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

After years of worrying about the electrical system in my 1989 home, I hired Mount Vista Electric for a major upgrade. The project included a new electrical panel, replacement switches and receptacles throughout the house, and five new circuits. This is my experience working with them. For some time, I have been worried about the electrical system in my home. The house was built in 1989, and I don't think there have been any major electrical upgrades apart from adding more strain to the existing system. I had outlets that were no longer working, occasional breakers tripping, and an electrical panel that was completely full, with no available breaker spaces for future work. At the same time, my demand for power was increasing, and I needed several new circuits. In the 1980s and 1990s, I worked as a programmer and general manager for a commercial electrical engineering and electrical contracting company that designed, installed, and upgraded electrical systems for new and existi...

This week I have spent a lot of time thinking about how I gather and preserve information. It started with trying to solve one of the problems I have working with AI, but somehow led me to thinking about how I use my eyes, how I see the traffic around me, and whether I should be allowed to record a conversation. The subjects may seem completely unrelated, but as I look back over the week, I think they all come down to the same thing: I want to understand what is happening around me and preserve the information I may need later. Most of my effort this week has been centered around a project I started last weekend with Astra (ChatGPT). For some time, I have noticed that one of the drawbacks to the way AI currently works is that AIs don't have much memory or access to subjects we have already spoken about. If I ask a question and then return to the subject a few days later in another conversation, the AI may not remember what the answer was, and we have to go over it again. I ofte...

This has been one of those weeks where several different parts of my life seemed to come together. I found myself learning new ways to work with Artificial Intelligence, making plans for a complete redesign of my office, improving my writing, and reflecting on America's Bicentennial and the lessons history still has to teach us. Looking back over the week, I realized that each of these experiences had something in common: they were all about learning, building, and looking back. This has been a week about growth and improving my skills. I have grown professionally, financially, in my skills with AI, as a writer, as a person, and in learning the skill of asking good questions. One of the biggest areas in which I have grown is in the work I'm doing with AI and ChatGPT, or Astra as she likes to be called. I have spent a lot of time working with Astra on developing new testing systems for the work I'm doing at work. These systems allow me to take the changes I'm makin...

This week's update continues my ongoing Weekly Update series with progress at work integrating Providex PxPlus with web forms, rebuilding my retirement investments, expanding my interest in space exploration and investing, and reflecting on the one-year anniversary of my hospitalization for diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) and the technology now helping me manage my diabetes. It's been a mostly quiet week. I'm continuing to make progress at work, making strides in developing access to web forms and testing tools to better understand how my interface from Providex PxPlus is working with the web forms. I'm finally seeing progress toward rebuilding my retirement savings after having to empty my retirement accounts while I was looking for work and recovering from various medical issues. I now have a Roth 401(k) with a generous contribution from my employer, along with a personal Roth IRA that I'm funding myself. Soon after SpaceX became available through the SPCX Excha...

   Weekly Update 06/13/26 – 06/19/26 (Medical Uncertainty, Home Equity Approval, Recording Privacy Debate) This has been a very eventful week. Unfortunately, I cannot go into details about everything that happened. I can say that it involved a medical problem affecting someone else who does not want me to discuss it publicly. The problem was very serious and required four days of hospitalization, many tests, several suspected diagnoses that proved to be wrong, and little that could be called closure, as the problem cleared without determining what was causing it, how to prevent it, or whether it will recur. At one point it was even considered infectious, and I had to be tested. On the whole, it was very frustrating. In the rest of my life this week, I finally found myself in a modest line at the new In-N-Out here in Vancouver. It was very good, and the fries, while not great, were good. I wish they would raise the temperature of the oil to make them crispier. I hea...

This week's update is part of my ongoing Weekly Update series and covers a major electrical project at the house, along with a few developments at work. Sometimes things move quickly. Dawn raises geckos. Frankly, I have lost count of how many geckos she has, somewhere between 40 and 80. She had 20 back in December, I know because I took care of them while she visited her son for Christmas. In any case, the geckos all need light, and some need heaters. Most of them are in her bedroom. With the extra load that puts on the electrical circuit, Dawn was worried they might be a fire danger. So she called an electrician to inspect what she had set up and make recommendations. I also had concerns about the electrical system in the house. We had several outlets that were not working. I needed another circuit in my office, and the electrical panel in the house was from the 1980s and likely needed replacement. In addition, Dawn wanted a quote to see how much it would cost to run power to a sh...

