Evie Day 104

Good morning! It is hump day, Wednesday, 28 June 2023.

Just a couple more days in my work week, month, year.

Lisa arrived home safely last evening after a short trip out of town. I can’t really get into what she was doing, but based on her mood when she arrived home, it appears to have been a successful trip.

Normally, my Wednesday is filled with anticipation of the evening’s festivities, and a chance to “hang out with the guys” online and play some games online. Tonight, however, we’re switching things up. A few of the gang will not be available due to vacation trips and whatnot, so I’m going to switch gears and get into futbol mode as the United States Mens National Team plays St.Kitts & Nevis in the CONCACAF Gold Cup tournament.

The news this morning is full of news about the Russians and whether there was an actual coup attempt, and there is lots of chatter about Trump and his ongoing legal woes. I’ll take a swing by the comments section after a bit to read the garbage “Trump 2024” posts. I suspect that those posts are coming from some troll farm, paid to use fake accounts, and post pro-Trump nonsense online – especially on stories about Trump or Biden. I can’t imagine that real people are that naive, but then again, maybe some folks are just so dense that they still think Trump is a viable candidate for the Presidency. He wasn’t a qualified candidate in 2016, and he’s even worse now, as everybody knows that if he were to get back in the White House, he would immediately start abusing the power of the office, then head off to the golf course – right after pardoning himself and members of his family.

I get back to my virtual classroom in a bit. Today I get to talk about data storage and security, as well as application programming content. It’s a decent day.

In the meantime, there is coffee to be made and toast to be toasted.

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 103

Good morning, and a happy Taco Tuesday to you. It is 27 June 2023.

I got up a little earlier this morning, as Lisa had to head out early for a meeting out of town. I’ve yet to make a pot of coffee, but I did grab a couple of glasses of water to start my day.

I’m watching the news right now, and they are discussing audio tapes that have been turned over as evidence in the espionage trial of Donald J. Trump. Yesterday there were ads on TV talking, flashbacks to Trump running for president in 2016, where he is railing against people (I’m guessing Hillary Clinton) that didn’t handle confidential and classified documents with the appropriate care. Then in the audiotape, he’s boasting and sharing classified content with a staffer that doesn’t have clearance. Criminally irresponsible.

My class went well yesterday, and while we are covering three modules today, I only have to worry about the middle unit, as my training partner is picking up the lion’s share of the content today, and I’ll switch that up with her tomorrow when I will cover two of the three scheduled units.

Other than that, it’s a pretty casual day. I don’t expect a lot of excitement. The only thing I really anticipate on the day is the tacos on Tuesday night. How will we mix it up today? Fish tacos, perhaps?

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 102

Good morning, and happy Monday to you all! It is 26 June 2023.

I should have kept my eyes out for a 100-Day report from my daughter about my granddaughter over the weekend. I might need to review my texts.

I started off the day by telling somebody in the comments about the inclusion social contract. He was telling me that all progressives are evil and discussing. I disagreed, but then I realized that the person I am having this little verbal spat with is defending neo-Nazis. I think I’m sitting in the right corner from a historical perspective.

I’m back in my virtual classroom shortly, teaching an east coast time zone class this week – the last class for the fiscal year. Next week I’ll take some vacation. I’m currently scheduled to work on Monday, but I’m starting to change my lean on that commitment. I’ve planned out my vacation time for the rest of the calendar year, and although we don’t keep tight track of vacation time due to policy changes, my manager wants to make sure I am taking at least as many days of vacation as I would have had if we were still tracking vacation days. So, I’ve got 5 days left. Maybe I should take off Monday, too, and get that sorted.

Not much else going on right at the moment. I need to make some coffee and grab a bit of breakfast.

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 99

Good morning. It is Friday, 23 June 2023. A pair of 23s in the date… might be timely to watch on old movie about that number, the 2007 Jim Carey mess, “The Number 23”.

Or not.

Bad news from the Titanic tourists. They found a debris field on the bottom of the ocean, including the nosecone of the submersible. It was also reported that the US Navy deep microphones in the Atlantic detected the implosion on Sunday morning. It is sad that those folks died, but if it was an implosion at depth, the passengers would have died immediately. It’s odd sometimes how we can focus on four or five wealthy people that require rescuing at the same time virtually ignoring refugees capsizing in the Aegean Sea, killing 31, or another ship with 700 passengers suffering a similar fate last summer. It seems we only pay attention to some, but not those that might need the most help.

