It’s Friday night, June 10, and we’re relaxing in the living room. Bonnie is playing a game on her laptop, Lisa is reading something on her phone, and I’m enjoying an evening cocktail.

Lisa and I went out to the pool earlier, and Dane came out as well. The water in the pool has warmed up to around 80 degrees Fahrenheit, so it was not nearly as cold as it has been in other years for my first jump into the pool.

I went in off the diving board. I know that men don’t enter the pool via the steps.

Last night, the family television slipped into a recovery mode, and in spite of applying the updates both over the internet and via USB port, the system became stuck in a loop, and even the factory reset option failed to get the system back working again, so after some brief maneuvering, I picked up a new television that will be delivered a week from Sunday… Father’s Day.

OK… I already received a Father’s Day gift this year, but I’m not going to get upset about this timely arrival. This will be another smart tv with an integrated Roku video system. We’ll be able to use the old remotes with it, and it’s being delivered and set up. We may even opt for a wall mount.

Oh… and it’s ten inches bigger diagonally. Old one was 65″. This one will be 75″.

Hey, my visual acuity isn’t what it used to be.

Tomorrow I’ll hit the farmer’s market with Lisa, and we’ll pick up some stuff for meals Saturday and Sunday. I might look for some more of that purple asparagus from Pendleton’s Nursery near by. Get a nice Hollandaise sauce on it… that’s the good stuff.

OK, time to think about other stuff.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Thursday morning, June 9, 2022, and I’m watching a news report about the guy that got arrested outside Chief Justice Kavanaugh’s home during an attempted assassination attempt.

Assassination attempts are wrong, assassination is wrong. Assassination attempts are not a form of peaceful protest. Let’s not create laws that restrict peaceful protest. Let’s not confuse the two.

I’m not going to spend more time going down that road. That horse is being kicked in Washington, DC, and, although there has been some action on AR-15 age limits (House passed a bill, we’ll have to see what happens in the Senate), I doubt there will be much change. The next mass shooting involving that class of weapon is likely already in the hands of the guy that is going to use it.

All I can do is hope my kids aren’t in his site lines.

I thought my wife was going to take off for Kansas City today for an overnight trip, but, pleasantly, her trip was cancelled for a positive reason, so we’ll have an evening of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and The Orville.

Last day of my administration course. We’ll get the lecture wrapped up this morning and leave the afternoon for lab time. At 4:30, I’ll participate in round two of a game challenge at work… I won my first round the other day, and now I face a member of the East team. She has won as many rounds as I have. I might lose… we’ll have to wait and see.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Wednesday morning, June the 8th, in the Year of Our Lord 2022… and I write that thinking, “In the Year of Our Lord” seems like there was no presence of God prior to the birth of Jesus.

The way we date things is pretty random.

We have our calendar, named after some guy, named “Julian”… (note to self… a character named “Julian Calendar” could be fun).

Meanwhile, in th other room, I have a Bluetooth speaker running out of battery power, and it groans at me to plug it back into power. Not right now, little Bluetooth speaker, I am writing. Not much longer now though.

It’s raining this morning, again. The rain is generally good for the trees and plants we have around here. It also causes the grass and weeds to grow, so that means more mowing.

Day three of my admin course this morning. I’ve adapted the class to a hybrid, teaching one module and performing one lab, then doing two lectures back-to-back, followed by open lab time for the balance of the day. It helps the learners in distant countries manage their day a little better, with a choice later in the day to either do the labs at that point of the day or head off to bed – by the time I get done lecturing at 1:30 or 2:00 in the afternoon, it can be pretty late for IST – India Standard Time. 1:30 PM Central Time equates to midnight in India. That’s late enough.

OK, time to go plug that speaker in and get some breakfast in me.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Tuesday morning, June 7, and the 59th birthday of my high school friend Rob. I hope you are having a great day out west.

Things are getting weird in Washington, DC, obviously. Thursday night the January 6th committee hearings move to prime time for some pretty interesting questioning. One of Trump’s advisors has been arrested for failing to respond to a subpoena. I have a feeling that more arrests are on the horizon.

Right now the news is reporting a story on the Proud Boys and the charges of sedition several members are facing. They are being charged for their attempts to overturn the election from November 2020.

Some people are very gullible.

Here in my corner of the world, I return to my virtual classroom in about an hour, and I will spend most of the day covering networking topics. The only question is whether I get all of the lecture addressed first, and then have a large block of lab time, or if I stick with a more traditional lecture-lab structure, where I deliver a module, do the related lab, then move on to the next module. I’ll ask my learners about it later.

Weather is starting to warm up here, which is a good thing for Lisa. The pool has been open almost three weeks, but is only now getting warm enough to enjoy. I’ll be the first to admit that I prefer the water to get a bit warmer before I take the plunge.

Tuesday is a good day for tacos… so I think we’ll have dinner squared away. The Mexican restaurant on the edge of twon offers dollar tacos today, and we polished off fourteen of them last Tuesday. That seems to be a good number.

OK… time to think about work.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Monday, June 6th, 2022. It is a crisp late spring morning, my oldest daughter has driven off to her job in Kansas City, Lisa is up and making her breakfast smoothie, and I am thankful for my morning coffee.

Today I’m back in my virtual classroom, doing a private class for a big customer on administration. The first day of class is always the longest, with students getting things set up, and getting introduced to the lab environment. By Thursday, the labs will be a breeze, but on day one, we’ve got some things to cover.

Yesterday was a good day with online gaming with friends. We finished a major portion of an adventure that seems like it was going on for months… because it was. We’ve got two different game masters and four different campaigns running with combinations of veteran and starter characters… but that’s ok. It gives me chances to play different styles and learn the ins and outs of each race and class. It’s been fun, and now that we’ve added a Wednesday night session, we’re getting more out of our sessions, and more time with friends.

