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.

It is Wednesday, 8 March 2023. The first story that pops up on the news is a sad one… four people in Mexico for a cosmetic surgery procedure were kidnapped by a drug cartel, and two were killed when they realized they had the wrong folks… a case of mistaken identity.

I think I’ll be avoiding cosmetic surgery in Mexico for the foreseeable future.

Or just about anything in Mexico.

I’ve got a couple of modules to cover today in class, focusing on cloud storage and application services. After I get that wrapped up, it’s off to downtown Kansas City for a show. I haven’t been to a show in years at this point, so this will be an experience. One of my favorite guitar players, Eric Johnson, is playing at the Midland Theater tonight. In the past, I’ve often gone to these shows with another friend, but he can’t go tonight. I’ve left a text for my oldest daughter to see if she’s interested, but if she can’t go (that’s the likely reality), I might be fishing around for a friend interested in going.

The news has moved on to another story about a conservative news pundit that is trying to get away with a little gaslighting regarding the January 6 insurrection. There is an ongoing lawsuit by Dominion Voting against Fox News, and some of the released depositions are rather alarming. I’d guess at this point Rupert Murdock and Fox News will be scrambling for a settlement, because the facts lead to one conclusion: Fox messed up. This is a one-point-something billion-dollar lawsuit, and the news channel doesn’t want this to go before a jury… they would lose bigtime.

OK, time for me to start settling in for the day.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Tuesday morning, 7 march 2023. Right now Odin is pawing away at some box over by the dining room table. The little guy has a knack for finding the box from the pet supply company that has his treats. This box isn’t from Chewy, but Lisa thinks it might be an order from another vendor that contains beef jerky. Odin has a powerful nose.

The first day of class went pretty well, but my training partner and I had an interesting interaction with a student. She let us know that my delivery style didn’t give her the structure that she needed in a learning environment. I found that exceptionally interesting considering some of the topics that have captured my interest of late. My training partner was following the posted curriculum pretty closely, while I was introducing topics and then diving into demonstrations, and apparently, I wasn’t providing some needed context. We’ll get that nailed down today and do our best to accommodate her learning style.

I keep looking at the date thinking that today is someone’s birthday. I’ll slide over to Facebook in a few to get barraged with posts over there, and I’ll take a look. There’s just something about March 7 that sticks in my head.

Tomorrow night I’ll be heading out to see a show for the first time in years. We’ll see how that goes.

Time for me to get this in the can and get going on the tasks of the day. Tonight – tacos!

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

Peace y’all.

It is Monday, 6 March 2023. Lisa and I are up and after it, and I’m wondering when daylight savings time ends this year… checking…we’ve got another week or so before the “spring forward” event.

I need to exercise a little discipline. I have some weaknesses… and apparently, I have been indulging them this past weekend. It is amazing how quickly I can add five pounds when I slip off my meal plan. Time to get back to eight glasses of water per day and no carbs, or a lot fewer carbs.

I’m back in the virtual classroom today, another week of cloud administration, the same as the course I delivered last week. I’ll be covering a few different modules than I did last week, as I am co-delivering with a different trainer. This course is one that I’m pretty comfortable with, so I can float between modules pretty easily.

Politics is happening, and the farms are spinning their comments on social media. There are forces in the US and abroad that want certain people in the halls of power in order to push their agenda. That agenda is pretty dark in the eyes of people that support diversity, equality, and inclusion. This past weekend, the CPAC conference went on (conservative/reactionary), and some of the stuff that came out of that group is quite alarming. One clown proposed the eradication of all transgender people… not therapies, not treatments, not discussions, the complete elimination of an entire sector of our population. It wasn’t shortly after that someone posted a link to a story about how the Nazi German government under Adolf Hitler went after and wiped out a transgender/transvestite clinic in keeping with their pursuit of some mythical “purity”.

These days the same thing is going on. Some ideologies don’t do inclusion. They don’t do equality. They require a target for their hatred, and they generally go after populations that are incapable of defending themselves. The transgender population is a target for right-wing hatred. The transvestite population is a target for right-wing hatred.

It’s already started. Tennessee has passed a law banning drag shows, with a punishment of up to 6 months in jail. Multiple states are implementing a ban on gender-affirming care.

If you want to confuse a right-winger, ask them the definition of “woke”. Then ask them about their medical credentials to diagnose gender dysphoria.

