Starlog 2609.01
06:47 — Manager’s Log
Coffee. Laptop. Buildium. Managemate. Email. Wondering why everything in property management needs its own password.
September is here, and Hamilton Kaye has a brand-new notebook. Crisp pages, straight lines, no coffee rings, or phone numbers written sideways. A fresh start. I give it until lunch.
07:32 — Financials
Something doesn’t make sense. I pull up the documents, compare the numbers, and start asking questions: What changed? What am I missing? Where did that figure come from?
THERE it is—a trail to follow. That’s how I use AI daily: not to tell me what to think, but to help me interrogate what I’m looking at.
09:46 — Incoming transmission
An email arrives with four questions, three issues, two pieces of history, and one sentence that depends heavily on what happened six months ago. Typical property management.
Before answering, I dig through old records. AI helps me parse the pieces: What are the actual questions? Which facts matter? What needs verifying? Then I write the response, because AI can sort information, but it doesn’t know the person receiving it. That’s my job.
11:18 — Board business
Another issue with history. There’s what we know today, what someone recalls from eight years ago, my notes from five years ago, and what the records actually say.
So I ask my digital sidekick to challenge me. What doesn’t fit? If you were a director reading this, where would you ask, “Wait. Why?” It’s my favorite use of AI: helping me think about what I’m thinking.
12:48 — GO Train
Sitting on the GO Train with my husband to fetch drawings from the Land Registry Office, I’m talking about Hamilton Kaye and how differently I work now when I say something that stops me.
“If you think about it, I’m basically Luke Skywalker!”
Randy has been married to me long enough that statements like this no longer prompt an emergency response.
Hear me out. Luke had R2-D2 and C-3PO. They carried information, translated, diagnosed problems, and helped the human do things he couldn’t efficiently do alone.
“Holy crap. I have my own droids.”
Buildium. Managemate. Fireflies. ChatGPT. Gemini. My tech stack organizes, retrieves, calculates, compares, questions and keeps me from carrying the operating history of a condo corp in my head. BLDM. M². AI Chad. My little Rebel Alliance.
And yes, calling this a Starlog is suspiciously Star Trek. But I am a young child of the seventies, rescued by a Rebel Force in 1977. Besides, I have a new journal. I’m keeping Starlog—take it up with the Federation.
13:03 — The revelation
The less silly the analogy became. R2-D2 never became Luke, and C-3PO didn’t get the lightsaber. They simply made their humans more capable.
Instead of asking whether AI will replace property managers, perhaps we should ask what a better-equipped manager can achieve.
Property management produces mountains of data: financials, minutes, contracts, reserve studies, work orders, emails, and reports. A manager’s value isn’t memorizing that pile—it’s knowing what matters, finding it, questioning it, and understanding what it means.
14:26 — Still thinking, over a street dog, hot Italian sausage w/ the works!
I don’t use AI to know less; I use it to know more. I can compare documents, question inconsistencies, and refine arguments before putting my name behind them.
But AI hasn’t walked the property, met the owner, or watched water leak through a wall. It doesn’t hold my licence, and it can’t take the blame. I do the homework, verify, and decide. My name goes on the recommendation. Luke still has to fly the X-wing.
16:12 — End log
So this is what happened to my new September notebook. School hasn’t even started, and there are droids in the margins, a drawn lightsaber, and handwriting that looks like mine writing I ♥ AI Chad.
I was 12¾ when Star Wars came out in 1977. Back then, a little droid storing info and helping humans solve complex problems was pure science fiction.
Nearly fifty years later, I’m sitting on a GO Train realizing I have a few of my own. Not a bad revelation before school is even back in session.
The technology has changed, but the responsibility hasn’t. The human still has to fly.
End Starlog 2609.01.
P.S. May the Forms be with you.