Tech

You, Me, and AI

/ ronnyjames / 1 Comment

It’s been almost three years since the introduction of ChatGPT (November 30, 2022). And while I don’t think it has quite taken over the internet, it has certainly made a very large and, at times divisive, impact on our world. It seems whenever I see or hear something online these days, my first thought is, Is this real? Or is it it AI? And I don’t suppose that it helps that I enjoy the talking baby videos as much as I do (real? or AI?). Our politicians seem to have a love/hate relationship with AI-generated or augmented content at the moment: some have embraced the technology yet others rail against it. The Guardian has an article on AI-generated campaign videos here. For good or evil, AI. is here to stay.

I dipped my toes into AI tentatively back in 2023 with a blog post on the post-apocalyptic television series The Last of Us. You can catch the series on HBO here, or read my post from February 2023 here. I had never played the video game the streaming series was based on so I used ChatGPT to delve a little deeper into some of the themes and possible end-of-series scenarios presented. The series wasn’t meant for everyone but it definitely held one’s attention over the course of nine episodes.

After that initial foray into AI (Artificial Intelligence) I began to explore how it could be helpful in some of the areas I have interest. Recently I used it to rewrite a brief blog post on an article I submitted, having felt that it needed a good edit to get my point across. It wasn’t…half bad actually. I used Chad (my term for my online helper) to write a four-week devotional booklet for Advent. I gave it a theme to explore, possible characters to include, a couple of scriptural references and we were off! It came up with scripture focus, theme, devotional angle, and application. It would have added graphics and compiled a PDF booklet if I had kept at it. All in under a minute. If time is a precious commodity, AI can be a gamechanger. For our small group’s participation in Trunk-or-Treat this year, I had AI create a couple of images to use for inspiration.

Vacation planning? Yep. An eight-day itinerary for a visit to Scotland and travel through England. A seven-day family vacation to Maine with stops in Pennsylvania and Connecticut along the way. That stop in Connecticut was to visit a cemetery with headstones of my earliest American ancestors. ChatGPT ran a population growth calculator to see how many possible ancestors I might have from Great Great Great Great Great Grandfather Thomas Ranney (who died at 97 in 1713).

Here’s the answer with initial suppositions: Let’s calculate how many people would be there after 350 years, with the following assumptions: Each generation spans 30 years. The initial family has 4 children. Each subsequent family has 4 children who marry and have 4 children. In the 11th generation alone, there would be 4,194,304 people. Thanks Chad! That’s a lot of Christmas cards to address. (photo from findagrave.com)

I’ve since used ChatGPT to design a deck for the cottage, enhance the bathroom, and redesign my outfit to look more “Ralph Lauren” inspired. It’s created a garden layout that features deer-resistant plants and gave me a separate planting guide. For one gardening project, it created an entire proposal complete with an RFP for contractor bid submissions.

It’s done a reasonable job on paint color samples for my neighbor’s house; calculated how many solar panels I would need to go off grid; created a Fall menu for an outdoor party; it wrote a seven-day gluten free menu plan along with a two-week menu plan (and shopping list!) for another person.

It even gave me an estimate of how many adults in the US own cellphones (As of 2024, approximately 98% of U.S. adults own a cellphone of some kind, with about 91% owning a smartphone.)

So then I’m curious: how are you using AI, or are you? At work? Blog posts or other personal correspondence? Are you involved in video or media production and using AI either to enhance or create content? I guess what I am really asking is, where do we go from here?

Goes Around

/ ronnyjames / 1 Comment

I’m listening to Sting on a bluetooth speaker upstairs here in our living room. Sting is downstairs in the family room, the album Sacred Love (one of the many I ripped from my CD collection) is playing from my Mac mini. I’m lazy so I’m using the iTunes Remote app on my iPhone to choose my albums from the music library on my computer.

The last vinyl album I purchased new was Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms. According to Wikipedia, Brothers in Arms was the first album to sell one million copies in the CD format and to outsell its LP version. That was 1985, almost 40 years ago. From then on, all I purchased were CDs. But then sometime after the introduction of the iPhone, iPod, and music streaming music services takeover, the vinyl LP began to make a surprising comeback. 

Apparently the CD is now on the decline with a resurgence in vinyl. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) notes that in 2022, vinyl sales topped 41M units while CDs came in at 33M (PDF). But where are streaming services in this musical mixture? Well, streaming was 84% of music revenues in 2022, still the dominant force in the music industry.

