Good morning. It is Thursday, May 26, and I made the mistake of visiting the comments sections again. It’s amazing to me how some folks want to steer a conversation in a particular direction to justify that person’s feelings towards another group of people.

People can suck sometimes.

Last night I replied to a post an old friend made. He posted pictures of the kids that were killed in Uvalde, Texas the other day. I replied in a rather neutral tone that after Sandy Hook, nothing changed, and after Parkland, nothing changed, and after this shooting, I wouldn’t expect anything to change either.

Then it became a cavalcade of stupidity.

One guy (who I ended up blocking) blamed everything but the availability of guns. He wanted to talk about the problem was a lack of masculinity, the rise of antifa and BLM, and trans kids. Seriously. What the hell was this guy’s problem, other than testosterone toxicity, mixed with ample portions of racism and homophobia. He absolutely was dead set on changing the subject.

Another clown simply stated that as I lived in Kansas, my opinion didn’t matter.

Well – regarding that… I’m a liberal living in Kansas, so, yeah, I’m used to being told my opinion doesn’t matter. There’s only one opinion that does seem to matter, and that’s the opinion of an energy billionaire based in Wichita who pretty much runs the Kansas GOP, and controls the state government.

I need to get ready for my day.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Wednesday morning, the 25th day of May, and, as anybody could have predicted, it has happened again. The death count in the Uvalde, Texas school shooting has reached 21.

When 27 were murdered at Sandy Hook, we had a chance to show the world that we care more about our kids than our guns, and we did nothing. When 17 were murdered at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, we had a chance to show the world that we care more about our kids than our guns, and we did nothing.

Time and time again, we make a choice. So far, in my lifetime, that choice has consistently been guns rights over lives.

And I honestly believe nothing will change. The gun lobby is strong, and they’ve been effective at putting the right amount of money in the right pockets to ensure that they face no consequences for these massacres.

And they won’t.

The shooter is dead. The next shooter isn’t. The next shooter is some disgruntled, bullied high school student that blames others for all of his troubles. He’s posting pictures of himself with guns and dead cats on social media somewhere. He’s mowing lawns or working at a store, saving up his money so he can buy the weapon of his dreams on his 18th birthday.

And then he’ll take action.

It makes me sick, but that’s America. And as much as I wish our love of guns will change, it won’t.

Thoughts and prayers ain’t doing shit. Buy Kevlar.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Tuesday morning, May 24, and this month is going by quickly. Hard to believe that Memorial Day is this coming Monday and June is right around the corner.

The weather forecast has us slated for up to 3 inches of rain today. We don’t really need it right now, but I’m sure there are parts of the midwest that do.

My oldest is on her first business trip, heading to New York state for some meetings with a vendor. Dane is home to take care of her dog while she’s away for a couple of days. We’ll give her a ring tonight to see how she is doing, or maybe I’ll just text her. She might be going out for dinner with her teammates.

I return to my virtual classroom today, diving into the last week of my blended learning delivery. My training partner has been ill the previous week but dropped me a line yesterday to let me know he’s ready to get back in the saddle.

It’s going to be a wet one…

We had a little fun last night. Lisa made chicken alfredo, and then we watched the 2nd half of the national championship game from last month. That was fun! After we watched Kansas win again, I flipped the game over to the Celtics/Heat game and saw an old neighbor of ours on the sidelines for the Celtics. Aaron Miles was a great guard for Kansas back in the early 00s, and he used to live around the corner from us when we lived in town. I remember him coming by when we were having a garage sale, and he bought a few of the children’s books we had. I remember talking with him about a new recruit to Kansas, asking him if he thought he was the real deal, and he said he was. That player we discussed might get a chance to see Aaron should the Celtics advance in the playoffs – Andrew Wiggins and the Golden State Warriors look like they will advance versus the Dallas Mavericks.

That’s enough for now—time to focus on the day ahead of me.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Monday night, May 23, 2022, and I’m kind of kicking back on a Monday night. Lisa and I decided to watch some basketball tonight, so rather than watch the NBA playoffs, we decided to watch the second half of the KU-North Carolina National Championship game from last month. Man, oh man, was that fun. I kind of needed that.

