Dave Kaminski

In this conversation: The enthusiastic, intense brother who ran naked through the AI wilderness for five days and came back with battle scars, breakthroughs, and $300 less in his bank account. Dave brings raw energy, creative metaphors, and a beginner's unfiltered honesty about what it's actually like to wrestle with Claude Code without guardrails.

Topics He Introduced

The Polite Email Incident — how AI-influenced writing style triggered an accusation from a colleague
Dave's Claude Struggles — the five-day coding marathon, blown stop signs, overwritten files
Three Times Three Thinking — his hack to make Claude consider decisions more carefully
Julie and Computing Metaphors — teaching his partner household organization in programming language
The Agent Economy — pushed back on Pete's claim that nobody will use Claude Code; argues niche expertise will always need custom work
Dave's Course Marketing Ideas — unsolicited but thoughtful suggestions for how Pete could structure his teaching business

Stories He Told

The Polite Email Incident

"I think what you're saying is... Oh, no, I'm sorry. What I'm hearing is... and then wrote the most polite email ever."

Dave wrote an exquisitely polite response to a rude colleague, using skills he'd picked up from interacting with Claude. The colleague accused him of running the email through AI and refused to communicate further. Dave had written the whole thing himself, on his iPhone, with one finger. See The Polite Email Incident.

Running Naked Through the Wilderness

"Running as far as I did gave me a sense of the expansive wilderness. And I can see the meadows, and the trees, and the water, and the sparrows, and the bears."

Dave describes his five-day Claude coding marathon as running naked through the wilderness — reckless, but it gave him a breadth of experience that careful hikers never get.

Claude Overwrites Its Own Code

"It overwrote its own code. And it only had a test line that said something like, 'can I write this?' And that's all it had. And it lost everything else. And then it freaked out."

Claude deleted its own work, left a single test line, and then "ran in circles like a mad dog" for two hours trying to recover.

The Casino Metaphor

"Claude, you're like a drunk person in the casino, and you're refusing to ride home. You could hurt someone."

Dave's go-to analogy for Claude burning through tokens without self-awareness.

Projects and Interests Discussed

Handwriting History Project — his research into historical handwriting styles, Internet Archive uploads, maps
Dave's Vault — the Obsidian vault Claude created for him
HandwritingHistory.org — his website with the Kaminski Archive Map

People He Mentioned

Julie — his partner, whom he's been teaching organization using computing metaphors
Don Marsh — friend and handwriting expert
Earl Verbeek — friend who writes recursively to prevent misunderstanding
Elizabeth McCloud — Internet Archive contact
Gene Siegel — contact at Scranton
Kathy — listens to podcasts, someone Dave talks to about his work
Nick — brother (Pete and Dave want to share Jankifiers with him)

Follow-ups and Action Items

Start using Obsidian properly (not just as a vault holder)
Begin using Git for snapshots
Start every Claude interaction with a project plan (Putting Claude on Rails)
Clean up and reorganize his vault into project-based structure
Read Pete's starter guides and course materials
Check back with Pete in about a week

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