It’s a Sunday morning. Lisa and I have already attended church online and had a nice breakfast. I’ve been going through certain tweets and posts on Facebook, and I am once again reassured that the world is full of idiots. The fact that my wife is sitting next to me listening to excerpts from Trevor Noah’s ” The Daily Show” off of Comedy Central, and Mr. Noah is making fun of some of the same people I would mock as well.

Some people really don’t get it.

It seems like there is such a pervasive attitude of anti-science, anti-consideration, pro-selfishness, pro-ignorance. People just don’t take the time to think things through.

But enough about Tucker Carlson…

(I believe Tucker Carlson might be the most malevolent force on television today… he’s ignorant and a racist, and if he’s done a positive thing in the world, he needs to figure out what it was, and set to automating that process, because ol’ Tucker needs to get focused on making up some karma).

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One of the fantasy role-playing groups I follow on Facebook had a post, “How does an area become infested with trolls?”. My first thought was wondering if it was an election season.

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BTW, for those that re coming across my blog for the first time – here’s the deal. I support our military. I support law enforcement. I don’t support people that deny Constitutionally guaranteed rights to others, we’re going to have a problem. That said, I think that there are some things that our Founding Fathers weren’t aware of in their time – health care issues, machine guns, weapons of mass destruction. The Constitution needs to reflect the times, and changes have been made to reflect the times… but it’s time to pass the Equal Rights Amendment.

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What’s a little anxiety the night before a delivery? Groan.

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Lisa is overdoing it outside. She has a tendency to go a little overboard when she works outside, whereas I only go outside and go overboard working in the yard to prevent her from going overboard. I have other stuff I need to focus on today, and I’ve already gone overboard, so there’s no one to keep her from going overboard, other than herself… and that isn’t going to happen the first weekend in May. Kansas has a long growing season, so stuff needs to go in the ground.

Meanwhile, I need to focus on work.

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OK, it’s 8:04 in the evening, and I’ve got a busy day tomorrow. I hope the world is treating you better than you deserve.

Peace y’all.

It’s a Saturday night, and I forgot to write yesterday, but that’s OK. I guess my focus has shifted from some of the things I used to write about to some new stuff.

I have done a decent job resisting the urge to respond to every idiotic post I’ve come across on Facebook the last few days, but I have to confess, I was sorely tempted to let a couple of folks know that I thought if their IQs were the same as the room temperature, they might consider a light jacket, maybe a sweater. I gave them credit for Fahrenheit over Celsius, the least I could so.

I spent a little time this weekend watching the Chiefs’ draft picks. Looks like the primary focus this off-season is “protect Patrick Mahomes”. I am completely fine with that mindset.

This next week I’m teaching a Cloud Solutions Architecture class for a private customer. I’m taking the appropriate steps to make sure we have a good class, and I’ll spend some time focused on that tomorrow.

Until then, I’m going to keep doing my reading, and my watching, and my writing, and all that other stuff that everybody does to learn enough stuff so that have enough to talk about when it comes time to talk about the topic.

Read. Write. Organize. Update.

Do that thing.

Hopefully it makes some sense when I present it.

So far, so good.

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

Peace y’all.

It’s Thursday, April 29, 2021. I’ve got some allergies acting up, but I’ll live.

Good morning.

One of the things I do with my blog is reflect and think about what I’m doing right, and where I can stand to make some improvements.

There is always room for improvement.

I’m pondering making some changes to my social media participation. I have to admit, FaceBook can be a blessing and a curse. It’s been a great tool for connecting with professional colleagues, and reconnecting with old friends.

It’s also can cause folks to reveal a little more about how they really feel about certain things. Sometimes you overlook with imperfections because you think they’re funny, or they’re cool, or you simply focus on some other adjective you find appealing in a personality.

Those flaws in the façade sometime reveal unfortunate truths.

