Feeling a bit guilty tonight. Tomorrow is my son’s eighteenth birthday, and I’m not going to be home to help him celebrate. It’s not a good feeling.

I’d like t think that I’ve been a good dad, and that I haven’t been one to let my kids down, but then I get to thinking, and I think about the other times that I haven’t been as present as I should have been.

Years and years ago, I contracted to some pretty big outfits, like Compaq/HP and IBM, and when the training opportunities came up, you took them. You had to keep chasing that next class, that next opportunity to earn a paycheck. I remember Gracie on her second birthday, crying as I had to head out the door to head to the airport. I still have some guilt about that.

I’ll need to find a way to make it up to him. He’ll tell me it’s cool, and that he understands, but it is his eighteenth birthday. He also knows that I’m still pretty new to this and that I need to keep my head down, and keep on grinding.

He heads up to the the University this fall, and he won’t be around as much. I’ve got the balance of this summer to make this summer one to remember, for him, for Bonnie, and for Gracie.

One more day here, then another day in the plane Friday. Keep grinding.

Peace y’all.

I better get my writing in now, because I have no idea how long it’s going to take for my browser to refresh with a new page for me to post a blog into… and just like that I get a new page, so I can forget about having to write in Notepad for now.

I’m kind of hitting a wall. Too many days away from my source. I need some time down to refresh, and that’s not going to happen for another week, and even then, I worry that I”ll be too amped up to really enjoy the down time befire I have to pack up and do it all over again.

I need to be more productive with the downtime that I do have. I need to get back to reading and writing, focusing on the weird loops running through my mind.

My life is an adventure right now. I’m traveling, seeing some of the world, but even though this is a sort of thing that I have hoped for, I’m not taking full advantage of the opportunity in front of me. I’ve see some stuff, granted. But there is so much more. There’s an incredible picture out there, and I’m sitting back, only looking at and admiring the frame.

More tomorrow, enough for now.

Peace y’all.

It’s Monday morning here, and I’ve decided to get this missive out of the way so I can concentrate on other parts of my day. Still trying to get something ordered off of Amazon, but for one reason or another, Amazon just doesn’t like me today. Or last week. Or the week prior to that, for that matter.

Later on today Chris and I will head over to the customer site to go through the tech inspection of our delivery on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. It’s always kind of funny… we’ll be asked to accommodate something that we didn’t think we’d have to accommodate. Sometime we can say yes, other times we have to let the customer down… “Sorry, we really don’t have the means to accommodate that spare conference room full of people with all of the questions…”.

Later today, I might try to get out to pick up the stuff Lisa and Bonnie requested. Might look for another coffee cup as well at yonder Starbucks.

In the meantime, I’ve got some work to get done. I need to take a look at my vouchers from the last few deliveries, and get them marked up as being delivered or disposed. From there, I need to schedule a few meetings for the coming weeks. Not too bad really, just have to stay on top of my responsibilities.

That’s all I have for now. More tomorrow.

Peace y’all.

It’s a Sunday night, Fathers Day, and I am alone in a hotel room in the West India Quay district of London, thinking about my family. I miss my wife and kids, but it’s just a few more days before I can think about heading home.

Today I did some site seeing, going down to the Tower of London… and I chose to avoid the thirty pound ticket for the grand tour. I’ll find some documentary or pick up a book about the Tower and its history. There’s plenty when you consider that the thing is a thousand years old.

I’m teaching with Chris the next few days. We did a delivery in Kansas City together, and I am looking forward to this opportunity to work with him again. Our styles are a little bit different – I called it “The Professor and the Game Show host”. Chris is more cerebral in his deliveries than I am.

This is the part of a blog post where I start to wonder how close I am getting to two hundred words. I wrote quite a bit yesterday, and I do have some things to keep me busy, I don’t necessarily write about every little thing running through my squirrel brain.

Maybe it’s just the right time to call it a night and prep for beddy bye.

Peace y’all.

I’m not as good at keeping some things to myself as I probably ought to be, but right now, I’m not worrying about it as much, primarily because I know even though I post my blog entries, and I tweet that I have written another blog entry, I”m pretty realistic about my audience.

I don’t have one.

I started this with the intent of letting my future grandchildren know about my and my life in the years starting in 2015 or 2016 or whenever the hell I started writing this thing, and here we are, a couple of years into it, and I have metrics that show who hit my pages and where those IP addresses are coming from, and for the most part, I think people are looking for personally identifiable information, or for some tidbit of information they can use to blackmail me.

I hope I let those people down.

What I can tell you for sure is that I failed to deliver a blog entry yesterday, so I owe the world four hundred words tonight rather than the two hundred words I would usually offer up as part of my pledge.

I made a pledge to write two hundred words per day. I didn’t get that done. Therefore, in the world of sentential logic and personal obligation, I can fulfill that stated obligation by writing four hundred words tonight.

It would probably help if I organize those words into a cogent sentence, however.

I’m not at home right now. I’m on the road, Tomorrow is Fathers Day, and I’m away from my kids. So if I have an extra whiskey tonight, it’s because I’d rather be home and be with my family than on the road on Fathers Day.

But…

I talked with my family about it. They understand. There are certain aspects of this career that lead to inconveniences like this. It’s not like I’m being singled out for road trips away from my family. That comes with the territory. We travel. I’m on the World Wide Learning team. The world is a big place. That means that people have to travel to get to those places and deliver good news.

