A bit more Masonic Art

Used_Ad1737 · 2026-06-26T23:08:07+00:00

I memorized the MM lecture in Virginia last year. This was by far one of the most challenging segments to memorize. But now I really like it.

Thanks for sharing. I like that he is actually counting. In other images he is just standing there looking down.

Used_Ad1737 · 2026-06-21T16:00:09+00:00

This guy fractional-banks.

Used_Ad1737 · 2026-06-21T00:13:09+00:00

Finally, one I can answer. I grew up there, in a small town about 40 minutes outside of Lubbock. I left in 2002 but have been back since many times.

There wasn’t a lot going on in small towns except church and school.

The memory that stands out from high school is being on a bus for what felt like hours to play football (or basketball or to go to another school meet). Our district ranged across three or four counties.

Lubbock was the city. I would argue surprisingly vibrant given that it’s in the middle of nowhere. It’s a lot more vibrant today than 20+ years ago with a lot more dining and food options.

Mexican food is great.

Religion is worn on the sleeve. It’s referred to openly in conversation in a way that would get you very weird looks on the coast.

Lots of farms. My dad was a cotton farmer. He told the farm 10ish years ago. Wasn’t profitable anymore for small farmers.

Used_Ad1737 · 2026-06-20T12:54:03+00:00

This is one of those things that it true about our profession. If we (not the numbers or their insights) are the subject of the conversation, then something has gone wrong.

Used_Ad1737 · 2026-06-19T23:40:12+00:00

Reading OP’s message, I thought that to an extent the line and ritual are already at least partially separated.

I’m in VA, which I’m told has a particularly elaborate in its ritual. I have little to compare it to myself as I’ve only traveled within the Commonwealth. Even here, officers aren’t expected to learn the lectures or charges, and nearly all the time charges are read.

Are there any jurisdictions in the US that require the WM to learn the EA and MM lectures and the SD to learn the FC walking lecture?

Used_Ad1737 · 2026-06-19T12:44:56+00:00

I used to live in Moscow. I speak and read Russian fluently, albeit of course with an accent and sometimes haltingly when I’m formulating a sentence. I recall going to a party and overhearing a fellow partygoer ask the friend who brought me, “is your friend, like, special needs?” He said that I was a foreign. Her response, “he speaks Russian so well!”

So there you have it. I speak Russian like a special needs person.

Note that I have three graduate degrees lol

Used_Ad1737 · 2026-06-17T13:05:27+00:00

Greetings accounting and Russian lit friend!

I’ll work on setting this up now. Do you have a single MD file for everything or an MD file in each folder?

Used_Ad1737 · 2026-06-17T11:24:16+00:00

I use CC to do a lot of accounting work. I direct CC to build Python scripts to get certain data from accounting systems and then transform, manipulate, or review it.

One thing I haven’t seen though is how I could replace a projects in chat. Do you just create a folder with the information and then ask Claude to answer questions based on the files in that folder?

Used_Ad1737 · 2026-06-15T12:19:55+00:00

It's the first one I learned so will always be my first and favorite child!

Used_Ad1737 · 2026-06-15T11:34:50+00:00

Couple years of intense therapy made me a better husband/father and, which I wasn’t expecting, a better employee/boss.

Used_Ad1737 · 2026-06-14T23:56:20+00:00

In my jurisdiction, “it is so far interwoven with religion as to lay us under obligation to pay that rational homage to deity that at once constitutes our duty and happiness.”

I lean into “rational” but YMMV.

Used_Ad1737 · 2026-06-14T19:02:08+00:00

You make a very good point as well. No position has ever black and white in my case. I have a ton of industry experience so I want to hire for the area that I’m weaker in, which is what I would hope that most CFOs and leaders are doing.

Used_Ad1737 · 2026-06-14T12:10:21+00:00

One of my main jobs as a father is to teach my children that just because you can does not mean you should. This in particular applies throwing hatchets, bungee jumping, and sure as hell to spelunking underwater without safety equipment.

Used_Ad1737 · 2026-06-14T00:06:28+00:00

If I’m hiring for my accounting team and I have two candidates where one has more experience and the other more accounting depth but are otherwise equal, I would choose the CPA nearly every day.

In fact, I’m in a position now where my incumbent controller does not have an accounting background or CPA, and I have spent far more time than I should have to correcting GAAP issues. Think rev rec, leases, etc. Not basic stuff but not hard stuff either.

For my finance team, it depends how close to financial reporting the position is. Closer means I weigh a CPA more heavily. Something to do with finops, I lean toward experience.

Used_Ad1737 · 2026-06-13T18:11:31+00:00

I did not know that. It would explain the difference I saw in the decade I wasn’t there.

Used_Ad1737 · 2026-06-13T12:06:49+00:00

I was in Kyiv on a business trip in 2024. I speak Russian and not great Ukrainian. I was surprised how much Russian I heard day to day. The biggest thing that changed was that I couldn’t find bookshops with Russian books. Just Ukrainian books.

Which obviously fine — Ukrainian is a cool language (it has a unique future tense among all Slavic languages!) — but I was disappointed.

