From FoxPro to Vibe Coding: A Programmer’s Long Way Around

Posted on 09/21/2026 by Glen Harness

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve gotten into 3D printing since I got the Bambu P1S. Well, one of the things that comes with owning a couple of 3D printers is a growing pile of filament spools, and no good way to keep track of what you have, what you’ve used, and what you need to buy more of. I tried an existing tool called Spoolman, but it just didn’t have the features I needed.

So I decided to build my own.

Here’s the thing: I’m not new to this. Back when I was in the business world I programmed databases using Microsoft Visual FoxPro, and I wrote SQL code for DB2 on an IBM mainframe. And way back when the web first started, back when it was just plain HTML, I built the first website for a motor speedway anywhere in the country and kept it running for five years. So, it’s not that I’ve never coded. It’s that I never kept up with all the web languages that came along after that.

What Vibe Coding Actually Is

The short version: instead of writing code yourself line by line, you describe what you want in plain English to an AI assistant, and it writes the code for you. You don’t need to know a programming language. You don’t need a computer science degree. You just need to be able to explain what you want, clearly enough, and be willing to go back and forth when something isn’t quite right.

That’s basically all I did. I told the AI I wanted a way to track my filament, including things it didn’t originally have, like spare parts inventory for the printers themselves and a maintenance log. I described how my spreadsheet was organized, since that’s where all my original data lived. And piece by piece, it built the thing.

What Kind of Stuff Can Be Vibe Coded

Just about anything, honestly. Small utility apps like mine. Dashboards. Simple games. Websites. Tools to organize a hobby, a collection, a small business’s orders. If you can describe it, there’s a decent chance it can be built this way. It won’t replace a real software engineer building something complex and mission-critical, but for a guy who just wants a database to track his filament spools and eventually a list of parts for print projects that need things like lamp bases and bulbs, it’s more than enough.

Who Can Do It

Anybody, really. That’s the part that surprised me the most. You don’t need any technical background. You need patience, and you need to be willing to test things, notice when something’s broken, and describe the problem well enough that it can get fixed. It’s a lot like being a project manager instead of a coder. You’re not writing the code, but you’re steering it.

My Final Word

I’ve still got work to do on mine. The system needs some revisions, and I’ve got a spreadsheet full of filament purchases waiting to get folded back in once I refactor things. I did take Fortran, COBOL, and BASIC classes back in college in the late ’70s, so maybe there’s an old programmer in me somewhere after all. But for a hobby project put together mostly by describing what I wanted rather than writing it myself, I’d call it a success.

Anyway, that’s my two cents.

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The Bluefields – How Did I Miss This?

Posted on 09/14/2026 by Glen Harness

Every once in a while, I discover a band that makes me wonder what the heck I was doing when they were playing.

The Bluefields are one of those bands.

The Bluefields were a Nashville rock band that got together in 2011. And calling them a local “supergroup” isn’t really much of a stretch. The members had already been involved in some pretty good bands before they got together.

Joe Blanton had been the lead singer and guitarist for Royal Court of China. Warner E. Hodges was the guitar player for Jason and the Scorchers. Dan Baird had been in the Georgia Satellites. And Brad Pemberton had played with Steve Earle, among others.

That’s not exactly a group of guys who decided one day they should start a band.

That’s a group of guys who already knew what they were doing.

The Bluefields apparently came together when Blanton moved back to Nashville and reconnected with Hodges. Hodges introduced him to Baird, and the three started writing songs in Blanton’s basement studio. Pemberton eventually joined them, and The Bluefields were born.

Their own description of the band talks about platinum records, a Grammy nomination, a Lifetime Achievement Award and songs that became rock-and-roll standards. That’s quite a résumé for a band that, honestly, I don’t remember hearing much about.

And that’s the thing I can’t quite figure out.

Why weren’t The Bluefields bigger?

