Good morning! It is 22 March 2023, and it might be time for me to change my post greeting.

Good morning, Evelyn. Today is your Day 6. I’m your grampa.

You are the single brightest light in our lives today, and that is an undeniable fact.

I would love to tell you that you have arrived in a world where everything is good, and people are treating everyone the way they themselves want to be treated, but that’s not always the case. Someday you’ll start talking and you’ll learn new words, and I hope one day you can appreciate the word, “empathy”.

As you grow up, you’ll find out about dictionaries, where we have great big collections of words, their definitions, and how they are pronounced. Empathy is an important word to me, and it is defined as the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person or animal, or even a fictional character in a book. You will see it around you. When you are happy, you will notice others feeling happy, too. When you are sad, you can look into my eyes, the eyes of your mom and dad, the eyes of your grandparents, your aunts and uncles, and you will see that we all feel your pain and want you to feel better.

Someone once wrote that evil is the absence of empathy. People can only hurt other people when they stop trying to understand the feelings of others. If people tell you that your feelings don’t matter, that’s not a good thing. Your feelings matter. My feelings matter. Even our pets have feelings, and you can see it in their eyes when they are happy or sad… although with the dogs, you don’t have to look in their eyes, the tail gives it away.

We all love you, and we want you to know you are loved. You matter, your dreams matter, your feelings matter.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Tuesday morning, 21 March 2023, and spring hasn’t entirely sprung yet, but the wild onions in the yard are peaking up a little higher than anything else that’s green. Pretty soon here it will be time to get the mower, tractor, and gator ready to roll around the property and get some lawn maintenance done.

Yesterday was a good day, the first time I’ve delivered this course solo. I always like the networking side of things, I think primarily due to the math and the logic involved in configuring route tables and filtering rules. Today we’ll pick it back up talking about load balancers for HTTP/HTTPS traffic and other solutions that aren’t as tightly coupled to specific protocols.

It is Tuesday, so that means tacos.

The sting of March Madness got a little pain reliever yesterday. KU’s men’s team had an early exit from the tournament, and the KU women did not get into the field of 64 for the women’s tournament. The women did get to go to the other tournament, the NIT (“National Invitational Tournament” which predates the NCAA – although some people refer to it as the “Not Invited Tournament”). The Kansas women moved deeper into their tournament last night by knocking off Missouri in impressive fashion, 75-47. Looks like they play again on Thursday, so I’ll wish them luck in their next game versus Nebraska.

It’s about time to get the coffee beans ground and the water heated for the morning brew.

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

Peace y’all.

Good morning! It is 20 March 2023, and the US is still not on the metric system.

Yeah, I’m in a goofy mood this morning. Day four of being a grandparent is off to the kind of start you’d expect. I stepped on the scale and didn’t receive bad news, grabbed a couple glasses of water, and coffee will be on the schedule as soon as I get this post completed.

I’ll be back in my virtual classroom for a networking class this week, and a cloud solutions architecture class next week. After that, I’ll be shadowing a class that I will be delivering in the next couple of months.

OK, so my daughter and Evelyn are at home. Lisa is going back to the university this week following spring break. Dane goes back to classes following spring break. My aunt had her account spoofed on Facebook and is now receiving all kinds of “helpful” posts from complete strangers (secondary hack attempts). Puppies are on my lap and sitting beside me (Freya isn’t a “puppy” per se, but she weighs in at five pounds and is our “perma-puppy”).

My basketball team lost in the second round of the NCAA tournament. Not having our coach on the bench probably affected the team a little bit, and the fact that there were twenty more fouls called in our second round game than the average game was a tough pill to swallow. It just wasn’t our weekend, and not out year – I’ll live, as it was our year last year, and these days, teams don’t repeat as champions – they’re more likely to fall in the first weekend, as has happened seven straight years now.

There’s some political stuff going on, but I’m not going to go there today.

Time to get ready for class.

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

Peace y’all.

Good morning, and happy St. Patrck’s Day… it is 17 March 2023, it is my nephew Keegan’s birthday, and it is the day after.

Evelyn Kay was born yesterday at 7:40 PM. Mother and child are doing well. She weighed in at a healthy 9 lbs, 20 inches in length, and the right number of fingers and toes. Lisa and I arrived at the hospital, and the other grandmother was there to let us know that she had been born and was doing well. I had to reset my phone to reconnect to the carrier to get my missing text messages, so we weren’t as up to speed on current events.

