Evie Day 393

Good morning, and a happy Friday to you all. Today is 12 April 2024.

A character from Western pop culture history died yesterday. The first professional football player to run for 2000 yards in a season, Orenthal James Simpson, died yesterday. He was an icon back in the 70s and 80s, as a performer in several movies, the spokesperson for Hertz rental cars starting in 1975, and a generation of kids watching football games saw OJ hurdle suitcases to catch a flight… maybe he should’ve left earlier.

I’m not going to get into the other stuff. Murder trials, theft of a Heisman trophy, jail time. He had a remarkable life, and he made mistakes. I’ll leave it at that.

I’ve got meetings today starting at ten, and a couple of other tasks I want to complete. I should try to tackle a certification exam this afternoon. but I don’t believe I’m prepared for it. Most of my classes break things down into 7 or 8 modules… this one has 57. Yeah… I need to stay focused a little longer for this one.

I keep looking to see if I’m getting blood on the computer keyboard. I nicked the side of my finger changing razor blades. Nothing arterial, no worries there, but it is a nuisance.

Lisa and I are going to have a busy day tomorrow. We’ll make a run into Kansas City to pick up some gardening supplies, and then I have to get some gas for the mower and some diesel for the tractor. I’ve never named the mower and the tractor, but after they turned over the first time after sitting idle all winter, they’ve earned monikers.

It’s crazy to think that we’re only a month away from opening the pool, Mother’s Day, Dane’s college graduation… wow.

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 392

Good morning, and a happy Thursday to you all. Today is Wednesday 11 April 2024.

So, what is new today? Went to the doctor yesterday, my GP, and after a bit of a discussion about the status of my blood pressure, I’m getting a new prescription to address that aspect of my life. Everything else is ok, and there is a need to do a cancer screening. I welcome that.

I’ve been focused on some new certifications this week. I added some new credentials, provisional, that I’ll get finalized when the assessment is back online. Three of the credentials are directly related to classes I already teach, two are for new AI-related programs, and one is tied to the exam I am currently studying for.

Today is lab day. I’ve got a cert I’m chasing regarding some security tools, and I’ve read through all of the courseware… now it’s time to lock in on hands-on part of the course. Then, I will tackle the certification exam, and I have been told by some of my peers that this one can be a bear. I hope I can pass it my first try, but I also need to be realistic and not get down if I don’t crack it the first try.

Lucy is outside barking at the wind. Odin is by Lisa, and he’s making some interesting vocalizations that all translate to “feed me”. The sisters Von Floof run back and forth, my leg rest becoming their high-dive platform. Go to Lisa, beg, run back over to me and the leg rest, stare at my wife, then jump down and run over to her again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Time for me to block out my day. I’ve got a couple of slides to get ready for a Monday meeting, some text to prepare for an afternoon meeting, and some follow up I need to address as well… but first, coffee.

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 391

Good morning, and a very happy Wednesday to you all. Time to break out the AI-generated cartoons of camels chilling on the beach. It is 10 April 2024.

I started thinking about domains yesterday, those things we all write into the field at the top of the browser. This domain is “bobsterism.com”. It is one of several that I have picked up – they are kind of a renewable lease, and if you don’t stay on top of them, you can lose them. I used to own “piercingblue.com”, but some joker overseas squatted my renewal, and then started offering that domain to tattoo & piercing shops for twenty-five grand.

I had a domain name pop into my head yesterday, and I decided to check it out to see if it had been claimed yet. I do this fairly regularly, but this time I pulled the trigger, so now I have the domain name “abandonedspace.com”. I’ll part it next to a couple of others I have, like wythinne.com, bobrealm.com, xynfinity.com, nimbus42.com, and sector84.com. There are a few others, one of which I would like to get rid of, but due to the nature of the domain name, I’m concerned about the name getting used by someone with ill intent. If you want to know what the domain name is, shoot an email to bob@bobsterism.com, and I’ll give you the low down.

Last night we enjoyed our tacos and settled on to watch the ladies play. The US Women’s National Team faced off against the Canadian team for the championship of the SheBelieves Cup. Canada scored first, then the USA scored twice, and then, at the very end of regulation, Canada scored again to force a penalty kick shoot out. After five rounds of kicks, they were tied, but the USA prevailed. Congrats, USA! One other point – it’s great to see Mallory Swanson back on the pitch after having surgery on her patellar tendon. She had a pretty good tournament, but the real stars for the US were forward Sophia Smith and goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher.

I have a doctor’s appointment a little later this morning. If I’m going to have a cup of coffee before, I better get to brewing a pot.

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 390

Good morning, and a happy Taco Tuesday to you all. It is 9 April 2024.

Lisa and I went eclipse chasing yesterday.