I finished my class yesterday. Seemed to have gone over OK. I had a couple of attendees ask me for the links, so I’m going to go through all four meetings from Monday through Thursday and harvest all of the URLs for the course. That’ll keep me busy for a bit this morning. No meetings until later in the morning, so I ought to be OK.

I noticed that it is my granddaughter’s 99th day on this side of reality. I start thinking about working “Evie’s Day 99” into lyrics to replace the words in a Prince song.

I’m back in my virtual classroom on Monday for a four-day administration course. I should get together with my training partner sometime today to work out the distribution of work.

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 98

Hi folks! It is Thursday, 22 June 2023.

Yesterday was a good day. We took some time to celebrate my son’s 22nd birthday, got to see all of my kids, my granddaughter, and one of the pooches in our extended dog family.

I’m entering day four of my security class this morning. I have four lessons, a case study, and a closing today. A lot of the content I go through today is merely checklists of security steps to take under certain situations. It will be a lot of talking, a lot of pointing to reference documents.

No news on the missing submersible. It doesn’t look good.

There’s stuff going on in politics, but I’m not going to dwell on that this morning. Sometimes I am convinced that a bunch of the people on Capitol Hill are vindictive idiots.

I’m going to get to work looking over my notes for my talks today. Yeah, I’ve got a couple of hours, but still… whatever I can do to mitigate the anxiety I get when delivering a course for the first time.

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 97

Good morning! It is Wednesday, 21 June 2023.

Well, let’s unpack what I’ve seen so far this morning… and the clock is reading 5:54 AM.

I saw that Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a bill banning “sexually-oriented performances”. Now people cannot perform nude or have a performance that appeals to the “prurient interest in sex” when minors are present. Now, I remember when I was a teenager in high school, I was one of many young men that paid very close attention to the performances of the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders. I am of the opinion that someone didn’t think this all the way through.

There’s a new ProPublica story about another Supreme Court Justice not reporting gifts. Apparently, a billionaire entertained Justice Alito at a private fishing resort and served all the good stuff at dinner, Alaskan king crab, Kobe filet mignon. Keep in mind that both Alito and Thomas missed a deadline to revise their declarations of gifts last week. This is not a good look when the two most prominent conservative justices are accepting gifts from billionaires and later ruling on cases that directly affect those billionaires. Apparently, Alito made a ruling that benefitted his patron to the tune of 2 billion dollars. Meanwhile, my wife couldn’t buy lunch for a college classmate that worked for the FDA because of the way the rules get applied to government employees.

Everybody is still on edge about the Titanic submersible. Reports are that people are hearing banging in the water at 30-minute intervals. At the time I am writing this, there are estimates that they have 24 hours of oxygen remaining. All positive intentions to all involved in the rescue.

Yesterday was my son’s 22nd birthday, and he went out with a group of his friends. We’ll have a little celebration this evening for dinner, with a special meal coming from Little Saigon here in Lawrence.

My day of lecture went pretty well yesterday. I think my lips were getting a bit fatigued by the end of the day. Lots of lecture in this course.

That’s enough for now.

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 96

Good morning! It is Tuesday, 20 June 2023.

Today is my son’s 22nd birthday. I celebrate the day with him, and I am quite proud of the man he has become. He has a good heart, and genuinely cares about the welfare of others. I guess my wife and I did something right.

There are things happening in the world. Right now there is a race against time to rescue some tourists that had taken a submersible to tour the wreckage of the Titanic. The vehicle had 96 hours of air on board, but time is running out. All positive intentions for the best possible outcome.

Also, my home state of Kansas is in the news because some idiot decided to send envelopes with white powder to some 100 Kansas Republicans. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation and their federal counterparts are investigating. Personally, I think this is a loathful act. If you have a problem with a politician, support their opponent in the next election, speak up and state your case, or start a grassroots movement to address the issue you are concerned about. Terrorism (and that’s what this is) is not a solution. Somebody is going to get caught, and they will be spending some quality time with the Kansas penal system.

I’m trying to get my head in the right space this morning. I have my first delivery of a security theory course. Yesterday my training partner got the class off to a great start. I hope to maintain that pace as we continue through the day.

Other than that, it is that wonderful day of the week that we celebrate the most perfect food… the TACO! Tonight, there will be tacos for dinner.

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 95

Good morning, and happy Monday! It is 19 June 2023.

