Evie Day 495

Good morning, and the happiest of Taco Tuesdays to you all. Today is 23 July 2024.

I was exceptionally relieved at about 5:00 PM yesterday afternoon, as my work teammate and I closed out the last of the sessions for yesterday’s learning day. I was up to my armpits in two sessions yesterday, one went off without a hitch, the other with a minor miscommunication that kept us from getting started promptly. All in all, it was a pretty good day with some pretty good sessions.

Today will be a regular virtual classroom day, with my training partner taking control of the office hours this morning, and I’ll be responsible for the first whiteboarding session this afternoon to talk about storage options in the cloud.

I’ll admit… I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about Vice President Harris moving from the VP role to Presidential candidate, but today I am significantly more comfortable, and that level of comfort seems to be growing not just in my household, but with others as well.

We’re busy here at the house when we aren’t focused on work responsibilities. We are having some family visitors this weekend.

Tonight… there will be tacos.

Until then…

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 494

Good morning, and happy Monday to you all. Today is 22 July 2024.

And it’s going to get very interesting. Yesterday, President Biden announced that he would back out of the 2024 election. He then endorsed Kamala Harris, the Vice-President, as his replacement. I’ve already made one prediction – if Harris is the Democrat candidate for the presidency, Trump will not debate her.

The barbs against Harris are already flying, with insinuations that she is too far to the left or otherwise unfit. Keep in mind that some of the folks making these comments are so far to the right that William F. Buckley looks middle-of-the-road.

This morning I saw Joe Manchin on the news. He left the DNC a year or two ago, and now he wants back in to have a shot at the presidency. He is very wealthy and made his money in fossil fuels. I’m not a fan.

I have a learning day today, with sessions starting in another hour. I have two sessions today, one early in the afternoon, one later in the day. In the first one, I am coaching people through a security tool, and in the second, I’ll be presenting some tips and tricks for using AI in the productivity suite.

I had a good time yesterday hanging out with the guys. We’re going to be focused on the house and property when we’re not focused on work stuff this week, as we have a niece and her husband coming for a visit this weekend. There will be D&D. I have to admit, I’m not quite sure what that will mean for my Sunday afternoon session with the guys I play with – it might be a good time to divert folks to the swimming pool so I can cause a little chaos role-playing an angry red-haired dwarven cleric. Lawful grumpy is an alignment, isn’t it?

The world is changing, and I need to change, too.

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 491

Good morning… I hope you aren’t sitting in the airport this morning. Today is Friday, 19 July 2024.

Today is not going to be a good day at the office. There’s an authentication problem apparently caused by a regularly scheduled key rotation and now Crowdstrike and Microsoft have a serious authentication problem. I have a feeling it will be part of this morning’s office hours session.

I’d like to go on a talk about celebrating my youngest daughter’s birthday tonight, she turns 26. I’d like to talk about some of the other preparations that I need to attend to in preparation for next week.

I think I need to educate myself a little bit more about what is going on.

I’m going to close this one out early and get to work.

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 490

Good morning everybody! It is Thursday, 18 July 2024.

Today is going to be a busy day.

I return to my virtual classroom for a couple of long blocks, a 2+ hour block in the morning, and another in the afternoon. In the between times, I have plenty to keep me occupied, with a couple of presentations for next Monday I need to nail down.

I flipped on the news… probably shouldn’t have. I think we’ll watch something a little more in our idiom. I certainly will not be watching any political conventions—too much gaslighting. I can’t support a felon for the presidency.

Election cycles bring out the worst in people. I had some guy virtually yell at me on social media yesterday, telling me that I’m not getting the truth from mainstream media. I asked him which news sources he would recommend, and for fun, I ran the named sources through a website called MediaBiasFactCheck.com . It’s fair to say that his news sources were a significantly less objective than the sources I generally lean on like AP Newswire or Reuters.

I probably ought to go tend to my other morning responsibilities.

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 489

Good morning, and a happy Wednesday to you all. My Teams background will have camels in it today… it is 17 July 2024.

Last night I had tacos.

I felt it was important to get the important news out there first.

After dinner, we resumed doing a little thing we’d been doing here. Dane recommended a few weeks ago that we should watch the Lord of the Rings movies once again, and all three movies, extended cuts, are available on Max. That last movie, with the extended scenes, is four and a half hours long. We got through a few hours last night, and we’ll probably finish it up tomorrow night.

It’s better than watching a few of the prominent events on TV.

Tonight, I’ll get to avoid television tonight as well when I get together with the guys for a little virtual tabletop gaming.

The news is on, I’m feeling ill. I better wrap this up.

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 488

Good morning, and a very happy Taco Tuesday to you all. Today is 16 July 2024.

Yesterday was a good day for me… I got some stuff done – not all of it, but a chunk of it. I made myself a list and got to it. Some of it I should be able to get taken care of before the day gets going in earnest. I’ll be back in the virtual classroom for office hours at about 8:00 AM… not due in until 9:00, but I like to get in early.

Last night I did a little foraging for dinner and came across a pretty good buy over at HyVee on pork tenderloins. I picked up two of the tenderloins, one to smoke this week, and another for the freezer.

Y’all don’t have to ponder too long on what our dinner plans are for tonight. There will be tacos, and the only variable is the number.

My son talked to me this weekend about reading more fiction, which I would love to do. He suggested that he and I, as well as my oldest daughter, start reading books together. Pick a title, read it, and talk about it. My only concern is trying to keep up with Bonnie… that girl goes through books like a hot knife through butter.

