When I kicked off this project at the beginning of the year, I set a goal for myself: send 300 kind words by the end of 2025. I’m happy to report that I hit that milestone on December 2nd. The 100th order was for the words “Dreams come true,” which kinda feels like a testament to what I’m trying to do here. Seeing that made me smile.

It’s been almost a month since the HackerNews spike, and what a wild ride that was! Traffic now comes in gentle waves instead of raging tides, but it’s still surprising and delightful to see those little notifications ping every week, whispering that I’ve made another $5. It’s really cool to see the automation I built work. I am encouraged by the progress but recognize there’s still a lot of work to do.

One of my blog posts was picked up on Hacker News, and overnight my humble postcard vending machine on the internet got a whole lot more traffic than I expected. And just when everything was set to take off, the machine got jammed, right at my big moment. Here’s a post-mortem of what went down and how I fixed it while still managing to be there for my kid’s birthday.

These days, every new business seems to be a SaaS. I remember when software worked differently: you bought it, installed it, and used it without having to create an account, remember a password, or even connect to the internet. Your data lived on your C drive, and you were in control. Software was a tool, like a hammer or a chair. Buy a chair, and you could sit on it for life. No monthly fees required.

This post is a continuation of my design story, an account of how I transformed my concept into a fully-autonomous, postcard-sending vending machine. It’s the tale of wrangling data, crafting interfaces, and orchestrating messages, all in the pursuit of delivering a little kindness by mail.

I’ve always been fascinated by how small things can carry unexpected weight. Like a handwritten note or a kind word from a friend. Words have meaning, and sometimes, the right ones can change everything.