I am a lucky man. I have a wonderful wife, and three kids that keep me on the straight and narrow. I am lucky to have been brought up by two wonderful parents that showed me the right from wrong, and also reminded me that kids are watching. Don and Carol Reinsch have been tremendous role-models for me. I am grateful.

That’s enough for one night I think. A longer entry, of course, but then again, that was for good reason. All I can hope for is that what I provided was “substantial”.

Peace y’all.

OK, it’s a Wednesday morning, and I’m trying my best to get off to a productive start to the third day of my AZ-103 delivery. Monitoring, Data Protection, and Network Traffic Management.

Just got word that eBay is down over half of Europe and the US. That’s going to make some people grumpy, especially those folks that have storefronts on that particular site.

Still kind of agape over the USWNT last night and the number they put up against Thailand. Thirteen-nil. Wow. I wonder how long it will be before we see another World Cup performance like that? I doubt that will ever happen on the men’s side.

I think y new swimsuit is at the hotel now. I ought to go “test the waters” with it and try out the hotel’s hot tub.

So much stuff on my mind right now. Class today, closing out on Friday, and then hopefully, dinner with an old friend Friday night.

Kind of weird, I feel like I’ve been writing this for a long period of time, but now I go to check and I haven’t written near as much as I thought I had. Might be the way the words appear on the page. Is my typeface too big so that it appears that my words are taking up more space on the display?

Looks like ebay is back up.

Might go check out some stuff.

Peace y’all.

OK, so here it goes. Tonight is one of those nights that I have fewer than zero f***** to give about any number of things. I’ve been watching the US Women destroy Thailand in the Women’s World Cup, and I had a Patriots fan give me a stern talking to about how classless it was.

Well… it was 13-0. A new record for margin of victory and total number of goals scored. The Thai women met a buzz saw.

The irony is that it was a Pats fan. The kind of fan that would never about the Patriots cheating scandals (yes, that’s plural), and would never recognize the blatant favoritism that their quarterback has received compared to other quarterbacks in the league, with the possible exception of any quarterback with the name “Manning” on the back of his jersey.

Give me a frickin’ break.

Yeah, the US Women are number one in the world. The home favorites are the French women, the German women’s team is good, and the British team is right there as well. Fact is, the seedings are based on a number of factors, and total goals scored is one of those factors. Rack up the points, ladies. Nobody is going to tell you to take the foot off the gas. If the net is open, kick that little sphere home.

I’m done for the night.

It’s a Monday night, and I’m looking over my material for tomorrow’s delivery day. Lots of good material to cover, including storage, networking, and connectivity. I’ve got enough to keep me going for the day. Tomorrow night I’ll go back and do the same, but I might call for an eight o’clock moratorium so I can watch a little bit of the Women’s World Cup.

I’ve got some things popping up on the schedule this weekend, as I prepare for next week’s deliveries with Chris. We get a chance to build on the AZ-900 deliveries we’ve managed, as well as add in a little additional Azure Administration to round out a solid delivery.

I’m getting tired, but there’s some stuff I need to continue to look lover before I call it a night, and I’ll look it over once again in the morning. I have to lock it down and be a pro.

Still waiting to hear about a pending delivery the week of 6/24.

In the meantime, kick back, throw on some music or a bad movie from the Marvel Universe (yeah, there are a couple). Maybe even think about a little pleasure reading – it’s been know to happen.

I wish you all the best, and hope the sun shines bright on you tomorrow.

Peace y’all.

It’s been a day. Lot’s of thoughts tumbling through my brain like tumbleweeds with gray matter and other forms of cerebral residue.

I found myself thinking about books earlier today. I’ve got a few authors I like to follow, and it’s funny, but I have an appreciation for the big data that takes a look at the meta around my favorite books and gives me a few more suggestions about the next books I ought to consider.

Science fiction, humor, military, fantasy. Sometimes it all comes together into this nice chaotic mess that becomes enjoyable for ten to seventeen hours of audio time. I do like my audiobooks. The narrators really do a pretty good job with all of the voices. Makes me wonder how they do that in production. You would think that they’d divy up the production so you could do all of the narration in one sequence, then do all of the other voices in turn. I’m thinking that the voice actor would prefer to keep in one character before shifting to another voice with all of the different tones and inflections.

Just thinking.

I hope all is well in your world. Tomorrow, mine is going to change a little bit.

Peace y’all.

It’s early here, and I remembered that I wrote one entry for yesterday, when I should’ve written two.

I’ve been focused on my pending AZ-103 delivery (maybe I should make that “deliveries”?). I need to go through my checklist to make sure I’ve got all of the bells and whistles taken care of. Tomorrow I’ll get through the intros, get through the setup, talk through a few operational concepts, then cut loose. I’ll get through the first two modules, then aim for three modules a couple of days, two modules a few other days, and try to leave some time on Friday to make up any labs that didn’t go quite right the first time.

This is an on premises delivery, so people will be called away for meetings and other sorts of activities. It’s always the case. The best thing for me to do under these circumstances is to leave big blocks of lab time for them to take a look at the labs and work at their own pace.

It’s about time for me to get cleaned up and grab some breakfast before getting to work on the day. It will be a productive day, with maybe a break early in the afternoon to watch a choice Women’s World Cup match.

I hope your day is a great one.

Peace y’all.