I’m not saying they weren’t successful. They made four albums, toured, played overseas and developed a following. But put those four names on a poster and you’d think people would have been lined up around the block.

Maybe Nashville has always been a little weird that way.

Back in the late ’80s, Nashville had a pretty impressive rock scene. Jason and the Scorchers, Royal Court of China, Raging Fire, Walk the West, The Questionnaires and Webb Wilder and the Beatnecks were all part of it.

And apparently I wasn’t paying nearly enough attention.

Nashville actually looked like it might become a legitimate rock-and-roll town. There was a local radio station playing the stuff. Record companies were signing Nashville rock bands. Music people were coming to town looking for the next big thing.

Then, as happens with these things, it didn’t quite happen.

The Scorchers didn’t become the next U2. Royal Court of China didn’t become the next big rock band. Webb Wilder developed a devoted following but never became a household name. Nashville’s rock scene eventually got overshadowed by, well… Nashville.

And I wish I had seen more of it.

I did get to see Webb Wilder and the Beatnecks back then, which I’m particularly glad about. Webb is still out there “spankin’ the plank”, and I still try to go see him whenever he’s playing nearby. There’s something pretty cool about seeing somebody decades later who you remember from when they were part of that Nashville scene.

But I wish I’d seen the Scorchers.

I wish I’d seen Royal Court of China.

I wish I’d gone to see some of those other bands that were playing the clubs around Nashville when all of this was happening.

And now I discover The Bluefields.

I’m not even sure The Bluefields are still an active band. Joe Blanton has gone on to other projects, including Million Dollar Emperors and The Chefs, and the Bluefields’ own website seems to be pointing toward some of those newer endeavors.

Maybe that’s OK.

The Bluefields weren’t trying to recreate their younger selves or become the next big thing. They were four guys who had spent years making music, got together, plugged in some guitars and made some very good rock and roll.

Which makes me wonder how many other Nashville bands I’ve missed over the years.

Probably a bunch.

And that’s the frustrating part.

I was there.

I just didn’t know I was supposed to be paying attention.

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YouTube University: Where Retirees Go Back to School

Posted on 09/07/2026 by Glen Harness

Somewhere along the way, I became one of those people who has a favorite era of home renovation YouTubers. That’s not a sentence I ever expected to write about myself, but here we are.

I retired a while back, and if you’d asked me beforehand what retirement would look like, I probably would’ve said something about slowing down. Instead, I’ve spent more hours than I’d like to admit watching strangers on the internet teach me things I never learned how to do. 3D printer calibration. ESP32 wiring. How to actually understand what my filament tracking spreadsheet was telling me. None of this was on my radar a few years ago.

The Timing Works Out

There’s something almost perfectly suited about YouTube and retirement. When you’re working full time, you don’t have the hours to fall down a two-hour rabbit hole on soldering technique. You watch a five-minute clip, get the gist, and move on. Retirement gives you the thing YouTube actually rewards: time. Time to watch the whole series. Time to pause, go try it yourself, come back, watch it again because you clearly missed a step.

I think that’s part of why so many people my age end up here. It’s not that we suddenly got curious in our 60s and 70s. It’s that we finally have the room to actually follow through on the curiosity we always had.

It’s Not Just About the Skill

Here’s the part that surprised me most: the actual project (the print, the wiring, the fix) usually isn’t the point. It’s the structure of it. Having something to learn, something to get better at, gives a shape to the week that a lot of us lose when the job goes away. A few things I’ve noticed it does:

  • Gives you a reason to plan your day around something other than errands and appointments.
  • Connects you to a community, even a loose one, of people who care about the same oddly specific thing you do.
  • Makes you the person your grandkids or neighbors call when something breaks, which is its own kind of purpose.

That last one matters more than I expected. There’s a real difference between having free time and having a use for it.

