It is Sunday, January 16, 2022. I have a cup of coffee clearly in need of a refill, so that may be the ultimate limiting factor in determining the length of this blog post.

I’m going to try and give my brain a day off. I say that and I immediately turn to the topics at work that require the most attention. I’ve had a couple of ideas, and I’m anxious to implement them, but it doesn’t need to be done right now.

“Hey, all you amateur crastinators, come check me out! I’m a pro!”

I’ll jump on Discord later and hang out with some friends on Virtual Table Top and make a world safe for humanoids and their friends. That engages and distracts at the same time. I’m very grateful to the crew I get to play with just about every Sunday afternoon.

Tonight, I get to watch my favorite NFL team play in the first round of the playoffs, as the Kansas City Chiefs host the Pittsburg Steelers. With this possibly being Ben Roethlisberger’s swan song, and the return of his favorite wide receivers off the Injured Reserve list, I worry that this could be a trap game, expecting the Chiefs to be thinking about next week rather than this week. There will be a couple of calls that will be outrageous and I will likely be among the fans screaming at the TV when they happen, but they’re part of the game, and a future source of arguments and threats of bodily harm between the bros.

I hope it’s a good game. I hope nobody gets injured (the difference between being hurt and being injured, right?), and, as a person that accepts his bias, I hope the Chiefs win. I’ll also hope that it can be credited to the defense rather than any struggles Big Ben might be having with nagging injuries. I hope it’s a classic.

Alright, looks like my cup needs to be refilled. Might be time to watch church… been doing that since the beginning of the pandemic.

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

Peace y’all.

Had to double-check my days… in the past I’ve often popped in the wrong day (how many days I’ve been alive), but I have made it a regular task to go check my “How many days have you been alive” page at imrodmartin.com.

58 years and change.

With more change to come, I guess.

It’s snowing this morning, and there are talking heads on TV discussing political issues du jour. Former Democrats complaining about Democrats, Former Republicans complaining about Republicans. Right now I’m glad I’m not aligned with a political party… but I do wish I could have a say in the primaries of both parties. Lately, there have been questionable candidates on both sides, more focused on advancing their parties than advancing the cause of the American people in total.

Maybe I should avoid politics today.

I like books.

Empty ones. With either a grid or dot pattern.

I like to write in them. I think everybody should have one at the ready to jot down tasks, ideas, and the things that pop in your head that sound interesting or funny at the time… the kind of things that are better kept quiet depending on the context of the moment. Some things are definitely best unsaid, but I have no problem jotting them down and enjoying them later when I take a moment to review the other relevant notes that I hopefully remembered to write down when I was also focused on a quip that I found humorous.

I have soft covers and hardcovers, and when Borders went out of business, I think I bought every 5″ x 8″ grid journal they had in two different stores… much to my wife’s chagrin.

Not all journals are created equal. Some definitely have features I like a little more – the consistency of a Moleskine, or the professionalism of the Code and Quill Monoliths and some of their other offerings (including a habit system, which we could all use from time to time to create more positive habits).

OK, that’s enough for now. Time to grab my planner (yes, I still use one) to mark some things down, goals, achievements, as well as review my milestones for conquering western civilization. Just kidding… why would anybody want to be responsible for this mess?

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

Peace y’all.

Today is Friday, January 14, 2022. Watching some of the news and it’s all gloom and doom. Kind of got me thinking, and I’m going to start off with a story about lemmings.

Back in the 50’s, Disney was very good at making nature documentaries. It dove-tailed very well with their family-friendly movies and television programs. They had an image to maintain. In 1958, they created a nature documentary called “White Wilderness” about wildlife in the far northern regions. One segment of the show featured lemmings, small rodents in the same family as voles and muskrats. It was in this documentary that the legend/myth was created that lemmings committed mass suicide.

From the Alaska Department of Fish and Game:

“According to a 1983 investigation by Canadian Broadcasting Corporation producer Brian Vallee, the lemming scenes were faked. The lemmings supposedly committing mass suicide by leaping into the ocean were actually thrown off a cliff by the Disney filmmakers. The epic “lemming migration” was staged using careful editing, tight camera angles and a few dozen lemmings running on snow covered lazy-Susan style turntable.

“White Wilderness” was filmed in Alberta, Canada, a landlocked province, and not on location in lemmings’ natural habitat. There are about 20 lemming species found in the circumpolar north – but evidently not in that area of Alberta. So the Disney people bought lemmings from Inuit children a couple provinces away in Manitoba and staged the whole sequence.

In the lemming segment, the little rodents assemble for a mass migration, scamper across the tundra and ford a tiny stream as narrator Winston Hibbler explains that, “A kind of compulsion seizes each tiny rodent and, carried along by an unreasoning hysteria, each falls into step for a march that will take them to a strange destiny.”

That destiny is to jump into the ocean. As they approach the “sea,” (actually a river -more tight cropping) Hibbler continues, “They’ve become victims of an obsession — a one-track thought: Move on! Move on!”

