It is Friday morning! Happy Friday, everybody! (OK, when Wayne sees this, it will likely be Saturday for him, time zones and date lines being what they are). 9 September 2022.

Yesterday was kind of a bummer for fans of the British monarchy, as the 96-year-old leader of the British royal family passed, Queen Elizabeth II.

I pass along my respects to her family and those that cared about her the most. She was the only British monarch that most people alive today have ever known.

I have done a little research on Ancestry about my family history, and I was able to trace a branch or two of the family back to England. It has a significant margin for error, but if you go back far enough, there are some significant folks that pop up in the family tree, including ties to King John, born in 1166, and died in 1216.

That and 6 bucks will get me a cup of coffee at Starbucks, right?

I’ve come to the conclusion that most people alive today are descended from some “royalty”, whatever that means. If you stop and consider who had access to food, clean water, and shelter, ultimately most of the survivors had some sort of strain of nobility, whether through traditional marriage and family, or through affairs, trysts, and the all-to-common rape back in that time.

Yeah, I know if you go back far enough, you’ll come across some rapists. I’m not that naive.

The Plantagenets demand a recount!

Nah… not sure I’d ever want to be the focus of all that attention all the time.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Thursday morning, 8 September 2022. I’m slow rolling up on my day, dogs (most of ’em anyway) are outside. I’m thinking about breakfast, at this point focused on something involving eggs, another protein, and cheese.

That other protein is the sticking point – I have bacon, sausage, and ham… and that makes for a tough choice. I like all three, and of course, you can never go wrong with bacon… but I do have all of the ingredients for a good Denver omelet.

I guess I’ll just have to buckle down and make a decision.

I think we have my daughter squared away. The insurance agent arranged for a rental car for her, but I think she’s delaying while they complete the road construction in from of her rental home. Her car got hit while parked on the street, and she’s concerned about a rental car getting hit as well.

I’ll get back focused on my recertification today, as well as putting together an agenda for a team meeting I called earlier this week.

This week is going by very fast… I guess that’s likely to happen when you chop the normal workday Monday for a federal holiday.

Time to get focused.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Wednesday morning, the 7th day of September, 2022.

I woke up this morning with the phone. My oldest child had a problem. Due to some construction, she was not able to park her car in her driveway as she usually does, so she had to park on the street.

You can probably guess what happened next.

Sometime in the night, some jackhammer hit her car, tore up the driver’s side, and ran off. Now she’s upset, no car, and has had to reach out to file a police report and an insurance claim.

It’s not a great way to start off the day.

I helped her with the insurance stuff, and I forwarded the info she needs about getting a rental car. I worry about her, always will, and when stuff like this happens it’s always a bit of an anxiety-inducing violation. I can’t blame her for being upset.

She’ll either get her rental car today, or either Dane or I will head over to her workplace to give her a ride home later today.

In the meantime, I’m focused on work stuff. Plenty to do here.

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

Peace y’all.

Good morning, folks! It is Tuesday, 6 September 2022, and I have to run to the computer store later to buy a new UPS. Looks like one of my smaller UPSs has given up the ghost, so later this morning, I’ll be running to the computer store and will hopefully avoid any unnecessary impulse purchases, and history has demonstrated that I’m not always too good at that…

… Hey, that’s shiney!

I go into a computer store and I turn into Doug the Dog from the Pixar movie, “Up!”.

“Squirrel!”

I was pondering a conversation I had with a dear friend when we first met. We were talking about political ideology, and this person admitted to me that they were a “Star Trek Socialist”.

I’ll be the first person to admit that the word “socialist” hasn’t always hit me right, but in our society, we have a lot more social programs and subsections in our society that are very close to socialist in their structure and distribution of resources. Some rural communities go out of their way to check on each other and make sure that folks have enough to survive. That starts out small, but also goes to the very top with the farm subsidies that the federal government distributes. We have Medicare and Medicaid programs for the elderly and poor. Even big energy companies receive a hefty chunk of funds to keep fuel prices down.

