Good evening, one and all, and a special “Hello!” to the grandchildren I have yet to know.

My name is Bob.

I might be your grandfather.

Yeah, it just gets weirder from there.

So, about my day. It’s been cold and wet here, and it’s going to turn for the worse. Winter storm warnings have been posted, and we’ll likely see temperatures in the low 20’s and colder over the weekend.

Basically, the kind of weather one would expect in the month of January.

KU Jayhawks play tomorrow, at West Virginia. Normally, that road trip would bug the crap out of me, but the Mountaineers aren’t the same team this year as they’ve been in past years.

The big weekend event is going to be the Chiefs – Patriots game on Sunday. It’s as Arrowhead, and that helps… but my Chiefs are looking at their first legit shot at the Superbowl since Joe Montana lined up for the Chiefs at quarterback.

So much on my mind. So much reading and learning to do. So much.

I’m growing weary. The day has been a bit taxing. Awards given at work for evaluation scores, awards that I’ll never receive, for any number of reasons. Might be my personality. I’m not going to be every body’s cup of tea. Might be the topic I’m teaching, not as mature as Windows Client or Windows Server, but it’s all part of the mix.

Maybe I don’t smile enough.

Maybe I don’t bring the energy some instructors bring.

Maybe my jokes are that bad.

Maybe next year.

Peace y’all.

Space… the final frontier…
Man, how I love to hear those words.

Tonight, I’m watching the beginning of the second season of Star Trek: Discovery. I’m a long time Star Trek fan, going back to when I was a little guy watching Star Trek on TV when I was 3 or 4 years old.

Then, in elementary school, I discovered the reruns. They’d come on Channel 41 in Kansas City after school, following a couple of Japanese sci-fi television series, “Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot” and “Ultraman”. Later, “Star Trek: The Animated Series” came on the old tube on Saturday mornings. A few movies later, “Star Trek: The Next Generation” came on the air. I think that was in 1987 or 1988.

Of course, since then there have been three other Star Trek series, then Discovery, and it has been announced that Patrick Stewart will reprise his character, Captain Jean-Luc Picard, for a new series that takes place at Star Fleet Academy. There is a rumor that a new animated series that takes place in the Star Trek universe will be produced as well, about the least important ship in Star Fleet. That idea has tremendous potential, but it might end up being more like a spoof like “The Orville” than something that belongs in the Star Trek universe.

Time will tell, but until then, we’ll boldly go where no one has gone before.

Peace y’all.

OK, tryng something a little out of the ordinary for me.

I never write my blog at the beginning of the day, but I have to admit that completing my daily pledge is a wonderful relief. Sometimes I reach the end of the day, and I realize that I have yet to write my two hundred words, and then there is this nagging need to get the job done. The problem is that, when I write later in the day, it tends to be more of a review of the days events, and that’s only if something eventful happened.

Note to self: good job avoiding the word “actually” in that last sentence. It’s become a bit of a crutch word for me, and I’m trying to avoid it unless really applicable in a given situation, such as discussing crutch words and vocalizations.

Roads are slick in the morning, and I hear an ambulance and rescue vehicles outside on State Line Road. I have to pause and hope that no one is seriously hurt.

Good things are going to happen today, I feel it in my bones. I also need to run by Micro Center and get a USB headset appropriate for Skype communications.

This is one of those days that I pause and think of good things happening to other folks and ask myself, “Why not me?”.

Maybe it’s my time.

Peace y’all.

And it’s another weekday night out here in the county.

It’s been a good day for the most part. My labs seemed to go ok, and we’ve got a little more to cover tomorrow. Weather looks to be making a turn later in the week, and I can’t help but wonder how it might affect my ability to get into the office to deliver.

We’ll take a look at things tomorrow, I’m sure. I think I’ll be able to teach from home if I have to. We’ll roll with whatever punches come in, as we always have. I taught from home a day last year… or was it the year before? We had a nasty little ice storm, so everybody remoted in. Didn’t have much choice in the matter.

I probably ought to have Dane get some extra firewood in the house. I have a feeling over the next few days, we’ll have ample opportunity to get a fire going in the stove.

Finished off my second book of the year, so it’s been “The Last Colony” by John Scalzi, and the third book in the Magic 2.0 series by Scott Meyer. Had the fourth book in the queue, so I launched in to that. I know I’m not going to do anything to enhance my brain listening to certain audiobooks, but sometimes you just have to get a little pleasure reading, or in this case, listening, in.

Enough for now.

Peace y’all

It’s a frigid Monday night in Lawrence, Kansas, and that seems to extend outward toards rural Douglas County.

I’ve got a dinner in the oven. It’s interesting the things you can throw into the oven for 40 minutes at 400 degrees and have come out tasty. Add a little olive oil and some salt, pepper, and a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese, and you will likely be pleased with the result.

Didn’t have a great day at work, but we got through it. One of those Mondays that’s a little more Monday-er than some of the others. It’s rather to be expected when you;re teaching curriculum that has been expired and the new course isn’t quite ready to go.

Tonight, my Jayhawks play the Texas Longhorns. This might be a bit of a test for KU. We beat Baylor, but they were missing one of their better players. Texas can be tough, but I have to admit, ever since Shaka Smart’s VCU team beat Kansas to go to the Elite 8 a few years back, Bill has done a great job against Coach Smart’s teams. Time will tell, of course, but I think we’ll be OK in the long run. Does that mean Kansas will pull down another conference championship? I can’t say. Time will tell.

