It is a Tuesday morning, the first day of February 2022, and there’s some stuff going on.

One of the things I meant to do when I started writing this blog was to pass along my point of view on certain events of the day to my grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and any other interested parties.

Yesterday there were bomb threats at six historically black colleges and universities. There are reports of additional bomb threats at Howard University this morning. The New Hampshire state legislature may pass a bill for “Teacher Loyalty” that requires teachers to not teach any aspect of US History that portrays the US in a negative light.

Are you kidding me?

You don’t erase history. You can hide it, you can push a different narrative, but you don’t erase it. I am well aware of the negative aspects of US History, and I’ll be damned if somebody tries to push some white-washed version of it that completely ignores man’s inhumanity to man. The people that immigrated to the US from Europe were perfectly fine with laws pertaining to race, including institutionalized slavery and genocide (Thank you, Manifest Destiny). We had racist laws that applied to blacks, Asians, indigenous peoples, and others… basically anybody that didn’t obviously fall under the category of “white”.

I’m not ignorant, and my children won’t be either. Teach the truth. If our non-white neighbors are brave enough to live through it, we’re brave enough to accept it, teach it, learn from it, and hopefully, build a better future for all of our kids.

OK, rant off.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Monday, January 31, 2022. The sun is going to come up, and I’m going to teach a cloud security course for a relatively small number of attendees, but that’s OK. It doesn’t really matter to me how many show up, the more the merrier, but so long as I have at least one, we’re going to get down and get funky, and later, we will get back up again.

My team lost yesterday in epic fashion. My Chiefs had an 11 point lead at half-time, and it wasn’t enough. Credit to the Bengals for doing what they needed to do to win and earn a berth in the Superbowl. My guys just didn’t get it done. There were mistakes and plenty of hindsight, but that’s pretty pointless now.

My Dry January is over, as my spin on it is that after the New Year’s Day bowl games are over, I quit drinking alcohol until I toast my dad on his birthday, January 29th. I had a cocktail Saturday, and I felt like drinking a bit after the Chiefs tanked, but I’m going to focus on a new habit. I have recognized that sometimes I’m not as diligent about my hydration as I should be, so I’m going to see if I can make a personal promise – no cocktails until after 8… meaning no cocktails until after I’ve had my prescribed 8 glasses of water per day. Let’s see how that goes. 2 glasses first thing, 2 mid-morning, 2 in the afternoon… I always have one full glass before I go to bed at night, so that leaves one more before dinner. I can do this. The benefits of proper hydration surpass the inconvenience of frequent trips to the bathroom.

Time for me to think about what comes next. I’ve got my security class starting in another couple of hours. Bonnie starts her first day on her new job. She’s nervous. It’s pretty exciting, though.

OK, that’s enough for now.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Sunday, January 30, 2022, and I am in a pretty good place right now. I stepped on the scale this morning and I’ve dropped 15 pounds for the month of January. The trip isn’t over, likely never will be, but this month has been generally positive. I got on my meal plan, stuck with it, saw some positive results.

That said, it’s hard to get in that 8 glasses of water per day. Two glasses first thing in the morning, a couple more later in the morning, and I always have another when I go to bed. It’s those afternoon/early evening glasses that I often struggle with. I can do better staying focused on that.

Today is also a sportsball day. My Kansas City Chiefs are hosting the AFC Championship today, with another meeting against the Cincinnati Bengals. Chiefs lost to the Bengals on the road in week 17, but the truth is the Bengals were in a must-win situation, and the Chiefs had already secured a playoff spot and may have taken their foot off the gas for a game. Chiefs lost by less than a touchdown, so I like our chances today. I’m guessing Arrowhead Stadium will be plenty loud… and I wouldn’t mind getting a whiff of the barbeque in the parking lot today. Say what you will about Kansas City, our tailgates smell as good as any in the world on game day.

Other than that, I’ve got prep work for my class tomorrow, maybe a load of laundry. Time to get focused and get stuff done.

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

Peace y’all.

Thanks to @imrodmartin, I know that this is the 21,320th day for me on this mortal coil. It is Saturday, January 29th, 2022. Today would’ve been my dad’s 81st birthday. I talked to him a bit this morning, hoping to feel his presence in some fashion… and that presence was there, in me.

It’s part of the legacy, I guess. My dad made a contribution, changed some people’s destinies, got some guys back on the road when they needed to get home, and he was the father to four kids. I’m the oldest, and part of my legacy will be the people I have helped in the training classes I’ve been providing for almost thirty years. And then, there are my kids, who I hope I have raised to be good people and will make similar contributions.