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We all have unfortunate truths. I haven’t been a kind person as often as I should have been. I have been mean, I’ve said hateful things to people in anger or while I was under the influence of intoxicants – I’m not a mean drunk, but sometimes thoughts that have taken out a long term lease in my brain come hang out on the front porch when my inhibitions go on an alcohol-induced vacation.

So what’s a guy to do? We pause and reflect, and we try to do better. We think about what can be done to be a better human being. I think about it, and I hope I put some of those ideals into practice.

I’ll meditate on this later today, and continue the practice moving forward. I’ll read, and ponder the words written by those wiser than me.

That’s a lot of reading.

I’ve got a lot of work to do.

The first step, tough, is coming to terms with the obvious – I’m a work in progress, and I am flawed. I’m not always good at keeping my mouth shut, and sometimes I keep my mouth shut when I ought to speak up and say, “Hey, that’s wrong, stop doing that”.

I feel like I’m ranting now. Might be time to take a little break from the keyboard.

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Here’s a fun moment that got turned back on me.

A friend post a picture, it showed two guys trying to jimmy a car door open, and there was a plastic bag taped over the rear window… all they had to do was go through the already-broken window to unlock the door. Someone had photoshopped “JOE2020” logos on the backs of the guy’s’ jackets, attempting to imply that these guys were dumb, and they were Biden supporters.

I posted the original photo without the photoshopped “JOE2020” logos, and pointed out that Biden supporters can spot a bad photoshop attempt.

Then the shit hit the fan, and I caught the blame for politicizing an innocent post.

Give me a break.

But, considering the bent of some those agitated by my correction, I’m guessing they’re still upset about the failed attempt to overthrow the government in January.
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Hey, Joe! Want to really throw a wrench into the NRA’s lobbying efforts? Define what a “well-regulated militia” is. That’ll turn some heads.

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It’s a little later in the day, and I read some posts on FaceBook, and all it takes is a couple of poorly-informed posts to remind me that some people really don’t know the head from a hole in the ground.

Be smart. Be inclusive. Don’t hang out with people that are willfully ignorant. Stupidity is infectious, and you can catch it from others… right now they’re the ones telling you that masks are stupid and that the pandemic is a hoax.

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

Peace y’all.

Hey everybody. It’s old Bob here, writing a blog entry for the first time in about six weeks. I’ve had a lot going on, but I’m thinking I ought to spend more time blogging, and maybe less time on other social media.

I’m a little peeved at some old friends. For a long time, his racism was a subtext. It was there, but he wasn’t overt. Wasn’t. Past tense. Now it seems that the racism is center stage. It’s not like he’s putting on KKK robes and burning crosses in folks yards. It’s more of the snarky, Trumpian racism, that sense of white privilege and entitlement that folks can get growing up middle-class in the middle of America, where a guy can likely count on one or two hands the number of minority classmates he has in his school.

He has disappointed me, and he really doesn’t give a shit.

I don’t need racist friends.

Nobody needs racist friends, or racism, for that matter.

It kind of pisses me off. Seriously. Guys I hung out with for years, and thought were the coolest of the cool, and then you start looking at them with a little more scrutiny, and the shine comes off pretty quick.

Well, that’s what we do. We live and learn.

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Today another old friend told me that I was part of the problem. The context was a story about people perceiving Biden as more of a moderate than Obama, and that’s why he was being more accepted. I questioned whether it was more of an issue of “moderation” versus “pigmentation”.

All I did was ask the question.

I’m baffled.

Have we reached a point where it’s wrong to point out that part of the problem Obama had with a segment of our society was the color of his skin? It’s wrong to even ask the question?

I’ve been told I ask the wrong questions before. Doesn’t mean there’s no value in the answer. What’s wrong with saying, “Hey, white America, are you more comfortable with a President that looks more like you?”?

I guess he didn’t like the question.

Or maybe he didn’t like the reality of his answer.