The Old Way vs. This Way

I think about how my dad’s generation learned new skills. Mostly it was a manual, a neighbor who happened to know something, or trial and error with nobody to ask when you got stuck. Now you can watch someone talented at the exact thing you’re trying to do, pause them mid-sentence, rewind, and try again. It’s not a replacement for a real mentor, but it’s a pretty good stand-in when you don’t happen to have one down the street.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say YouTube has become a kind of open university for people who are done with their careers but not done learning. No tuition, no deadlines, no test at the end. Just a search bar and whatever you’re curious about that week.

Where I Land

I didn’t expect one of the defining features of my retirement to be a video platform, but here we are. If you’re retired and haven’t gone down one of these rabbit holes yet, pick something you’ve always wondered about and just search for it. You might end up with a hobby. You might just end up with an afternoon well spent. Either way, it beats sitting still.

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The Problem With Health Care

Posted on 08/31/2026 by Glen Harness

First, my bona fides: I worked 15 years in a hospital business office. While I only provided support to those folks who were actually talking with patients, insurance companies, and other third parties, I did pick up on how things are done. My department had over 100 people in it (and that was just for the hospital side; the physician business office had closer to 200 people).

Normally, you’d think of a business office handling things like billing and collecting. But the health care industry is different.

The vast majority of the time, the person receiving the service isn’t the one paying for the service (or at least paying for all of the service). When you go to the hospital, chances are you don’t pay anything up front. After you’re discharged, a claim form is generated by the hospital and sent to your insurance company.

The insurance company looks at the charges, then looks at the contract they have with the hospital. They decide how much they’re going to pay for the services, and then sends the hospital a payment. The guarantor (the person actually responsible for paying the patient’s hospital bill (usually the patient or a spouse or parent)), then gets an Explanation of Benefits from the insurance company that explains what they’ve paid and how much the guarantor is going to have to pay “out of pocket”.

Then the guarantor gets a bill from the hospital for the remaining charges that weren’t covered by insurance.

So, what’s the problem? Where’s the crisis? Notice in all of this I didn’t say anything about the actual care of the patient. I think overall, actual health care in America is the best in the world. So is there a crisis with health care or with health care costs? I contend that while there may be a problem with health care costs, it’s certainly not urgent enough to PASS LEGISLATION RIGHT NOW!

Does health care cost too much? Maybe yes, maybe no. How much is it worth to you to be cured of cancer? How much is it worth to you to live?

They say that at least part of the crisis is that 20 25 30 40 45 million people are uninsured and that something needs to be done to get them insured so they can have access to health care. Well, I was one of those folks who were uninsured at one time.When I needed surgery, I got it. The hospital didn’t refuse to treat me because I couldn’t pay. They ultimately wrote off the costs of the hospital stay to charity.

So it’s false to say that people aren’t getting health care because they can’t pay. The hospital I worked at wrote off a LOT of charges to charity (they do more charity work in Middle Tennessee than the other hospitals).

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Certificate of Need? More Like Certificate of Nonsense

Posted on 08/31/2026 by Glen Harness

This one’s been rattling around in my head for a while, so bear with me.

Here in Tennessee (and in about three dozen other states), if a hospital wants to add beds, open a new facility, or buy a piece of expensive equipment like an MRI machine, they can’t just do it. They have to ask the state for permission first. It’s called a Certificate of Need, or CON for short. The more I read about it, the more I think it’s backwards.

Wait, You Need Permission to Build a Hospital?

The idea got started back in the 1960s and 70s. The thinking was that if hospitals could build wherever they wanted, they’d overbuild and duplicate services, and the cost of all those empty beds and unused machines would get passed along to patients. So states set up CON boards, and if you want to expand or build, you have to prove there’s a “need” for it, usually to a board made up of people connected to the existing hospitals and health systems in the area.

That means existing hospitals often get a seat at the table when a new competitor applies to build nearby. I don’t think I need to spell out how that usually goes.

The Basic Economics

I’m no economist, but one thing has always stuck with me from the one econ class I took decades ago: when supply goes up relative to demand, prices tend to come down. It’s about as close to a law of nature as economics gets.