We spent a little time with Gracie and Austin, held our first grandchild for a bit, and then let them all get some rest. On the way home, our thoughts turned to our new roles as grandparents, and the usual questions came up between us. Evelyn is our first grandchild, and it could be a while before there are any others. Our oldest daughter doesn’t plan on ever having kids, and our youngest is 21 years old and is focused on school, no girlfriend, and it could be another decade before the thought even crosses his mind. On the father’s side of the family, she has a bunch of cousins all ready to take her into their warm embrace… and I hope she has a lot of fun with them as she grows up.

Evelyn is going to grow up in a different world than her mother did. Lisa and I were in our early thirties when we met and married, Gracie isn’t even 25 years old yet. Our oldest daughter was born less than two weeks after the passing of Lisa’s mother, and her father passed away a few years later when Gracie was just a couple of years old. I remember getting that call – I was in Germany when I received the news. Evelyn has more than a couple sets of grandparents, and we’re all a short distance away. My parents have had a presence in our kids’ lives, but they’ve never been right around the corner. Lisa and I were either in Wichita or Lawrence, always a couple hours away from the nearest family members.

So many thoughts running through our minds this morning.

I also realized that I don’t have a great deal of green clothing in my wardrobe appropriate for St. Patrick’s Day.

Anyway, I have a talk to get ready for… wiped out, didn’t sleep well with so many things running through my mind.

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

Peace y’all.

Good morning! It is Thursday, 16 March 2023. It is 6 months until I turn 60… and the day Lisa and I will most likely become grandparents. Gracie was admitted to the hospital yesterday – later in the day than I thought (AM v PM mix-up on my part). Poor thing has been in the hospital overnight, and we haven’t received any text messages about the arrival quite yet.

Today will have some distractions. New baby on the way, the senior dog getting an abscessed tooth pulled, and KU versus Howard in the first NCAA tournament round. With Lucy getting a tooth pulled, we had to move some stuff around here, as she wasn’t supposed to have food and water after ten last night, so all of the dogs are walking around looking at us with expressions of longing … for their water bowls. Not to fear, pooches… Dane is taking Lucy to the vet shortly, and then we can get the water back to the regular spots.

Anticipating the arrival of Evelyn yesterday got me a bit anxious. Not sure how well I slept… I’ll probably figure that out this afternoon when I feel the need to crash hard.

I’m going to get this in the can and figure out my morning. Coffee needs to be made, and a low-carb bagel tossed in the toaster.

More later…

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

Peace y’all.

Good morning to any and all that have discovered my blog. It is 15 March 2023… and today could be the day. In history, this day has been referred to as the Ides of March, the day that Julius Caesar was stabbed repeatedly on the Senate floor. After today, at least in my house, it will be remembered as the birthday of my first grandchild. My youngest daughter is going into the hospital this morning to be induced.

Man, oh man.

I’ve got meetings that run until later this afternoon, then it will be time to run up to the hospital. It will likely be late enough in the day that I should bring the new dad some dinner.

I’ll get to work on my work stuff in a bit to keep my mind occupied. Time to break down the topic of the day and throw together a few slides on the topic of training to neurodivergent audiences… and what neurodivergent means, and all of the different ways it can manifest itself in a learner.

Or an instructor.

Today is going to present some challenges for a guy that needs to stay focused.

Yeah… and the butterflies take flight.

I’m going to get this in the can and see if I can lock in.

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

Peace y’all.

Good morning! It is Tuesday, 14 March 2023, and we’re starting off a little bit colder today. It’s been hovering around the 30s and 40s the last few days, and this morning it is a brisk 17 degrees Fahrenheit outside (-8 degrees Celsius).

I’ve got a few projects to keep me focused today. I’ll get back into my neurodivergence topics, as well as content relating to my networking course next week, and teammate feedback.

I readily admit that I’m in a creative block. I’m a bit focused on the practical aspects of my life, and not real open to creative stimuli. There’s stuff going on, certainly… heck, tomorrow my baby girl gets induced and I could be a grandfather by the end of the day.

Beware the Ides of March, right?

Presentations to work on, comments to write, books to read, stories to tell. That’s a lot to tackle for a Tuesday.

I better start with making a pot of coffee… first things first, right?

Breakfast is fluid… but I’m thinking a toasted English muffin with a circle of whipped egg (shape of a disk, good for muffins), and a big slice of Canadian bacon and American cheese to round out a good breakfast sandwich.

