It’s Saturday night, a day after after the passing of my dad. I’ve been chilling at the house most of the day, dealing with the reality of recent events. Part of me wants to deal with this whole thing, another part of me wants to watch the opening weekend of college football and just remain oblivious to the things happening around me.

I made a pork loin today, prepped it in the Instant Pot, with a marinade and some additional seasonings. I’ll take that with me tomorrow to mom’s place, along with some buns and some sauce. We’re all taking our turns with food prep. Tomorrow is mom’s birthday, and it’s going to be a birthday unlike the one’s she has experienced since she was a teenager. The last time my dad wasn’t involved in her life on her birthday, she was in high school. Kind of crazy to think about.

I’m still a bit overwhelmed with the whole situation. Might be the reason why I’m trying to just keep putting one foot in front of the other right now. dealing with life one step at a time. I find myself doing the other things, any thing, that distract me from the reality that I don’t want to deal with. My dad is gone. I’m never going to hear him laugh again, or make an inappropriate joke again, or wave at me to let me know that I”m talking too loud and he needs to turn down the volume on his hearing aids again.

I find myself turning to the things that make me happy. Guitars, tools, ideas. Family.

Enough for now.

Peace y’all.

Oh, man. This is one of the most difficult entries I’ve ever had to write.

Yesterday, I was dealing with a somewhat-less-than-optimal work week. I had to step back and focus on learning what I didn’t know. I had to accept some of my inadequacies.

Then, while I was chatting with my manager, I got the first call. I didn’t know what it was when it happened. Then it happened again, and I checked my phone. My younger brother, Tom, was trying to get a hold of me to let me know that my dad was not in good shape. He had a heart attack, and Tom had performed CPR on him for twenty minutes. He was alive, but not in a good situation.

This morning, as I was waiting for my next flight to get home, I received word from my mother. My dad was gone.

A part of me is feeling guilty as hell right now. I moved into a new carerr path last February, and I hadn’t worked some visitation onto my schedule. I should’ve gone to see him and my mom, but I didn’t. I’m going to lose some sleep over that in the coming weeks, I’m sure.

Anyway, my dad, a good and accomplished man, is gone. I’m going to miss him. But – he is no longer in pain.

Peace y’all.

It’s the last day of deliveries here in the Fargo training center for Microsoft. I get to listen to real experts show their stuff, and I’m going my best to absorb every bit of info that is being tastefully presented to me. Sometimes you think you know what your doing, then the real experts get in the front of the room and let you know that you don’t know as much as you think you did.

It’s been a good week. Sure, there have been high points and low points, but part of this career track is recognizing that you need to learn more, and you need to swallow your pride and approach the challenge with determination, deliberation, and humility. All too often, I get a little cocky, and I end up getting a lesson. Some lessons land harder than others. The lessons this week landed like a reliable airplane… the good landings are the one’s you can walk away from. I’ll be fine… in fact, I’ll be all the better for it.

Attitude cannot be emphasized enough. You have to have a positive attitude on a day-to-day basis. People won’t like being around you if you’re a grumpy butt. I’m not that guy. I endeavor to be a positive person, especially with my coworkers. My family sometimes catches my bad mood bouts more than they ought to, and that’s another opportunity for growth right there.

Early flight tomorrow, but at least I’ll get a chance to sleep on the flight.

Time to post this mess. I hope your day goes well.

Peace y’all.

I’m sitting in a classroom, helping out where I can when I can, but for the most part, I’m practicing the long-respected art of sitting down, shutting up, and listening to another instructor, and he’s taking me to school.

One of the personality flaws of people that work in IT is over-confidence, and I am no stranger to that. On many, many occasions, I’ve thought to myself, going through labs or demos, that “I got this”… and then I make the mistake of going off script. Sometimes that comes back to bite me in the ass. Best bet, never try to “jam” in front of a customer unless you know to the last detail every aspect of what you’re trying to demonstrate. All too often, improvising, or “jamming”, can take you down the wrong path.

It happens to me in the command line. I think I know the right command or all of the relevant parameters, and I choke. I have choked harder than a Packard Bell 386SX running Windows for Workgroups 3.11.

(BTW, for those of you that aren’t familiar with Packard Bell, they were likely the largest manufacturer of PoS computers during the 90’s – terrible, terrible computers that were prone to failure immediately after the 30-day warranty expired)

I’m sitting and learning from a peer… and I am just fine with that.

Peace y’all.

I always wondered what the view of the bus was like at this angle.

I’m being a little hard on myself right now and I realize that I just need to focus on the opportunity for learning and growth that comes with a situation, and separate out the professional stuff from the personal stuff.

For me, that is often a challenge, primarily because a huge chuck of my identity is focused on my role as a professional trainer. I have a tendency to take things personally, and I’m pretty hard on myself.

I think there’s a popular prayer that goes something like this, “Lord, give me the strength to make the things I can change better, the patience to deal with the things that I can’t, and the wisdom to know the difference”. I know, I likely butchered the Serenity prayer, but you get the idea.

Anyway, this is where I have to know the difference. I just need to focus on getting better at what I do, and get over the slight bruising of the fruit.

Trim away that part of the apple, and try to enjoy the pristine slices that are left on the plate.

Back to the class…

Peace y’all.

Yeah, I know, I skipped another day. But I have a reason, not an excuse.

Yesterday was not an optimal day for travel. I’m not sure if I mentioned it, but Friday and Saturday nights, Lisa and I were awoken with the site of spectacular lightning shows. It was a little nuts, and I think I mentioned to you that we likely lost one of our internet connections during the storm, most likely due to an electrical irregularity.

