Good morning. It is the 8th day of November 2022. It is election day in the United States, and I’m already tired of this day.

Seriously.

Elections suck all the air out of the room. The money spent on elections could feed the hungry and house the homeless. There are enough lies told (legally) to keep the country’s priests in confessionals for decades.

Just saw a graphic talking about the amount of money billionaires are spending on candidates, and it’s absolutely hideous, primarily because billionaires don’t want their taxes to go up. They’re ok with everybody else getting the bill, but they don’t like it when they are asked to pay as much as the working folks of this country.

That’s not a joke. That’s not a misleading statement. This country does some interesting things with taxes – the income tax that folks pay on their wages can vary from income class to income class, but in the case of my wife and I, we’re around 30% on federal income tax. Billionaires earn their $$$ primarily through investment income that is taxed at a rate of about 8%.

Billionaires want to pay less… and they don’t really give a rat’s ass about anybody other than themselves.

I probably ought to turn the TV off for the rest of the day. Or maybe the year.

I probably ought to go back to my sunroom and focus on things I can control.

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

Peace y’all.

Good morning! It is 7 November 2022, the first Monday of this eleventh month of 2022. It is hard to believe that 2023 is just around the corner – that year I will turn 60.

I stayed up a little late last night watching Sunday Night Football – the Kansas City Chiefs hosted the Tennessee Titans and somehow pulled out a win in overtime. Most of the night, I was not in a great mood as my favorite NFL football team struggled against an outstanding Tennessee defense. It didn’t help that our kicker missed a “point after touchdown” and a field goal, but he got it together to hit the game-winner in overtime.

I’m back in my virtual classroom today, teaching an advanced role-based course on cloud security. My training partner is in the Mountain Time zone, but our class is scheduled for Eastern Time, so I told him that I’ll come in early to shoulder the load first thing – once again, I’m everybody’s cup of coffee.

Tonight, some more good sports action as the University of Kansas hosts the University of Nebraska – Omaha to begin the college basketball season. The Jayhawks had an exhibition game against Pittsburg State last Thursday night, but tonight counts in the record books.

It’s about time for me to get busy with the activity of the day.

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

Peace y’all.

Woot! I like round numbers.

Today is Saturday, 5 November 2022. I missed yesterday when I was feeling under the weather most of the day – although I will admit that despite my discomfort, I found a way to make it a pretty productive day… I just didn’t write my blog.

So here I am again, returning to my role as an unpaid content developer for Twitter. Yeah, I smiled and laughed a little when I wrote that.

No, I don’t write for Twitter. I write for me, and I share that I’ve posted something new on Twitter, and if it’s something I really want to draw attention to, I’ll post it on Facebook.

It’s a brisk Saturday morning here. We’re getting some stuff done before we settle in to watch some college football later. I have a feeling I’m about to be asked to take some empty boxes out to the trash (which I will do with no additional commentary).

This is still my favorite time of year. I love the crispness in the air, and the smell of the outdoors after a bit of rainfall dampens the leaves on the ground. I know in some places, getting all of the leaves raked up is a high priority. Not at this house – it’s all biodegradable, so let nature take its course. I’m not real big on turning my yard into the front lawn of a country club with the perfectly manicured lawn and curated artisanal plant selections. I moved out here to get away from that sort of attitude. I mow… that’s good enough.

OK… time to get to the other tasks of the day.

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

Peace y’all.

Good morning! It is 3 November 2022, a beautiful Thursday morning, with a sunrise breaking across the horizon with slate blues, sharp orange-pink highlights, and just enough purple to spark the imagination.

I voted yesterday. If you are an American citizen, I would encourage you to vote. Just one to a customer, thank you.

I like the word “encourage”. I am not an “influencer”, and I have no ambition to be so. There’s something about that word, “influence” that hits me at the wrong angle. I looked up a definition, “the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something, or the effect itself”.

I don’t want to effect people other than make them think. I often ponder the questions we ask ourselves prior to making a decision. Some decisions we put a lot of effort into, such as decisions on purchasing a car or house, what wine to have with dinner, or that dreadful array of ice cream options at Sylas and Maddy’s (think Baskin-Robbins, but locally owned). Other decisions don’t require as much effort, or we sidestep the effort altogether – such as the decision to have another cocktail… too often I don’t put in the requisite effort and end up rolling out of bed rather than popping right up the morning after.

I am not a fan of people that put labels on themselves, so even if I did demonstrate the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone, I’m not sure I would welcome the label “influencer”. I know I have been one – that’s what parents do – but again, I don’t label myself.

We tend to get stuck on labels, and we do a pretty poor job being a little more creative with the labels we assign. Look up synonyms for “influence” and you see some options that mean the same thing but have just a slightly different angle of attack – words like, “form”, “shape”, “control”, and “govern”. I can tell you straight out that I would never want to be called a “controller”, and I have no intention of running for governor.

I like the word “encourage”. Helping people to work up a little gumption to tackle a challenge is a good thing. It’s so much more positive, and look at the synonyms – “inspire”, “motivate”, “invigorate”, “revitalize”. You can get a sense of positivity from words such as these.

That’s what I’m talking about!

I hope you can encourage others today. I’ll try to walk that road myself.

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

Peace y’all.

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.