Hello again. Today is Saturday, June 25, 2022. It is a warm, humid day following a few days of steady rain and temperatures. I have some mowing to do, but I’m not looking forward to getting on the mower. I better get my water supply ready for a long, hot hour in the seat.

I have a good book to listen to…

And I realize that I am ducking the 800 lb elephant in the room.

Yesterday a decision was handed down by the US Supreme Court. It is a bad decision. Turning a woman’s choice about her personal health care over to a bunch of tribal religious zealots is a mistake.

It may very well come back to bite them all in the ass.

Right now large voting blocs of women are being motivated and mobilized like the US hasn’t seen since the days of the suffragettes. Women are pissed, and like-minded men are going to stand right alongside them ./

I am one of them.

I have two daughters of childbearing age. I will not have any man, elected or otherwise take their rights from them.

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

Peace y’all.

Good morning! It is Friday… and Friday is good. This is June 24, 2022, and my name is Bob.

Yesterday was an interesting day. Two of Kansas’ basketball players were drafted in the first round of the NBA draft. The House Select Committee investigating the January 6th insurrection had a very interesting day, as there was testimony that Trump pressured the Department of Justice to overturn an election without a shred of evidence in support of his allegations of cheating in any state.

Today I’ll wrap up my cloud solutions architecture class. I hope to be done talking by 2:00 this afternoon, but considering the content, I think 3:00 is more likely. I’ve got a good bunch of learners, some good comments kicking through the chat, but I do sometimes wish they were a little more engaged. Sometimes, with remote classes, you kind of get a feeling that folks just turn on the meeting, leave it sitting in the background like a yacht rock radio station, and go about the rest of their day.

The rain has been pretty steady this week. I hope it dries out a bit so I can get some mowing done this weekend. It’s a little mower weekend, taking my little John Deere riding lawn mower around the front yard and the back. Next weekend I’ll break out the tractor and get a little more aggressive around my property with the brush cutter.

That’s all I’ve got really. Time to work on the rest of it.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Thursday morning, June 23, and I am starting my day with a glass of water while the coffee brews. I am halfway through my solutions architecture class for the week, and next week I get to do a repeat of the same material. I’m glad it’s a repeat, as I have a feeling that I’m going to have to spend some time on the mower this weekend. The rain the other day has kicked off a little growth spurt in our local flora.

Saw some news this morning from NASA Climate Change, a government-sponsored group within NASA that, quite obviously, monitors our climate trends. May 2022 was the 6th hottest May on record. That might seem like a good thing at first blush, but when you take a look at the trend over time, it isn’t good news. The site can be found here.

Part of my interest in checking the site was a meme – a little “haha” moment. An old friend posted the graphic pointing out that if the current grid can’t support our electrical needs now, how can will it handle a bunch of electric cars bring plugged in to recharge their batteries.

There are several important points that the meme addresses, sidesteps, and fails to consider.

I immediately pointed out that most people would be charging their cars at night, when the draw on the grid is substantially less due to changes in temperature overnight. I thought that was a valid point, but of course I got a little pushback from a relative of that old friend, who I have argued with before (he’s an adamant Trump supporter that refuses to get vaccinated).

I was also thinking about the heat, and rising temperatures, and the CO2 parts per million. I thought the red line was about 300, and we reached that almost 20 years ago… we’re now at 421. You think your air conditioning is running hot now? LOL.

We’re backing down on our fossil fuel use these days. Lisa is the only family member that has to drive to work with any regularity, and she drives a hybrid. I go into town once or twice a week. Part of the problem we have with gas prices is based in market forces – demand exceeds supply – therefore, driving less helps. I don’t think a gas tax holiday will help the supply portion of the equation, in fact, it might exacerbate it. If people get a break on gas taxes and gas prices per gallon go down, a bunch of people are going to go out and fill their tanks… and that will affect supply.

That’s enough for now.

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

Peace y’all.

This is Wednesday, June 22, 2022. It has been storming most of the night with some power outages. I went out last night to watch the fireworks, as lightning flashed and webbed behind the ominous clouds that moved in from the west. The rain was still coming down this morning when it was time for the dogs to go outside to tend to their morning business.

Odin looked up at me with an expression that I interpreted as “Nope” in his native Goliath Morkie language.

I guess I should expect to find a mess somewhere in the house later this morning.

I’ll start the second day of my architecture class here in a couple of hours. Yesterday was a pretty good day, as we worked through the intro content and the first couple of modules. It had slipped my mind how long that compute design module can be. This morning we’ll review that case study, review, then jump right into storage design.

