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

Weekly Update 07/11/26 – 07/17/26 (Apollo 11 Memories, Technical Leadership, Office Remodel) This week's update continues my ongoing Weekly Update series. It includes an unexpected encounter with a summer thunderstorm, memories of Apollo 11, progress at work, developments in my office remodel, and some difficult news involving one of Dawn's puppies. Thursday morning started like most mornings. I got up, took my meds, and went for a walk. I did not get very far when I heard something strange. At first I thought it was the sound of a jet airplane taking off. I live only 4.5 miles from the runway at PDX, so we sometimes hear the planes, although not very often because they normally take off and land on a path parallel to my house and do not fly over it. But I noticed that the sound level was increasing and decreasing, so it was not a plane. The next possibility, of course, was thunder. I was not overly concerned. I did notice that there were occasional raindrops falli...

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...