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 Wednesday, as
Artemis II launched toward the Moon. I was feeling much better I did the last
time we began a mission like that. On December 21, 1968, at 4:51 AM, I watched
the beginning of a similar mission flying by the Moon, but without landing. I
remember how dark it was outside and how sick I felt at the time, I had a bad
case of the flu.
Thinking back to that mission led me to think
about memory itself. I remember watching Star Trek and hearing Captain Kirk
talk about remembering things that happened 20 years earlier. At the time, I
thought that was unrealistic. As a kid, it did not seem possible that anyone
could remember events from that long ago. That perspective has clearly changed.
Looking back, the two oldest memories I can
reasonably confirm are:
- Watching
the launch of Gemini 8. I had to look up the mission number, but I clearly
remember the announcer, likely Walter Cronkite, discussing the docking
with the Agena target vehicle. That was on March 16, 1966. I would have
been about four and a half years old. That puts the memory roughly 60
years in the past.
- A
vague memory of my sister Conie being born in June of 1964. This one is
less certain. I can picture what I believe is the nursery at Valley
Presbyterian Hospital, but the memory is in black and white, which
suggests I may actually be recalling a photograph rather than the event
itself.
I also took advantage of living in a world with AI
to verify something I was taught years ago. In my professional career, two
classes have been especially valuable. The first was a high school typing
class. For a programmer, that skill has been consistently useful. The second
was an accounting class I took at Valley College as part of my associate degree
in computer science. Understanding basic accounting principles has proven just
as valuable, especially when working with accounting systems or building them.
I remember a discussion with a boss about whether
the system should automatically issue a credit memo when a vendor invoice was
too high. I argued against automatic reversal. Explaining that a liability
represents a claim on a company’s assets, so reversing it requires intentional
action, not automation. That foundation came directly from that accounting
class.
I will always remember the first night of that
course. The instructor asked everyone to raise their left hand and then told us
that was our debit hand. She explained that debit meant left, and that it was
French for left. The idea was simple and effective. In accounting, the left
column is the debit side. Some accounts increase on the debit side, such as
assets, and others decrease, such as liabilities.
I have carried that explanation with me for years,
including the part about it being French. I have also wondered whether it was
actually true. This week, I finally checked. It turns out that debit is not
French for left. The term comes from Latin, meaning “he owes.” The explanation
was incorrect, but as a teaching tool, it worked.
Integrity Check: No factual or logical issues
detected.
Labels: Weekly Update, Work, Health,
Hearing Aids, Space Exploration, Personal Reflection, Accounting
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Previous: Weekly Update 03/21/26 – 03/27/26
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