The “pack of lemmings” reaches the final precipice. “This is the last chance to turn back,” Hibbler states. “Yet over they go, casting themselves out bodily into space.”

Basically, Disney frightened a bunch of rodents into killing themselves.

These days I’ve heard more than one talking head say that they would rather die than take the vaccine.

I can’t help but draw a comparison. It’s not natural to kill yourself, but some folks apparently are willing to do so rather than take a vaccine because they are afraid.

Seems to be trending.

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

Peace y’all.

Good morning! It is Thursday, January 13, 2022. Today is the last day of my new course delivery, and next week, I get to do it all over again.

Regarding my post the other day when I was a bit “under it”, meaning the weather. I had an old friend reach out to me in the comments to let me know that he’s got my back covered, and I certainly appreciate it. To be honest, it came as a surprise… I didn’t know he read my blog posts at all (I don’t do much promotion other than a Twitter post).

Thank you, sir, for your support. It matters.

After I get this wrapped up today, I’ll go back through in my own head about what we got right and where we could stand to improve a bit. I think this week has gone pretty well for a first delivery or new content, but I am keenly aware that deliveries I do 6 months from now will bear little semblance to this week’s class.

OK, enough about that. Sitting here, waiting for my coffee to finish brewing, contemplating eggs or low-carb toast with peanut butter for breakfast (right now, the idea of toast and peanut butter with a cup of coffee is winning). Plotting my day out with breaks at 10:15 and 2:15, and a one-hour lunch… I have a tendency to work backward on my day, calculating the start time, the end time, subtracting the breaks, and there you go – that’s how much time I have left to deliver today’s content. It’ll be a reasonable day, covering three subjects that migrated pretty cleanly from the previous version of the course.

OK, that’s enough for today. Time to get my cup of joe and get my brain dialed in for the day ahead.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Wednesday morning, January 12, 2022.

I’m breathing a little easier today. Yesterday I delivered the first day of a new class, and it went OK. I’ll be the first to admit that I was dealing with some anxiety (as well as being under the weather), but we got through the day just fine with a little bit of extra time available at the end of the day for my learners (students? trainees? attendees?), I wasn’t as comfortable with the database-centric material as I would like to be, but we’ll get there. I’m going to turn some of these weaknesses into strengths.

Last night I was able to relax a bit and watch some basketball. I do enjoy watching the Kansas Jayhawks, and last night they had a nail-biter against Iowa State. KU won in the end, but it was a dogfight. On top of that, Texas Tech knocked off the number 1 team in the country and Big 12 Conference nemesis, Baylor. This conference is going to be a beast this year. Lots of talent, solid coaches, and great fans for the most part.

Today I get to back up my training partner while he’s back in the hot seat. I’ll sit on the sideline and shovel in URLs left and right in support of the topic of the moment, as well as do my best to answer questions that pop up in the chat.

Tonight, it’s back to study hall for me as I prepare for our last day, then I’ll reach out to my partner for next week’s class to discuss what went right and where we have room for improvement. That’s the job. Buckle down and get ‘er done.

I think I’ve spewed enough brain scrapings for now.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Tuesday morning, January 11, 2021. I normally wake to my alarm at 5:30 AM on delivery days. Today it felt more like I just rolled out of bed rather than wake up, as I feel like I tossed and turned most of the night with thoughts about my delivery today (first-time content), as well as all of those other peripheral issues that can keep a person from a good night’s sleep.

Yesterday’s class was pretty good, my training partner did a solid job covering the content, and as I ponder the content, I think I’ll be OK with that material in future deliveries. Today’s discussion will center on databases, database storage, and other data-related topics (integration, hybrid deployments). Not my strongest suit, but one of the things we all have to do sometimes is reinforce and buttress those weaknesses, study, explore, and eventually the topics that we consider weaknesses become strengths. I can say I know more today than I did a weak ago on the subject.

There’s plenty of room for improvement.

I have this same class a few more times before I have to do my first solo delivery of the course in March. Before that opportunity, I’ll be delivering another course that is new to me and sitting, possibly partially delivering, a third new course in February.

I just need to buckle down and stay focused, maybe loosen up the belt around my brain a little bit to let my cranium expand. Nailing this course will be a nice leap forward relating to getting past some of the anxiety that is keeping me up at night.

That’s enough for now.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Monday morning, January 10, 2022.

Started off the day with a little good news. I’m back on my meal plan, and I am down almost a full seven pounds from where I was last week at this time. Up the hydration, down the carbs, and discipline, discipline, discipline. I do believe combining my meal plan and cutting out my alcohol intake is somewhat responsible for the success I’ve had this week. I’m hoping by this time next week I’ll have bumped a digit on the scale, getting below 290. It’s a very reasonable expectation.

