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Weekly Update 04/18/26 – 04/24/26 (Root Canal Experience, Primary Care Doctor Change, Online Scams Impact)

It has been an uneventful week. The big items have been my root canal, a new PCP (almost), and what I’m thinking of as the death of trust. To begin, on Wednesday, I had my root canal. I must admit I’m very impressed by how much anesthesia has advanced in my lifetime. I remember my first filling when I was a kid, my mother warning me over and over that I had to be careful after the procedure because the whole side of my face would be numb, and I could bite my cheek or my tongue without even feeling it. She was right. My whole face felt strange, and I had no idea what my tongue was doing. This time it was nothing like that. There was a little tingling around my eye, but not my whole face. The entire time I could feel my tongue and was never in danger of biting it. In fact, if it were not for the pain of the injection in the roof of my mouth and them testing the tooth they were going to work on, I would never have known that my sensation was gone. As for the procedure itself, I didn’t...
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Weekly Update 04/11/26 – 04/18/26 (hearing aids adjustment progress, FACTS credit card demo, rebuilding music library)

   Weekly Update 04/11/26 – 04/18/26 (hearing aids adjustment progress, FACTS credit card demo, rebuilding music library) This week’s update covers a mix of personal reflection, progress at work, adjustments to my hearing aids, and some ongoing cleanup of my music library. As part of my ongoing Weekly Update series, I try to document both what’s happening and how things are evolving over time. Well, I’ve been in shock for a couple of days. This started when I realized that Thursday was the 19th anniversary of Linda’s passing. How that is possible, I have no idea. Those 19 years have flown by. https://mrodell.blogspot.com/p/chapter-15-kitty-litter.html Things at work are going well. I have been working on getting eBiz data to post into FACTS for payments. I have also been preparing for a demo of the current way FACTS processes credit card payments. Since I now have access to Astra ChatGPT at work, I feed it all the FACTS manuals. I laid out how I’d like to present the ...
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Weekly Update 04/04/26 – 04/10/26 (Artemis eclipse claims, ISS sunsets explained, hearing aid adjustment, credit card strategy)

 This week’s update covers the Artemis flight coverage, what “eclipses from space” actually mean, adjusting to new hearing aids, and a shift in my credit card strategy. The big item this week has to be the Artemis flight. For me, the strangest part of the coverage was hearing reports claiming this was the “first time humans have seen an eclipse from space.” I knew that was inaccurate. Based on what was described, the Sun moved behind the Earth, disappeared, and then reappeared, effectively a sunset followed by a sunrise. We see that every day. On the International Space Station , it happens about 16 times a day. There are other eclipse-related observations from space as well. Astronauts can observe lunar eclipses from orbit. They sometimes see partial solar eclipses. There are also images taken from the ISS showing the Moon’s shadow crossing the Earth during a total solar eclipse. None of this is new. In my research, Astra (ChatGPT) pointed out that one of the early documented e...
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Weekly Update 03/28/26 – 04/04/26 (hearing aids adjustment, Artemis II launch reflections, early memories and Gemini 8, accounting principles insight)

  Weekly Update 03/28/26 – 04/04/26 (hearing aids adjustment, Artemis II launch reflections, early memories and Gemini 8, accounting principles insight) Well, it has been a calm week. Not much is going on, just steady progress. This update continues my Weekly Update series, covering work, health, and a few reflections that came up along the way. Things at work are going fine. The biggest event of the week was getting my new hearing aids on Thursday. $5,000 for what are essentially earbuds. They seem to be working well. Frankly, I do not notice much difference, but I was not the one noticing the problem. Other people were complaining that I could not hear them.   The one place I did notice a change was when backing up the car. The alert tone sounds different. The higher range notes that I could not hear before are now audible. It is also useful to be able to listen to things without bothering anyone by streaming directly to them. Another major event happened on Wednesda...
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Weekly Update 03/21/26 – 03/27/26 (Xfinity Billing Issues, Internet Outages, Dental Treatment Decisions)

Weekly Update 03/21/26 – 03/27/26 (Xfinity Billing Issues, Internet Outages, Dental Treatment Decisions) This weekly update covers ongoing issues with my Xfinity internet service, including repeated disconnections caused by billing errors, as well as a dental consultation that resulted in decisions about upcoming procedures. As part of my ongoing Weekly Update series, this post documents both the technical and personal challenges encountered during the week. Things are going well. The biggest thing this week has been a ridiculous battle I have been going through with Xfinity. A few weeks ago, I needed to upgrade my internet service to an unlimited data plan. The plan I was on had a limit of 1.2 TB per month, and I had gone over that limit two months in a row. So I needed an unlimited plan. I checked around, thinking about changing providers from Xfinity to something else, perhaps back to CenturyLink. What I found out shocked me. Back in the 1990s, I had a choice for high-speed in...
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Weekly Update 03/14/26 – 03/20/26 (Work Progress, Hearing Loss, Healthcare Navigation, Personal Reflections)

Weekly Update 03/14/26 – 03/20/26 (Work Progress, Hearing Loss, Healthcare Navigation, Personal Reflections) This week’s update covers progress at work, ongoing medical recovery, hearing changes and next steps, navigating primary care access, and a few reflections tied to personal history and current events as part of the ongoing Weekly Update series. This has been a good week. Things at work are going well. I’m learning a lot. We have a new person, what they call a Product Owner, for FACTS. From what I’ve seen, this is the person responsible for handling our project. But I still report to James. Medically, my foot is continuing to heal. I’m taking it easy on it, constantly. OK, I take it off for showering and changing clothes; otherwise, even when I sleep, it’s on. I’m wearing a special shoe to protect the foot after surgery, though my foot is just broken. It’s a little awkward as the special shoe is shorter than the normal shoe on the other foot. Also, now when I walk, it sound...
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St. Patrick, the Patron Saint of Ecological Disasters!

St. Patrick, the Patron Saint of Ecological Disasters!   According to legend, St. Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland and into the sea. According to the story, he chased the snakes away after they attacked him while he was fasting on a hill.   Of course, in our modern age we recognize this for what it was: a massive ecological disaster. Not only polluting the sea with snakes, but also removing a beneficial predator from the ecosystem. This supposedly happened in the 5th century. Who knows, the absence of snakes, if they existed at all, might even have contributed to the Great Potato Famine of the 19th century.   Today we understand that ecology is a balance that humanity is usually better off living with rather than drastically altering. All of God's creatures have a role to play.   Perhaps Patrick never heard the story Ramakrishna told in the 19th century about the snake and the holy man.   A holy man passed through a village where a poisonous snake liv...
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