I think it’s about time to get busy. Those coffee beans aren’t going to grind themselves.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Monday, 13 March 2023. It has been a rather eventful weekend around Lawrence, Kansas, as well as other parts of the world.

I’m a basketball fan, as I have shared in the past. Kansas did not have a great weekend, as they fell in the Big 12 post-season tournament to Texas. Bill Self, the head coach, was still in the hospital following a cardiac emergency (ended up getting a couple of stents out in) and one of our best defenders – a starter- was out with back spasms. The end result was an uninspired loss to the Longhorns.

Kansas still pulled down a number one seed in the NCAA tournament, and is considered (?) the favorite in the West region. If Kansas can make it back to the Final Four, they’ll have to get their work done in Des Moines and Las Vegas.

In US news, two banks have failed since I last posted. It reminded me of events in 2008. After the financial crisis of 2008, a piece of legislation was enacted to prevent banks from overlending – that was called Dodd-Frank. The whole point of Dodd-Frank was protection and reducing risk. Good idea, right?

It’s a good idea if you can stick to it.

The CEO of Silicon Valley Bank is on the record as lobbying for a repeal of Dodd-Frank as early as 2015. Tenets of Dodd-Frank were effectively neutralized by legislation during the Trump administration – the Financial Choice Act of 2017, and the “Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act” of 2018. Looks like both were inappropriately named as a reduction in lenders reduced financial choice, and consumers were not protected by anything other than the FDIC.

Meanwhile, idiots out on the internet are blaming diversity and equality initiatives.

Say what?

True. There are people out there that are arguing that the problem with SVB was the fact they were implementing diversity and equality training – basically training that teaches people that all of your coworkers are human beings worthy of a basic level of respect for simply walking the face of the earth. It’s smoke and mirrors, as these are the same folks that will twist themselves into knots to rationalize GOP policy.

I’m on a prep week. Time to get prepping.

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

Peace y’all.

Happy Friday, folks! It is 10 March 2023, and looks like Evelyn will be making her debut next week. My youngest daughter will be induced as early as next Tuesday, so … Bubba becomes a grampa.

My training partner and I finished up our class yesterday. I am out of my virtual classroom until a week from next Monday. I’ll have a week to get dialed in for a class I haven’t taught in a while.

The Big 12 basketball tournaments are going on… KU women fell yesterday to TCU, so they get to wait until Sunday night to see if they’ll get an invitation to the Women’s NCAA Tournament – I think they will – and the KU men played yesterday afternoon, but as we were all working, we deferred watching until after dinner last night. Kansas played West Virginia and did a pretty good job keeping the truck out of the ditch, winning by 17. Kansas will play Iowa State this evening at 6 for the semi-finals.

One frightening aspect to the KU basketball team – the head coach, Bill Self, went to the emergency room the other day with something going on – early reports (wrong reports) had him having a heart attack, but that was later reported as being a false report. He won’t be with the team for the Big 12 Tournament while re recovers, but all of the fans are sending positive thoughts his way.

I’ve got some meetings starting in a couple of hours, and I need to get the trash out to the corner for pickup later this morning.

Time to get to it.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Thursday, 9 March 2023.

I am a bit tired. I went to the show last night… glad I double-checked the venue… I originally thought I would be heading into downtown Kansas City to attend a show at the Midland Theater, a pretty big venue, and then realized the show was at a much smaller venue, the Madrid Theater, south of downtown on Main Street in Kansas City, Missouri.

No regrets, really. The crowds would’ve been ridiculous downtown, and the bar manager at the Madrid was an old co-worker of mine that married another co-worker, so she and I had a chance to chat and catch up which is always nice.

Guitar enthusiasts from all across the area were in attendance, and striking up conversations about Eric Johnson and guitar playing came pretty easy to the Wednesday night crowd. After the first set, there were more than a couple of guys overheard saying something about wanting to get another Telecaster, myself included.

This morning I’ll be back in my virtual classroom for a couple more lessons, our class closing, and then open lab time for the balance of the day. The Big 12 basketball tournament will serve as background noise for the lab session. We’ll make a family event of it, watching the recorded game after Lisa gets home from work. Kansas hosts Wednesday-night-winner West Virginia, and Kansas should be heavily favored. It can be quit the challenge to play games on consecutive days, and Kansas will be fresh as they earned a bye in the first round thanks to their regular season record.

So, let’s get going with the day.

I hope the world is treating you better than deserve.

Peace y’all.