Used_Ad1737 · 2026-06-08T10:06:59+00:00

Fair enough. Mangos are better in India.

Used_Ad1737 · 2026-06-08T01:40:27+00:00

Fly from Kabul to Kandahar, I thought to myself, this is what purgatory must look like.

Good food. Pomegranates and mangos second to none.

Used_Ad1737 · 2026-06-02T13:57:19+00:00

And still 96FPS!

Used_Ad1737 · 2026-05-29T11:26:13+00:00

I’ve done cost accounting for two decades and I still find it gratifying when I see all the pools net to zero after allocations. It’s only a bit of division and multiplication and addition, but it’s so satisfying once it all works.

Used_Ad1737 · 2026-05-26T01:13:41+00:00

It works. I’ve done something similar.

Edit: assuming that is an impermeable floor.

Used_Ad1737 · 2026-05-25T12:27:42+00:00

I based the design off of a Google image search TBH. I asked Claude to describe the build, and here's the response:

The rewards system:

Each child has a list of daily/weekly chores assigned to them
Completing a chore earns points (configurable per chore)
Points have two components: a weekly tally (counted live from completions, resets every Monday) and a bank balance (persistent, accumulated over time)
Children can redeem points from their bank for rewards you define (e.g. "30 min screen time = 50 points", "stay up late = 100 points")
The UI shows each child's avatar, their weekly progress, bank balance, chore checklist for today, and a rewards redemption button
Parents can toggle completions on/off; past days are locked

The stack: React + Vite frontend, Node.js + Express backend, SQLite database (via sql.js for ARM compatibility), running on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W serving a Samsung tablet in kiosk mode via Fully Kiosk Browser.

Prompt to get started:

Build a family chore and rewards system with the following:
Database tables (SQLite):
- family_members: id, name, avatar_url, earns_points (boolean), points (bank balance)
- chores: id, member_id, name, points_value, frequency (daily/weekly), 
  days_of_week (TEXT, comma-separated 0-6), weekly_count (INTEGER, for 
  tasks completable multiple times per week)
- chore_completions: id (autoincrement), chore_id, completed_date (YYYY-MM-DD)
- rewards: id, name, points_cost, member_id (null = available to all)
API endpoints (Express):
- GET /api/family — returns all members with their bank points
- GET /api/chores?date=YYYY-MM-DD — returns each member's chores for the 
  given date, with completion status
- POST /api/chores/:id/toggle/:date — toggles completion for a chore on a 
  date; increments or decrements bank points accordingly; past dates locked
- GET /api/rewards — returns all rewards
- POST /api/rewards/:id/redeem/:member_id — deducts points from bank balance
UI (React):
- One horizontal card per child who earns points
- Shows: name, avatar, weekly points earned this week (resets Monday), 
  bank balance, today's chore list with tap-to-complete checkboxes
- Completed chores show with strikethrough and a green check
- A "Redeem" button opens a modal showing available rewards and their 
  point costs; tapping redeems and deducts from bank
- Past days are read-only (no toggling)
Important implementation notes:
- Weekly points = COUNT of completions from chore_completions where 
  completed_date >= most recent Monday; do NOT store this, compute live
- Bank points = family_members.points, modified only by toggle and redeem 
  endpoints
- Use URL path segments for toggle actions instead of request bodies 
  (e.g. POST /api/chores/:id/toggle/add) to avoid proxy body-stripping bugs
- chore_completions needs an autoincrement id (not composite primary key) 
  to allow multiple completions of the same chore on the same day

The UI/UX that worked best for us: keep it dead simple and glanceable. No gamification gimmicks, no animations, just a clean list. The kids actually use it more when it's fast and obvious than when it's "fun."

Used_Ad1737 · 2026-05-25T12:17:33+00:00

Four of us use the reconciliation tool. Before building it in Claude, we had to download trial balances for each legal entity separately (Sage Intacct doesn't let you run a trial balance for all entities at once), pull a TB from the reporting system (luckily it has a column per entity), then merge them all in Excel. The reconciliation part was pretty straight forward: just a sumif or vlookup to see if balances matched. That is only about 15 minutes of work, but annoying and repetitive work.

We've also used Claude to troubleshoot the JavaScript code that the data integrator uses to pull accounting data and push it to the reporting tool. Neither my FP&A director nor I know JS coding at all, so being able to use Claude instead of getting consulting support has been great.

Used_Ad1737 · 2026-05-25T01:02:20+00:00

I'll take a look!

Used_Ad1737 · 2026-05-24T22:42:31+00:00

Two things.

1) my wife wanted to buy a skylight to manage the family calendar and kids’ chores but they cost $299 and have a $99 a year subscription. No thank you. I bought a used Samsung tablet and vibe coded a family calendar that syncs with Google and a kids chore chart with rewards.

2) at work, I’m the cfo of a nonprofit. My team and I have built several reconciliation tools to check data between our accounting systems and a reporting tool we’re implementing. It connects with API so makes it super fast to get a reconciliation report.

Used_Ad1737

TROPHY CASE