Time to get some things going on the day.

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

Peace y’all.

Good morning! It is a rainy Friday morning on this 3rd day of March 2023.

I get to wade out into the raid to get the trash cans out to the corner on trash pickup day. That’s always fun.

My class is over for the week. I have a couple of meetings later today, but other than that, I’ll have a little bit slower day. I worked on a day off last week, so I’ll be “flexing” a bit today, taking about half the day to focus on stuff that I would’ve dealt with on President’s Day.

Dane is getting together with friends this evening, and Lisa has a working dinner with another professor, so tonight I get the rare opportunity to hunt and gather for one on a Friday night during Lent… which means there will be sushi on the menu. I’ll have to take a closer look at the sushi landscape here in Lawrence and make appropriate plans. Lisa has never been a big fan of sushi like Dane and I have been, but she has on occasion given it a try, so long as there was no raw fish. If there’s a roll in front of my wife, it’s most likely loaded with tempura shrimp. The only absolute for me is the absence of sea urchin… that is a texture I can’t deal with.

Plenty of stuff going on in the news, but I’m not going to dwell on that. Anybody can look up “this day in the news” on the internet to see what’s happening in Ukraine, South Carolina, and the Capitol.

I’m going to get this in the can and get on with my day. There is a coffee maker that requires my attention. I think a low-carb bagel and onion & chive cream cheese will align with the current direction of my taste buds.

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

Peace y’all.

Good morning! It is 2 March 2023.

Right now I’ve got the news on, and the topic is the poisoning of schoolgirls in Iran. These girls are being attacked for the dire sin of seeking an education in a backward country that doesn’t see the value of women beyond their ability to reproduce.

People sometimes wonder why I view certain religious institutions negatively – here you go. Religion does a great job of putting men at the center of the universe. Religion even strips women of their most sacred power – here’s an example. In the Book of Genesis, God creates Adam in his own image – personally, I think man created God in his own image – but the creation of woman – the “birth” of woman, if you will – was from Adam’s rib. Despite the observed truth that women are responsible for bringing new life into the world, the jokers that wrote Genesis decided somewhere along the way that women didn’t deserve that credit, and that woman was created from man with no uterus involved.

People wonder why I question religious tenets – well, there you go.

Today I wrap up my four-day class with my training partner. I’m in Kansas, she’s in New York City, and the class has been running on eastern time, so I’ll start a little early, but be wrapped up by 4 PM my time. Three days to decompress, then right back at it again next week with the same material, but a central time shift.

I’ll have a prep week the week of March 13 with no classroom responsibilities. A good time to focus on some peripheral projects.

Now reading that some clown named Muffley tried to sneak a bomb onto a plane. I’m kind of laughing at the name… if I recall correctly, the name of the US President in Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove” was named Merkin Muffley. Ironic, I suppose.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Wednesday morning, and the first day of March. 1 March 2023.

Last night the University of Kansas guaranteed themselves at least a portion of the Big 12 Basketball Championship – there will be a tournament next week for the post-season championship – and could win it outright when they play Texas at Texas next Saturday. If Texas wins, it’s a split – and I have a feeling the Texas Longhorns will be coming at the Jayhawks with a full head of steam. Texas plays at TCU tonight… if Texas loses, then it’s a done deal anyway.

As I have shared, I spend a little time in the comments sections of some stories that appear in my feed. One of the things that I have often been curious about is whether or not troll farms spin up fake accounts to foment chaos by making irresponsible, uneducated, and inflammatory comments. Sometimes I read the comments and I have to ask myself, “Are people really this ignorant? Are people really this racist?”, and I do ponder the idea that there are chaos agents in the world that really want to see America fall – they want to see infighting to the point of civil war in this country – they want to see us at each other’s throats.

When I see a profile picture, I will sometimes do a “right-mouse click” on the photo to pull up the shortcut menu and select “Find On Web”. This is a little something I do just to see if their profile pic is a stock photo, or some other shut publicly accessible. Earlier this week I did just that and the profile pic was linked to a story about a man from eastern Europe that had died.

Sometimes the devil is in the details. I’m not going to stand here and state as a fact that just because somebody used a picture of an eastern European man it has to be a troll farm, but when there is no other obvious reason why that photo was used, it does give rise to more questions.

Keep asking questions.

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

Peace y’all.