In most industries, if a company sees demand somewhere, they can just open up shop, and the competition usually benefits the customer. In health care, under CON laws, the existing players get real influence over whether a new competitor is even allowed to exist. That’s not really a free market.

A few things worth noting:

  • States with CON laws tend to have fewer hospitals and hospital beds per capita than states without them.
  • Multiple studies have found CON states have higher, not lower, health care costs than non-CON states.
  • Rural areas, which CON laws are supposed to help protect, are often hit hardest, since CON laws make it harder for a new provider to step in when a struggling rural hospital closes.

“But Won’t Hospitals Overbuild?”

Maybe some would. But that’s true of every industry, and we don’t usually solve it by requiring businesses to get permission from their competitors before expanding. If a hospital overbuilds, it bears the cost of that decision. That’s how markets are supposed to work, without a state board picking winners and losers ahead of time.

Given how much capacity we actually need right now, overbuilding doesn’t feel like the risk to worry about. ER wait times are bad. Specialist appointments can take months to get. Rural hospitals keep closing. Meanwhile, hospital systems that would like to expand or build a new facility often can’t, because the people who already have a facility nearby get to object.

A Fair Point on the Other Side

Health care isn’t quite like opening a new coffee shop. There’s a reasonable argument that duplicated high-end equipment, like every hospital in town having its own MRI sitting half-idle, can drive up costs in some cases. That’s worth taking seriously. But the answer probably shouldn’t be letting existing hospitals vote on whether a competitor gets to open at all. There are better ways to address genuine overcapacity concerns.

Where I Land

When the people who already have market share get to decide whether new market share is allowed to exist, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that very little new market share gets approved. That’s not a flaw in the system. That’s the system working as designed, just not for the benefit of patients.

If we want more hospital beds, shorter ER waits, and lower costs, the fix probably isn’t more paperwork and more permission-asking. It’s letting supply respond to demand the way it does in most of the rest of the economy.

Anyway, that’s my two cents.

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Not So Common Sense

Posted on 07/10/2025 by Glen Harness

The following ideas/concepts should not be controversial:

  • People who live in the US but aren’t citizens should not be able to vote in any election.
  • People who are here illegally should be sent back to the country from where they came.
  • People who are here illegally should not be eligible for benefits that are meant for poor US citizens people.
  • Children should not be permitted to receive life-altering elective cosmetic surgery, even if their parents agree.
  • Insurance companies should not be required to cover elective cosmetic surgery.
  • Humans have the right to defend themselves against attacks that could cause great bodily harm or death.
  • Countries have the right to defend themselves against attacks by other countries or terrorists. Note that this defense doesn’t prohibit disproportional responses.
  • Discrimination based on inherent characteristics of a person (race, sex) is wrong in any form.
  • Men should not be allowed to compete with women in women’s sports.
  • Anyone who wants to come to this country legally and spend any amount of time here should be required to know how to speak, read, and write English.
  • Children should be protected from being sexualized.
  • Science is never settled; it should always be tested.
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Some Pet Peeves

Posted on 07/03/2025 by Glen Harness

Here are a few things I’ve found annoying over the last few months.

  • I’ve noticed this disturbing trend of people watching movies or videos on their phones…without headphones or earphones. In other words, you get to hear every piece of dialog in whatever they’re watching. Are we to the point now where your ability to watch whatever you want when you want it trumps my desire to not be disturbed by it?
  • Here’s another trend I’ve noticed: someone will say “That’s 10 times less than something else.” Huh? Multiplication (i.e. “times”) is additive, not subtractive. I don’t even know what 10 times less than something even is.
  • Related to that is this: “This product has 80% fewer calories than brand X” or some such. Do you mean it has 20% of the calories than brand X? If so, just say it.
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Time? Is It Really On My Side?

