Weekly Update 06/27/26 – 07/03/26 (Learning, Building, and Looking Back)

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 making to the software and return valuable information that I, or someone else, can use to detect errors and workflow problems that might never have been discovered without the insights these tools provide. I was able to work with Astra, letting her write huge sections of code in just a few minutes that would have taken me hours to write. At the same time, I maintained control, improved what she developed, and directed how the system would ultimately work.

Part of my goal was to determine whether the API calls and WebForm sections of the code were working correctly and to see whether the system was wasting time redoing work that had already been done.

This is a common problem in object-oriented programming, or "lasagna programming," as I call it, where there are layers upon layers of code calling other layers of code. I'm an old structured-programming person.

I talked with Astra about changing the way the system reported the results of the calls I was making. Together we brainstormed and found better ways to verify the results, along with cleaner ways to report errors and identify times when no error had actually occurred.

From what I saw, I was not being replaced by AI. Instead, I was working with a partner, someone I could depend on to generate code, but who also served as a sounding board. Someone I could share ideas with, whose suggestions I valued, and who was open to my suggestions, changes, and feedback.

I have also been using Astra quite a bit for projects at home.

I'm working with her to help improve my writing skills and optimize the presence of this blog on the Internet. One of the things we are working on is developing a writing coach to help me expand what I start with while still keeping my own voice. The goal is to have her ask questions about things I'm not telling the reader that they might want to know, and to suggest ways I might make the article easier to understand. For example, once I'm done writing this, she will review it and make suggestions about what I might want to expand upon.

Another interesting project I worked on is developing a plan to remodel my office.

It started with wanting to replace the carpet and deciding what kind of flooring I should consider instead. I needed something durable that could stand up to the presence of dogs that are not exactly housebroken, something an office chair could roll over for hours every day, something that looked good, and something that felt good underfoot.

I was thinking about bamboo flooring, as I have in the front room, or maybe tile. After working with Astra, she pointed me toward Luxury Vinyl Plank (LVP). The more I learned about LVP, the more it seemed to fit exactly what I needed: durable enough for dogs, comfortable enough to walk on, resistant to moisture, and tough enough to handle an office chair every day.

Once I had the flooring picked out, I wanted to take advantage of the fact that the carpet was going to be removed so it could act as a drop cloth while painting the room.

A few years ago, I made a huge mistake. Dawn and I had decided to move from Vancouver to Denver to be closer to her son. In order to sell the house, we decided to repaint it and hired a professional painter to do the work. Unfortunately, this person did not do a good job.

Part of the project that concerned me the most was painting the wood trim white. Both our Realtor at the time and Dawn believed the wood trim was outdated and that painting it would be better and cheaper than repairing it. Since we were not planning on living here any longer, I went along with their suggestion and had it painted.

Unfortunately, the painter did not properly prepare the wood before painting it. It turns out that wood trim is usually covered with a finish such as varnish or lacquer, and paint does not bond well to that surface unless it is properly prepared. Over time, the paint begins to peel. That is exactly what is happening in my office and throughout the rest of the house.

With the help of This Old House and Astra, we have come up with a plan to remove the paint from the woodwork and restore the natural wood finish throughout the house.

Part of the effort to sell the house also included repainting the walls and ceilings. The ceilings were painted white and are still in good shape. However, the color chosen by Dawn and the Realtor was gray, or, as I call it, "Prison Gray."

I want to change the color, or rather, add color back into the house, and I'll start with my office.

You may wonder where this is going and why I'm talking about it while discussing things I've done with AI. Well, it turns out that AI, and Astra in particular, has an interesting ability to understand color. I spent a good deal of time discussing color with Astra and designing the look I wanted for the room.

I wanted to start with a sky blue, not a bright blue, but more like a summer sky around 10:00 a.m. Then I wanted an accent wall. Still thinking about the sky, I chose the colors of twilight just before it becomes completely dark.

One of my favorite things to do is what I call "Listening to the Music of the Night." I like to be somewhere that is going to become truly dark, not city dark, but real darkness where you can see the Milky Way and the colors of the nebulae.

I like to lie on the ground or in a hammock around sunset and watch as the world slowly and methodically disappears, as the colors change, and as objects fade from distinct shapes to shadows and finally disappear altogether. To watch the world vanish and be replaced by the vastness of the universe and feel myself falling into it is an incredible experience. It takes time, but it is wonderful.

That is the feeling I wanted to remember every time I looked at that wall.

After talking it over with Astra, we developed two custom colors. One she calls Morning Sky (Red 171, Green 200, Blue 245), and the other Civil Twilight (Red 112, Green 138, Blue 170).

