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

 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...