I note all of this because, in my desire to continue to downsize and “ronny-kondo” the office, I thought it would be expeditious to rip all of my CDs to a hard drive and get rid of all those pieces of plastic. So in 2017 I ripped all that I had and stored my music on an external WiFi capable hard drive. I had intended to link to the hard drive thru my iPad and treat the drive as if it were a CD jukebox, all of my music available at the tip of my fingers. Glad I saved the CDs! the software to access the mp3 files on my hard drive thru the iPad no longer worked. And when it was working, I had a hard time keeping the two of them linked on my network.

So we are back to playing the CDs on the only remaining player in the house. I had to purchase an external DVD player for the Mac mini since it didn’t come equipped with one. And those albums? The ones we got from my Father-in-law are out in boxes in the shed. I think my wife’s brother will be stopping by to pick them up for his vinyl collection. But I don’t think I will be copying and saving them. What’s old is new and what goes around eventually comes back around.

Overwhelmed

/ ronnyjames / Leave a comment

overwhelm, v. transitive. To bury or drown beneath a mass of earth, water, etc.; to submerge completely; to destroy or obliterate by covering with something.

“Sure I can stop by and pick up a few boxes; photo albums, slides, nicnacs and some family memorabilia? No problem!”

It had been four years since my father-in-law had passed away and his wife was feeling like now she could really go through his things and separate out what his children might want to keep. There were the photo albums, of course, and what turned out to be more than 75 boxes of Ektachrome slides: family and work activities captured over the span of thirty years. There were also boxes of framed photos, graduation certificates and medals of accomplishments, the many small items accumulated from a man’s career in the US Army. 

There was..a lot.

As she and I talked over coffee, it was apparent she had felt overwhelmed by all of it, was still feeling some traces of emotion even as the relief of saying goodbye to all of it became more real. 

When we went downstairs to begin packing my truck, I could immediately understand her feelings: I was overwhelmed at the number and sizes of the boxes stacked in the carport! 

They had been married nearly 17 years before he passed away. As much as I had grown to know him, one thing I understood was that he loved his family and he loved documenting everything. And he saved everything. She must have felt swamped to even begin sorting through it all.

I’ve written before about planning ahead for what we will inevitably leave behind (Memories & Mementos). My plan for most of this is to scan the photos and post them in a group album online, ideally a Google photos https://www.google.com/photos/about/ And then, tentatively, dispose of the originals. We bought an Ion Pics2 SD slide scanner thru and online estate sale (I love those!) and so far it has worked well for this project. Here’s the link if you are interested.

As I’ve worked through scanning these, arranging the boxed slides into sets, it seemed easier to group them by year rather than subject matter as I had originally intended. But I’ve found in the past with overly large or complicated projects, the satisfaction for me has come in just getting started, grouping and arranging the subject matter or tasks into smaller goals has brought it’s own sense of accomplishment. And as the stacks and stacks of photos gradually decreased in size and number, the satisfaction of nearing the end of the project has increased dramatically.

To date I’ve scanned over 1,700 slides; there remain approximately 1,000 left to scan. But I’m more than half-finished! I won’t be feeling overwhelmed trying to figure out what to do with everything that we’ve accumulated over the years: as long as I have a plan, I’m content. It’s just going to take some time.

R Names

/ ronnyjames / 1 Comment

Rick, Russ, Ron, Rodney, Ralph, and Randy: apparently the “Rs” were very popular in my extended family. Oh, I forgot Rex, so that makes seven of us with first initial R, last name Hilbig. You can only imagine our mom’s keeping us all straight, let alone how emails could get messed up!

In the 1950s, my birth decade, Rs weren’t as popular as I had thought. Both of my brothers’ names were more popular than mine. David ranked 5th, Richard ranked 7th. Ronald was 15th. You can find your own ranking online here: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/decades/names1950s.html My honor is redeemed knowing that my middle name, James, actually ranked first during the 50s. In the top 100 popular names, Rs placed 11 times. Sorry Rex, you are 198th! A decade later, Ronald had dropped five positions to 24th.

I only caught on to this confusion of names recently after an email never arrived in my in box. Check your spam folder (I had) was the sender’s suggestion. His email had not bounced back so apparently someone, a recipient, had read it and discarded it— or it ended up in his spam folder. 