You always wonder whether your parents are proud of you, being their child. My dad, later in life, was much more forthcoming about telling us that he loved us, and it was always meaningful.

Yeah, had to pause a moment there. It’s not always easy to reflect.

I tell my kids I love them and I tell them how proud I am of them when it’s appropriate – kind of like curse words, it almost seems like the more you use certain words and expressions, the less meaning they have. Kids that curse every other word drive those words into meaninglessness. There are lotharios out there that will tell every prospective lover that he loves them will all his heart… part of his game of seduction. Seems that can take words from “meaninglessness” straight to ill intent real quick.

I miss my dad. He was a good man. I hope I am one, too, but I’ll readily admit, I’m far to eager at times to tell people what I really think rather than bite my tongue. I should learn to dial things back a little bit more, and with greater frequency.

Enough for now… but I think my dad would appreciate the fact that I have made a commitment to writing. He once dreamt of being a writer, but responsibilities took him down a different path.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Friday, January 28, 2022. Tomorrow would have been my dad’s 81st birthday, and I’ll spend a little time with him on my mind. I sent my mom a little something to mark the occasion, and will do the same when my folks’ (and my) anniversary falls next month.

I’ve got a busy day ahead of me with plenty to keep me busy, including presenting during part of a business meeting. I’ve been asked to take on a little more responsibility, so today i the day I step up rather than step aside.

BTW, the start of the day was pretty good, with a really nice sunrise. I grabbed a pic to share.

Not too shabby. I don’t normally post a lot of pictures… actually, that might be the first in years of writing my blog. So, another milestone.

Ironic moment of the day – a bridge collapsed in Pittsburg, PA, on the day that President Biden is arriving in that same city to talk about infrastructure. I think mother nature just dropped an exclamation point on that sentence. Fortunately, no one was hurt or killed, so that is a positive. Finding out that a natural gas line was severed with the bridge collapse is a bit alarming.

So, time to get to work. I’ve got a class to get ready for, and two meetings on top of that. Might be able to wind down a little this afternoon, but for now, let’s get some work done!

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

Peace y’all.

This is the 21,318th day of existence as an independent human being on this plane of existence. It is January 27, 2022, a partially overcast day in rural Douglas County, Kansas, with the sun peaking through a quilt of clouds in the sky.

I mean, where else would the clouds be anyway?

I am enjoying a little coffee, a medium-roast Tanzanian Peaberry, and a couple of pieces of low-carb toast with a thin layer of peanut butter. My breakfast today is nothing to crow about from the top of the highest mountain, but it gets the job done.

I’ve got meetings most of the day starting in about an hour or so but might have a moment or two later in the day to make a run into town to address a couple of minor needs.

All in all, today is just one of those days that I have a lot to do, but I can get things done at my own pace – no tremendous urgencies.

I might even take a moment for myself later in the day as well. Woohoo!

But, in all seriousness, today is one of those days that the writer’s block kicks in, and I don’t have that much to dive into. I do have a daily writing goal, but what I have noticed is that if I just let go and let the words flow, I can go well beyond my daily writing goal. Good for me! Granted, my “stream of thought” posts are about as exciting as riding a bicycle with the saddle missing, but here we are nonetheless.

And there you have it… a boring blog post where I focus on the habit of writing.

Good thing this post isn’t about editing – most of what I have written today was simply to fulfill my need to extend and reinforce the habit. Not much substance beyond the coffee.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Wednesday, January 26, 2022. I double-checked my day count on Rod Martin’s website. I know the average person can expect a lifetime of pretty close to 30,000 days. Let’s make this one count, shall we?

I was kind of stuck this morning pondering what I wanted to write about. Thought about how I’ve been called a communist multiple times for having certain liberal perspectives (right to vote, matters of personal choice, single-payer healthcare, climate change), but in reality, I’m a capitalist. I earn a decent living, as does my spouse, and we own a couple of companies on our own. Just seems to me that historically, it was the fascists that needed an enemy, and going after communists seemed to be low-hanging fruit during the rise of fascist regimes in certain European countries.

But that wasn’t what I wanted to write about after I thought about it.

I have an issue with other labels.

Mainly, “expert” and “ally”.

Bear with me for a second… I don’t dislike those labels. I love those labels… but my problem is in the use of those labels. I had someone ask me if I considered myself one of those labels a while back, and it kind of swelled into my consciousness that these terms, these expressions, should never be given to oneself. To be referred to as an expert, to be referred to as an ally, these are gifts from observers. It kind of ties back to the use of the descriptor “Christian”. You don’t have to tell me you’re a Christian, in fact, you shouldn’t have to. If you are following the tenets of that teacher, it should be rather obvious in the way you treat people.