We’ve had a good weekend here in rural Douglas County. Friday night we spent a little time catching up on shows we wanted to watch, watching the first episode of the news season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and the new season of Outlander. Worked in a little more time watching some Nations soccer, both the European and CONCACAF semifinals and the finals yesterday. The match between the US and Mexico generated the most red cards I have ever seen in a match at the level with 4. Fortunately, the US regrouped and pulled off the 2-0 win over Canada yesterday for their third straight CONCACAF Nations title.

Yesterday was Fathers Day here, and I find myself thinking about my dad who passed away in August of 2019. My dad taught me a lot of important lessons, the most important lessons having to do with inclusion. My dad was a people manager, taking care of a big diesel mechanics shop, and he tried to see the good and the talent in all of the folks he worked with. I am grateful for whatever wisdom he passed along to me.

I spent time with all of my kids yesterday, and Evie came over as well. Gracie came in the morning, and we had an enjoyable visit, and for a period of time we had all three kids here, but Gracie had other familial responsibilities. I was distracted with some work stuff, getting ready for the first delivery of a new course this week, and everybody was pretty understanding. We all spent a little time in the pool, then grilled some steaks and had dinner.

Meanwhile. back in the world…

Not a whole lot else to talk about. Time to make some coffee, through in a couple of eggs with some leftover corned beef hash, and get focused on the day at hand.

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 92

Good morning! I almost forgot to write today!

It is 16 June 2023.

Today is Evelyn’s three-month milestone – she seems to be happy, healthy, and a beacon of light whenever she is in the room. It’s my future son-in-law’s first Father’s Day this Sunday, so I told my daughter I would buy the steaks for them to put on the grill. He strikes me as a “big steak” kind of guy, so I’m going to keep my eye on a couple of bone-in ribeyes today.

I’ll grab some steaks for us here as well. It might be a good idea for me to grab an extra refill on the propane tank as well.

In a little bit, I get to host a team meeting. It will be interesting. I’ve never been the host, so I hope it goes OK. I’m sure it will. Sometimes I approach talking with my teammates differently than in my classes – known versus unknown. I like the element of surprise

Anyway, there’s mowing to do this weekend. I have a mask to wear to cut down on the volume of stuff I breathe in while I mow. I might need to double-check my fuel supplies – premium for the little mower, diesel for the tractor, and the brush-cutter behind that.

No gaming this weekend. Father’s Day weekend is a time for family, as is Mother’s Day. A new class next week, teaching a little more computer security theory this time around, then back to almost two straight months of teaching administration.

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 91

Every day is a good day, and today will be no different.

Today is 15 June 2023.

Yesterday I did my regular work stuff, prepared for my security class, got a few emails out, and chatted with a few folks on teams. Later in the afternoon, my youngest daughter and my only grandchild came over for a visit. I got a little “Evie Time” with a beautiful 90-day-old child. She’s getting stronger every day.

June is Pride Month, and we celebrate some other occasions as well, with Juneteenth and Father’s Day on the June calendar as well. Gives me pause to think about diversity and inclusion, and I will be party to a discussion on that subject at tomorrow’s team meeting.

I look at the topic of D&I as a social contract. We have choices in our lives, and the choice I make relative to D&I is inclusion. I choose to include. I will include others that choose inclusion. If you want to reap the benefits of the contract – meaning you want to be included, too, the policy is pretty simple – choose to include. There are a lot of folks out there that want to exclude one group of human beings for one reason or another, and they adhere to ideologies that require a target, something to hate. These ideologies can’t survive in the light, they have to have a focus for their righteous indignation.

And then they choose exclusion and get upset about it.

Make better choices.

I’m not perfect, and I don’t have all the answers, but some things have become very clear in my life. Everybody wants to be included. I include you, you include me, and we’re going to include everyone regardless of where their ancestors came from, regardless of the faith they were brought up with or chose, and regardless of who and how they love as consenting adults. I’m going to include people regardless of how they dress, whether it’s a homeless guy in worn clothes, or someone dressed up in a sequined evening gown.

I’ll probably catch a little crap around my home state for adopting an attitude such as this, but in the reality I experience, we need diversity and inclusion. We need exposure to different cultures. We need to cut loose and have a little fun, and if that involves some dude dressed up as a flamboyant alter-ego, that’s fine. Nobody is getting hurt. I’m more concerned about the dude carrying an AR-15 wearing camo at the grocery store than some entertainer wearing a ballgown and singing funny songs.

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

Peace y’all.