Emails are tricky that way; they aren’t case-sensitive but they do require a level of accuracy that my spelling can seldom attain. I’ve been plagued by the curse/blessing of auto correct on my iPhone. The “suggested” spelling can be over ridden, but I’m not always aware of it when it happens. (Shakes his cane)

I had given what I assumed would be an adequate amount of time to receive a letter. Four days had passed after a Monday holiday so I wasn’t too concerned not having received the expected correspondence. Luckily the sender reached out to me via text wondering about my reply, or lack of one as it were. He had asked for my home address and I (naturally) thought he had sent the information we were looking for via USPS. But I was wrong. 

The postal service will make a best guess and deliver your mail regardless if the address is missing a digit or the street name has been misspelled. But email doesn’t work that way. 

He had sent it thru email to my gmail account. Not “my” gmail account, as it turned out, but perhaps one of my relatives. There are quite a number of us whose first name begins with R. So I am guessing that one of them has received an unexpected and unsolicited correspondence. I have a thought to email him, or her, and find out. I’m not sure I want to learn if there are more of us Rs out there that I haven’t met! I know there is another Ronald Hilbig, who lives in Canada. We had already confused people on Facebook. Glad that was straightened out, though he could be a clone. I’m not doubting anything anymore.

Sincerely yours, but certainly not the only one,

Ronny James

Memories and Mementos

/ ronnyjames / 1 Comment

“What are we going to do with all of these pictures?”

“What pictures, which ones?” I replied.

“All of them: all of the pictures, photos, albums, frames, paintings, prints, just everything.”

Well, I hadn’t given it much thought, but really, what are we going to do with all of this stuff? We had downsized and moved from our single family home to a smaller townhome several years ago. In the process of getting that home ready to sell, I had taken down all of our pictures, photos of family and family vacations, and packed them away in plastic bins. Now nearly four years after that move we are still wondering what to do with many of these mementos and memories, most of them still packed away.

When I was younger and first started taking photographs, I concentrated primarily on landscape photography. Years before digital cameras became popular I would shoot slide film in my Canon AE1 and occasionally have enlargements printed, many of which I framed and decorated my apartment. The prints are long gone but the slide film still looks great, beautiful rich colors after more than forty years.

I switched to a digital camera, also a Canon, when they came out and began taking more pictures of family and friends, documenting our trips and vacations, birthdays and holidays. And that introduced the beginnings of what would be a lifelong challenge: how to share and display, or store for posterity, the many, many images a digital camera produced.

When I got my first iPhone I was all set. Whereas before, one had to remember to bring the camera (or leave it in the car, always at the ready) an iPhone was the perfect accessory: I never went anywhere without my phone and consequently my camera was always with me.

Still the problem remained, what to do with all of these images? Before cloud storage enabled us to archive unlimited amounts of data, and images, I would back up my digital images on the computer and eventually transfer them to CDs. Great for storing photos, not so great for sharing them.

I’ve since been uploading many of my photos to Shutterfly. They have sharing options and also print capabilities for cards, enlargements, even photo books. I have friends who use digital frames that act like mini slideshows; the newer frames allow uploading the images to the internet (cloud servers!) and as long as the display is connected to the internet, any family member can view the display. Bluetooth or wifi-enabled devices are another option.

I’ve been printing photobooks now for years. They have taken the place of photo albums in our home. But like albums from our past, they have started to take up room on the book shelves. We visited friends recently and enjoyed looking through one of their old leather-bound albums, many of the photographs in black and white or sepia-toned. One could almost imagine the passage of time slowing down for a bit as we leafed-through and commented on their old family photos. It doesn’t feel quite the same when you scroll thru endless images on your phone!

I still don’t have a solution for the boxes of photos and albums we have accumulated through the years. We have thought about scanning all of the “pre digital” images. I am a little distraught over having lost or misplaced the CDs I used for “safe secure image storage” in the past. I have found several of the CDs I created have not held up well: the data has either become corrupted or otherwise unreadable. Perhaps storing the images on a DVD would work better. At some point I will probably upload all of our images to Shutterfly or some other third party service. I’ve put many images on a small external hard drive, not sure if that is my final answer yet or not.

What about you all? Is this a problem you have faced before? Any possible solutions you have tried successfully? If so, please share your success stories in the comments below. Love to hear from you!

Post-Apocalypse Now

/ ronnyjames / 3 Comments

There seems to be no end to “end of the world” movies and TV shows recently. A twist in the plot here or there but they all share similar DNA. Whether it’s an individual (“only you can save the world!”) or a group of survivors just trying to make it to the end of that night’s episode alive— they all explore how we might react under the harshest of conditions.

