Evie Day 435

Good morning, and a happy end to the work week, on the eve of a three-day weekend! Today is 24 May 2024.

My training partner and I finished up our course yesterday afternoon. My training partner and I have different styles, and he sometimes goes a little deeper into the content than I do with his demonstrations. I think our course went well, but I should take a look at the post-class surveys to take a look at any comments that were left. I have a little resistance to looking at the comments from time to time… the good comments can artificially inflate one’s ego, and the critical comments can hang around in my head nagging at me for weeks. I know it’s meant to be constructive, but part of my reaction can sometimes be an overreaction, leading me away from something that works towards something new that may not land as well as a tried and true technique.

I’ve got some paperwork I need to tend to later this morning, right after I get the trash out to the corner for the garbage truck. I have presentations I need to follow up on, and some other tasks kind of nagging away at me in the background.

I might be able to sneak out later in the afternoon for an ice cream break. I wonder if my daughter and granddaughter might be free for such an event? Hmmm. I probably ought to send somebody a text message.

A three-day weekend… I probably ought to get over to Clay Center to see my mom again.

OK, time to get this in the can.

I hope the world is treating you better than you deserve.

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 434

Good morning and a happy Thursday to you all. Today is 23 May 2024.

A good day to wrap up a few things and get some other plans laid out.

I’ll be back in my virtual classroom in another couple of hours. My role today is to help my training partner get things wrapped up for our security course. Tell ’em what you’re going to teach ’em, teach ’em, tell ’em what you taught ’em. I like the structure of training – organize the day, organize the info, prepare the demonstrations, and point the learners towards the documentation set to explore capabilities. I am so fortunate to have stumbled into this field.

I got together with some of the guys last night, and we did our thing, slaying a few wyverns and helping some wizard out. Some nights and Sundays we have everybody show up, and some days we are short a few. I’m grateful that the gamemaster gauged our opposition, making it tough, but not too tough for us to eliminate the clear and present danger.

Tomorrow is an interesting day. Travel for Memorial Day is already starting in some places. If I can get some things accomplished tomorrow morning, it might be in the realm of possibility to take tomorrow afternoon off. Before I can do that, I better take a look at “the plan”. What tasks do I need to make sure I get accomplished today so I can take a little more of a mental health break on my three-day weekend? I should probably finalize what I can in my schedule for next week, including booking a certification exam.

It’s getting to be about that time for me to throw a couple of eggs in the skillet and add a couple of spoonfuls of my wife’s chili, and a slice or two of cheese. It may not be everybody’s idea of a healthy breakfast, but for me, there’s nothing better.

I hope the world is treating you better than you deserve.

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 433

Good morning, and a happy Wednesday to you all. Today is 22 May 2024.

Humpday.

I was able to get some things done yesterday when I turned the talking stick over to my training partner. I have a presentation to get together for next week, and some other new projects to work on as well. It’s interesting how two different instructors approach the same material. I think I take a fairly linear approach, while some others can go into a circle, and still come back around to make the same points I might’ve made.

I’m back in front of the camera today, talking about securing online apps and storage. I might sneak in another module if time permits, relieving my training partner of that burden tomorrow.

Last night there were tacos. Of course. I try to be a little bit predictable, and Tuesdays seem as good a day as any to be predictable.

Thinking about folks in Iowa today. I see they had seventeen tornadoes roll through yesterday. One small community of Greenfield, population 2000, looks to have been erased from the map. Reminds me of what happened to another similarly named community, Greensburg, Kansas, was hit by an EF5 tornado in 2007.

I’m not that motivated to write much more today. I’ve got some things I need to attend to.

I hope the world is treating you better than you deserve.

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 432

Good morning, and a happy Taco Tuesday to you all. It is 21 May 2024.

The news is on, and it looks like there will be some interesting courtroom fireworks in New York today. I’m very grateful I have something more important to do.

I had a pretty good day yesterday. I was delivering my course for the majority of the day. The class I am delivering isn’t the most dynamic – it’s a lot of theory about IT security, with references to benchmarks and reference architectures. It has it’s moments, but it’s a lot of lists, rules, and best practices for the most part.

An interesting story in the world of AI – Scarlett Johansson was approached by OpenAI to be the voice of their chat service. She said no to them twice… but when the chat service debuted, people thought it sure sounded like Scarlett Johansson… and she’s taking legal action. If OpenAI was smart, they found another actor whose voice had similar qualities and had that person sign a release. I think Scarlett has a very nice voice, but she’s not the only person in the world with the qualities in her voice. I hope they find some 68-year-old grandmother to voice the thing, and then program it into whisper phrases of reassurance and positivity to small children that have trouble getting to sleep at night.

