she helped patrons access materials and supported day-to-day library operations.​

• She has also worked at Lincoln Electric, gaining experience in a large, industry-leading manufacturing environment.​

School and music support

• Terry has played a key role in the Wickliffe High School Band Boosters, serving in leadership positions such as treasurer and helping organize and oversee booster activities.​

• As president of the Wickliffe Band Boosters, she helped coordinate donations and support for the music program, working with local partners to secure resources for students.​

Family and personal life

• Public records and community references connect Terry to a broader Tennant family network in northeast Ohio, including relatives in nearby cities such as Willowick and Euclid.​

• Friends and family describe her as someone who values time with loved ones and enjoys being actively involved in school, band, and community events

And here's what it had to say when I asked it to write something about me:

Scott Tennant of Wickliffe, Ohio is a lifelong Northeast Ohio communicator, public address announcer, and author who is closely identified with Wickliffe schools and local sports.​

Background

• Scott Tennant is a lifelong resident of Wickliffe, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, and continues to make his home there with his family.​

• He graduated from Wickliffe High School (Class of 1988) and has remained closely connected to the Wickliffe community ever since.​

Family and Personal Life

• Tennant is described as a husband, father, and grandfather, highlighting a strong family focus in his public profile.​

• He and his wife Terry have five children and share their home with two cats, a detail he uses as part of his personal author branding.​

Education and Early Career

• As a student-athlete at Wickliffe High School, Tennant was a four-year letter winner and team captain in track, competing as a sprinter and long jumper.​

• He also lettered in football as a running back and has spoken fondly of Wickliffe’s tightly knit community and the toughness of its athletic programs.​

Professional Career

• Professionally, Tennant has built a career as a strategic communicator, executive counsel, and development/external affairs leader for organizations in the Cleveland–Akron area.​

• His experience includes roles such as Vice President of Development and External Affairs at OneCommunity and work in writing, communications, and plan documentation for regional organizations.​

Public Address and Community Involvement

• Tennant is widely known as a public address announcer for high school, college, and minor league sports around Northeast Ohio, including serving as the stadium voice for events at Wickliffe Upper School.​

• He also works games for the Lake County Captains, a Class A affiliate of the Cleveland Guardians in Eastlake, Ohio, extending his announcing presence into professional baseball.​

Honors and Writing

• In recognition of his athletic achievements and ongoing contributions as an announcer and community sports supporter, Tennant was inducted into the Wickliffe Schools Alumni Association Athletic Hall of Fame in 2022.​

• As an author, he wrote “5 Kids, 1 Wife,” a humorous and personal look at family life that reinforces his identity as a Wickliffe-based writer and storyteller.

*   *   *

OK, we have three cats, not two. And the reference to Terry having family connections in Willowick and Euclid doesn't ring a bell. Other than that, everything else seems pretty solid.

You often hear that the AI you use now is the worst version you will ever use, meaning the technology advances and improves continuously. I'll believe that when it can tell me the correct number of felines in my house AND their names.

The easy rhythms and gentle mockings of a longtime partner

I met my wife 40 years ago.

Or roughly 40 years ago. I can tell you our first date was March 1, 1986, which is almost 40 years ago. But we knew each other before that.

Sort of.

We were in the same second-period study hall at Wickliffe High School, and we spent those study halls hanging out in the band room. This was a nice privilege for band members, as it beat the heck out of sitting quietly in Room 111 doing homework or reading.

At that point, Terry's time in the band and my time had overlapped for three semesters, but we hadn't really talked much. I wasn't in marching band (just concert and jazz bands) and she was. So our paths didn't cross with any regularity until those study halls.

The details are fuzzy, but I know I started looking forward to those second-period sessions because I knew I would get a chance to talk to her.

One time another girl in the band with whom I had been somewhat involved (I'm not even sure that's the right word) sat down on my lap while a group of us were talking. Terry looked over at us with a raised eyebrow, and I made a face to communicate that I wasn't happy with girl #2 doing this.

I remember Terry smiling back so only I could see.

I have documented here the process by which we actually became a couple, so no need to go into that. You can click the link if, for whatever reason, it interests you.

What I will say is that I so enjoy our life together. It's four decades' worth of shared experiences, from marriage and kids to buying houses, building a nest egg, and mourning the deaths of our parents.

And now we're learning to be grandparents. I'm almost embarrassed to tell you how often Cal is our main topic of conversation (It's a lot...a whole lot.)

We live day to day as 50-somethings who are blessed to have four of our kids living close, family members and neighbors we love, and sufficient resources to travel and do other things we enjoy.

I rate it 5 stars, no complaints.