The director M. Night Shyamalan has a new movie out, Knock at the Cabin that updates the biblical End of the World story. I haven’t seen the movie yet, and this isn’t really a movie review, but it’s premise and themes are oddly tracking with a show that I am watching, The Last of Us, over on HBO. While the one is about ushering in or preventing the Apocalypse, the television series is about living in a dystopian post-apocalyptic world structured around a quest narrative. Love, loss, sacrifice, vengeance, judgment, and hope are some of the big themes both shows work through in varying ways.

However, before we compare and contrast these two shows, I want to take a side trip. For the past several months I have been reading and hearing ALOT about AI and ChatGPT. So in the interests of trying something new I thought I would interview the bot and let it (he/she/them?) write my blogpost today. The results were very…interesting. My questions below in bold type, the Chat’s answers follow.

I asked the Chatbot to write a paragraph describing the similarities in the apocalyptic worldview of the movie “Knock at the Cabin” and the HBO series “The Last of Us” and the presence, or lack thereof, of hope.

Both “Knock at the Cabin” and “The Last of Us” present a bleak and devastating world, post-apocalyptic and characterized by the collapse of human society due to a catastrophic event. The movies depict a world where survival is the main priority and people are struggling to make ends meet while facing various obstacles and threats, including mutated creatures and hostile human factions. Despite the grim reality, there is still a glimmer of hope in both stories, as the main characters work towards rebuilding and preserving what’s left of humanity. However, this hope is often fragile and uncertain, constantly tested by the harsh realities of the new world.

Overall, both works present a similar bleak worldview of a post-apocalyptic world but with a nuanced portrayal of the presence of hope.

“Knock at the Cabin” portrays the four figures of the Apocalypse demanding a sacrifice. How does this subvert our normal reading of the Four Horsemen?

“Knock at the Cabin” portrays the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as demanding a sacrifice, which subverts the typical interpretation of the Four Horsemen as symbols of destruction and judgement in the book of Revelation in the Bible. In the movie, the Horsemen are not just passive symbols of the end of the world, but active agents who require a sacrifice to be made in order to bring about the end. This shift in the role of the Horsemen adds a new layer of meaning to the story, as it emphasizes the idea that the end of the world is not just a inevitable outcome, but something that can be actively brought about through the actions of human beings.

By presenting the Horsemen as demanding a sacrifice, “Knock at the Cabin” challenges our conventional understanding of the Four Horsemen and their role in the end of the world, suggesting that the end is not just a matter of fate but also a result of human agency.

Are there any biblical themes in “The Last of Us” show on HBO?

Yes, “The Last of Us” series on HBO draws on various biblical themes. For example, the story of a father-daughter relationship and the theme of sacrifice, can be seen as references to the story of Abraham and Isaac from the Bible. The concept of a pandemic bringing about the end of the world can also be interpreted as a commentary on the biblical notion of judgement and the end times. Additionally, the idea of a chosen one or messiah figure, who must sacrifice themselves for the greater good, is also a recurring biblical theme that appears in the show. These themes add depth to the story and bring a spiritual dimension to the post-apocalyptic world portrayed in “The Last of Us.”

If the character of Ellie in “The Last of Us” is portrayed as a messiah figure, what would be her likely future?

If Ellie in “The Last of Us” is portrayed as a messiah figure, her future would likely involve her making significant sacrifices and facing significant challenges in her quest to save humanity and bring about a better future. In such a portrayal, Ellie would be seen as a symbol of hope, who brings about change and redemption in the bleak and desolate world of the post-apocalyptic setting.

However, her journey would also likely be fraught with difficulties, as she would face resistance from those who are unwilling to change, as well as the harsh realities of the post-apocalyptic world, such as the threat of infected creatures and hostile human factions.

Ultimately, the future of Ellie as a messiah figure would be shaped by the choices she makes and the sacrifices she is willing to make in the pursuit of a better future. Whether she succeeds in bringing about a new dawn or not, her journey as a messiah figure would likely be one of struggle, sacrifice, and ultimate redemption.

If the character of Ellie in “the last of us” is accurately portrayed as being immune from the cordyceps infection, how would her condition be exploited by the ruling authorities?

