It is Wednesday night, January 27, 2021. I was having a pretty good day today, with class going well, and I was just answering questions online and supporting my training partner this week.

Then, I saw a post on social media. A high school classmate of mine had passed away. I made an assumption, and I’m still riding that likelihood… he had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer a few years ago, and I’m pretty sure that cancer ended up taking him.

It’s been a curse on his family, with several family members, including the baby of the family, Pat’s sister, Susan, who died from a different form of cancer a number of years ago. I’ll always remember Susan’s smile and positivity while she participated in so many high school theatrical productions.

I had Pat in some classes, but, at first, we didn’t have much in common, we ran with different crowds.

But there was something about Pat that caught my attention.

With all the students that I went to school with back in the seventies and early eighties, Pat was unique. In his back right pocket, there always seemed to be a handkerchief, and in his left back pocket there was that one thing that gave us something to talk about.

Pat always seemed to have a paperback book in his back pocket.

I remember asking him about it one time, and he joked, “What? You didn’t think I could read?”.

Yeah, I kind of screwed up that conversational opening. But we started talking about books we liked and we had something in common.

Pat was the guy that introduced me to a couple of different authors, most notably, George R.R. Martin and the Song of Ice and Fire.

We had been in touch through social media. and chatted from time to time. We talked about his cancer diagnosis when it first came down, and we talked about treatment.

And we talked about getting together and throwing back a bottle of better booze when he got a clean bill of health.

That didn’t happen.

I bought a bottle today. It’s a 19 year-old bottle of Glennfiddich. It’s a commemorative “Age of Discovery” edition, aged in a Bourbon cask. I’ll crack it here in a few days and raise a glass to Pat Maxey.

I think then I’ll set that bottle off to the side, and raise a glass with fellow Salina Central Class of ’81 classmates that drop by my digs as time goes by.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Tuesday night, January 26, 2021. I’ve got a nice fire going in the wood-burning stove, and the heat coming out of that front is enough to fill the room with a gently, glorious breeze embracing me like a warm blanket.

I’m teaching a class this week, and the primary instructor and myself have divided up the work load. I covered the first six modules yesterday and today, and I’ll hand off to my partner in the morning as we tackle modules 7, 8, and 9. I’ll be back on deck first thing Thursday morning, but the rest of the modules fall to him, and that’s great because I get to hear a great instructor deliver the content I am not as comfortable with as I would like to be.

After this week I’ll have delivered 9 of the 15 modules for this course, and I anticipate I’ll get the others delivered in the coming months.

In a few weeks, I’ll be sitting a different class, the follow on to this one, so I can teach the AZ-304, rounding out the complete suite of Cloud Solutions Architecture classes. After that, the Azure Security class will be on the horizon. Ideally, I’d like to get to a point where I’m delivering one of each, AZ-104, AZ-303, AZ-304, and AZ-500 in a rotation.

I think somebody once said that if you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.

I feel that way about being a Microsoft Certified Trainer. I just renewed for year 26.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Monday night, January 25, 2021. Lisa and I are the only humans in the house, and the tiny little squeaks we hear in the background emanate from the little dog crate, as the two pups play and the rest of us watch in the awesome power of delicate life.

I’m taking a class on creating a high performance mind set, and it has given me some solid food for thought. I’m thinking about things I really haven’t contemplated in years, going back to some of the seminars I participated in back in the early 90’s. Matters of goal setting and time management, life balance and the perpetual pursuit of excellence.

A long time ago, I really got into the motivational speaker thing. I’d go to see the big names in self-improvement, and I’d listen to the audiobooks, and read the articles, and buy the expensive planner (OK, truth is, I still buy a planner… and sometimes I actually use the thing to track stuff).

I listened to “The Secret” audiobook… ok, truth, I think I’d like to go back through it again. I do wonder about the Law of Attraction and Creative Visualization.

There’s always good material out there for those that want to dig into it. Some of it I really like, but because there’s always a buck to be made, there are some guys out there that really aren’t that great. You get some good, you get some mediocrity, you get some that you drop off in the canister on your way out the door There are some really good motivational speakers out there, and I hope you find some folks that speak to you and reach you, and find a way to help you transform yourself into the best version of you that you can be,

OK, that’s an article. A post on this 20,951st day of my life.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Sunday night, the 24th day of January, 2021. I am very pleased to pass along that the Kansas City Chiefs have defeated the Buffalo Bills and will be facing the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the Superbowl on February 7th.