I drove a rental car (Jeep Cherokee), flipped my phone over to wifi hotspot for my bride, and we left the house about 7:00 AM heading to Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

We might have been better off flying into Dallas in the morning, and flying home that night. Or driving to St. Louis on Sunday, then heading south first thing in the morning.

About the time we hit Wentzville, just west of St. Louis, the GPS told me to turn south. Next thing I know, Lisa and I are weaving through two-lane roads. I occasionally looked at the arrival time for our intended destination, and noticed that the time to destination was not getting shorter… it was getting longer, and already increased by an hour. We eventually stopped fighting the traffic and pulled off to watch what we could in the quaint community of Festus, Missouri – and at the gas station, I did not see a single Gunsmoke-related gift item.

Festus treated us well.

We found a park, broke out the two-seater folding chair. We had our eclipse glasses ( I grabbed all of them, when I intended my son to have a set – Sorry Dane!). It was pretty cool. We were still about a hundred miles away from the best site, but we’re not complaining. I spent a day in the car with my wife, and that was just fine.

We had some friends post pictures online from their view of the eclipse. One friend was fifty miles off the coast of Mazatlan, and I have to confess some jealousy. Another friend, one of Lisa’s bridesmaids, lives in Dallas, and she was able to get some really spectacular pics.

Now we’re home, and back to the reality of the work week. I have a non-delivery week, or a prep week, depending on what you want to call it, and I have plenty on my plate.

Tonight… there will be tacos. And the championship between the USWNT and Canada for the SheBelieves Cup starts at 6:00 tonight… woot!

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 389

Good morning, and a happy Monday to you all! Today is 8 April 2024.

We’re checking the glasses, the camera filters, and the small cooler. Lisa and I will be heading out to Cape Girardeau, Missouri, in about an hour. We’re hoping to find a good spot off the side of the highway and enjoy the last eclipse to pass over North America until 2044. Cheese, sausage, crackers, Twizzlers, two Rockstar energy drinks (orange), and a full tank of gas in the rental car, a Jeep Cherokee, and I’ve already paired my phone to the vehicle. Lisa has work to do, so I’ll flip on the wireless access point on my phone so she can stay connected.

Head to St. Louis, then turn south.

Tomorrow I’ll get focused on work-related content. I’ve got a certification exam I need to focus on, so there’s that, and there are the other regularly scheduled work obligations that I normally tackle during my non-delivery times.

Had a nice thing happen yesterday. I hadn’t really focused on our yard vehicles yet this year, and after resting all winter, I had concerns that the batteries might be dead and that they wouldn’t start- surprise! Both the lawn mower and the tractor turned over on the first try. Gotta love that!

OK. Time for me to focus on getting organized and hitting the road. Breakfast, meds, coffee!

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 386

Friday! It’s Friday! Woot!

Hi folks, and welcome. Today is 5 April 2024.

I wrapped up my class yesterday afternoon, and it was a positive week. I finished all of my lectures and closing prior to lunch yesterday, then helped out with labs in the afternoon. About a half hour before the formal close of class, I noticed that the last lab had closed out, so I closed things out at that point. It was a private class with a number of folks that all work together, and they were a great group to work with.

Today I have to get caught up on the other stuff. When I’m in deliveries, I tend to stay focused on the delivery. Some of my teammates are far better at multitasking than I am, but I do a pretty good job reacting for my students when they need a hand. I can get in a little reading, but I tend to prioritize my learners… as I should. That also means that there are a number of recorded meetings that I need to follow up on today, as well as some new coursework I need to spend some time with. AI over here, AI over there, AI everywhere. The time is going to come that I’ll put together a task list, open up my email client, and ask my CoPilot to organize my day and tasks into time blocks.

It’s Friday, so that also means I need to get the trash out to the pickup spot in the driveway.

This weekend I will be focused on getting the yard where it needs to be, and getting some plants in the ground. Lisa planted some peppers that are starting to sprout, so I’ll get my collection of pepper pots (no pun intended, Gwyneth) and get those sorted and watered. It’s kind of crazy to think that we’re less than 6 weeks out from opening up the pool for the summer.

I better check to see if I need to crank out a Youtube video for work… other than that, I hope you have a great weekend.

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 385

Good morning, and welcome to the last day of class for me this week! Today is Thursday, 4 April 2024.

Today is the last day of my cloud admin course. We’ve had a good week. Day 1 had a couple of moments, but I think I’ve shown them a few things that can genuinely help them in their respective roles. A little demo from yesterday showed how they can use generative AI to help with projects, and the comments were quite complimentary.

My little attention-grabbing demo was quite simple. I was discussing App Services and App Service Plans when I explained that I hadn’t written code since the 90s. I then opened up CoPilot and asked for some .NET code for a simple tic-tac-toe game. I then had CoPilot do the same thing for Python. Then, icing on the cake moment, one of the attendees did the same thing, but asked for HTML, and he was quite pleased that his request also generated the CSS and Javascript files to support his app request. Yesterday was a good day.

