The most important step that voters can take is to vote early if possible, and be prepared to vote in person on Election Day if that is the voter’s choice (i.e., show up early with identification). What is at stake? The issue being covered in the mainstream media is control of the US Congress (currently the House and Senate have Republican majorities). Election polls are indicating that the Democrats could take control of at least the House, and perhaps the Senate as well.

The other issue that is getting a lot of attention is the possibility that Republicans could block Democrats from taking control of the House or Senate when the new Congress meets on January 3, 2027. Again, mainstream media are publishing a lot of negative “what-if” scenarios on how this could occur. I recommend following the Election Law Blog headed by Rick Hasen at UCLA Law School. This is an excellent resource on following any election-related litigation. In addition, there have been multiple posts evaluating these “what-if” scenarios at Election Law Blog and other sites on how the likelihood of success is low to none:

• Fearmongering about stealing Congress on January 3, 2027 (August 27, 2026)
• Can the Midterms Be ‘Stolen’ On Jan. 3? It’s Complicated. (August 2026)
• Can Congress Be Stolen from the Voters? (September 2026)
• How Trump Can—and Cannot—Still Mess With the Midterms (October 2026) (PDF copy)
• Taking the bait (October 2026)
• OK, Doomer – Trump can’t steal the midterms. ICE can’t be at the polls. A rogue clerk won’t tip the House. Our elections run smoothly – and this November’s will too (PDF copy)

When I started my retirement, I would start each day with a written list of to-dos on my computer, and work to complete all the things on the list. After about two months, I decided that I did not need to have a list. Now, I have a hand-written list to collect things/tasks as they come to mind, and I just keep adding items, not starting a new list until the page is full.

I had some planned projects for when I retired (mostly website maintenance/migration, start looking at using AI for software development). I was able to finish the migration work in a few months, and did some experiments with AI after that. Over the past few months, I have had difficulty thinking of a project where I want to invest my time. For example, I see articles/posts about apps that people have developed using AI, and I have no interest in those things. If anyone has any ideas for a good project, send them my way!

In general, I have become more relaxed in my day-to-day activities. If I don’t get a task done, there is always tomorrow to get it done, or the day after that….and I have also taken a lot of naps!

Hamilton worked for the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, which was a contractor working for NASA on the Apollo program. The team she lead was developing software for the Apollo Guidance Computer. This computer had 2K words of random-access memory (RAM) and 36K words of read-only memory (ROM). Even with those constraints, and limited processor capability, NASA was able to conduct the Apollo missions. Hamilton deserves a lot of credit, and stands on par with other women at NASA such as Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughn.

Thanks to Manton Reece and Sven Dahlstrand for posting on this event.

I am 2/3 of the way listening to this podcast, and it is giving me some insight into the (visual) design of software. In my career in the aerospace industry, this was not a topic that was included in most of the software I worked on. Maggie Appleton talks about the importance of the human input in creating user interfaces, and how most, if not all, of agent software tools (Claude, Chat-GPT, etc.) have not been successful in producing good designs from prompt input. The part that I am finding most interesting is near the end, where she talks about a prototype app her team was creating. I found this more inspiring than her stories of iterating on user interfaces with Figma, etc.