 Weekly Update 05/30/26 – 06/05/26 (Morning Walk Recovery, Dental Crown, Space News)   This week's Weekly Update covers my return to morning walks after recovering from a calf hematoma, a visit to the dentist for a new crown, developments involving SpaceX, Blue Origin, and the International Space Station, along with a few observations from everyday life.   My biggest news from last week must be that I have started doing my morning walks again. I had to take a few weeks off while I recovered from my hematoma, but it's mostly gone and I am back to walking. I'm starting off slowly at about 0.8 miles at a time. Next week I plan to increase that back up to 1 mile, and next weekend hopefully I'll be back to my usual 1.5-mile walk. I also had my crown installed this week. It feels so weird, much smoother than my natural teeth. In two weeks I'm going to be fitted for another crown and have a tooth removed. I was saddened to hear about the loss of the New Glenn space...

This week's update covers progress at work, upcoming dental treatment, and a significant development regarding my ongoing urinary issues. Things at work are going well. I'm making real progress on the project I'm currently working on, and it is encouraging to see things moving forward. My dentist contacted me this week to let me know that my new crown is ready to be installed. Unfortunately, my appointment is not until Thursday, so I'll have to wait a little longer before that work is completed. For several years I have been experiencing urinary difficulties, including frequent urination, occasional bladder control issues, and problems initiating urine flow. In 2022, I saw a urologist and tried several medications to treat the problem. At that time, my urologist wanted to perform a cystoscopy, an examination in which a small camera is inserted through the urinary tract to determine what is causing the symptoms. I decided to hold off on that procedure until the pro...

  Weekly Update 05/16/26 – 05/23/26 (Medical Week, Dog Fight, Hematoma Recovery) This week’s Weekly Update was dominated by medical appointments, an unexpected dog fight, and continuing problems with my right leg. Despite all of that, work is going well and there were at least a few reassuring medical results along the way. This has definitely been a medical week, but I managed to get through it. While I was in Irvine I was walking about four miles a day without pain. I returned to Vancouver on May 6th after a 2.5-hour flight. I did not notice anything immediately, but sometime during the following week, around May 10th–15th, I started noticing pain in my right calf. At first it felt somewhat like shin splints along the ridge of my leg below the knee. Since I thought it was a shin splint, I decided to take a day off from my usual one-mile morning walk to give the leg a chance to heal, but that same day the pain started getting worse. I checked with Astra (ChatGPT), and she sug...

 Well, the big news this week has all been around the arrival of the new puppy. I do not yet know the puppy’s name, as Dawn likes to give her dogs “special names,” like Boudica, Gurta, and Bouraged, and I cannot promise I will either remember or spell the name of this dog correctly. We picked the puppy up on 05/10 in The Dalles and drove her home to Vancouver. The puppy is what Dawn calls “dapple,” which apparently means having dappled spots on her coat. She is a nice little puppy and very affectionate. This brings the number of dogs we have up to seven, I think, not including the two puppies from Carolyn, who are now about four weeks old and growing fast. Unfortunately, on the evening of the 10th, Dawn noticed that the new little puppy was coughing a lot. It looks like the poor little thing has kennel cough, a highly contagious condition. So now we have the dogs broken up around the house and are quarantining the new little girl. Otherwise, it was a normal week of going to w...

Weekly Update 05/03/26 – 05/08/26 (California Business Trip, Alaska Airlines, Rental Car Problems) Sorry this is late. I did not have enough energy to write it on Saturday. Last week was an eventful week. This post is part of my ongoing Weekly Update series and covers my trip to Southern California for work, a visit with family, and a few unexpected travel surprises. It started Saturday morning as I was getting ready to go to the airport. I thought I would take a minute and empty the kiddie pool that had been sitting in the backyard for months. Dawn uses it to help sterilize branches she wants to use in the vivarium she built for her collection of geckos and other lizards. She fills the pool with water and Clorox and lets the branches soak for a few days. I thought I could simply lift one side of the pool and let the water spill out the other side. When I tried, I found it was too heavy, so I had a bright idea. I could lift the pool enough to create a wave that would splash over ...

This week’s update focuses on ongoing work progress, troubleshooting in FACTS ERP, and a practical example of how AI tools are improving development workflows.   This week has been focused primarily on work and preparing for my first visit to headquarters next week. I did run into an issue with my hearing aids. The right side stopped working, and I ended up needing to replace the speaker. Fortunately, the warranty covered the repair, so it was more of an inconvenience than a real problem. At work, I had a good example of how AI is starting to change the way I approach development. I created a new program in FACTS, where a significant portion of the behavior is driven by metadata files that define how the program operates. I used an existing program as a starting point and copied it to build the new one. However, when I tested it, the new program became stuck in an endless loop. I initially tried debugging it the traditional way, stepping through the code line by line, but i...

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...

   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 ...

 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...

  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...

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...