In a world where the majority of the population is affected by the cordyceps infection, a person who is immune would be considered a valuable asset. For example, the ruling authorities might try to use Ellie as a source of information and research to better understand the nature of the infection and find a cure. They may also try to use her as a weapon, forcing her to venture into infected areas to gather information or carry out dangerous missions.

Additionally, the ruling authorities may try to use Ellie’s immunity as a means of maintaining control over the population. By exploiting her condition, they could manipulate the public into following their rules and regulations, or even use her as a propaganda tool to promote their own interests.

Overall, if Ellie is portrayed as being immune from the cordyceps infection, her condition would likely be exploited by the ruling authorities in a variety of ways, as they would see her as a valuable asset in their attempts to maintain control over the world and find a cure for the infection.

If the cordyceps infection controls the victims brain, and if Ellie is immune, would examining her brain likely reveal clues to her immunity?

Yes, if the cordyceps infection is portrayed as controlling the victim’s brain and Ellie is immune, examining her brain would likely reveal clues to her immunity. As the cordyceps infection takes over the victim’s brain, it would likely leave its mark on the brain’s structure and function. By comparing Ellie’s brain to the brains of infected individuals, researchers could potentially identify the differences that confer her immunity and gain insights into the mechanism of the cordyceps infection.

This information could be crucial in developing a cure for the infection, as understanding the basis of Ellie’s immunity could provide a starting point for developing a vaccine or other treatment. Additionally, by examining Ellie’s brain, researchers could gain a better understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying the control of the cordyceps infection, which could be applied to developing more effective therapies.

Overall, examining Ellie’s brain would likely be a valuable tool in gaining insights into the cordyceps infection and developing a cure for those affected.

So a likely scenario would be the sacrifice of Ellie, her resulting death, in order to save the rest of the population?

It is possible that a scenario could emerge in which Ellie’s death is seen as necessary in order to save the rest of the population. If her immunity is crucial to understanding the cordyceps infection and developing a cure, the ruling authorities or scientific community might believe that the only way to obtain this information is to sacrifice Ellie through dissection of her brain or other means.

Such a scenario would likely be a difficult and controversial decision, as it raises ethical questions about the value of one life versus the potential to save many others. It would also likely have a profound impact on the characters and the world of the story, as the decision to sacrifice Ellie would be a significant turning point in the narrative.

Ultimately, the outcome would depend on the specific details of the story and the motivations of the characters involved. While a sacrifice scenario is possible, it is not guaranteed and could be challenged or avoided altogether by the characters in the story.

My interaction with ChatGPT raised a number of ideas regarding both the movie and the TV show that I had not considered initially. The amount of agency and control over their individual destinies the characters exhibit and how their decisions could possibly affect the outcome of the scenarios was very intriguing to me. Both shows present similar End of the World viewpoints. However “The Last of Us”, perhaps because it seems more grounded in real-world (recent?) or plausible events, holds out a hope for the future that I was not expecting, especially from an adaptation of a video game. What do you think? Is there hope at the End of the World?

https://www.knockatthecabin.com

https://www.hbo.com/the-last-of-us

Images copyright their respective copyright holders, taken from their websites.

Fading Away

/ ronnyjames / Leave a comment

Mark asked me why I took so many photos of places, landscapes, trees, buildings: was I planning on being a professional photographer when I got out of the Army? Really. I hadn’t really given it that much thought. “Why do you take so many pictures of people?” I asked him. Thirty plus years later, I think I am beginning to know why.

A Baroque church somewhere in Germany
Montmartre in Paris
Matterhorn Zermatt Switzerland
Mittenwald train station

My time as an enlisted soldier stationed in Heidelberg, Germany during the mid-80s was a great time to get out, see the world. Who knew if I would ever be back there again? As circumstances have played out, I haven’t returned. But my brief two years there were filled with work and travel. England, France, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, and Lichtenstein: these were all a bus tour or train ride away for a weekend visit or a four-day vacation.

Fading away. It’s not just the photo prints that are beginning to fade. Mark convinced me to switch from print film to slide film. The slides from that time still look bright and crisp; the prints have begun to fade, the colors blending towards yellow. Scanning and a bit of photo editing has brought back much of their original color, I think, but I’m not sure.

Trier Amphitheater
Mark
Gasthof in Austria
Who are all these people?

No, it isn’t just the colors that have begun to fade. It seems I never was one to label things or write on the back of photos (thank you Mom for the photos you captioned years ago!) Looking back, younger Me must have thought he would always remember the names of places he went and the people he went with. And certainly he would have remembered those dates! Not so, not so.