I sometimes think that the words “socialist” and “socialism” have been demonized by some folks for pure ideological reasons. The concept of sharing is generally cast aside by those that “have” and don’t want to share with the “have nots”. Oh, they’re generally fine with selling to the “have nots”… but that requires having goods or funds to exchange.

Right now, in America, the “haves” really don’t give a rat’s ass about the “have nots”.

Maybe I should distinguish that there are more than one kind of “haves”. There’s the “have some”, “have much”, and the “have most” subgroups. Some folks within each group do share. Others think that life is all about dying with the most toys.

Reminds me of an episode of Star Trek.

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

Peace y’all.

Good morning! It is Labor Day, the first Monday of September, 5 September 2022. Odin is whimpering about not getting a slice of bacon off the table, Bonnie is over on the loveseat with her dog, Ruthie, and I’ve got Freya and the sisters Von Floof sitting on the couch between Lisa and me.

Yesterday we left in pretty good time to go to Clay Center, Kansas to celebrate my mom’s 80th birthday. It was a good family get-together with more food than we could eat. My brother smoked a turkey breast on the grill, and my brother-in-law smoked two briskets on his pellet smoker. There was plenty of veggies, and chips, dips, beans, and cereal malt beverages to satisfy a growing crowd.

Growing it is…

One of the highlights was the arrival of my youngest daughter and her beau, Austin, and the announcement became formal, kind of a two-fold thing. They plan on getting married, and the question is whether they tie the know before or after our first grandchild is born, expected in March. According to the tests, they are expecting a girl.

I’m going to be a grampa.

I recall somebody making the comment, “If you raise your kids, you get to spoil your grandchildren. If you spoil your kids, you get to raise your grandchildren”. I’m thinking Lisa and I will be able to spoil grandkids more than raise them.

We still have some things to get done around here today. We need to patch a hole in the pool cover before we shut it down for the winter later this month.

I’m going to try and decompress a bit, get my head in a good place and lower my blood pressure, right after I have this other cup of coffee.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Saturday morning, 3 September 2022, and I am floof wrestling. Rosy and Lily are being particularly needy this morning, demanding attention, climbing up on my laptop, and being general nuisances.

Cute, needy, lovable, fluffy nuisances.

I’ll throw the little orange ball in a few moments, Lily, just give me a moment to crank out a couple hundred words.

Last night, Lisa and I went to the KU-Tennessee Tech football game. These season openers are meant to be confidence builders for struggling programs, and Kansas has been one of those struggling programs for more than ten years now. Last night should, however, instill a little confidence in the team and for the fan base that this team is really doing the work. Kansas scored on their first few possessions, sometimes in rather dramatic fashion, with effective runs, and solid passing downfield – the Kansas quarterback completed 14 of 15 passes in the first half, and that’s a solid half of football in anybody’s book.

Kansas won 56-10.

We were invited to watch the game from the “Friends of Mechanical Engineering” suite at Memorial Stadium, and that was the first time I had ever seen one of the suites. Lisa spent the entirety of the game talking with alums and administrators, and I watched the game with other interested parties, several alums, including a father and his son. I enjoyed the evening immensely, and the dean of the engineering school asked if we would ever be interested in attending more games and watching from that suite, to which I replied with an “enthusiastic “Yes1′.

I’m going to have to spend some time on the mower here after bit. I love country life, but at the same time, there’s a lot of mowing to get done. Fortunately, I have the right tools for the job, and a decent audiobook to listen to as well.

If all goes well, I’ll be back in my recliner shortly after lunch ready to watch some sports.

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

Peace y’all

It is Thursday morning, 1 September 2022, and it is a good day. Lisa gets back home tonight, it’s the first day of a new month, and it is also my last classroom day for a couple of weeks.

Alright. I can do this!

