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

Weekly Update 03/ 07/ 26 – 03/ 13/ 26 ( Broken Foot Diagnosis, Workplace Scam Attempt, Daylight Saving Time History) Weekly update covering a foot fracture diagnosis, a workplace impersonation scam attempt, and the history behind daylight saving time. I have good news and bad news. The good news is my toe is not broken. The bad news is that my foot is. A couple of weeks ago I was walking out of my bedroom when I managed to catch my pinky toe on the metal leg of my bed. It hurt terribly, and I was concerned that I might have broken my toe. The pain subsided as the day went on, but it still hurt to walk on uneven ground or put on my shoes. Since there is not much that can be done for a broken toe, I just let it heal. A couple of days later, I was stepping into the shower when I stubbed the same toe on the edge of the tub. Again, the pain was severe and then subsided as the day went on. A few days after that, I accidentally kicked a shoe that was on the floor and the pain came back again....

 Weekly update 02/28/26 – 03/07/26 (Injured Toe, Blood Moon Eclipse, Fake War Videos) Weekly update covering a painful toe injury, a missed lunar eclipse, music playlists, and thoughts on fake war videos and space program stories. On 02/27/26, I was walking across my bedroom when somehow I managed to bash the little toe on my right foot into one of the legs of my bed. This was the start of my foot ordeal. The pain when it hit was excruciating and lasted most of the day. I was immediately afraid I had broken my toe, but since there is nothing to do about a broken toe except let it heal and possibly tape it, I did not go to the doctor. The pain subsided in a few hours, but it still hurt when I walked, and the swelling made it painful to wear my shoes or walk on uneven ground. This went on for a couple of days with me avoiding walking, not even going for my morning walks, and the pain slowly subsided until I was getting into the shower and re-hit the toe. The pain came back at ...

Weekly update 02/21/26 – 02/27/26 (Dental Work Experience, Blog Indexing Issues, and Political Reflections) I hope everyone has had a good February! This week, I got started on dental work. On Wednesday, I got two fillings, one on the left side and one on the right. The process was mostly painless. The biggest shock came when they were working on the tooth on the right side. I do not know what kind of drill they were using, but man, it was loud. It sounded like they were using a jackhammer on my head. There was a little shaking, but the noise was unbelievable. I think it must have been transmitted directly from the jawbone to the ear. It was odd having to have both sides of my face numbed. The oddest part was later, when I tried to drink from a cup. My upper lip was swollen and very numb. When I put the cup to my mouth, I simply could not feel it or the water in it until the water reached the back of my mouth. I am going to be spending some time this weekend working with Ch...

 Weekly Update 02/14/26 to 02/20/26 (Glasses, Gums, and Better Sleep) Finally, my new glasses arrived. I’m very pleased with them. I can see much better now. In fact, I’m wondering whether I still need separate computer and regular glasses. I can see the screen well with my regular glasses, though the computer ones may still be slightly better. I’m a little disappointed that they are larger than I would prefer, but overall, I’m very satisfied. This week I had my first dental treatment for periodontal disease, and I was very worried about it. I had heard stories about gum cutting with lasers. It was nothing like that. In fact, I’ve had many routine cleanings that were much worse than this treatment. The main differences were that the procedure was done over two days, though I’m not sure why, and that the sonic cleaning technology seems improved since my last visit. In the past, I often felt like I was drowning in the water used during the cleaning. That did not happen this time....

 Weekly update 02/07/26 to 02/13/26 (Work Progress, Drum Corps International, New Glasses, and EKG Results) Things are going well at work. I now have FACTS communicating with the web and opening web pages. This is a big step forward. Otherwise, last weekend was the Super Bowl. I, of course, did not watch, not even to see a Bad Bunny at the halftime show. The only reason I would have had to watch was that President Trump did not want me to. Personally, I have felt for a long time that the way the halftime show at the Super Bowl, something I have never seen, is handled, bringing in popular stars to perform, makes no sense. This is supposed to be a halftime show, and as we all know, halftime shows are made up of marching bands. I strongly believe that the people who put on the Super Bowl should team up with www.dci.org , Drum Corps International. If you have ever seen a highly polished marching performance that looks and sounds more like a professional production than a halfti...

  Weekly Update 01/31/26 – 02/06/26 Things continue to go well at work. I received my second paycheck on Friday, and it was my first full paycheck. Outside of work, this was very much a medical week. It began on Saturday with new prescriptions for eyeglasses. I hadn’t gotten new glasses since 2022, and my eyes have changed quite a bit since then. When I got home, I went online to 39dollarglasses.com. I’ve been using them since 2004 and have always been very satisfied. I was pleased to see the improvements they’ve made to their site. These include a new method for measuring pupillary distance, which should improve the performance of my bifocals, and a feature that lets me upload a photo of myself to see how the glasses will look on me. That’s far better than trying on frames in a store. Being extremely near-sighted, I’ve never really been able to see what glasses look like on me without them, and the online selection is vastly better than anything available in person. I now have fou...

  Weekly Update 01/24/2026 – 01/30/2026 Things at work are going well. I’m learning a lot about integrating APIs with PxPlus using the Cordedll system.   Apart from work, this has been my annual week of remembrance, with January 27 marking the anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire in 1967 and the 28th marking the anniversary of the Challenger disaster. Next week we have February 1 st and the Columbia Disaster.  Remembering these events made me think about memory, especially visual memory and visual memory deficit: “a functional limitation in visual recall or recognition that interferes with daily tasks such as reading comprehension, spatial navigation, or visual learning.” It seems that you, Muggles, have a much greater ability to recall visual memories than I do. That made me think about what visual memories I do have. I remember being in a car, turning left from Riverside Drive onto Van Nuys Boulevard, when I heard the announcement about the Apollo 1 fire. I reme...

 01/17/2026 – 01/23/2026 This has been a good week. Things at work are going well, and I am learning a lot while making solid progress. I am relearning and remembering a great deal about FACTS software. It has been a very long time since I last worked on that platform, but it is all coming back to me. I have even found myself hitting “P” after loading a program. That is a habit I picked up in the 1990s when working with FACTS. The “P” command was used to enter the program’s password so I could access it. I stopped using “P” when I moved from FACTS to MAS 90, where it was not needed, but the habit has resurfaced now that I am back in FACTS. Even though the “P” command is no longer required and locking is handled differently, I still find myself doing it. The biggest event of the week was PAYDAY. This was my first payday since October 2022, so it was a big deal. It felt good to have money coming in again. Between October 2022 and January 2026, I spent some time on unemployment unti...

  01/10/26 – 01/17/26 My week has been dedicated to my new job. I have finally reached the point where I am doing real programmer-type work. I have been reviewing the FACTS code to understand how their credit card processing software works and how we can use that code to integrate our own credit card system. I have found this to be educational work, and it has taken up most of my time this week. This was also the end of the first pay period of the new year, so I turned in my timecard and am looking forward to getting paid next week. I also spent some time redeveloping my budget. I like budgets, but somehow I lost my old template and had to rebuild it. I now have a solid template in place, including the ability to set up payments based on a percentage of net pay, fixed dollar amounts per month, and amounts set aside each month for recurring expenses such as bills that are paid every other month, every three months, every six months, and annually. Part of my new financial plan inc...

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...