Here in the states, it’s been an interesting couple of weeks (when is it not?). I am so grateful that some folks choose people over party and politics.

The problems with the baby formula crisis are pretty easy to nail down. Number 1 – too few companies making a valuable product with critical supply issues. Number 2 – the largest baby formula manufacturer had a problem – 3 babies had died due to some of the hygiene issues in their plant… ok, I get that, seems reasonable… but the problem is with so few manufacturing locations, there was no other plant out there to pick up the slack – in the US. The Canadian plants had the formula, but thanks to Trump’s “pay attention to me” plan to get rid of NAFTA and renegotiate the terms, importing baby formula was off the table (that’s a capital “S” when you spell “STUPID”).

So now the congressional representatives from Kansas – all male, all GOP – with ONE exception, grunt, groan, bitch, moan about the baby formula crisis, and then when legislation comes down to address the problem, ALL of the Kansas GOP representatives vote against it.

What a bunch of hypocritic assholes.

There names are Estes, LaTurner, and Mann. Sharice Davids, the only female representative from Kansas and the only non-GOP rep voted to pass the legislation.

It seems to me that it is far more important for the GOP reps to hurt people and embarrass this administration rather than do the right thing for the people of Kansas.

Enough… my blood pressure is going up just thinking about those assholes.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Sunday night, May 22, and it’s been a day. It hasn’t been a really busy day, more of a relaxing day with a chance to get caught up and to unwind a bit.

This week will be my last week with my blended learning course. It works out OK as far as time commitment – note to self, I’m supposed to be keeping track of my time on the project a little better than I have. I have a tendency to keep loose blocks of time in my schedule to accommodate my scatterbrain. I can spend a few minutes on one thing, go check my channels to see if there are any posts that require my immediate attention, then go work on some other thing, check my emails. ponder the nature of the multiverse… the important stuff.

I kid around a lot. I’m not always real good about prolonged periods of seriousness, and that hasn’t always been a good thing. Granted, it does seem to help when stuff gets too serious, and folks need to break the tension, but I’ll admit there were times I didn’t get the time and place right. I’m working on that.

Almost 10 o’clock, and I know 5:30 is going to get here way too soon. I probably ought to wrap this up and put this post to bed… and then put myself to bed.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Saturday, May 21, 2022, and I am exhausted. I woke in good time this morning, around 7 AM, which isn’t too bad for a Saturday… sleeping in relative to my regular wake-up time of 5:30 AM during the workweek. Lisa made a great breakfast, we watched one of our regular morning television shows, then started on the work around the house. We got quite a bit of mowing done, took a break for lunch, and then went back to moving soil, mulch, and other “organic matter” that promotes plant growth. I took some time and planted jalapeno and poblano peppers, then helped Lisa plant some potatoes.

The strawberries are coming in very nicely. I hope we honor the spirit of a 2x great uncle.

There’s an entire family of strawberries called Rockhill strawberries. They are named after a family member, Harlow Rockhill, who did his own strawberry research on his farm in Iowa back in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Let’s just hope we don’t embarrass the family name – not too worried about that right at the moment, we’re already bringing in daily crops of strawberries. Might be time to figure out how to make our own strawberry sorbet.

We’re thinking pizza tonight… we’ve been working around here a pretty good chunk of the day, so maybe we’ll treat ourselves a little bit.

OK, time to relax a little. It’s late enough in the afternoon to fancy a cocktail. Do I go Scotch, Japanese Whiskey, Bourbon, or maybe a smooth Canadian? Hmmm…

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

Peace y’all.

It is Friday night, and I’m late writing my blog entry. It is the 20th day of May in the Year of Our Lord 2022. OK, I never write the date that way, but I did it this time just as a lark. Every now and then you need to break things up a little just to keep them interesting.

I wrapped up my work week earlier today, and that’s a lie. I wrapped up my Friday work week, but there are a couple of work-related projects I need to work on tomorrow and Sunday. Monday I’ll be able to devote a little more time to it, but the whole point is to have a slot filled with Father’s Day-related content for a meeting next Friday. OK… I still think June is a more appropriate month, though.