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I’m thinking that I’d rather post my response to Facebook posts here rather than on Facebook. I’d hate to cause some of the conservative FB snowflakes to have a meltdown.

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OK, that’s a post. I might add more later, but I’m back. And I’m a little angsty.

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

Peace y’all.

Wow. It is the Ides of March, the 15th day of the month, and I have been a bit remiss in my writing. I promised myself after I started writing again that I wasn’t going to get too down on myself for skipping, but, that said, I probably should have not gone since the 9th since I last wrote.

Here’s the funny thing that I did to walk in to the low overhead beam of life. I didn’t event think about it, but I scheduled myself to teach an East Coast time zone class. It’s usually not a big deal, you get in a little early, start the class at 8 am CST rather than 9, and everything goes pretty smooth.

I did not plan ahead, however… I forgot about the time change with the end of Daylight’s Savings Time, so rather than starting an hour earlier than normal, I had to start what works out to be two hours earlier relative to my last Central Time delivery.

I won’t have any difficulty falling asleep tonight.

I have a good class this week, though. Going solo on a delivery with twenty students, and they’re all pretty engaged and the occasionally groan at my jokes, so I’ll call that a win.

So, I’m going to wrap this up, do my mindfulness exercise, and then go hit the sack, and hopefully it won’t hit back.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Tuesday, March 9. I’m in a co-delivery with one of my teammates, and he’s holding down the fort discussing virtual network peering, and I’m interjecting from time to time answering questions.

I need to curtail some of my social media posts. Or, maybe, I need to curtail some of my social media responses. Some of my old friends and classmates just don’t seem to see the world the same way I do. Whatever malady they see in the world, they point directly at folks that see the world a little more like I do.

As you can expect, they didn’t support Joe Biden in the last election.

I just don’t get it sometimes. I mean, I get some of it. I know I’m a progressive, a liberal, and I’m sure there are any number of terms folks would use to describe me, and I’m guessing some of the terms wouldn’t fall under the general classification of “complimentary”.

If there is a trend on the progressive side, it’s always bad, and anything on the conservative side is good. Their definition of “patriotic” is all that matters – as a liberal, there is no way I could ever match their love for this country… although based on wardrobe, I might have a little more knowledge of the flag code (One incredible irony!).

They use propaganda sites to support their arguments, and those are sites I can’t really debate against, as I know that if they are willing to cite those sites (see what I did there?), they are willing to accept garbage as the truth because it agrees with their world view.

I am thankful for mediabiasfactcheck.org for helping me improve my sourcing… thanks, folks.

I’m frustrated.

They are old friends, and we’ve shared a lot of history and experiences, but these days I just don’t know. I feel like Bill Murray in “Scrooged” telling Claire to “Scrape ’em off”, like these old relationships are barnacles damaging the hull.

But, maybe Claire is right. Maybe I just need to reframe the relationships and slap on the rose-colored look-back-in-time sunglasses and focus on what was good, and just ignore their biases and prejudices, because the reality is, I don’t think I can help them with their view of the world.

Doesn’t mean I won’t stop trying.

I’m reminded that there are any number of conservatives out there that rail against liberals six days of the week, then focus on the teachings of one on Sunday.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Sunday evening, on this, the 7th day of May, and I have to tell you, some folks really kind of amaze me. A high school classmate of mine who rarely posts decided to endorse a voter suppression plot. Of course, it was under the guise of preventing illegal aliens and felons vote, but when posed with the question of frequency, that classmate demurred. Folks want to create solutions to problems that don’t exist.

We just had the most secure election in history. All of the states certified, multiple states audited and recounted votes, and nothing changed. The election was safe and secure. Sure, there were plenty of accusations that there was fraud, but sixty plus court cases later there has been no proof. The accusations are just that, words floating on air with no gravity, no footing.