Dogs had a pretty good evening last night. There was some up and down and tossing and turning in the night as the three bedroom dogs planned their sleeping strategy around my prone visage. Granted, Lucy was not very happy when I woke this morning and accidentally gave her a little prod from my right foot as I sprang to attention with the morning alarm.

Coffee is done brewing. House needs a good once-over before my beloved returns. I probably ought to take care of some other cleaning options around here as well.

Oooh. I also need to check my schedule for tomorrow. Might be an opportunity to take half a day off.

Tomorrow night Lisa and I are going to go to the KU-Tennessee State football game. KU is favored, so it could be fun. KU is supposedly favored by several touchdowns, but I think we ought to temper our expectations.

Dogs are requiring my attention, so I should wrap this up and be a dog dad.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Wednesday morning, 31 August 2022. Today will be a good day… Odin slept through the night (for the most part), I swing into Day 3 of my security course, and it’s payday… I’ll take it.

Odin sleeping through the night and not baying at the moon or barking incessantly made for a more satisfying sleep. There was one moment in the night when I had to tell him to stop barking, but it was brief, and I was able to drop back off to sleep.

I’m watching the news, and it’s the usual mix of good and bad. Former Soviet Union leader Gorbachev passed at the age of 91 – he’ll probably be remembered more fondly in the international media than he will be in his home country of Russia. Parts of Asia are suffering extremes in the weather, with flooding happening in one area, while there is a devastating heat wave and drought in other areas.

I am also glad I haven’t been caught with classified documents in my home. Looks like taking hope docs labeled “Top Secret” and stashing them in a desk drawer is a really bad idea.

Dogs are barking at Ryan Reynolds on TV. Might be time to watch “Deadpool” again.

Today I get to talk about key vaults and policies, then move on to more traditional topics like storage and shared-access signatures.

Coffee is done brewing, time for a cup.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Tuesday morning, 30 August 2022. I am not in a great mood right now… thank you, Odin, Lily, and Rosy.

Lisa has a meeting out of town, so she went to the airport very early this morning, leaving the house by 3:30 AM. I normally get up about 5:30… but Odin doesn’t care. He was barking ad howling for two hours, and the sisters Von Floof were more than happy to add their voices to the choir.

Now, right now, they are perfectly fine. Odin is on the back of the loveseat, staring out the picture window in the front of the house, and the little girls are lying beside me… yeah… now they chill out and nap.

I might have to sneak in a nap before I head to the virtual classroom today. Coffee is brewing, but I might just drink a glass of water for now.

Day 2 of my security course, teaching with an old friend this week. Today will be a little easier, as the first day of the security course is always a bear… lots of setup, lots of content, lots of labs.

Yeah, I’m thinking a quick little nap between 7 and 8 AM might not be such a bad idea.

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

Peace y’all.

Good morning! It is 29 August 2022, a Monday morning. This is the unofficial last week of summer, as Labor Day weekend comes at the end of this week, and the sights and sounds of fall begin in earnest.

I’ve missed a couple of days of posting, as I focused on other tasks and responsibilities around here. Lisa and I had an enjoyable weekend as we recognized her 29th birthday again, and I pinged my brother Tom to wish him a good birthday as well.

There has been news, and as I look forward to the launch of the Artemis rocket, I am concerned about some of the news coming out about the security of the US. At this point the stories are little more than rumor, but if the rumors get confirmed, it really looks bad. Damage assessments, national security breaches, exposure of human assets.

This could really be bad. I wouldn’t want to be a foreign asset of the US government right now.

I get back into my virtual classroom here in a bit. It’s a security course, so a lot of folks take this sort of stuff very seriously.

Four days, and then my “official” September begins. Due to schedule movements, I have a non-delivery week next week so I can focus on some recertification I need to get wrapped up. The following week is built around some team meetings, and then I return back to teach an admin course. I had a non-delivery week scheduled for the first full week of October, but that was moved up a week so I can jump into another 4 week blended learning class in October.

Time to make the donuts…

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

Peace y’all.