The East, Noah, and Other Odds and Ends

Greetings my brethren, one and all! It has been quite a while since I last posted and much has been happening during my absence.

First and foremost, I am happy to report that my website “A Mason’s Journey” has gained several new members over the course of the last few weeks! I am pleased to welcome our new members and invite you all to visit the site frequently and take advantage of all of the resources available in my Research Index! If you’re looking for material to support a masonic education piece, you might just find something in my library to support your effort!

You may also be interested in my art gallery where I’ve organized and posted several different categories of masonic art and imagery and even some from the “Independent Order of Odd Fellows” (IOOF) as well! Definitely worth checking out! And finally, at least regarding the website, you can read up on summaries of my “Noah” books, including my replies to the most frequently asked questions about them. If you’re inclined to buy my books after reading about them, you can click on the links to go directly to Amazon to purchase them. NOTE: As I was finishing the final draft of this post, I received an email through my website with another great question about my “Noah” series books and the underlying (hidden) storyline. It is one of the best questions I’ve received so far, and I will answer it directly on my website when I upload this blog post. My reply to my fellow Texas brother will appear in the FAQ section on the page called “Bookshelf”, just look for the FAQ button!

Speaking of my books, I have resumed work on my next book. This one will continue my experimentation with the “masonic fiction” genre and continue my own exploration of the origins of, and meanings behind our craft; it is not technically a “Noah” book, but if you have read the “Noah’s Quest” and “Noah’s Legacy” books before you read this next one, you will enjoy a more complete knowledge of the background and storyline – just imagine starting your degrees with the Fellowcraft degree and knowing that an Entered Apprentice degree existed, but you didn’t receive it! You might always wonder what was in that degree and whether you missed something important or even whether there was something in that degree that explained or clarified your experience in your Fellowcraft degree; why take the risk?

As I head into September, I’m hoping to be able to increase my time and attention devoted to my new book, but that work will have to compete with – and take something of a backseat to – my duties as master at Helotes Lodge. I am fortunate in that the lodge is well-organized with well established processes and functions, so I am able to devote some of my focus on my “side labors” and personal interests; if that continues to be the case, I should be able to manage lodge, maintain the website, and work on my book while keeping all three moving forward (fingers crossed).

I have high hopes for my next book because it will allow me to take the lessons and themes from my “Noah” books and expand them even further. The theme I have set for my year in the East at lodge is “Beyond the Monitor” and I am challenging my brothers to look at our symbols and allegories and envision unique and personal meanings and purposes for them that go far beyond what we are taught in “The Monitor of the Lodge”. I want to challenge my lodge brothers to apply our symbols and allegories to their own journeys and lives and see what they may discover – just as Noah did in his quest. In my newest book, I am constructing a story that goes even further into the esoteric aspects of how masonry “manifests” in our lives and provides clues as to how we might spot it when it does.

~

I will part now on something of a brief diversion from masonry. Earlier, I made a passing reference to some unexpected computer problems that I have been dealing with over the last couple of weeks and during that particular test of my patience I discovered something that may be of use to you and all of my brother’s! I learned how to partner with AI to troubleshoot and solve my computer problem, and it was much easier than I expected.

I had been experiencing the 2026 version of the “Blue Screen of Death” (BSOD) with my system frequently rebooting itself without notice. The problem had been going on for about two weeks, and I had identified some repair options – each of which would have required me to be offline for several days and cost a fair amount of money. On a hunch, I selected one of the popular AI apps from my bookmark list and I typed in a prompt that described my problem, its frequency, and its symptoms, and then asked AI to evaluate the information see if it could make any recommendations. I was pleasantly surprised to see it come back with an initial assessment and several follow-up questions along with the instructions I needed to find the answers to those follow-up questions. It needed data from my Event Log and from something I’d never heard of before called a “Reliability Monitor” and it told me how to get to them and how to find the data it needed. I followed Mr. AI’s (Mr. AI is my nickname for my new AI friend and the particular tool I used) instructions and gathered the data it needed and copy/pasted it into the AI prompt box. It immediately came back with three potential problems and two or three recommendations to address each. I implemented the ones that were feasible (re: within my limited knowledge and capabilities) and put the others on hold.

After two or three days, I discovered that the BSOD failure pattern was wider than I thought and that reboots were happening in other situations and at other times than I originally submitted to Mr. AI. I provided this new information to my new friend and partner who then requested more data from my Event Log and Reliability Monitor. I gathered the log entries and the specific records that preceded the most recent BSOD and pasted the code into the prompt box for Mr. AI who promptly scanned the code and came back after less than a minute to tell me the problem was an outdated driver for my network adapter card. Mr. AI informed me that the outdated driver was allowing the adapter card to try to access Windows files it was not authorized to access and that I needed to update the driver to the current version. Mr. AI then assisted me in identifying and finding the driver I needed; it was in the Microsoft Update Catalog, but for some reason my system was not picking it up when it was doing routine Windows updates. Once I found and downloaded the driver, Mr. AI guided me through the extraction and update process, translated the incomprehensible computer lingo, explained the process itself, told me what I would see during the update, and how to verify the new driver version was in place. I am now almost thirty hours beyond that driver update and there have been no further BSOD’s since.

The moral of the story – to me – is this, AI reads code and translates it into English and into easy-to-understand actions! I had been prepared to spend upwards of $300 or more to have a technician come to my house and do the diagnostics on my computer and repair it, but Mr. AI was able to walk me through the entire process, do the diagnostics, explain it to me in English, and provide me the workable solution. There is hope for AI and there may even be hope for old timers like me!  There is no masonic moral to this story, and it is not an allegory for some greater life lesson; rather this was just some information I thought I might share with my brothers who may put the information to use and save themselves some time and money! Thank you, my brothers, may your travels be rewarding and your journey be fulfilling!

S&F

BroBill