As long as I'm changing the flooring, woodwork, and paint, I also started thinking about upgrading my furniture. First, I'd like a sit-stand desk. I also want to replace the wing chair that I use for meditation.

This seemed like the perfect time to do it because I would already have to remove my current desk to make the changes. I like my current glass-top desk, but it isn't easy to move and would have to be completely disassembled. If I'm going to go through all of that work, now seems like the right time to replace it.

Astra and I spent a good deal of time trying to build a library of facts and drawings about my house. In the end, we found that her ability to work with the information I currently have was still too limited. However, we were able to spend serious time thinking about the layout of my office and whether it could be improved.

In the end, we decided that the current layout is actually optimal for my workflow and the available space. We gave considerable thought to having two separate desks instead of a single L-shaped desk, but I rejected the idea because the new arrangement would have placed the second desk directly behind me during video calls, and unfortunately that area is often cluttered and not the impression I want to share on a video call. I decided to keep the current layout but replace the desk itself.

Like I said, this has been a real learning process, and I've learned a great deal about how I can work with AI.

Right now, I need to gather more information, test different methods of stripping the paint back to bare wood, determine the best way to seal it afterward, and choose the exact flooring and furniture that will complete the project. Hopefully, I can begin the work over Labor Day weekend while still keeping the room functional enough for work.

Another big event this week was finally being approved for my line of credit. I signed the papers on Thursday, and the funds should be available on Tuesday. I'm going to use them to pay off a couple of outstanding home improvement loans so that my interest rate will drop substantially, and the interest should become tax deductible.

As I'm writing this, it is the morning of July 4, 2026, America's 250th birthday.

Watching America approach this milestone made me think back to the Bicentennial 50 years ago, when I was 14 years old. It's very scary to me that I can look back on events from 50 years ago.

Things were very different then.

I don't remember July 4, 1976 itself, but I vividly remember the months leading up to it. It seemed like the whole nation was eager to celebrate. For months before the big day, the evening news gave daily updates about what had happened on that day exactly 200 years earlier: the Boston Tea Party, Lexington and Concord, the events leading to the Continental Congress, and the other events that eventually led to the Declaration of Independence. Little events and big events all leading to one glorious document and a dramatic shift away from tyranny and toward freedom.

There were so many things being done to get ready for the celebration. The Statue of Liberty was restored, the National Air and Space Museum opened, there were large national celebrations covered by television, and it seemed as though every small community had its own celebration. The entire celebration seemed dignified and respectful.

The feeling is much different this year, and I find that sad.

Instead of remembering the past, the only big event seems to be an Ultimate Fighting Championship event being held on the grounds of the White House to enrich friends of the president. Not even a traditional boxing match governed by the old Marquess of Queensberry Rules of sportsmanship and honor. Boxing was violent enough, but to me Ultimate Fighting goes a step further. I have never understood the appeal of watching two people deliberately injure one another for entertainment, and I find it a sad symbol of what has become one of the centerpieces of our nation's 250th birthday celebration.

Another change was the attempt to restore the reflecting pools on the National Mall, but that ended up being a failure and will have to be redone.

How the mighty have fallen.

One of the events I also remember from 1976 was the opening of the National Air and Space Museum.

Oddly enough, I have never seen the completed museum.

When I visited Washington as part of our family's coming-of-age tradition, a tradition that began with my father's trip at age 13 from Los Angeles to Middletown, New York, I followed in his footsteps and made the journey myself using money I had earned to pay for the airline ticket.

Part of my trip was spent with my Great Aunt Constance, visiting places in New York, including West Point, and spending time with other family members who still lived there, including Tay, Tad, and their mother, Darling Ann. I also spent time with my Uncle Brad, who lived in Washington, D.C.

While I was there in 1975, we visited the partially completed Air and Space Museum. However, I have never seen the finished museum.

One thing I remember someone telling me (it might have been Brad) years later concerned Michael Collins, the Command Module pilot of Apollo 11. After leaving NASA, Collins was placed in charge of building the National Air and Space Museum. Congress gave him a budget and a deadline to have the museum ready for July 4, 1976.

From what I remember, Collins became the first person in history to complete a major government project on budget and ahead of schedule. He took what he had learned at NASA and successfully applied it to an entirely different field.

I have tried, without success, to confirm that he was the first, and maybe the only, person to achieve this, but I can't. I can say that I think the number of people who have done this is likely quite small. Whatever he learned at NASA has been lost to NASA. Just look at the current state of our space program.

Happy Fourth of July!

— Odell Sneeden Hathaway III

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