I’m watching the morning news and the discussion is on the January 6th House Committee. Yesterday was not a good day for the former president. I hope he was a few more days like that. The more candid the testimony by the witnesses, the more it’s obvious that January 6th was an attempted coup.

I never liked Trump. You can go back through my blog entries from earlier years to fully grasp my loathing of that person. He was wrong in 2016, and he sure as hell is wrong in 2022.

The karma train has pulled out of the station and looks like she’s rolling downhill, and from the looks of the sparks, there’s no brakes.

It’s about time for me to focus on the workday ahead.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Tuesday morning, June 21, 2022. I return to the classroom today – virtual classroom – to teach an architecture class. It’s been a couple of months since I’ve taught this class, so I spend some time the last few days doing some review. I’m pretty comfortable with the content, and it’s a smaller class, so I’m confident that we’ll have a positive experience.

Of course, the moment I type that, I’ve probably aroused the ire of the Gods of Fate, and I’ll get “that one guy” in class.

Every technical trainer has had an experience with “that one guy”. Sometimes that one guy is always that one guy, and other times it can be more reminiscent of the Star Trek (Original Series) episode, “Wolf in the Fold”, where a dark entity jumps from one unsuspecting human to the other, then commits heinous crimes.

It doesn’t happen to me that much these days. I guess I’ve reached a point in my career that I don’t come across that one guy as often. My interactions with learners are almost always positive, primarily due to the training situation. Generally, I get the best students these days, and not the folks that are under a lot of pressure to pass an exam, or work their way into a position to jump from one employer to the other.

Yesterday, we celebrated Dane’s birthday, and it became a bit of a book fair. I think there were 9 or 10 books in the pile by the time we started birthday dessert – not cake this year, but a strawberry-rhubarb crumble.

That’s enough to get me started on the day.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Monday morning, and I’ve got a couple of things going on this 20th day of June. First, and most importantly, today is my son’s 21st birthday, and it is a partial prep/partial day off for me. In some parts of the country, it is a full national holiday, as we celebrate Juneteenth, the day we recognize the protracted announcement of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. The Emancipation Proclamation was signed on September 22, 1862, but word did not reach enslaved Americans in Texas until June 19, 1865.

Texas has a tendency to take their sweet time recognizing some folk’s rights.

Apparently, the Texas GOP (Republican) party has established their party platform for the midterms, and it’s about as ass-backwards as you might expect.

First, they reject the election of Joe Biden as President of the United States. They have no evidence to support this position, no court cases, they merely desire it to be the truth, so they are believing it into existence, and it will be the truth just as soon as Tinkerbell sprinkles fairy dust on me so I can fly.

Second, the party also adopted the policy that “homosexuality is an abnormal lifestyle choice”. Once again, more backward-assery. I know enough from my gay friends and family to recognize is normal and not a choice. This type of hatred and prejudice is typical of the toxic masculinity I’ve witnessed on the far right. Being gay is not a choice. A choice would be something along the lines of, “Should I stay home and watch CSPAN, or should I dress up like in riot gear and try to overturn an election?”.

Obviously, many made the wrong choice on January 6th, 2021.

They’ve also established that all gun control legislation is in violation of the second amendment. This just a few scant weeks following the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas. I guess prior rulings by the Supreme Court don’t have traction in Texas.

There are other issues that eliminate other’s rights as well. Reproductive rights are under assault, trying to make sure that men unable to control their penises can control every woman’s uterus instead.

I’m glad I don’t live in Texas.

To be frank, Texans are probably glad I don’t live there either.

I’m guessing there’s a fair number of Kansans that wished I didn’t live in Kansas.

There are probably some jackhammer macho men that wished I didn’t live at all.

Yay, me.

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

Peace y’all.

Good morning! It is Sunday, June 19, 2022, and today is Fathers’ Day in the US. It’s going to be a good one, and it’s going o to be a hot one.

My wife and kids are going to spoil me today, and I’ll respectfully relish every moment. Lisa got up early and got some things done around the house, including some cleanup in the living room in anticipation of the new television arriving this morning (yeah, I’m a little excited about that… and I get to hear my wife say something like, “Bob, that thing is huge!” for the first time in my life). The delivery crew always calls before they deliver, so we’ll have a few minutes to get the dogs out in the backyard… but we might have to put Rosy and Lily in their kennel. Lily has figured out how to get out of the backyard, either by squirming through a hole in the fence or a hole under the deck.

