Good morning! It is A couple of minutes past 7:00 AM on a Wednesday morning, 2 November 2022.

The news is on in the background, coffee is brewing, and an improvised meatloaf-bacon-and-egg sandwich awaits me in a moment.

It’s about time for me to turn the news off. Just about everything I see makes me worry that the country is headed toward an authoritarian dictatorship, and it won’t be fun dealing with that sort of upheaval. 32% of the American population thinks that Joe Biden did not win the election… but once again, lots of theories, but no evidence.

There is no evidence.

There is no evidence.

Yes, I am repeating myself. And I’ll keep repeating myself, because the morons out there that can’t accept the truth keep pushing a narrative they like – but that narrative is wrong.

It just pisses me off daily how many people are that gullible. Some folks need to have firewalls built around their brains and set some rules to filter out the bullshit a little better.

Poke some holes in the box and let some air in while you’re at it.

I would love to see a law that made it illegal to tell lies during election campaigns. A lot of people are not aware that telling lies is permitted during election campaigns in the US. Yep, you can pretty much say anything you want about an opponent without any repercussions.

I better get going on my work day.

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

Peace y’all.

Good morning! It is Halloween! 31 October 2022. It’s also payday, so I’ll focus on the day’s good news.

Somewhere nearby there’s an accident or medical emergency going on. Lisa and I heard multiple emergency vehicle sirens outside. Not sure what is going on, it doesn’t appear to be on our little side road. All positive intentions to the parties involved, we hope nobody is hurt.

Today is a day for me to think about some stuff. I’ve got work to do, preparing for classes next week and the week after. I have a security class next week, and an administrative course the week after.

I probably ought to check with my manager on my vacation days I’m on the verge of losing. If I’m going to wrap up some of my vacation time, this is the week to do it, otherwise, it’ll be a patchwork of Monday and half-days on Friday afternoons to wrap up the year.

One of the nice things about living rural is that we don’t have to worry about passing out candy to trick-or-treaters. It’s generally pretty quiet on Halloween out here.

Pest control guy coming a little later this morning. This is the time of year when the bugs move from outside to inside, and an accidental arachnid might cause my wife’s blood pressure to spike.

I don’t want to post on social media where my links to my blog are surrounded by racially-motivated loons regurgitating the conspiracy theory du jour.

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

Peace y’all.

Happy Friday! It is 28 October 2022, and my wife returns home later today.

One thing I have noticed over the last couple of days/nights. Our dogs – Lucy, Freya, Odin, Rosy, and Lily – behave rather differently when my wife is away. I think they are a little depressed, and a little less energetic in Lisa’s absence. It does make sense, as she is the perpetual font of dog treats and I’m not quite as forthcoming with the snacks.

The last session with my Solutions Architecture class is today. I’ve got a poll to hand out to them, as well as a closing slide deck to wrap up the class and show them how to redeem their discount for the certification exam. We’ll have a little fun going through the content, and we’ll go through some practice test questions.

Not much going on for sports this weekend. The World Series starts for baseball this evening between the Astros and the Phillies. I do have a connection to the Phillies (my cousin is a scout for them), so go Philadelphia!

Lisa and I will have the house to ourselves tonight. Dane is getting together with his friends, so I think a quiet evening at home is in order. I might have to go snag a lottery ticket prior to the Saturday night drawing. Looks like it is getting up there, and it can be a little fun to imagine what winning that sort of jackpot might do for a person’s life. Basically, you end up trading one set of problems for another set of problems.

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

Peace y’all.

Good morning! It is Thursday, 27 October 2022.

Lisa is out of town, and let me tell you, the dogs missed her last night. Lots of activity and noise at night, random acts of barking, and I’ll likely stumble across a mess somewhere.

Not much going on, really. I’ve got a pot of coffee going, and I’ll grab a bagel here in a few to get some morning chow. Lily and Rosy are playing, and Freya is sitting beside me. Odin is around here somewhere moping. Lucy is in the sunroom hoping to be left alone by the others… she’s kind of in a grumpy mood this year.

I should put together a closing deck for my learners for tomorrow, and get the closing survey prepped – we’ll start asking folks for some participation on that side of it, the goal is as much participation as possible.

I got online with friends last night, talking about our regular Sunday and Wednesday night games. We knew we were going to be a couple of guys short, so we just focused on housekeeping, experience, and treasure distribution. The regular two-hour session was abbreviated, and that’s fine by me – after a long day I was ready to call it a night early.

No real news, just kind of looking forward to a catch-up day.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Wednesday morning, and I need to keep an eye on the pooches today – 26 October 2022.

This morning my wife left on a business trip, and the dogs are not happy with her absence. Odin has been a whimpering boy for the last hour or so since Lisa left. All five of the dogs are wandering about the house looking out the windows, sniffing at doors, pushing doors open, hoping to find the lady of the house.

Coffee is made… Lisa made a fresh pot and filled up her travel mug before hitting the road. I appreciate that, as I appreciate the coffee every morning. She makes it most of the time these days, as she tends to get up a few minutes before I do. Medium-roast Tanzanian peaberry. Good stuff.

My training partner surprised me a little yesterday. Normally I take the morning sessions and he takes the afternoon sessions, but he confessed that he preferred the Thursday morning topic to the Tuesday afternoon topic, and that got my attention, as the Tuesday afternoon networking topic is a favorite of mine, so we swapped. That front-loads my week a little bit, and my last major chat with the learners before the closing will be this morning.

I can adapt to that.

The other day at HyVee I found about a discount that I was unaware of. The Kansas City Chiefs scored 44 points on Sunday, so HyVee offered 44 cents off per gallon of gas if you bought 44 dollars worth of groceries.

