How I See It: Reflections on spirituality, technology, and the art of everyday life

Hello, and welcome to my weekly update for the week of January 3, 2026 through January 9, 2026. It’s been quite a week. I was finally back to work for the first time since October 2022. The week is a bit of a blur to me. I’d like to tell you all sorts of interesting things about what I did, but I just can’t recall events in that level of detail. Much of my time was spent on onboarding: a lot of meetings, a lot of documentation, and a lot of discussion about company policies and how things work at EBizCharge. I met many of the people I’ll be working with and enjoyed getting to know them. One familiar name from the past came up as well: Tim Plotner. Tim is one of the main architects who developed the FACTS software back when it was still owned by Software Solutions. I spent part of the week getting a copy of the system up and running and reacquainting myself with how FACTS works. It has its own screen editor that relies on its own metadata rather than Providex’s NOMADS system. Fortunatel...

  Happy New Year Since it’s a new year, I’ve been thinking back on New Years past. I remember those early ones as a kid at my parents’ house, especially the New Year’s Eve parties they threw for their friends who also had kids. There was always food, and lots of it. At least one six-foot sub from Vitello’s, sometimes a six-foot meatball sandwich as well, along with plenty of other things to eat. The house would be broken into several sections. In the garage, we showed movies, but not the way people do today with TV projectors. We had a pair of cinema-quality 35mm film projectors, and my father borrowed movies from friends at the studios. In the front room, we showed films on 16mm, not as professional as the setup in the garage, but still impressive. Other parts of the house were set up for games, some using early home systems and others using arcade machines like Ms. Pac-Man . It was a fun evening for everyone. As an adult, I also find myself thinking back to those mornin...

This is the first weekly update I’m connecting to my New Vlog.  The Vlog entry and the Blog entry share the same information, just presented in a different format.  The Vlog is more informal, while the Blog is more structured. You can see the blog at https://youtu.be/rEvOA71pvK0 I’m Becoming a Senior Software Engineer II When I asked Astra (ChatGPT) what the difference was between a Programmer and a Senior Software Engineer II , and why the title had changed since my youth, here’s what it had to say. There was a time when the title Programmer carried real weight. It meant someone trusted to write correct, efficient code on systems that were expensive, shared, and unforgiving. You didn’t deploy often, you didn’t get many second chances, and you were expected to understand not just the language, but the machine, the data, and the business problem behind it. The title didn’t need embellishment because the responsibility was implicit. Over time, that changed. As tools became eas...

Weekly Update 12/13/25 - 12/19/25 It has been a stormy week, weather-wise. Twice this week, we have been hit by an atmospheric river. This caused very stormy conditions; in fact, my next-door neighbor had her shed destroyed on one of those nights. Total rainfall was up to 3 inches. I spent a good portion of the week working on publishing two books. Right after high school, I wrote a book I titled The End of the Beginning and the Start of Eternity , a sci-fi story about a future time when suffering and violence have been eliminated, and the results. Several of you may remember helping me proofread this and giving me suggestions and opinions in the distant past. My second book is titled From Crack to Kitty Litter . This book tells the story of my late wife, Linda, and her struggles with drug addiction. I have wanted to see these published for some time but did not feel comfortable facing the battle to get them published conventionally. A few years ago, I looked into self-publishing...

This has been a relatively uneventful week. Most of it has been rainy, as the Pacific Northwest has been sitting squarely in the bullseye of an atmospheric river. It dried out a bit toward the end of the week, but I’m told the rain is expected to return next week. On the job front, I’ve sent out several hundred copies of my resume to companies that use PxPlus (Providex), BBx, UniBasic, Sage 100 (MAS 90), or Infor FACTS. Since these are all cold contacts, I’m not expecting a large number of responses, but I only need one. Past mailings have led to a few contacts. Among them is the Irvine position for an Infor FACTS developer. Early in the week, I heard back that I’m still being considered. At the same time, I’ve seen the job posted on several boards, including Indeed, Glassdoor, and ZipRecruiter. So while I’m not out of the running, they are clearly still looking. I haven’t heard back from the London role yet, but I’m still hopeful. I was hoping to start something this month, but with ...

This has been an eventful week.   On Tuesday, I woke up trying to sneeze but couldn’t quite get it out. Then I noticed the scratchy throat and the stuffed head. Yes… You guessed it, I have a cold. I went to the doctor on Wednesday to make sure it wasn’t COVID, and thankfully, the test came back negative. Just a mild head cold. As of Saturday, I’m still a little stuffy and tired, but overall improving. On the job-search front, I had two interviews for a position in Irvine, CA. The first one went very well. They even gave me a short coding test, and not only did I solve the problem, but I also found a bug in the original code that made the tester laugh at his own oversight. I left that call feeling hopeful. Within an hour, they contacted me to schedule a second interview, which I had on Friday with three senior leaders. This round focused more on modern tools and frameworks than on my legacy strengths, so it didn’t go as smoothly. I made sure to highlight how quickly I pick up ne...