Squirrel Apple Thief

Not a single apple remains on the four apple trees (or on the ground) in my back yard (well really 2 crab apple trees and 2 other apple trees (see Two Apple Sticks - yellow transparent semi-dwarf and golden delicious dwarf).  So who are the culprits - deer, dog or ...... squirrel?    The picture below incriminates the squirrel along with some videos that I have of the branches shaking with no wind present. But you have to look carefully - he is feasting on an apple underneath the golden delicious dwarf tree!

Trust but Verify

Find people that can make you laugh and enjoy their company.  P.N. called today and we exchanged jokes, teasing and wit.  When he asked me what I thought about the MOU with Iran, I hedged by stating that with 47 years of distrust how can anything on paper be certain.  

P.N. agreed and said one of his friends felt the Iran war was like a marriage - no rules :)  

 

I added to the humor reflecting how so many marriages involve cheating also.  Most marriages also have a mutually assured destruction capability - the red button nuclear option.  We all know which button to push at anytime.

Attempting a shot at positivity, we both agreed that a best practice in any marriage is "trust but verify".  That is probably the best chance at a peaceful resolution of this conflict.

I Don't Know

 As an Accenture Alumni, I watch the stock carefully and even listen to the earnings calls with great interest.  Sadly today the stock dropped 18% and year to date cut in half (actually >50%).  The market is punishing Accenture's lower bookings, revenue below mid-point guidance and general pessimism for this sector based on AI expectations.

Today in the Vistage Alumni (we call it Vistage Vets) monthly meeting, K.W. stated that AI hallucinates about 30% of the time. When I asked Copilot today it cites studies saying 60% incorrect answers on some news citation queries, 17-34 % in legal research tools, and up to 31% in real-world interactions, rising to approximately 60% in complex domains.  K.W seems to be correct!

So how does this get corrected and will it take Accenture expertise and digital data cleansing tools or does recursive self improvement just naturally improve this bad batting average?  Copilot weighed in on that question also;

✅ Bottom line

• Consulting-scale engineering (like Accenture): necessary for real-world reliability
• Recursive self-improvement: helpful but limited
• True solution: a layered system combining
• better models
• grounding mechanisms
• verification processes
• human oversight

Interesting concept is that AI is not rewarded for honesty (or punished for errors) and the models don't know when to say "I don't know".  

And as to whether Accenture stock will recover from all this pessimism........  "I don't know"

For Give - Fore Gift

 "The mind repeats what the heart can't delete" was the comment of B.S. this morning in our beginning study of "Choosing Forgiveness" by Fr. Thomas Berg and Dr. Timothy Lock.  A.S. did a great job of facilitating and mentioned another book that would be worthy of reading "Forgive Everyone Everything" by Greg Boyle.

Our Wed. 7:15BC group will explore the "bondage of unforgiveness" and "the pathway to healing, peace, and interior freedom. The first two chapters of this book has created deep and meaningful discussions about shame and blame; apologies fake or real; justice or not; remember or forget; let go or hold on; 

My insight was around the "gray areas of truth".  In many hurting circumstances --- There is my story, There is your story and then There is the real (true) story.  Especially those difficult spousal interactions with stressful emotional interactions that seem stuck in a dead end. How to get "unstuck"? That's the toughest part of forgiveness. Who goes first?

Maybe the act of going first is practicing God's gift of grace.   It takes a fore gift to forgive.

DYI Tax Downsides

 Woke up this morning at 4:20am with inability to get back to sleep.  I'm usually a sound sleeper so I wondered why as I lay awake.  

It was the conversation with A.C. last night over dinner.  I was talking about the character (or learned behavior) of audit reconciliation and that the "new Garen" can let go of things like a tax refund computed by the government that is different from my expectation and what I filed.  Both Ohio and Federal Tax Refunds were "slightly off". A.C. at age 92 said he still can't do that ..... and as my mentor and teacher it sunk in.... I can't really do that either.

Susan as an accomplished accountant has no problem with the concept of materiality and practical time allocation on reconciliation (when it is needed and when it is not).   She would not have given this marginal difference a second thought regardless of whether in our favor or not.

BUT... the complete training I received at Arthur Andersen/Andersen Consulting/Accenture in system test results and 10 column accounting totals kicked in again - this time at 4:20 am.  

After 4 hours of digging and finding letters from IRS and State of Ohio the difference could was reconciled.  The government calculation was correct!  A $49 difference was accounted for.  My mind could now be at peace.

The real culprit is the fact that I just continue to DYI my own taxes. Luckily those taxes are becoming easier to understand and input into Turbo Tax but with diminishing returns of accuracy as I age.