Posted on 06/30/2025 by Glen Harness

Here I am, back again. I suddenly find myself with a TON of extra time. The reason? I got laid off the other day (June 26, 2025, to be precise).

The kicker is that I was two months away from having 35 years in. And another kicker is that I’d planned on retiring at the end of 2025 anyway.

My employer announced a few weeks ago that some employees (out of around 40,000 ish) in research departments had already been affected, due to the cuts the administration in Washington had made/was making, and that another 500 would be cut. So it looks like around 650 people were let go. What’s frustrating is that, other than research cuts, the cuts on which they’re basing these layoffs are non-existent. I think it comes down to wasting money (who knows how much money they wasted on DEI programs).

The department I’d been with since July 2008 cut around 20% of its staff. Some of the cuts kind of made sense, and some were complete surprises. No idea what the selection criteria were (hopefully age wasn’t one).

Interestingly enough, I was in this department because I got laid off in May of 2008. Before that, if a department eliminated a position, you were guaranteed a job in another department. I got to be one of the first people to experience the new policy in which the laid off employee only got priority applicant status for jobs in other departments. So I was able to go on interviews that I probably wouldn’t have gotten to go on otherwise, and as a result, I got the job (that I was just laid off from).

What I’ve Been Up To

I spent about 10 years being the webmaster for the speedway at the Nashville Fairgrounds (formerly the Tennessee State Fairgrounds). About 20 years ago, I gave that up due to some conflicts that prevented me from devoting the time to it that I felt it needed. I continued to follow NASCAR, but eventually just got tired of it. Trying to emulate stick and ball sports, NASCAR changed the points system so that they had a “playoff”. And they kept changing rules. And some of the drivers I was semi-interested in retired. So, I just lost interest.

Then from around 2010 until maybe 2023, I got involved in leather craft. It’s something that my dad did back in the ’70s (which is why I knew it was a “thing”). I’d gotten tired of going through “leather” wallets and belts every six months and one day I said to myself “I can make my own better than that”. So I went to Tandy and bought a beginner kit, which contained a belt blank and a wallet blank. I’m wearing the belt as I type, and the wallet is in my left rear pocket. I joined the South Central Leathercrafters’ Guild shortly after getting the beginners kit, and then for some reason, they elected me as president in 2013. I served as president until 2021 (or was it 2023?). Anyway, because of the low number of members, I found myself doing a lot of the work to get the guild’s name out there. But between the Covid shutdown and just a seeming lack of interest in people joining the guild, I pretty much lost interest in leather craft. The fellow who took over the presidency has done an excellent job and the membership is going back up.

Early Retirement

So, I’ve basically retired six months early. I figured I’d resurrect the blog and just post stuff that occurs to me.

Current interests include 3D printing, genealogy, and travel.

Earlier in June, I bought a Bambu P1s 3d printer, and it’s been pretty slick. In 2020, I’d bought a Creality CR6 SE printer and printed a few things with it, but it wasn’t exactly user friendly. If a print didn’t come out right, you had to figure out if you sliced it wrong, used the wrong filament temperature, or any number of things. The P1s worked right out of the box. Other than a few user errors (like not clearing the print bed off before starting another print), it’s worked perfectly. And it’s at least twice as fast as the Creality printer.

I’ve been doing genealogy research off and on since 2000. It’s something my dad had gotten into shortly before he passed away, and I was able to get the files he’d created and use them. Tracking down ancestors is an ongoing process. I’ve managed to trace an ancestor who was in the Revolutionary War (David Lawson).