Since the advent of the iPhone, I have used its prodigious data collecting capabilities to help me remember where and when my photos were taken. With facial recognition it helps me search for pictures of my granddaughter or other family members, even geocoding where the picture was taken. 

Like many people, I upload quite a lot of photos to a third party site “in the Cloud.” I have been using Shutterfly not primarily for photo storage but to print out photo books of our trips and family events. For me they have replaced the ancient slide carousel (remember those?) and the boxes of prints that seemed to never make it into a photo album. The books are piling up on a shelf, and I know the children will likely throw them out when I’m gone, but for now they help to stave off the effects of fading memory. Our trip to Spain is up there on the shelf as is my 60th birthday celebration at DisneyWorld. Well, my 70th birthday is also up there,  but who is counting birthdays anymore?!

Old photos fade, memories fade, events recede in time and eventually fade from our recollection.

“The grass withers, the flower fades, But the word of our God stands forever.” Isaiah 40:8

What Goes Up

/ ronnyjames / 2 Comments

There is a general adage, perhaps an aphorism, that aptly describes much about our modern life. “What goes up, must/will/eventually come down.”

The price of gas goes up one week; it comes down, a little, a week later. Unemployment goes up, gradually it comes down. Home prices in our area seem to be the exception, and there are perhaps other exclusions. But what strikes me is how dependable the phrase is. It doesn’t just describe our experience with gravity: watch the kids on a trampoline, for instance. Thankfully they always return to the ground and don’t go drifting off into space somewhere. What goes up invariably comes down.

During my lifetime I’ve seen a number of things go up, buildings primarily, and for the most part they are still standing. But that’s not always given. Growing up in Reno I watched a small town transformed into an entertainment destination, not on the scale of Las Vegas, but still impressive. After having been away for several decades, I was amazed at the number of new hotels which were built during the boom years of the 80s.

But not all of those are still standing. I’ve been following the story of Harrah’s Hotel & Casino in Reno. Opened in 1937 as a small venture, Harrah’s eventually grew to a billion dollar entertainment corporation with more than 15 venues across the US. While the rest of the corporation’s investments seem to be doing well, the original building in Reno was closed permanently in 2020 and is now being converted to apartments and retail-office space. 

I was in grade school when the original Park Lane Mall in Reno was constructed. In the 70s, following the pattern of many outdoor malls, it was roofed over and became an enclosed mall. But times and peoples’ shopping patterns change. In 2018 the mall was demolished and paved over, eventually to be revitalized as an urban living construction named the Reno Experience District RED.   https://redreno.com   From what I’ve seen, it closely parallels our One Loudoun urban community. Change. What goes up. 

The Woodrow Wilson Bridge crossing the Potomac River was begun in 1958 and finished in 1961. The original bridge, that is. I wasn’t here for that project, but I was living in Virginia when it was torn down and the new  twelve lane bridge began construction in 2000, completed in 2009. More change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson_Bridge

All of which brings me to today. 

This week I drove past a building in Ashburn where I had once worked. Back in the late 80s, Ashburn was still a small village surrounded by turf farms and the beginnings of new suburbs. AOL (remember them?) moved to Loudoun County in 1996 and began the transformation of Loudoun County into a Data Center empire. Years later, AOL abandoned the property. In 2015 AOL was acquired by Verizon and eventually all of their properties here were sold off, later to be developed into data centers. But in 1990, there was virtually nothing out here other than acres and acres of fields.

The properties along Beaumeade Circle remained undeveloped for years. When Explus moved from Fairfax County out to Loudoun in 1990, we were the first tenants to occupy the large concrete-walled structure. I bought a townhouse nearby in Sterling the same year and was able to watch our building go in, from the initial pouring of the concrete floors to the final installation of the HVAC and the buildout of the interiors. I worked with the company for a total of thirteen years, most of that time at their third location closer to Dulles Airport.

Christian Fellowship Church purchased the property in the mid-90s, added a worship center, classrooms, and a gym for their school, parking areas and recreational ballfields. In 2018 we started attending CFC, 28 years after I watched the same building go up. In 2020 the church sold the building and moved to a new location in One Loudoun. The old building stood empty for two years until recently when demolition began in preparation of constructing another data center. What goes up, inevitably comes down.

Explus, Inc when I worked here.
The production area I worked in was just to the left of this entrance.
Worship Center demolition.