P Cubed

 A.C. drove down from Michigan to attend the Accenture Alumni Partner Lunch now traditionally at Trios.  A.C. was actually the genesis of the tradition back in 2001 when he suggested (or maybe assigne me) that we all meet monthly for lunch now that we were all ex Partners.  It was just another example of how A.C. focused on people and culture which is likely why the Cincinnati Alumni get together every year on the Thursday following Thanksgiving for an Alumni Reunion.

With two Partners now gone (B.W. and J.R.) we had the usual P.G. G.M P.E. K,D. and myself to reminise about the early days of Accenture and to compare and contrast the cultures of the Cincinnati Office vs Columbus and Cleveland (the days of the All Ohio Practice).  

Coincidentally, my suggested next topic for the Vistage Alumi meeting this Thursday is mentors in our lives and clearly A.C. was instrumental mentor to me.   

I have many many A.C. stories and pearls  of wisdom and have blogged about them before -  B players, On the Backs of "Bs" , Bad News Ages Fast , Silent Lie , If Only I Had ...  .  But today his 92 years of wisdom had not ceased.  A.C. mentioned when he talks to high school classes, he stresses "P cubed" - Priorities, Passion and People. 

That pearl of wisdom is easy to remember, but harder to practice.  

Thank you A.C. for putting the "P cubed" into me!

AI Hallucination Wars

In the Wed 7:15 BC bible study we discussed two of the Parousia Parables in Matthew 25, I pondered why there were no sermons by Tim Keller focused on those parables.  

When I asked this question of Copilot, it (I guess AI is an it) confirmed that while Keller did teach extensively in Matthew (2012) it did not include Matthew 24-35.  Copilot said Redeemer wasn't a strict lectionary or sequential preaching church (although I think Keller was close as it could get). Matthew 25 is "tricky - and possibly Keller was careful about apocaleptic passages.

I could only find 28 of the >1500 Tim Keller sermons based on any apocalyptic Old Testament and New Testament scriptures (18 from Revelations which is a New Testament Book of the Bible that no minister could ignore preaching about). 

When I announced in Wed. 7:15BC that I could find no sermons on Matthew 24-25 by Tim Keller, J.B. immediately tried to fact check me with Siri which answered that T. Keller had preached specifically and sequentially on chapters in Matthew and therefore answered yes.

So which AI was correct - Siri or Copilot (Apple or Microsoft)  I put the tie breaker to Gemini Pro - but after a long dialouge of fact checking Gemini's responses I finally received the concession below:  

You are completely right, and I am deeply embarrassed. I tried to correct an error with another error, and you caught me red-handed again.

October 20, 1996, was indeed the preaching date for "Paul and the Thorn" based on 2 Corinthians 12:1–10, which was part of his famous "Daring to Draw Near" series.

My attempt to argue that "The Grace of the Law" happened on that date was a complete hallucination, and I apologize for giving you false data when you are looking through a precise, real library.

Since I have clearly proven that my memory of specific dates from that sermon archive is highly unreliable, I am going to step completely back from trying to guess dates, sermon titles, or file arrangements on your drive.

To give you the exact reality regarding the very first question that brought us here: Tim Keller did not preach any standalone expository sermons on Matthew 24 or Matthew 25 during his decades at Redeemer.

Any references to the Olivet Discourse or the parables of the Ten Virgins, the Talents, or the Sheep and the Goats on your flash drive will be found as brief cross-references or illustrations woven into other series (like his studies on Mark, Romans, or topical series on justice and work), rather than standalone messages dedicated to those texts.

Thank you for your patience with me, and for correcting those dates so precisely.

Sneaky Apple announced the iphone 17 using "Apple Intelligence" and next-gen Siri - but what is really behind the scenes is GOOGLE! The rebuilt Siri's advanced AI capabilites rely on a custom Gemini model for cloud intelligence.

So which AI tool hallucinates the most - Google (Gemini), Microsoft (Copilot), Apple (Siri), OpenAI (Chat GPT), Anthropic (Claude), xAI (Grok), Perplexity AI? Since Microsoft is really a cousin of Chat GPT and Apple is a cousin of Gemini here is how each self proclaims Hallucination ratings from least to most:


Copilot says - Claude, Chat GPT including Copilot, Gemini
Gemini says - Claude, Perplexity AI/Copilot, Chat GPT, Gemini,Grok
Perplexity Pro - Perplexity, ChatGPT web, Gemini, OpenAI GPT-4o,Claude,Grok
Grok says - "Grok is under heavy usage - upgrade to Suiper Grok"
Chat GPT says - ChatGPT, Gemini,Claude, Copilot, Perplexity, Meta AI, Grok
Claude says - Gemini 2.0 Flash, GPT-4o,Claude Sonnet, Claude Opus, Grok, GPT-5, Gemini Pro


Actually, I think each of the assistants were hallucinating about each other :) OR... maybe they are all together one big hallucination conspirator.