I’m excited to use the AI tools at work. I think it can seriously impact my productivity.

Lucy is in the kitchen, barking at some phantasm that only she can see. I worry about that dog. When she looks at me in the right light, I can look into her eyes, and there appears to be cloudy patches in her eyes.

After I get done with class today, it will be time to pivot toward a certification I need to nail down. Fiscal year is winding down and I need to nail a couple more credentials down. There are always a few extra projects that need some work.

I need to spend some time with a guitar. Maybe more than one.

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 384

Good morning, and a happy Wednesday to you. Today is 3 April 2024.

We enjoyed out tacos last evening… I know that many folks have had that question weighing heavily on their minds.

Today I will get into my third day of cloud administration with my private class, all attendees are from the same company. Monday wasn’t as productive as I would’ve liked, and I felt we didn’t have enough time for labs. Yesterday was more efficient, and we had an hour more lab time yesterday than we had on Monday. I’m hoping we have more of the same today as we address storage, virtual machines, and Platform-as-a-Service solutions.

It’s not unusual to have some significant weather events in Kansas this time of year. We had some thunderstorms roll through the last couple of days, and it always kind of cracks me up the way my big boy behaves. Odin the Odiferous, first of his name, does not like thunder. He’ll whimper and scramble for the nearest human lap to seek comfort. The other dogs – Lucy, Rosy, and Lilly – aren’t quite as anxious as the boy.

News this morning is focused on an earthquake in Taiwan. Some of the footage was terrifying.

I don’t have a lot going on right at the moment. Coffee pot awaits my attention, and there’s a low-carb bagel and cream cheese to compliment my favorite morning caffeinated beverage.

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 383

Good morning, and a happy Taco Tuesday to you all! Another weekly celebration of the world’s most perfect protein delivery system! Today is 2 April 2024.

I did a pretty good job avoiding any pranks yesterday, but Dane and I were chatting a bit when a story caught my eye… and it wasn’t a minute or two later when I realized I had been had. It was a story about Robert Kraft putting up the New England Patriots NFL franchise, and I got pulled in. I was thinking about the situation and what may have led to that move by Mr. Kraft, and then it hit me like a sportscar coming out of my peripheral vision. Well played.

I had my first day of my cloud administration class yesterday. It went OK, but I did have a learner ask me to try to allocate a little more lab time. I absolutely agreed with her. I had some challenges getting into a flow yesterday, and then I’d get a question that required a little more in-depth explanation, and then I had to break out the road map to figure out how to get back onto the highway. I hope I can do a better job keeping my lectures flowing and on-topic today. It’s networking day, and there are any number of rabbit holes I might find myself falling into.

We watched some basketball last night. We got to see the Iowa Hawkeyed defeat the Lady Tigers of LSU to move on to the Final Four. We watched some of the Southern Cal versus UConn game, but we were tired – Lisa had gotten up very early on Monday – so we called it an early night. I just checked the score, and it looks like the Huskies pulled an upset, and number 3 knocked off the number 1 seed. The women’s Final Four might have more compelling story lines than the men’s side of the tournament.

Time for me to get a pot of coffee going, and get my low-carb bagel in the toaster.

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 382

Good morning, and a happy April Fool’s Day to you all. Today is 1 April 2024.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to do anything weird… well, not any weirder than a normal blog post, anyway.

The news is on, and coffee is calling. I received an order of low-carb bagels last week, so I’m set on breakfast for a while. Add in some cream cheese, and maybe a couple of slices of bacon, and I’m in good shape.

I’ll be back in my virtual classroom a little sooner this morning. I have a four-day class that runs on Eastern time, so rather than an 8:00 AM start, I pull back to 7:00 AM instead. Next week will be a little lighter, but I’m planning on tackling a certification exam at some point next week. I have a certification goal I’m trying to cover, and I’ll be the first to admit that I have been deferring this exam for some time.

We had a pleasant Easter Sunday here yesterday. All of the kids were here, and our granddaughter was here as well. It was a good day. I missed hanging with the guys on Sunday afternoon, but there will be more chances for that. Wednesday night and Sunday afternoons are my social outlet, hanging out with the crew, and making the Forgotten Realms safe for all, with the possible exception on necromancers, cultists, and evil beings from beyond the prime material plane.

It’s time to brew a pot of coffee. The Hamilton Beech coffee maker has sort of given up the ghost with a broken hinge, so we’re using a new coffee maker Lisa picked up from Ninja. It makes coffee a little bit faster than the old drip coffee maker, and I might try to get a more accurate timer on it. The old maker would take about fifteen minutes a pot. I’m guessing the new one cranks a pot of coffee out in about seven or eight minutes.

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

Peace y’all.