I’m not going to digress much for now. It’s early in the week, and I have a feeling there will be some interesting experiences… this afternoon, for example. I am getting involved in a fun event for work, a “tournament”, and I go up against one of my best buds at work in round one. He’ll probably trounce me.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Sunday morning, June 5, and I’m relaxing a little bit on this drizzly morning. Lisa is getting ready to head into town to do a little shopping. I’ve got some work stuff to focus on, and maybe some gaming this afternoon with friends.

Dealing with an irritating situation at the moment – my Alienware M15 R6 doesn’t appear to be taking a charge. I’ve got the thing plugged in, the icon in the lower right shows it’s plugged in, but the battery charge just slowly dwindles. I left it sitting on the charger last night, expecting to see it at 100% this morning, and I am a bit disappointed to see the charge sitting at 62%. I’ll get it back on power a little later. Some mystery needs to be solved, and I’m wondering if a power reset might be called for.

Tomorrow I start a four-day class for a private customer. It will be a small class, so I’ll be going solo for four days. The following week I will be able to enjoy a week of internal sessions focused on making me a better instructor. After that, it’s closing out the year with two straight weeks of cloud solutions architecture and a couple of down days to make sure all of my ducks are in a row.

Settling in now to watch Wales v Ukraine in a European qualifiers UEFA playoff. It would kind of suck to be anybody playing against Ukraine now in a sporting event, because of the sentiments of support directed towards the Ukraine team. I’ve got nothing against Wales, but certainly, the Ukraine team has earned a soft spot in the heart of many sports fans.

Wow… that yellow card came out quick.

OK, time for my to focus on the tasks at hand, and get this unit back on the charger. I’m wondering if I get it down to 3% or so if that will help in tracking down the source of my charging problem.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Saturday morning, June 6th, and I’m just sitting in the living room pondering the day, wondering how much I can get done before my body says, “Nope”.

Dane has been up already, as he had to run over to his sister’s place to tend to her dogs. Lisa has breakfast just about ready to go, with sausage, pancakes, and eggs. I made a pot of coffee, medium-roast Tanzanian peaberry. Two of the dogs, Rosy and Lily, are trying to get my attention because that tummy is not going to scratch itself.

Last weekend I spent time on the little mower trimming the front of the house and getting a little closer to the fence line. Today might be a diesel day, breaking out the tractor from the barn and dropping the big cutter to take care of the main parts of the property. The new tractor does a great job cutting the heavier stuff. I just try to keep from getting too close to the edge of the pond, keeping a good six feet from the edge.

My nephew has a baseball game in Baldwin today. We should get over for a game sometime.

Other than that, there’s some work stuff kind of hanging out there that I need to attend to. Just some preparatory stuff prior to the start of my class on Monday – a solo shot with a private customer.

Time to get over to the breakfast table.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Friday, June 3, and the last day of my workweek. I start off the day with a meeting with teammates in Atlanta and Stockholm. We’re getting things taken care of earlier rather than later.

Looks like there was some drama in Washington, DC, yesterday, as legislators argued for and against a piece of legislation that is supposed to make our kids safer from gun violence, this after the murders in Uvalde, TX. You can bet that most of the Texas legislators will vote against it, and they’ll stand at the ready with thoughts and prayers.

Nothing is going to change.

This will happen again… hell, it already has. We had attacks at two different hospitals, one in Tulsa, and the other in Ohio. I think there was another shooting in Florida as well.

Apparently, for many legislators, enough of the right people haven’t died.

It makes me sick, but nothing is going to change.

Meeting in about another hour…

The weather is a bit cool for June here. The daily temperatures are staying in the high 70s, low 80s. The pool could stand a little more heat.

OK, time to make the donuts.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Thursday morning, June 2, and I’m about to pour my first cup of coffee. I’ve got plenty to keep me occupied with work responsibilities today, as I prep for some additional Klaxoon materials and read up on a couple of other courses I should be tackling starting next month.

I’ve got a fellow trainer I’ve been working with for the last year, a bit of a mentorship role for me, and he and I talked a bit yesterday. He was a little down after taking on a new certification exam and not passing it. I had to let him know – failing a certification exam isn’t the worst thing in the world. One of my standing jokes is that I’ve taken over 80 certification exams and I know I passed at least 4. Fact is, I’ve passed over 60… and that in itself kind of blows my mind – but I’ve been a certified trainer since ’95, and when you figure two or three new certifications a year, you can get to 60 pretty quick.

I also need to keep myself available for some other conversations as well. There is just so much going on right now, it can be a be… whelming.

In the meantime, I should get to work on my day.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Wednesday, June 1. What will this new month bring? Time will tell, I guess.

I’ve got plenty to keep me busy today. I have a class next week, but that won’t require a great deal of prep work… I’m pretty family with the admin course at this point. The week after that, I get to sit some internal training to help me become a more active, engaged presenter.

I’ll close out the month and the fiscal year with two weeks of cloud solutions architecture.

It’s been rainy here again this week. We’re hoping that the sun comes out and dries out the ground a little bit so I can get back out and mow. I’ve also got some other responsibilities (note: I just wrote “otter responsibilities”… not sure if that was a simple typographical error or a Freudian slip… I love otters!) such as getting some bills taken care of – I forgot to take care of the tags and taxes on a couple of cars, so that gets addressed first thing after I’m done writing.

I might have a chance to get together with my friends online tonight. I do enjoy a midweek escape when the opportunity presents itself.

Time to make the donuts…

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

Peace y’all.