Time for Bubba to buy some KC Strips to get that grocery bill up to 44 bucks!

Next time I fill up with gas, I’ll get a nice bottom line on that receipt.

Time for me to get a cup of that warm liquid stimulant and get the rest of the day rolling.

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

Peace y’all.

Good morning! It is Tuesday, 25 October 2022. I return to my virtual classroom in a bit to jump back into the topics of networking, migration, business continuity, and site recovery.

Flipped on the news first thing, and what do I see, but a story about a Supreme Court justice playing partisan politics. Shameful.

Time to break out Hannah Waddingham in her Game of Thrones garb, just to have her parade Clarence Thomas down the main drag, ringing a bell, and shouting, “Shame!” every few steps.

Kids were killed at a high school in St. Louis. No guns were harmed during the event…

Yeah, that might have been a bit insensitive, but some days the guns just sort of piss me off.

It rained yesterday, and we’re thankful for that. I mentioned the dust cloud that followed me around while I mowed on Saturday, and this will help keep that under control, and get some moisture in the ground for the trees. I still have some mowing to do around the property, trying to knock down some of the native grasses before we get into winter.

Tuesday… and my thoughts turn to tacos…

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

Peace y’all.

Good morning! It is 24 October 2022, one week away from Halloween.

We’re into the 4th quarter here, 3 weeks in, and I have yet to make my Flaviar 4th quarter selections, so I should take a look at the subscription and figure out what I want to get in my order.

We had a weekend around here. I worked on some late-season mowing, kicking up a dust cloud the entire time. That’s when I notice how dry it has been around here.

Watched some sports this weekend. Kansas went down by two touchdowns early against Baylor, but made a contest of it, threatening late, but ended up losing their third in a row. Kansas City started off the same way, going down 10-0 to the 49ers, but scrapping back to win 44-23.

I’m back in my virtual classroom tomorrow, prep day today, and I’m going to work on some quizzes for my learners. I’m responsible for the mornings, and my training partner takes care of the afternoons.

I’m watching a news story about the state of elementary education for science and math. People are going, “Why are the math scores so bad? Why are the science scores so bad?” all the while approving cuts to education budgets. It amazes me that people can’t make the connection. Some politicians seem to want to educate our kids, other politicians want to stupid population incapable of critical thinking.

Time to think about the day ahead.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Friday morning, 21 October 2022, and I need to get the garbage out to the corner for pickup. After that, it’ll be time to settle in for my routine, with a low-carb bagel and cream cheese plus a large hot cup of medium roast Tanzanian peaberry coffee.

I hope you are well… Friday only comes once a week.

I look forward to it with a little more zeal these days. Dane usually gets together with his friends for dinner and gaming on Friday nights, so Lisa and I have the house to ourselves. Last Friday we went out for dinner and had a nice time getting out of the house. I’m thinking tonight we’ll stick around our place, but I’m thinking of either making dinner here at home or making a plan with a local restaurant we haven’t been to in a while, then presenting dinner here at home before settling in for a relaxing Friday night.

All of the political advertisements arriving in the mail, showing up on TV, appearing in the newspapers… I like the political season other countries have – 6 weeks, all the ads get out, all of the debates are aired, and then you vote. Our political cycle seems neverending and infinitely expensive, pricing any underfunded candidates out of the race. It’s a pretty disgusting process, to be honest with you.

I need to eliminate that expression from my vocabulary… saying “…to be honest with you” implies that there are other times that someone is not being honest.

Yeah, I think I’ll try to be honest with you all of the time. Sometimes I might be a little more blunt or frank, so that’s what I ought to stick to.

I’m going to go focus on the day.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Thursday morning, 20 October 2022. I’ve got a talk on authorization and monitoring in a couple of hours, and I have a little time yet to go over some of the video content that is out there.

One thing I can say, these Blended Learning deliveries can give a person the experience that the month is flying by very fast. Hard to believe we’re into the third week, and that is coming to a close following my training partner’s delivery this afternoon and a brief office hours session tomorrow morning.

I think today is a good day for a bagel. I also think cutting up and frying some ham might be a good idea, and then adding that to the leftover salad from last evening’s dinner.

Dogs are flying about the living room this morning, the beginnings of an energetic day, I suppose. I’ll give ’em credit for having more energy than me.

Lisa got up before I did and made coffee for us. I am so very thankful that she is my partner going through this thing called life. I should arrange for a nice dinner for us tomorrow night. .

I’m going to go look over my other stuff.

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

Peace y’all.

Good morning… at least I think it’s morning. Sun hasn’t popped over the horizon yet, but I’m used to that. It is 19 October 2022, a Wednesday morning.

In a little bit, I’ll return to my virtual classroom to present a case study. In the meantime, I’ll write, grab a couple of cups of coffee, and have a little breakfast.

Yesterday I wrote about the garbage I witness in the “comments” section of news articles, but there is something else that ought to be mentioned. It amazes me how people can state bald-faced lies with such impunity. It has gone on forever, but during the political season, it gets so much worse.

This morning I scanned through an article that involved a journalist found with classified information, and then the comments. Wow. It seems like a very aggressive group of posters with an obvious agenda was repeating the same block of old disproven falsehoods over and over again, reinforcing positions most often associated with the white nationalist movement.

If white nationalists take over control of the United States, I fear for free-thinkers around the world. Those folks will do anything to maintain their power base, as they have already proven. We can’t let it happen.

We just need to take note of it and speak up about it when we see it.

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

Peace y’all.