Lisa had her students over last night and there was quite a spread. Beef Chili, Pork Chili, cinnamon rolls with pecans, cinnamon rolls without pecans – I’ll have my choice of options this morning for breakfast… but I’m currently a strong lean towards a couple of spoonfuls of leftover beef chili with a couple of eggs and a slice of American cheese in a skillet. Those rolls, however… very tempting. My wife’s rolls remind me of cinnamon rolls I would pick up at a small farm bakery just outside of Yoder, Kansas. Big, war, an topped with delicious icing.

I had a conversation with a friend recently about the new prescriptions added to my daily routine, and I asked him, “Do anti-depressants cause weight gain?” and he replied, “Yeah, but you don’t care as much.”

I couldn’t argue his logic.

I hope the world is treating you better than you deserve.

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 431

Good morning, happy Monday, and hello to the last full week in May. Today is 20 May 2024.

I woke up tired. This past weekend, we focused on the house and yard. I was a little more yard than house, with plenty of time on the string trimmer and plenty of time on the tractor mowing where I could. I broke down on Saturday an ordered some new batteries for the string trimmer as those Milwaukee batteries just don’t have the recharge life that they had when I first bought them a couple of years ago.

I took a break from the yard chores yesterday to get together with the guys online for one of our get-togethers. I always enjoy those reality breaks. The only thing that took away from my pleasure was my big boy, Odin, who felt that it was important to constantly bark at anything moving in the front yard, including a young man we have over on occasion to help out with the yard work. I was on my laptop out on the living room, but under the circumstances, I might have been better off going back to the sunroom. Part of my motivation for watching in the living room was the two “game seven” matches going on in the NBA playoffs, and both of the higher-seeded home teams. That said, we had a good time, and slayed a couple of bad guys that were up to no good, causing trouble in our neighborhood.

Lisa is having her grad students over tonight for a little post-semester celebration – there will be chili and cinnamon rolls. It’s become an annual tradition around here.

I’ll be back in my virtual classroom shortly. I’m back teaching a security theory course, with emphasis on a couple of security frameworks and reference architectures. My key days are day one and day three, and my training partner will focus on the other two days of class. I have some other things on my mind as well, and I need to make an appointment to create some original content with a teammate.

I’m thinking I might be able to sneak a couple of spoonfuls of my wife’s chili in with a couple of eggs and some cheese for breakfast. That always goes well with a big freshly-brewed cup of coffee.

I hope the world is treating you better than you deserve.

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 428

Good morning, and a happy Friday to you all! Today is the last day of this work week, 17 May 2024.

The news is on, and there’s a recap of some committee drama in DC. It’s laughable, and the usual suspects are at the center of the excitement. Yay.

I have the last day of my current course, cloud administration, and I’ll be covering the business continuity/disaster recovery module before turning it over to my training partner to cover monitoring and log analytics as well as the closing. We’ll help folks out with labs for the balance of the afternoon, and if I have time, I’ll swing over to the implement dealer to take care of the service tab on the mower and the gator.

Next week, I’ll be delivering a security course with another teammate. I should reach out and confirm our schedule.

Oh… we had a little excitement. Apparently, my granddaughter took a couple of steps today. Now things get really dangerous.

This weekend will be wall-to-wall yard work. We’ve got plants to transplant, and there is always mowing that needs to be taken care of. The tractor gets the job done, but the riding lawn mower is better for the tighter turning radius.

I am not very exciting today at all, am I?

It might be best for me to wrap this up and get focused on the other things I need to attend to before class starts. Some days I’m a little more interesting than others, it all rather depends on where my head is. Most days, my head is in the cloud.

I hope the world is treating you better than you deserve.

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 427

Good morning, and a happy Thursday to you all. Today is 16 May 2024.

The news is on in the background, and the 5:30 segment is closing with a raccoon on an MLB baseball field. They used a trash can to catch the trash panda.

Today is a day with thoughts, positive intentions, love for life, a few other random ideas, and probably one PowerPoint presentation. I’ve got a family member going in for a biopsy today, so it’s safe to say I’m a little distracted. We’re all focused on sending positive thoughts and intentions to that family member here.

I’m back in the front of my virtual classroom in a bit. Today is my day to talk about storage and application services. The class seems to be going well, and the learners are very engaged. My training partner has a knack for drawing folks out and getting them a little more involved in the delivery, and all seem to be a little more active.