Being together for 40 years or more creates a sort of rapport and routine you can't just make up. It evolves organically over time.

At night, after I shower, I come into the living room and sit on the opposite end of our sectional couch from her. It's not that I'm trying to distance myself, it's just that that's...well, it's my spot, you know? She has her place and I have mine, and together we'll watch TV and laugh at most of the same things.

She often makes fun of me, and the way she does it is always funny. She knows me, including the less-than-flattering parts, and that's OK.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

I don't know how much longer we'll be blessed to have this life together. It could go on for another 40 years, or it could end tomorrow. You just never know.

And again, that's OK.

It has already been far more than I could ever have imagined, and certainly more than I deserve.

Even I know something like that doesn't come along every day.

If your hobby is collecting something, you can really get deep into the weeds (and deep into your wallet)

This was my collection of Atari 2600 game cartridges about a month ago, when I had something like 102 of them. The collection is larger now, and if I have my way, it's going to get much larger.

About a year ago, I wrote here about the fact that I had acquired an Atari 2600+ and was enjoying playing the primitive video games of my youth.

I still play those games on our basement TV, but now that pastime has evolved into an honest to goodness hobby: collecting old Atari 2600 cartridges.

I use the world "old' intentionally because, believe it or not, there are many people in 2026 designing "homebrew" games for the venerable 2600, a console that came out in 1977 that still holds a place in the hearts of Gen Xers like me.

My focus is the games that were commercially released during the golden era of the Atari 2600 from '77 through roughly 1991.

The numbers vary, but according to this list on Wikipedia, a whopping 472 games "were released during the system's lifetime." Many of those are easy and relatively inexpensive to get your hands on (here I'm thinking of the games many, many of us played back then like Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Combat, etc.)

eBay, Facebook Marketplace, retro video game stores and garage sales are havens for these "staple" cartridges. In most cases, sellers are more interested in having you take these ancient games off their hands than they are in making any real profit from them.

As it turns out, though, there are many other Atari games considered rare or scarce that can only be had if you're willing to shell out $100 or more.

One is Crazy Climber, a popular arcade game that was adapted for the Atari 2600 but offered only to members of the Atari Fan Club. Not many copies were made back in the 80s, so not many are available now.

My go-to spot for buying old cartridges is Video Game Nirvana in Madison, Ohio. The owner, RJ, is a great guy and a fount of classic gaming knowledge. He has one copy of Crazy Climber in his store, and the price tag is $150.

I'm determined to have it...eventually.

Initially my intention was to acquire every commercially available cartridge for the Atari 2600 over a period of several years. But already I've realized that's an unlikely feat for me.

For one thing, some of those games are twice the price of Crazy Climber (or more), which seems pretty excessive. Then there's the fact that I'm not sure where I would even store 472 Atari cartridges.

So I think that, with the possible exception of Crazy Climber, I'm just going to focus on games that are $50 or less that I know I'll want to play. That should limit my collection to around 300 cartridges, which is still borderline ridiculous but at least defensible.

"Defensible," that is, to my wife, who has been kind enough to indulge this little passion of mine so far.

If someday I come home and find my Atari consoles and cartridges in trash bags on the curb, that will be a sign I probably crossed the line at some point.

No more teenagers in the family

For the past 6,883 days, we have had at least one teenager in our family. Tomorrow that streak comes to an end when our youngest, Jack, turns 20.

I say "at least one" because for most of that time, there have been multiple teens among our children. There was one stretch from September 2013 to March 2014 when four of them were teenagers.

Come tonight at midnight, the counter resets permanently to zero.

It's another one of those little life milestones you don't think too much about until they actually happen. As I told someone recently, the combination of having our first grandchild and seeing the family teen years come to an end really brings home how quickly time passes.

Other than a string of car accidents and some other relatively minor crises, I've enjoyed having teenagers. I really have.

I got to see them all graduate high school and go off to college. Four have degrees, with Jack currently working his way through the second semester of his freshman year at Cleveland State University.

I've seen one get married and have a baby, one get engaged, and one build an incredible life with a longtime partner we absolutely love (that last one is Elissa, whose boyfriend Mark has long been a full-fledged member of the family and is one of the best bakers I've ever met).

On the other hand, as the kids have gotten older, I've come to realize that much of my fondness for their teen years stems from how much I didn't know. As they get into their 20s and 30s, they're very free about confessing stuff they did as teenagers that, in retrospect, I'm glad I wasn't aware of.

Ignorance is truly bliss, in this case.

Still, Terry and I can't deny that we've been blessed with five great kids who are turning out to be some pretty great adults. We experienced our share of homecomings, proms, high school sporting events and all the other stuff that comes with having children in the 13-19 age range.