Right now, the party that lost the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives is trying to force through a bunch of laws at the state level to try and suppress the vote and gerrymander districts. This is the cowardly way of doing things. If the losing party is serious, here’s an idea: Push better policies. Be the party with the best ideas for everybody, and not just ideas that help a small but very wealthy groups of constituents.

It wont happen, though.

That party would have to step back and change their whole philosophy, and I don’t believe that will happen. For that to happen, the real power at the heart of that party would have to have a change of heart. They would have to give up some power. They would have to put the needs of all above the needs of themselves, and I don’t think that is within the realm of possibility.

I’m back in the virtual classroom tomorrow, betting back to teaching an Azure admin course, what has become one of my comfort food courses. Two weeks of Azure admin, a week of prep, then two weeks of Solutions Architecture.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Thursday night, the 4th of March, and Kansas just eked out a win against the Miners from UTEP. It was not a fun game for the most part, with the Jayhawks down by as many as fifteen at times, but they ended up rallying and pulling this one out.

My class for the week has completed, and I feel pretty good about the result. My students seemed to have a good experience, so I’ll consider that another addition to the minor victory column. Tomorrow, I’ll get my head on straight and think about my good spots and my weak spots and try to build out from there.

I love what I do. I wish more people were as happy doing what they do as I am doing what I do. I learn stuff, and I tell people what I learned. Folks ask me questions, and I do my best to answer them, and I do my best to refer them to the content they are looking for.

Azure is such a dynamic environment. I love that it is contantly changing and that there is always something new to master, or at least something new to pursue competence in.

The puppies are chasing each other around the kitchen table, it is so much fun to watch, especially when Mama Freya joins in on the fun to show them how to really take the fun to the next level.

That’s about all I’m good for tonight.

Tomorrow, my meditation session, focusing non my mindfulness, then a review of my class, and an isolation of weaknesses. Everything is going to be fine.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Sunday night, and it has been an interesting weekend. I’ve been laid up most of the day dealing with the after-effects of another GI problem, but I am feeling much better now. The only lingering negative is the strain on my abdomen from the protracted cramps from the GI issue. Those things can hurt.

Right now both Lilly and Rosy are sitting between my legs here in my recliner. Lisa is asleep and has been so for the last hour and a half. I am thankful for the moments when she can sleep well.

I’m going to endeavor to do the same here shortly. I have some butter pecan ice cream beside me that keeps drifting back into my peripheral vision, and I have not been good at resisting temptation. It’s not that bad, though, as it’s Rebel Ice Cream and it has a scant 4 grams of carbohydrates in a pint.

Just rubbed my forearm across my tummy… it’s still pretty sensitive. I tell you what, those cramps can be pretty damn wicked. I’ve dealt with it four times now over a couple of decades, but when I think that women have to put up with that pain every month for 40 years? Respect!

I’m back in the classroom again next week, with a solo delivery of AZ-104 for an open -enrollment class. I’ll be busy this week. Monday is always the hardest day, with all of the check-in and lab setup stuff.

Other than that, I think I’m going to get things wrapped up and get my backside off into lala land. Might check my office first, but I think I’m going to fade pretty quickly tonight.

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

Peace y’all.

It is a Thursday night, the 25th of February, and I am relaxing and watching sleepy puppies.

We finished up our Azure class today, and I am once again reminded of the things I can do to become a more effective instructor. I learned some lessons in professionalism this week, and I am grateful for it. My training partners taught me some valuable lessons about classroom comportment and depth of knowledge.

I’ve got some room for improvement.

Tomorrow I’m going to go through the classroom curriculum and put together a road map for myself. I’ve got some topics to dig a little deeper into in the coming weeks… but that is the way of things.

I’m bone weary tonight, and I’m going to keep this one short. Lisa is going to be up awhile working, so I’m going to take care of the other things that need to be taken care of before calling it a night. I still need to remind myself to take out the trash tomorrow.

So much stuff going on. I’m glad that I don’t have to commute or head to the airport on top of everything else.

I’m good…

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

Peace y’all.