Peace y’all.

It’s a little bit later on a Sunday night than I like to start writing, but there are two hundred words tat need to be cranked out to fulfill the ol’ pledge, and I’m not going to let a little weariness get in the way.

Tomorrow I go back to the classroom to teach an Azure class, and there’s going to be a bit of a learning curve for everybody. The class is a bit dated, and I have little doubt the labs will be as well. That’s part of it. I’ll buckle down and get through it. Azure changes so darned fast, it can be a challenge to keep the documents up to date, especially when it’s for training purposes across a number of different languages.

So, I’m taking a little bit different approach to the details this week. I hope it turns out to be as successful a class as a trainer can hope for.

I am in need of some sleep. I still have to plan on getting over to pick up Dane’s car tomorrow.

I’m going to call it. My mind is starting to drift, and that’s a pretty good sign that I need to hit the sack.

Peace y’all.

Good evening one and all! It’s a snowbound Saturday night in rural Douglas County with about four inches of snow on the ground, three logs ablaze in the wood-burning stove, and a happy, fat, old man enjoying a day of sports.

Chiefs and Jayhawks both won their respective games today. The Jayhawks had a game in Waco against the Baylor Bears, and for the casual observer, you would’ve thought the Jayhawks would win handily as they led by as many as twenty, but the Bears got a little scrappy there at the end and made the last few minutes of the game a little more exciting than they probably ought to have been.

Kansas City was able to exorcise a few demons today by finally beating the Indianapolis Colts in the playoffs. Off-hand, I can clearly remember three separate times that the Colts put the brakes on any post-season hopes and dreams that the Chiefs and their had. And there were some pretty good teams that lost under Marty Schottenheimer and Dick Vermeil.

But the Chiefs put those ghosts to bed today. And I am grateful.

I won a bet, too.

Looks like the Rams are going to knock the Cowboys out of the post-season tonight, up by fifteen in the fourth quarter.

Tomorrow is another day.

Peace y’all.

It’s a winter storm warning kind of Friday night in rural Douglas County, and my beloved is sleeping in her recliner, sweatshirt odd pulled down over her eyes.

Gracie is sitting on the sofa, Colby asleep in her arms.

We’ve had in interesting day, with the flat tires, and the phone calls, and a few other things. Tonight it was a pizza run into Minsky’s for dinner, and a little Christopher Robin for our evening movie.

Tomorrow will be a bit ( ok, I under-emphasize) of a sports day in my neck of the woods, with both the Jayhawks and the Chiefs playing.

Other thoughts are starting to weigh a little heavier on my mind. I’m wondering where my primary corporate affiliation is heading, with so many changes to the Microsoft training environment. Questions here and there.

Lisa is still sleeping.

Tomorrow is looming. I find myself worrying about things beyond my control.

Like any other fan.

Next week I’m back I’m back in the classroom teaching an Azure class that is likely to have a lot of bad data… the courseware designers have had such a hard time keeping up with the changes.

I need to think about hitting the sack. I hope your life is better than you deserve, and I hope you deserve much.

Peace y’all.

OK, it’s getting late on a Thursday night in January. The trash is out to the corner. We’re kicking back watching a little TV, “The Orville”, a nice little spoof of every Star Trek series ever made, tonight with actors featured on Star Trek Voyager and Star Trek Enterprise.

It’s been a long day. Gracie woke up in a lot of pain this morning at 1 AM, and called us, asking for a ride to the ER at Lawrence Memorial Hospital. After rigorous examination, an MRI, an an ultrasound, it was determined that Gracie had a kidney stone… almost 21 years to the day that her mother, my wife, was rushed to the ER for a kidney stone while she was pregnant with Gracie.

I should have stuck with my original idea of naming her “Pebbles”. Seems more appropriate than ever now.

Gracie had a bad day. Dane had a bad day, too, with two flat tires. Tire blew out, we replaced it, then one the way home it blew again.

I hope Bonnie is OK. Seems like the stars are aligned against my kids… waiting for the last shoe to drop.

I hope your day is going a wee bit better… as always, I hope better than you deserve. And I know that sounds odd, but think about it. I hope you deserve much for your hard work and dedication to making the world a better place.

And I hope the rewards you receive in this life reflects that, and more.

Peace y’all.

Hey, it’s a Wednesday in the year 2019, and I’m a little bit hacked off at myself.

I had a couple of decent ideas for my blog tonight that sort of popped in the old noggin while I was driving home from work, and lo, and behold, I can’t remember either one right now.

Oh… I was thinking about happiness.

I was thinking about what motivates people to make a change. When you have a customer that is happy with the service they are receiving from a vendor, when you have a prospect that is happy in their job, when you have a talent resource that is making a choice. The motivation is happiness. You have to make people happy, or, more to the point, happier, than their current situation.

That then leads to a difference bu important question… what makes you happy? For some it’s pretty straight forward – money, or maybe opportunity for advancement, or simply feeling appreciated. Some folks are willing to make a big move just one step to the side if it means a significant change in one area of their happiness.

I intend to think about it a little more deeply. What is makes me happy? What makes my students happy? What makes my coworkers happy? Some of the things are pretty tangible, but you just never know with some folks.

Now if I can only remember what the other thing I wanted to write about was.

A better memory… right now that would make me happy!

Peace y’all.