I’m not feeling it this morning. There’s usually something going on somewhere in the world worth mentioning, and I’m sure there is… but I just don’t feel like talking about stuff. Right now I think it’s more important to listen to what’s going on rather than commenting. Some of the things going on in the world are quite frightening, and a number of those things are going on in my backyard.

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 487

Good morning, and a happy Monday to you all. Today is 17 July 2024.

OK… somebody took a shot at Trump over the weekend. Clipped his ear. The shooter is dead, a 20-year-old kid who couldn’t win a spot on his high school marksmanship team. Trump is apparently fine, a father there with his family is dead, and the Republican National Convention begins today in Milwaukee.

I’m on a prep day today. I’ve got two presentations to nail down, a talk for tomorrow to outline (a familiar subject), and an exam to prepare for. I should look at the applied skills courses as well, and fill in a couple of blanks.

We had a relaxing weekend around here. Lisa wrapped up a major project on Friday and had a little time to relax this weekend. I worked on projects intermittently, watched some sports, and joined the guys around the virtual tabletop yesterday afternoon.

There’s not much else to share really. I grilled some wings and had some Thai food. Peppers are coming along nicely, and the pool is warm.

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 484

Good morning, and a happy last day of the work week to you all! Today is Friday, 12 July 2024.

Today is an Evie Day.

I always look forward to seeing my granddaughter. I think she’s getting used to us a little more. My daughter is raising Evie at home, not using daycare the way Lisa and I had to back in the 90s and early 00s. I think that’s a pretty healthy choice. That said, Evie is all about Momma. She can be a little clingy.

Yesterday I burned a bridge. An old high school classmate, from my younger brother’s class, had called me out more than once on my opinions, one of them being on the use of Ivermectin as a treatment for COVID. I did a simple lookup of some medical content, and he wasn’t really happy with the peer-reviewed content I offered up in the debate. He makes fun of old Joe, and he wasn’t happy that I pointed out the guy he supports has 34 felony convictions, 2 impeachments for cause, two judgments against him for defamation related to sexual assault, and his fraud related to Trump University and his legal paperwork for loans and tax appraisals, and that wasn’t even getting into the Georgia election interference or his mishandling of classified documents.

I then told this person that no one is too surprised that he would support a felon with a history of sexual assault. I must’ve struck a nerve… a real old one, but it was struck nonetheless.

Fluff Busting Purity informed me that he was no longer connected to me on Facebook soon after.

I can be an arrogant, opinionated curmudgeon. If folks come at me with misinformation, they will meet that arrogant, opinionated old fart. It has amazed me how some folks will believe blatantly false and malicious things about one person, yet ignore the verifiable truth of someone else.

I’ll be back in my virtual classroom later. One two-hour session, then I have the balance of the day to focus on some other projects. I’ve got two presentations a week from Monday that need some attention. I’ve got plenty to keep me occupied… the grass in the yard won’t cut itself, either. Sunday, there will be mayhem… the online sort with the game crew.

Next week… we’ll continue with the class, moving from week 1 to week two in the four-week format.

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 483

Good morning! It’s Thursday! I hope you all have plans for a great day. Today is 11 July 2024.

The little icon in the lower right corner of my laptop is waiting for me to install an update. I thought I was done with updates for the week.

Yesterday was a good day. On the work side of the house, we talked about the labs and alternatives if the labs get a little wonky. One of the things I like about this course is that there are interactive lab simulations that walk through all of the labs. I recommend these for folks who are relatively new to the cloud, so they can see how the tools work before engaging in a hands-on lab where they are required to engage in a little more tactile learning.

After that, I had to focus on helping some of the learners with authentication into our course web app. I might still have a couple of folks that need some extra help, but right now, I think things are on track.

I’m up on the virtual dais at 9 o’clock. I have a presentation on “Governance, Policy, and RBAC”. RBAC stands for ‘role-based access control” – basically making sure that people have access to the resources they need to have access to, and have an authorized level of access. Not everybody needs to be a global administrator.

Last night I got together with the guys, and we progressed on our latest campaign, and nobody’s character croaked. That’s a pretty good night in my world.

My son and I talked a bit about gaming last night on the topic of homebrew world-building. My son has a very good imagination.

OK, time for me to get my ducks ready for the parade ground.

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 482

Good morning, and a happy Wednesday to you all. Today is 10 July 2024.

Later today, I will be sporting an appropriate background for my Teams meeting. Camels will be involved in the humpday theme.

I had generative AI spin up a couple of backgrounds last week with some camel art. It was OK, but I did end up with something like a “PushmePullyou” from Dr. Doolittle. Generative AI is fun, but it’s not perfect.

We had tacos last night. I ordered the bacon-wrapped shrimp fajitas and then assembled my own… that was after I had a couple of good old-fashioned crispy ground beef tacos. I love Tuesdays.

The class went pretty well yesterday, with almost 200 learners in the sessions. We had the same issues we normally have when it comes to virtual private networks, authentication, closed ports on the firewall, etc., but we did a decent job getting almost all of them addressed. I’ll be back in the virtual classroom in another couple of hours to talk about the lab experience and give folks a hand with the first couple of labs for the course.

Tonight I will get together with the crew for some virtual tabletop mayhem. I’ve been playing with this same group for a few years now, and it is a lot of fun, I am grateful they have accepted me into the group. We have three different gamemasters, and two of them are running two different campaigns… so a total of five campaigns, five different characters, and all of them seem to be evolving in the right direction.

I need to get gas for the mowers… 5 gallons of regular gas, 5 gallons of diesel.

That’s all I really have on my mind today… ok, that’s a lie. I’ve got plenty of other things on my mind, but I’ll just keep some of those thoughts to myself for now.

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

Peace y’all.