Watched a little football yesterday while I was prepping for class this week, and there was some excitement. Right now I’m watching the overtime of the Chargers/Raiders game. I don’t know the final score… don’t ruin it for me. If these two teams end in a tie, the Steelers are frozen out of the playoffs and both the Chargers and Raiders earn wild card slots. I think it would send the Raiders to Kansas City for the first round of the playoffs if memory serves.

I’ll just sit here with my glass of water and ponder the Chargers attempt to tie the game with a field goal… and it’s still tied in overtime. I do love an exciting football game.

This week I have a first delivery of a new course, focusing more on whiteboarding and case studies rather than the hands-on classes we have been teaching. This will be interesting. I get to teach with the same trainer I taught with last week, so that helps with in-class rapport.

There’s political news out there, but you can look up what happened on this date. Insurrectionist GOP reps don’t want to cooperate with the January 6 investigation. Surprise, surprise.

Anyway, I’m going to wrap this up, finish my water, grab a cup of coffee, and make an omelet.

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

Peace y’all.

It is Sunday morning, January 9, 2022.

I made a mistake this morning.

My wife gifted me with a Flaviar subscription, for which I am truly grateful. Part of my quarterly shipment is a small, three-vial tasting sampler set. It comes in a cylindrical container with a slip-off top.

I had shown that wonderful gift to some peers the other day, specifically a mentor who is involved in bourbon tastings.

My mistake… this morning I was moving that container from my desk back over to a shelf where I store my premium whiskeys, and I was holding the container by the lid, not by the bottom, and, you guessed it, the container slipped out and gravity did its thing.

I lost one of the vials. On the positive side, I could’ve lost all three, but I am disappointed I lost one of them. I don’t know that I’ll scurry about to find a replacement, but I will investigate whether there is a process. I’m not drinking this month, otherwise, one or maybe all three of those vials would have been consumed.

I need to stay focused on work today, though. Hitting “Dry January” at the same time that I have two new classes coming up fast is probably all for the best. My productivity is likely to be slightly higher when I’m not slightly higher myself.

I can work today and keep a football game on in the background. Kind of hoping that the Houston Texans can knock off the Tennessee Titans today.

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

Peace y’all.

Today is a Saturday, January 8, 2022. Nobody’s making people into Soylent Green yet.

A great performer passed away yesterday, legendary actor Sidney Poitier, and I’ve read several tributes to him. One that particularly grabbed my attention was the reflection by Halle Berry, posting a quote from Mr. Poitier’s book, “Life Beyond Measure”.

“A tiny bit of myself is lost when my friends are gone”.

That got me thinking.

I have had a number of great friends over the years, solid people that you could always count on when the going got rough. I tried to be there for them as they had to deal with some of the worst tragedies a family or an individual could endure. I cannot assess how valuable my friendship was to them, as that’s not for me to judge.

Over the years, there has been a distance created with any number of my old friends, and I understand part of it is human nature, part of it is a change based on, believe it or not, politics. A number of my old friends are far more right-leaning than I am. I was pretty vocal about my distrust and distaste for far-rightwing politics and politicians. I take full responsibility for my words, spoken and written, about the former guy and his followers. I know what I said, I know what I wrote.

So, those friends are, for the most part, in my rear-view mirror, and, although there are plenty of great memories, I’m going to make new ones. There are gaps, and I’m either going to grow to fill in those gaps myself, create new content with my family and current friends, and when the opportunity presents itself, create new friendships that won’t be hammered and dinged up by political alignments.

Thank you, Mr. Tibbs.

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

Peace y’all.

It is a Friday, January 7, 2022. I don’t have a class today, as just about all of my classes have moved to a four-day format, and today I have a number of meetings to attend, starting with a casual “come as you are” chat with my fellow trainers here in about ten minutes. Coffee is brewing, I’m on my second glass of water for the day. Breakfast will happen over the course of the next hour, probably eggs and ham, or eggs and cheese… maybe I’ll take the easy way out and just grab a hard-boiled egg or two and head into the coffee talk.

Yesterday was both eventful and uneventful. There were multiple remembrances of the events of a year ago in Washington, DC, and it seemed that the insurrectionists decided to keep a low profile, perhaps reflecting on their roles in that sad, historic day, as they tried to overthrow the government because Donald J. Trump is a whiny bitch that still can’t wrap his tiny brain around the indisputable fact that he lost the election by 7 million votes. To be honest, there are still any number of his weak-minded followers that still subscribe to that lie.

Just two days ago, Attorney General Merrick Garland stated very clearly that there will be further prosecutions and that the instigators of that attempt to overthrow our democracy will face justice. I hope they all get what’s coming to them. I’m not asking anyone to be shot at sunrise, but some of these overblown egos certainly need to be humbled to the point where they retire quietly in some community away from the public eye to wallow in their shame.

OK, this is my Friday entry, I’ve got coffee and breakfast to attend to, and some meetings to prepare for, so I better get to it.

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

Peace y’all.