I’ve decided that reading the comments in the comments section is not healthy. Too much extremism. Even if I were to express myself, the onslaught of negativity from the whackos makes it hardly worth the effort.

Some people aren’t really worthy of a person’s time.

We’ve got plenty to do around the property this weekend. I have plants to get into planters and above-ground gardening beds. Plenty of peppers and herbs to get into their respective summer habitats. That little AeroGarden has been a wonderful starter for some of the plants. Next cycle, I’ll try to use better seeds. The first batch didn’t yield 100% germination most likely due to the age and viability of the seeds. Better luck next time!

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

Peace y’all.

It is Thursday morning, May 19, and I am thankful for it. I have a talk this morning, some lab support, then a couple of hours to help out learners out with anything else on their minds. Lisa is working from home today, starting off with an excursion with the floofs to go get trimmed (the little girls need it – exceptionally floofy right now). On top of that, it is the day that we’re prepping the pool for the summer. The cover is off, and now it’s time to get it cleaned out, treated, and scrubbed.

The Kansas Supreme Court has supported the new redistricting maps for the state of Kansas, doing whatever they can to ensure that Kansas will have no democratic representation in Washington. It’s the way Kansas rolls – we’ll do whatever it takes to support the state’s protected class of wealthy white guys that control the state. Seems the only time a Democrat gets into the governor’s office is after the GOP has completely screwed up the state’s finances, and then need a D in the big chair to blame for it all. After the Dem gov solves the problems, it goes back to business as usual, and the wealthy will grunt, groan, bitch, and moan about supporting public education, do whatever they possible can to divert public education funds to their pet private schools (like Wichita Collegiate, right Bill?).

That’s what happens in an oligarchy. The poor and the minorities don’t matter, the wealthy got theirs, and they’re going to get yours, too, and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it.

Oh, and remember, they’re Christians, and God intended it to be this way.

Such bullshit.

Anyway, time to get focused on the day.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Wednesday, May 18, 2022. Had some running around to yesterday, trying to get my wife’s flat tire issue resolved. It was kind of funny – after I couldn’t get Lisa’s tire reinflated, we ended up calling a wrecker through roadside assistance to take Lisa’s car (affectionately referred to as “Max”) about a mile and a half to the auto shop. There wasn’t a local wrecker available, so they dispatched a tow truck out of Holton, Kansas to take my wife’s little car that short distance… so they called service in from 70 miles away.

Doesn’t strike me as very efficient.

The good news from yesterday is that at least one Republican representative to the House will not be returning following his failure to capture his party’s nomination during his reelection run. Madison Cawthorn, your fifteen minutes are up. I did see that John Fetterman won the Dem primary in Pennsylvania for the Senate seat. I think his campaign against his GOP opponent will be … colorful?

Full day of training here for me today. Starting off talking about virtual machines, closing out the day talking about application services, Azure Container Instances, and Azure Kubernetes Services.

Tonight… returning to a little adventure. Our Sunday game didn’t happen this last weekend, but we’re giving it a shot tonight.

Time for me to make the donuts.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Tuesday morning, May 17, and I realized I completely blew off writing my blog yesterday. Yesterday turned into a busy day, between my regular Monday responsibilities, my son moving home from the dorms, an internet outage, and then a note that my training partner this month has just tested positive and now must quarantine for 5 days.

I need to try and stay on top of writing in the mornings. The longer I put it off, the less likely I am to get my blog posted.

It’s still Tuesday, and there are things that need to be done, so I need to get to work. Get breakfast, get my office prepared, and get online to start talking in another hour and a half or so.

I’ve got a couple of things that are at the top of the list. Lisa has a flat tire up on campus, and I’ll need to call the mechanic to see if we need to get the car towed in or if I merely need to bring them the tire… but I really don’t have a good time gap to address that until this afternoon. I made a payment on my tractor, and John Deere Financial sent me a check back… I need to figure out what is going on with that.

And I need to focus on my virtual machines today. That’s my topic this week, and it’s one I am pretty comfortable with. I’ll get over and do a little review, and make sure I check all of the boxes.

Until next time…

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

Peace y’all.