I haven’t made coffee yet this morning… I should do something about that.

Lisa is planning a breakfast of corned beef hash and eggs, a longtime favorite. Lunch will be leftovers from last night – takeout from Jade Garden, and tonight, the grand finale of the day, filet mignon, potatoes, and bacon-wrapped asparagus on the grill.

I think the guys are getting together this afternoon for a little gaming, so I’ll jump in with them for a bit as well.

I’ll probably close out the day with a trip to the pool before bedtime. Sometimes it’s nice to go out and just float under a star-filled sky.

Tomorrow combines a couple of noteworthy dates – it’s a federal holiday with Juneteenth celebrations, and it is also the 21st birthday of my youngest, my son Dane. I think taking the afternoon off might be called for, and I’ve got the time off in the bank.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Saturday morning, the day before Fathers’ Day, June 18 2022. I just finished a wonderful breakfast my spouse prepared, French toast and bacon, with a couple of cups of black coffee.

I am preparing for a day out in the yard for as long as I can stand it.

It’s 9:36 AM in the morning, and we expect the temperature to reach the high 90’s, but I’m guessing we’ll hit triple digits again…38 degrees for my friends that generally work with Celsius rather than Fahrenheit.

311 degrees for those that prefer Kelvin.

I’ve got trimming to do around the property, around the fence line. I probably ought to get a little mowing done there in the dog patch as well. Lisa already went out to the orchard to water our new fruit trees, and she did some spraying for pests (read “ticks”) around the pool and raised flower beds as well.

Dane and I will get some things squared away here in the living room in anticipation of arrival of the new television set tomorrow. Both Lisa and Dane have mentioned how quiet it has been without the television set running constantly. I even looked up from my laptop once to nod at them.

I will admit that the absence of the living room tv has been manageable. Lisa and I have spent more time out in the pool this week, and I’m better for it. I also worked with my daughter’s dog, Ruthie, to make sure she can get in and back out of the pool on her own. She’s half standard poodle, so she has a bit of a water affinity. Last thing I want to see is a drowned pet in the pool.

I could talk about stuff in the news, but just getting started on that will just get me depressed.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Friday morning, and I’m pounding out a blog entry before my meetings start. This is the 17th day of June 2022.

I wrapped up my internal training yesterday, and I feel revived by the experience. One aspect of my career that I have always embraced is the occasion to recharge the batteries and polish the furniture. I am a pretty experienced technical trainer, going back to my first days of training back in 1993. I’ve had my ups and downs and certainly have had my fair share of self-doubt and bouts of imposter syndrome – yeah, I still get those. A week like the past one can be very fortifying.

The trainers running this course were complimentary – two voices, two different approaches to the content. One more therapist, one more coach. I like experiences such as this with a mix of perspectives and differing experiences.

Today is a meeting day, starting shortly. Team meetings, chats with folks I’m assisting, and some prep work to get my ducks in a row for my architecture class next week.

I’ll head into town later to grab a few things for Sunday, Fathers’ Day, and my son’s birthday on Monday. Plenty of other things to address around here, everything from sweeping and mopping to mowing and trimming.

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

Peace y’all.

Hey folks! It’s Thursday morning, June 16, 2022. Life is pretty good, a little rain fell last night, the pool is in good shape, the water is warm, and the coffee is done brewing.

Today is my last day of internal training. I’ll admit that I didn’t know what to expect with this sort of training, “advanced presentation skills”, but I must admit, it was definitely beneficial and an eye-opener about things I do when I present, as well as some insight into things I can do a little better. After having been a professional technical trainer since 1993, I have likely become a little overconfident in my abilities without taking adequate time for self-analysis.

I’m going to be a better trainer thanks to this experience.

The world is still a sad place. Russia is still hurting people to placate Putin’s ego. Fortunately, it looks like ol’ Vlad is not in the best of health. Lots of rumors floating around about his state of being, both mental and physical. I think (hope?) that new leadership would be best for the Russian and Ukrainian people, and how that transition happens is in the hands of others. Read online yesterday that the 50th Russian colonel has fallen victim to that conflict. I don’t have much pity for him.

There’s always political stuff going on. The comments section is filled with nonsense from troll farms and gullible rubes. I do my best to keep scrolling. That said, the January 6th House Committee needs to get on the ball. If this whole mess continues after the November election cycle, it will all get swept under the rug by the Republicans as swiftly as possible.

Time for me to get on with my day.

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

Peace y’all.