Last night the crew did gather online for some virtual tabletop gaming, and while I was intermittently distracted by the NBA playoffs, we collectively succeeded in eradicating a little problem with manticores at an ancient temple. In this particular setting, I am playing a humanoid ranger – think Orlando Bloom from Lord of the Rings, but with less charm, wit, and no Katy Perry. The bow strings were singing last night… it seemed like every round I was getting a couple of deft shots off and my damage rolls were maxed out. One of the group members (Ron?) pointed out that we had rolled at least 6 natural-20s on our attacks, a rare event indeed. My character is more effective at range than melee (I do more damage with my bow than my sword), so I was able to keep my wounds to a minimum. We’ll get back after it on Sunday afternoon.

Time for me to think about the day at hand…

I hope the world is treating you better than you deserve.

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 426

Good morning, and a happy Humpday to you all. Today is 15 May 2024.

I figured it out… why I keep wanting to write “March” instead of “May”. I include the number of days my granddaughter has been alive, and I type in her birthday… which is in March.

Mystery solved.

I’m sure it was keeping you up at night, right?

Last night was not as productive as I had hoped. I’ve got some tasks to attend to later today, some things I should’ve focused on last night, but other things required my attention.

Some of the topics my brain is devoting processor cycles to are matters of mortality. It goes with age, with family members that are getting up in years, and it goes with health issues. I’ve got some family close to me that I worry about every day, some days more than others. but the reality is, it’s all out of my hands. What’s going to happen will happen in its own time. The best I can do is care, observe, and pat myself on the back for using “it’s” and “its” correctly in consecutive sentences.

I’m back in my virtual classroom in another couple of hours, this day dedicated to networking technologies in the cloud. I have the review to cover and the first module, and then I’ll turn it all over to my training partner for the other two modules and the introduction of the lab.

Tonight, who knows? I’m hoping that certain scheduling challenges have been resolved and I’ll be able to sit around the virtual tabletop for some gaming.

In the meantime…

I hope the world is treating you better than you deserve.

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 425

Good morning, and a happy Taco Tuesday to you all. Today is 14 May 2024.

I keep wanting to type March… it’s as if my mind can’t keep up with the calendar.

I’ll be back in my virtual classroom in a couple of hours, preparing to deliver an administration course for about 70 attendees. It’s unlikely that everyone will show up at the appointed hour – there are always a couple of folks who run into some sort of scheduling snafu, but we’ll be there for those who need us today and the rest of the week. I’m taking the daily opening sessions, as my training partner is based on the West Coast. I’ll take the first shift so he can grab a second cup of coffee.

I’ve got some paperwork to do before the end of the day. I can be a terrible procrastinator. That said, I’ll get to work on it here shortly and spend an hour on it before my class starts at 9:00 Central Standard Time.

Tonight, there will be tacos.

It’s hard to believe we’re almost halfway through May already. I hope I get my mower and gator back this week. They called me last week with estimates (yikes!) and they let me know there was some additional work that they required, flushing out the fuel system of the old stale gasoline that I put in there last fall that had gone bad.

Other than that, not a whole lot going on. Tomorrow night I hope to get together with the guys and do some online slaying, but other than that, not much else consuming a lot of processor cycles in the ol’ noggin.

I hope the world is treating you better than you deserve.

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 424

Good morning, and a happy Monday to you all. Today is 13 May 2024.

It’s been a weekend. College graduation festivities started on Friday and ran through yesterday evening. Bonnie and her dog, Ruthie, came home and spent the weekend. Gracie and Evelyn joined Bonnie and me in the stands to watch the youngest of our immediate family get a little recognition for his accomplishments. We’re all very proud of our new graduate in Mechanical Engineering. He’s earned a pat on the back and an “atta boy”.

Saturday afternoon, Gracie had to work in a local flower shop for a few hours, so Lisa and I spent some time caring for our granddaughter. It was fun watching her play improvised games with Lisa and Dane.

Mother’s Day happened, although without some of the same pomp and circumstance as the graduation festivities. All things considered, it was a pretty good day. After Lisa and Dane went into town for the big graduation event on Sunday morning (Saturday was just the engineering school), I jumped on the tractor and took care of some of the mowing and trimming around the property. It’s a job that never ends out here.

Tomorrow I’ll be back in my virtual classroom, delivering an admin course with another instructor. I haven’t delivered a class with Kyle in some time, and I am looking forward to it. He’s out on the West Coast, so I’ll open the day’s content, let him get a cup of coffee, and then turn it over to him a little later in the day.

I’ve got work to do…

I hope the world is treating you better than you deserve.

Peace y’all.