My right side
Right hemiparesis
The stroke took the strength from my right side, which is my writing hand. Gripping a pen is hard. Hitting one correct key is not a reflex any more. It is something I plan.
A BBS before the internet reached most homes. Bitcoin in 2009. YouTube marketing in 2010. I have been early to technology for thirty five years. Then, in 2015, a stroke took my speech, my right side, and my ability to type. I am early again. This time it is AI, and it is not an advantage. It is how I talk.
AI voice Honest note: I cannot speak the way I used to. Every recording on this site is an AI copy of my real voice, made from my own recordings, with my permission. It is not an actor and it is not a stock voice. It is the tool that lets me say what I mean.
I have been a programmer since 1990. I ran a BBS before the internet reached most homes. When Friendster, MySpace, Google, Yahoo, and YouTube arrived, I was already there. In 2003 I founded Screen Text Software and built a team in the Philippines.
In 2009 I needed to pay my team in the Philippines. My bank flagged the transfers as suspicious and raised the possibility that they funded terrorism. I was not a criminal. I was making payroll. So I found another way to move money, and that way was Bitcoin.
In 2010 I started marketing on YouTube, years before that became normal. That is the pattern of my whole life. I do not chase what is new. I go where I need to go, and it keeps turning out to be early.
On September 8, 2013, while I was in the Philippines, my aorta tore open. It is called an aortic dissection, and most people who have one do not survive it. I did.
On March 30, 2015, surgeons at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles opened my chest again. They replaced my aortic valve with a mechanical one and repaired an aneurysm near my heart. The surgery worked. The next day, I had a stroke.
It struck the left side of my brain. When I woke, my right side would not move, and my words were gone. Not forgotten. Gone from the road between knowing a thing and saying it. I knew exactly what I meant. I could not get it out.
This is what it can feel like to reach for a simple sentence. Press the button and watch what my brain saw.
The meaning is there. The letters will not hold still. This is aphasia and agraphia. It is not a loss of intelligence.
The stroke took the strength from my right side, which is my writing hand. Gripping a pen is hard. Hitting one correct key is not a reflex any more. It is something I plan.
I know the word I want. My brain will not hand it over, or it hands me a different word instead. Then spelling it is a second problem stacked on the first. The meaning is intact. The way out is broken.
Even when I find the right word, my mouth slurs it. People hear the difficulty before they hear the idea. That is the part that costs the most, because it makes strangers assume things about my mind that are not true.
I am 52. I still work as an IT consultant and I still write code. What changed is how. ChatGPT helps me turn my thoughts into sentences. Claude and Gemini help me build. ElevenLabs gave me back a voice, and it is the voice you are hearing on this page.
I have been early to every technology of my adult life. The BBS. Bitcoin. YouTube. AI is the first one I did not adopt to get ahead. I adopted it because without it, I cannot say what I mean.
I am married to Geraldine. We have five children: Angelic, Andrew, Abigail, Aidan, and Asher. They are the reason I kept going through the years when going was very slow.
Before the internet reached most homes, I was running a BBS and writing software for it.
I founded my own software company and built a team in the Philippines.
My bank blocked my payroll transfers to the Philippines. I needed another way to pay my team, so I became an early adopter.
An aortic dissection while I was in the Philippines. Most people do not survive one. I did.
Open heart surgery at Cedars-Sinai on March 30. The surgery worked. The stroke came the next day.
Still consulting. Still writing code. AI is how I write, speak, and build now.
I was early to every technology of my life. AI is the first one I needed to speak.Burt Lao
Most people test AI tools. I depend on them. Every issue, I share what actually works for writing, speaking, and shipping code with aphasia and a weak right hand. Thirty five years in tech, and no hype. If a tool fails me, I will tell you.
I just sent you one email with a button in it. Press that button and you are in. If it is not there in a minute, look in your spam folder.