I think the same goes for “expert” and “ally”. I hope I never claim to be either, but I would welcome being referred to as either one by others. I will return the favor if the evidence supports the assignment.

Kind of weird, I know. What else do you expect from me at this point?

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

Peace y’all.

It is Tuesday morning, and I am a bit tired, once again. (It’s January 25, 2022)

Last night there was another game, a KU basketball game, hosting a very determined Texas Tech squad hellbent on becoming the third team in Bill Self’s tenure at Kansas to sweep the regular-season series. Double overtime. KU wins, but it was a hard-fought game, that went on for an extra hour, or so it sure seemed.

This morning there is rumbles of conflict in the air. Putin and his Russian military forces seem on the verge of invading the independent Ukraine as part of his dream of reuniting the old Soviet Union territories. It seems to me (an opinion, not sure how much can be based on facts and evidence), that Putin longs for the old Soviet Union, where he can implement an even broader autocracy and expand his control over the very valuable resources in Ukraine.

It’s an opinion. I could be wrong.

I think that’s part of the problem we have in the US today. People think they are stating facts, but facts require evidence. I’ve heard more than one person say or post that they know (know – not suspect, not theorize or hypothesize) that the 2020 elections were stolen… but there is no evidence to support that statement. It’s not a fact that they can know – it’s an opinion, based on other opinions that are forced by people that want to control other people. If you can get people to believe a lie, you can get them to do other things on your behalf… like storm the Capitol on January 6.

We need to be warier of those messages out there that tie in with our confirmation bias. We all have a tendency to want to believe certain things if it reinforces other things we want to believe. Folks that want to believe Biden is an ineffective President are going to focus on the way he speaks, and even though they know the guy has fought a speech disorder his whole life, the moment he misspeaks or says something we can’t make out, it immediately gets labeled as evidence of cognitive failure… because that’s what a portion of our population wants to believe is the truth.

I admit my bias. I hope others will as well.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Monday morning, January 24, 2022. There were times last night that I was pretty positive that I would not be sleeping well… like the time I looked up at the end of the 4th quarter of the Chiefs-Bills game, saw the Bills up by 3, and a scant 13 seconds left in the game.

I slept pretty well last night.

I could hardly believe the events that transpired at that point. Mahomes found another rabbit in the hat. With 13 seconds left at the end of regulation. Patrick Mahomes fired two perfect passes to get the Chiefs within field goal range to tie, and then they won the toss in overtime, chose to receive, and finished up the Bills in epic fashion. (Credit to the Bills: they played top-shelf football for four quarters).

It was an incredible weekend of football. 4 games… and the first three were just about as exciting, with all three road teams winning their respective games on the last play with a clutch field goal to win.

Amazing stuff.

Next weekend, the Chiefs will host the Cincinnatti Bengals to earn the right to go to the Superbowl.

Kansas City is going to be a buzz all week, and I’m happy to get a peripheral secondary-smoke buzz from the abject joy the community is embracing. We’re not done yet. One more game, maybe two, but let’s get business done at our house first.

Back to the grind, coffee up, time to make some breakfast. Meetings start in a bit.

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

Peace y’all.

Good morning. It is Sunday, January 23, 2022. My daughter is asleep on the couch, as she apparently was woken up early by her dog, Ruthie. Right now the other five pooches (yes, I did not mistype that… 5… Lucy, Freya, Odin, Rosy, & Lily) are just going about their mornings, getting underfoot and begging for treats, as good dogs are wont to do.

Yesterday was a pretty fun day for the casual sports fan. I’m a Kansas Jayhawks fan, so basketball season is king around these parts. Yesterday my Jayhawks were down by as many as 17, down by 16 at the half… and came back to finally take a lead with 30 seconds left in the game, and were able to hang on to win. It was a special game for the coach, who had recently lost his dad… this was his first game coaching since his dad passed, and he was a bit emotional about the victory afterward.

Also, there were big upsets in the NFL playoffs. Both top seeds were knocked out by road teams… no benefit to having that bye week this year. The Bengals beat the Titans with a last-second field goal, and the 49ers were able to do the same to knock out the Packers. Great excitement, and for me that adds a little more anxiety… my Chiefs host the Bills today at Arrowhead, and if the Chiefs win, Kansas City will host the AFC Championship game again.

Go Chiefs.

Might have to cut my afternoon D&D game short this afternoon.

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

Peace y’all.