It was a good game, and the Chiefs gave up the lead early, but came back with a vengeance, at one point up by over 20 points.

The Superbowl this year takes place in Tampa Bay. The Buccaneers will be sleeping in their own beds. Playing at home is a big advantage in a normal year. This is no normal year.

On the negative side, my primary internet access has been down most of the evening. I’ve made a couple of support calls, but I’m concerned that the lack of connectivity will adversely affect my delivery starting tomorrow morning. I have reached out to my training partner to let him know about my internet challenges, and I hope to get it resolved sooner rather than later.

I need to think about hitting that hay. I am trying to get more sleep, trying to get a solid 7.5 to 8 hours of sleep as part of a high performance training program I am participating in .

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

Peace y’all.

It is Saturday night, January 23, 2021. Had a somewhat productive day, for a Saturday, with some work, some laundry, and a run to Kansas City to pick up a piece of furniture.

The dogs are well, and the two little ones are just so darn cute.

Got some steaks in the sous vide, set to go on the grill just before tomorrow night’s game, Chiefs hosting the Bills.

It’s a writer’s block kind of night, with me thinking about too many things other than writing.

So, I pause and spend a few minutes holding our now four-week-old puppies.

Tomorrow is Sunday, and I’ve got some more rep work to prep my demo environment for the class starting Monday. I need to remember to log in and activate my Azure Pass and the Premium P2 trial for Azure Active Directory.

Sometimes I just take a look at all the things I would like to accomplish and wonder where the time went.

I’m going to wrap this up. I’m just not into writing a whole lot tonight. I wrote more than enough last night to cover a couple of entries, so I’m not going to beat myself up over not having much to dwell on.

Go Chiefs, beat the Bills.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Friday night, January 22, 2021. My wife is calmly sleeping in the recliner next to mine, and my dog, Odin, is whimpering because the one toy he absolutely wants to play with more than any other toy has rolled under the couch out of his reach, and he wants me to get it out for him. It would be the fifth time tonight if I were to get up and retrieve his toy for him.

My wife says that Odin is doing a good job training me.

It’s all a part of my new normal.

Normal.

One word that means something a little bit different for everybody. For some folks it means one set of standards based on experience and the way that one person feels. And that’s ok. That’s ok for that one person. It’s a subjective truth.

My normal, my subjective truth, is unique for me, just as yours is your normal. It would be wrong for me to require you to adopt my definition of normal… unless, of course, your definition of normal involves being a serial killer or rapist.

President Biden has announced a reversal of the transgender ban for the military. An old high school classmate is opposed to it. Granted, he’s also a Trump supporter, and liked Trump’s LGBTQ agenda. It might seem a bit snarky, but I think Trump would’ve preferred that community just stayed out of his sight. He had his idea about normal, and he wanted to impose that set of beliefs on everybody else.

My normal is no one else’s normal.

If somebody else’s normal makes me uncomfortable, is the problem with them, or is the problem my own?

All too often, people would rather deny freedom to others because it makes them feel icky, it makes them feel uncomfortable, it makes them feel … something.

I think at the heart of it, folks just can’t wrap their minds around the idea that we all deserve to be happy, and so long as you aren’t hurting anybody else, it’s really none of your business.

Suck it up, Snowflake. The first sex change procedures took place in 1952, almost 70 years ago.

That’s quite some time. Preceded a lot of the modern civil rights laws that were enacted during a tumultuous time in the US and the rest of the world. Today, we accept all those civil rights changes (most of us do anyway… ironically, the same folks that have problems with equality for all, also have a problem with folks transitioning their gender… no coincidence, I think) without blinking an eye for the most part.

Let’s give those folks a chance to find their own normal. Let’s not force others to accept our definition of normal.

I’d rather be in a foxhole with a transgender soldier that felt good about his/her/their life than with a miserable human that was so tired of having to accept other’s “normal” that they were ready to flip a spoon and check out.

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

Peace y’all.

It’s Thursday night, January 21, 2021. A scant 36 minutes ago, it was the 21st minute of the 21st hour of the 21st day of the 21st year of the 21st century.

It wasn’t that exciting.

And I am just fine with that.

I’m resuming my personal journey of self-discovery this year, taking a more proactive approach to becoming a better person. I’m going to try to cover the big three, mind, body and spirit.

I might try to work on my keyboarding skills as well. Heaven knows they could stand some improvement.