Lightning counts as an electrical irregularity, right?

My 9:17 flight to Chicago was going to be late. Interestingly enough, the 7:10 flight Chicago had not yet left the gate, so I was rebooked onto that flight. My luggage, apparently, was not. So when I finally arrived in Fargo, I arrived. My clothes for today’s delivery did not.

I had a pretty good day, but I think I need to retool a few things for tomorrow. And here comes “weird analogy time”.

I’m a fan of Craig Alanson’s “Expedition Force” series. The first book is called “Columbus Day”. Anyway – spoiler alert – part of the storyline has to do with an AI that is ancient, and sometimes explains things in a fashion that the human lead character cannot understand. To get past that communication problem, Joe asks the AI (Skippy) to break things down in a fashion JOe can understand. Do to some earlier events in the book, that simplification gets referred to as “breaking it down, Barney style”.

The book series alone is good enough to justify that terminology, and, yes and no, it does have something to do with what you might be thinking, but I can guarantee you, it’s a little more complicated than that.

So… I’ve got a plan.

I’m going to break it down, Barney-style.

Joe and Skippy would be proud of me.

I love my job. I was joking with one of my peers yesterday that I have the second-best job in the world. I told him that he had the first, as he hadn’t plateau’d, whereas I had.

I’m a trainer. I like to teach people how to use tools.

Tools.

I owe another co-worker a bit of gratitude for giving me “Tools” as a callsign. He’s a full bird, so I have to confess that there’s more than a little bit of cachet to that honor.

OK, I’m about tuckered out tonight. I’ve got a little bit to think about, and some other things to consider.

I hope you’re day goes well.

Peace y’all.

A Saturday night, and not looking forward to the 6:00 am wakeup call to head to the airport tomorrow.

Oh, sorry. Hi. I’m old fat grampa Bob somewhere in the middle of America, namely Lawrence, Kansas, just outside the city limits in rural Douglas County.

Lisa and I are chilling out, watching the thirty-year-old Batman movie, featuring Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne, and Jack Nicholson as The Joker.

I’m going t get my two hundred cranked out here in short order, then keep moving forward. Getting to Fargo tomorrow will not be the best part of the trip, of that I can assure you.

But, we go. We do. I’ve got a job to do, and I’m well suited to getting stuff done the right way, hopefully the first time.

I’ve been able to get some things done around the house today, but, as one would expect, not nearly as much as I need to get done. I’ve spent a little time dreaming about the changes I want to make to the barn, but that will get done in its own time.

I get caught up just worrying about the old lawn mower.

So, we do what we need to do in the time given. Hopefully it’s enough.

Peace y’all.

I need to spend some more time at home in the near future.

Hi, one and all, the old fat future grandfather of somebody is sitting here in his recliner, lamenting my lack of discipline yesterday and my failure to crank out my 200 word blog post. Of course, that means tonight I am going to write a 400 word post tonight, and hopefully, it will be something worth reading.

Granted, it shouldn’t take the average reader more than a minute or two to read one of those posts.

I like to use a package called “Dynamic Reader”. It uses a sprint reading system to place one word at a time in the same spot, and then a person can train their eyes to read faster, and when done right, at a higher rate of comprehension as well.

I am pretty comfortable with about 500 words per minute. That’s a pretty good clip, but at the same time, not as good as the 800 word-per-minute pace I achieved while I was in my freshman year of college.

I guess my point then becomes, my 400 word blog entry shouldn’t be that much of a barrier.

I wrapped up class yesterday in Dallas, and then returned my rental car to the airport, checked my bag, got my boarding pass, and meandered through security, followed by a couple of hours in the lounge at DFW. I needed to get some work done, and it wasn’t but a moment after I sat down that I got pinged by my team about jumping into a meeting to recap the training experience there.

It had been a down-and-up week. I struggled a bit early in the week, but as I posted earlier, I got things figured out, and we finished pretty strong. It was a very good experience for me professionally, and I felt I grew as a trainer. That experience will be foundational as I prepare for my delivery this next week.

Tomorrow I’ll get my laundry squared, take a look at getting some things done around the house, and try to get some relaxation in before I head back out on Sunday.

I might spend a bit of time on the office tomorrow, getting some things put away that are starting to clutter up the desk.

I ought to get to work on my latest literary idea as well… this one might grow some legs, we’ll see.

Peace y’all.

It’s Wednesday night, I’m in Dallas, and I have gone through three days of an interesting class.

Technical training can be an odd career track at times. You have to learn the technology. You have to be able to relate the core concepts to a very wide range of backgrounds, because you might find folks at different places and different tracks in their respective careers. You’ll have some guys that are in the twilight of their careers, and young college grads learning something new through an internship.

So, I had a rough first couple of days, but I think I figured a few things out last night, and had a much better day today, and I’m trying to replicate that effort for tomorrow’s delivery, my last classroom day this week.

Still waiting to confirm my delivery for next week… but getting this thing sorted out is a load off my mind.

I’m looking forward to a couple of days home, then back out again. Then maybe a protracted break.

I’m kind of odd sometimes. One day I’ll be a bit on the OCD side, counting this, organizing that, and just being really, really focused. Other days, I’m one notch above bum.

Bum time sounds a little appealing.

Peace y’all.

One year after my 20K day. Not feeling like writing tonight, though.

It’s not you. It’s me.

Peace y’all.