April 8, 2025 a thought for today, Those who do not honor the ways of the Great Spirit, are not strong. Native American Seneca proverb

The first upload for the 7th was “glimmer micro moment”.  This is very early bloom for the black berry plant we have at the back of our yard. I was glad to see it because I had been worried that we had trimmed it way to far back. 

The next upload is “game”. I don’t have to many games around the house. I dug through one of the two toy boxes that we keep for visiting children. I found this one that I bought for one of the twins a while back . It is a ball with all kinds of patterns and forms for a little metal ball to traverse and travel as it is moved about.

The last upload yesterday was “church windows”. This one is an easy one for me to get. I didn’t go out today for this one but it is a recent one in my archives. 

Life today. I mentioned earlier that I was having a problem with my six or seven year old printer. I use the printer a lot, some for church items. So I was anxious about not having one when I need it to the point of “worrying”. A few years back I had purchased a printer that I liked when I was shopping at the time for other computer supplies. At the time I decided to put it aside until the “old” one actually quit working. So that time has come. Yesterday Tami and Andy came over to help me bring it out of storage and to set it up. That is one of my pet peeves, setting up new technical equipment. With their help it went with out incident. I am back in business. The printer is a little larger than I remembered so I can’t put it where the old one is. I am going to need some more help changing the desk around so that it will fit in with all the other equipment. We’ll do that in a few days.

One of todays uploads is “golden”. As I was sitting here at the computer I glanced around for an idea of something I could use. I have a gold chain by my keyboard that has a mustard seed in a tiny glass bowl attached. I took several shots of it trying to get one without the glare of a ray of sun in the ting glass bowl. Two were very good. Then I looked around and found a bottle of honey on my sister’s desk. I liked its color along with the softened wine color on a book lying next to it. 

Brian was going to take care of the lawn yesterday but I had mentioned to him that I prefer that he do the job early in the day, at least before noon. He didn’t get in the neighborhood yesterday until afternoon so I asked him to wait until today or later in the week. He came early this morning. It was near freezing so I told him if he would rather not work with it so cold to do it later but he wanted to get it done. The lawn mower hasn’t been used in around six months. It was a bit slow in starting. He got it started and the lawn done in good time and seemed happy about it. It looks like we are started on summer-type projects. This weeks bulletin is for one of the pastors who is precise in wording and in the information submitted for print so it takes some extra time for me to size and position the text and then to place it with an appropriate format. This took me a good hour longer than most others take to get finished. It is done and on its way to people who need to see it early. I took a break for Sweet Pea and me to go out for a sandwich and photo shoot. I changed my stop to Wendys instead of McDonalds today.

I think it is time for another multi-task project so I am going to go to the kitchen for some clean up before getting back here to the computer to finish and close down for the day. 

Next is a “glimmer micro moment” of the car ahead of me as we were sitting at a pair of stop lights, another “micro” moment in time. I had to notice the red stop light on the car ahead of me. 

The word is wear.  Good humor is one of the best articles of dress one can wear in society. William Makepeace Thackeray.  Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles. George Eliot.  We forge the chains we wear in life. Charles Dickens.  No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true. Nathaniel Hawthorne.  After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on - have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear - what remains? Nature remains. Walt Whitman.  To be a king and wear a crown is a thing more glorious to them that see it than it is pleasant to them that bear it. Elizabeth I.  Never seem wiser, nor more learned, than the people you are with. Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not merely pull it out and strike it; merely to show that you have one. Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield.  If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one? Abraham Lincoln.

The last upload is “symmetrical”. While I was out and about a little while ago I looked around at the several symmetrical things that can be found all around us everywhere.  One of the shots I made was this one of the two stop lights.

Article: This is another story about AI and about animals. The AI situation is at the top of a lot of peoples minds right now. This was an interesting title. “What is reinforcement learning? An AI researcher explains a key method of teaching machines – and how it relates to training your dog” It is written by a professor of statistics. Early in the article a statement was made that made we turn on my “thinking cape”. “The ability to learn from experience is a cornerstone of intelligence for machines and living beings alike”. I had to think about the ability to learn from experience for a machine. But I guess it is one way of defining it. As it went on I understood more where that thinking was based. In 1948 “the father of modern computer science – proposed the construction of machines that display intelligent behavior”. It was describing “education” as an offering of rewards and punishments. Further on, “Animal trainers know that animal behavior can be influenced by rewarding desirable behaviors”. Relating this to a machine was still bothering me. Now I came to “reinforcement learning is about training computational agents, not animals”. Then another idea was thrown in the “agent can also be an embodied entity like a robot learning to do household chores”.  To explain that statement, a “robot can sense its surroundings with cameras and microphones”. These robots or machines have “goals that their human designers program into them”. As AI is progressing and according to the article the AI “agents” have to act by “instructing” its AI “students” to act and  perceive “in their environments”. The “rewards” part of this programing “can be achieved by designing a numerical signal, called the reward, (reward hypothesis), and having the agent maximize the total sum of rewards it receives”. I should most likely stay away from the subject because I am totally at a loss as to how this can safely be achieved. I’ll be leaving it to those who can make it work and stick to my own endowed legacies.

I may make beef and noodles in the pressure cooker for dinner. 

Joy 

                on top of a downtown Columbus building in September 2009