I’m going to focus on a few things in my life that I think could stand a bit of improvement. I don’t like certain parts of my personality. I have an argumentative side that can slips out of my control sometimes, and my temper can come through. I’ll be the first to admit that, although I am a generally tolerant person, there are some things that flip the switch a little quicker than others.

I’m have been exercising with more regularity this year, and I am going to continue the practice, hopefully becoming a full-blown daily habit.

I’m going to read more, and meditate/practice mindfulness daily. Sometimes that means combining the two, sometimes it means taking a nap.

Most days, a nap sounds pretty good.

I’ll review the other stuff, too. Hydration, exercise, mindfulness, goal setting… the “plan”, as it were.

And I’ll try to be a better person tomorrow than what I was today.

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

Peace y’all.

It is ten o’clock pm on this Wednesday night, January 20, 2021.

We have a new president.

Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th President on the United States of America. Chief Justice John Roberts had President Biden swear his oath of office on the Biden family bible which was over a hundred years old.

I am going to sleep a little bit better tonight.

On the new president’s first day, he signed seventeen executive orders, covering topics from DACA to rejoining the WHO and the Paris Accords. He stopped all oil exploration around a couple of significant national parks, Bears Ears being among them.

He stopped the Keystone XL pipeline.

I spent a little time on social media today. Apparently the big MAGA/Q-ANON conspiracy crowd was surprised when Biden was sworn in, and there was no spontaneous revolution with the POTUS being taken into custody and Trump being brought back into serve another four years. Those folks are finding out the hard way that they were getting played the entire time.

Some will hang on to there programming a little longer though. I think they’re caught in a processing loop. Eventually, they’ll end up like Norman on the “Mudd’s Planet” episode of Star Trek: The Original Series.

“Shut up, Stella!”

I’m going to head off to bed here in a few minutes, right after I get this wrapped up.

I hope the world is treating you better than you deserve… my world is doing all right tonight.

Peace y’all.

It’s the 19th day (night) of January, in this Year of Our Lord 2021. TOmorrow we inaugurate a new president and vice-president. I look forward to being able to say President Joe Biden.

I have thought and thought about what I should write about tonight. I need to remain as objective as possible with the new administration coming in. There is a bar that needs to be applied here… and the comparison will not be to the Trump administration, but to the Obama and Clinton administrations.

I am going to pay attention to what happens with taxes. I know people are going to be really surprised when their temporary tax breaks go away – a lot of folks don’t remember, but the tax breaks Trump signed into law when he went office were not permanent (except for the corporations).

I will pay attention to the environmental laws that are changed through executive order, and the other Obama era laws that get re-enacted because there were cancelled out by a Trump executive order.

There have been a lot of policies that need some attention. I will try to give a fair assessment of each one. I will bet that some folks will greet every policy change and reversal with disdain. It doesn’t take a lot of critical thought to call everything crap without giving a second thought.

I hope tomorrow is a boring, run of the mill inauguration. I hope that there are no distractions or worse… heaven knows that Trump’s followers are capable of worse.

I hope that the Biden/Harris administration achieves their goals. First goal has to be cleaning up the myriad messes left behind by the Trump administration.

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

Peace y’all.

I have now figured out why I always had to go back and check my “Number of Days I’ve Been Alive” from time to time. I pulled a typo on yesterday’s blog post and swapped a 3 and a 4. Yesterday should’ve been Day 20, 943 and I wrote 20,934.

I almost took ten days of life away from myself.

I would’ve missed Trump’s second impeachment.

I find myself wondering how we got here. It was the hatred so many American’s felt for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and just the general idea of moving forward, trying to get away from older established thoughts and practices, moving further away from some folks’ comfort level.

People don’t want to have to deal with the “other”.

Sometimes the “other” is family members.

It is a little nuts. People are posting and predicting ridiculous stuff. Went by one old friend’s Facebook page and he was predicting how long Joe Biden will last in office. Some said he’d never get inaugurated. Some predict he will be out of office in a matter of months. Based on the prediction and the current makeup of the House and the Senate, it likely won’t be due to impeachment. In effect, these folks are predicting either a resignation or death.

These are the same folks that berated me for the amount of hatred I had for Trump, and another telling me that I was symbolic of everything wrong in the America.

I really don’t think so. I did make a couple of bets on Trump getting through his administration without getting impeached or resigning. Lost that bet… after all, who would have thought that betting on him getting impeached twice was the safe bet?

Noon Wednesday can’t get here soon enough.

I’m going to goof around for a little bit, then call it a night.

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

Peace y’all.