We’ve been fortunate enough to do some travel over the last few years, including some overseas travel that I never in a million years thought I would get to do. In the early 2000s, we took a handful of cruises to the Caribbean, and those were really great trips. In 2007, we went to Oceanside, California to visit some family, and then to Las Vegas. We did a 10-day Caribbean cruise in 2008. And we got to do a Thanksgiving cruise in 2013 with a friend (who I’d been able to reconnect with after losing touch in 1990). In 2019, we discovered a local company (See America Tour) that offered bus tours across the US. We took their tour to South Dakota with our oldest granddaughter and got to see Mount Rushmore among other things. In 2021, I came across an Italy tour for early 2022 that I couldn’t pass up. We also did that tour with our oldest granddaughter. We visited Rome, Assisi, Florence, Pisa, and Venice. In December 2022, we went with See America Tour to New York, with our oldest and youngest granddaughters. In October 2023, we again took our oldest and youngest granddaughters with us on a cruise around four of Hawaii’s islands. And our most recent trip was to back to Italy on our own, in February 2025. We’ve put a deposit down with See America Tour for a cruise in May of 2026 that starts in Rome, goes to Greece and Turkey, then back to Rome. But that was before I got laid off, so I’m not sure we’re going to be able to do that trip.

So, I’m Blogging Again

Since I’m not actively job searching, I’m at home all day. In addition to learning how to design 3d models, I plan on doing more genealogy research. And I’ll be blogging about things that capture my attention. I’ll also be posting pictures from our travels and maybe talking about that some.

So stick around.

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Back again?

Posted on 11/28/2020 by Glen Harness

Well, here we go again. As you can see from my last post a couple of years ago, I had intended on more or less regularly posting things here. But as John Lennon said, “Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.”

At the time of my last post, we were living in a house that was built in 1930, and it was showing its age. We’d been dealing with an occasionally flooding basement for several years. I was finally able to get a pseudo sump pump hooked up, and we limped along with that for about a year. Then in February 2019, we had a heavy rain. I mean, really heavy. I went down into the basement and there was water coming in from everywhere. At that point it was clear to me that we needed to either spend a TON of money to fix the problem (one company I got to come out and look at it never even gave me a quote), or sell the house.

We opted to sell. Luckily, we were able to sell the house quickly (as is) to our neighbors and were also able to find a house built this century in a neighboring county. They’ve spent the last year or so working on the house, adding to it, and fixing things (they had to completely remove and replace the 2nd floor).

So that’s why blogging didn’t really happen. We’ve been in the new house about 18 months now and it’s nice not having to worry when it rains.

I’ve been on Facebook around 10 years. Initially it was to play games, but as Facebook got away from being a game host, and moved to what they are now, I found my time being taken up more and more on Facebook. But during this last national election cycle, it became clear that Facebook was doing everything in its power to affect the outcome. And it looks like it succeeded.

I’ve decided to start cutting back on my time spent on Facebook. I just went a whole week without logging into it, and it’s not that hard. There are a few features that I find useful (the instant messaging, the birthday reminders, and the memories function). But I’m not sure they justify my spending the amount of time that I was spending on Facebook.

So, if you’re interested in what I have to say, come on back. I certainly won’t be posting every day, but I probably will post something three or four times a month. Get set up with an RSS feed reader (like Commafeed) and you can keep up with me whenever I post.

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Testing 1 2 3, testing 1 2 3…

Posted on 03/28/2018 by Glen Harness

Hello? Is there anyone out there? Just nod if you can hear me.

With the way Facebook is going these days, I think I’m going to start posting things here that I would otherwise have put on Facebook. I think Facebook is going to go the way of Myspace. Maybe not soon, but as they’re implicated in more and more data breaches, at some point the government is going to step in and regulate them out of business.

Anyway, I’m not going to post here often; I didn’t really post that much on Facebook anyway. I have a page dedicated to my leather work, and eventually I’ll get a web site back up for that.

If you want to keep up with my musings, you can either visit this page periodically or use an RSS feed reader. I use Commafeed. Just go to www.commafeed.com and create an account. Then start adding subscriptions by pasting in the URL of your favorite web sites. Some web sites may not have an RSS feed, but all the good ones do (including this one!).

And now the rain is started falling harder and harder, so I need to go down to the basement and see how much water is coming in.

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