And now we're past it all. Time to move on.

Which is just fine.

(Happy early birthday to the one and only Mr. Jack Tennant!)

I really miss the World Book Encyclopedia

NOTE: This is a somewhat adapted version of a post that originally appeared on the blog back in 2015.

When I was growing up, we had a full set of World Book Encyclopedias on our living room bookshelf, and I devoured them.

(To be clear, I don't mean I ate them. I read them.)

Here's exactly what they looked like:

I'm not kidding when I say I read them. I would literally open up a volume and just read whatever article I found. This is a main reason why I'm so good at general-knowledge trivia. A lot of the weird stuff I know comes from reading the 1964 edition of the World Book Encyclopedia.

There were certain articles I returned to time and again. "Snakes" was one. "Space Travel" was another. I also remember them having cool plastic overlays illustrating the different organ systems of the human body. Not sure if that was part of the "Anatomy" entry or what.

Still, there was no article I turned up more often than the one on "U.S. Presidents." The pages for that entry were torn and dog-eared from use. I can still picture the two-page spread in which the World Book editors very helpfully laid out illustrations of all the presidents from Washington to Lyndon Johnson (this was, remember, the 1964 edition).

I memorized those photos to the point that I could recite the presidents in order by the age of 6. My dad took me to the Hob Nob, the bar at the end of our street, a couple of times and had me show off my little presidents trick. The friendly drunks there were very appreciative of my skills, and both times I did it, Doris the barmaid gave me a free Coke. Not a bad deal.

Anyway, I used those World Book Encyclopedias a lot throughout my school career, usually as the basis for some written assignment or other. Like, for example, I remember having the "V" volume open at the kitchen table while I wrote out a report on the state of Vermont. Later essays depended heavily on Volume "I" for Iceland, "D" for diphtheria, and "R" for my favorite president of all, Teddy Roosevelt.

I later went to college in the late 80s and early 90s, which you geezers will remember was still essentially the pre-Internet age, so the World Books even helped me out as an undergraduate.

Then, with the advent of CD-ROM drives in the mid-90s, the encyclopedia people started putting their stuff onto CDs. Which at the time was pretty cool. "All of those encyclopedias on this ONE tiny disc?" As you might imagine, it was a lot cheaper – both for the manufacturer and for the consumer – to produce encyclopedias on CD rather than heavy-bound books.

However, I'm proud to say you can still buy the print version of the World Book Encyclopedia. The 22-volume 2026 edition can be yours for the low, low price of just $1,349.

Seems like such a small investment for guaranteed free drinks at your neighborhood watering hole.

You're my little potato

Me reading a book to Cal at his house recently. He seemed to appreciate the effort, but his expression told me, "I think Mom and Dad do this better than you, Grandpa."

My four-month-old grandson Cal is comforted by the funniest things.

Like running water. I find if he's tired and cranky but not yet ready to go down for a nap, I can take him the bathroom and turn on the faucet.

That sound calms him down, as does looking at his own reflection in the bathroom mirror. Taken together, the water and seeing his own face always stop his tears, if not make him downright happy.

There are also certain songs that soothe him. Actually, I'm not sure whether it's the songs themselves or the fact that his mom, my daughter Chloe, is singing them.

Chloe has always had a nice voice, and Calvin responds much better when she sings "The Eensy Weensy Calvin" (a slight adaptation of "The Eensy Weensy Spider") to him than when I do.

There is, however, one song that makes him happy no matter who sings it. And the recorded version seems to work best of all.

That tune is "My Little Potato" by the group Metamora. (The link takes you to YouTube. If you're interested in just the lyrics, here they are.)

It's a playful, silly little song, but also a heartfelt tribute to newborns everywhere and the people who love them.

You’re my little potato, they dug you up, you come from underground. The world is big, so big, it’s very big. To you it’s new, it’s new to you. 

And later...

You’re my sweet potato, they dug you up, you come from underground. You smile a smile, a little smile. The world is small, so small, it’s very small. 

Chloe discovered it from a friend who is also a relatively new mom, and over the last few months, it has been in heavy rotation in her car and on my Apple Music playlists.

It is, in effect, my Cal anthem. I've played it for him on my phone and have softly sung it to him while trying to get him to sleep.

It reminds me of everything I felt as a new dad back in The Day and everything I'm feeling and learning as a new grandpa.

He won't remember it as he gets older and baby songs give way to toddler songs and little kid songs and eventually popular songs of the type he will love and his grandfather will patiently endure.

No matter, though. As long as he knows he'll always be Grandpa's little potato, that's good enough.