Hey folks. I went and took a look at my word count for the month, and I was pleased to see that my word count for the month of October met and exceeded expectations. The count is growing, and sometimes I actually post something worth reading.

I’m in the middle of a travel week, and I have to admit that sometimes it can be difficult to stay on top of my literary commitment. I took a pledge of two hundred words per day, and extrapolated that out to s monthly commitment, and that has been something I can stick to. I’ve been throwing down the thoughts on a regular, if not daily, basis.

I’ve met my goal for the month, and I’ll kind of stop there. I could go off on a rant about the travel experience I’ve had the last couple of days (84? What Uber driver sets the thermostat in the car to 84? I’m a human being, not a thanksgiving entree!”

I will leave you with a simple Halloween meme…

I am the darkness!

Peace y’all.

And be the darkness!

Getting to be about the right time for me to check my day count. I’ve been thrown off before, I will no likely be off again at some point. Funny how you can look at the same numbers day after day, the number of days you’ve had in your life, and still find inconsistencies.

Some of it is human error.

Some of it is simply due to the lenses through which we observe our lives.

We all have them, the lenses. Sometimes they filter out the blue light, sometimes they filter out reds and yellow. Sometimes they filter out things we don’t want to see or truths we don’t want to accept, but we all have them.

I know I do. It’s all part and parcel to the actualization process that I may never complete. The best I can hope for is the Carl Spackler prophecy of self-actualization and complete awareness while on one’s deathbed. Maybe it will happen for me, but most likely the closest I’ll ever get to it will be about 5 minutes after I’m pronounced dead and I get composted into a fruit tree.

But the fact remains… we all have unique experiences and perspectives, and those will provide a degree of clarity and distortion moving forward. We have no choice but to accept it. We also have a choice to make – can we try and look at the world through other people’s lenses? We must try. We must make an effort to walk that mile in another person’s shoes, or in my analogy, look at the world through other people’s lenses.

Let’s give it a shot, shall we?

Peace y’all.

It’s a Tuesday night in the Twin Cities, and I am going to keep this short and sweet, and not worry too much about the volume of words I’m committing to paper.

I had a delivery today as part of the Azure Training Days program, and I had a full house. Literally. There was not an empty seat in the three rooms I spoke in (reconfigured to be one big room). It was a fabulous experience, with lots of well-informed attendees asking very challenging and insightful questions. On more than one occasion I simply had to tell somebody that I just didn’t know the answer.

But it’s the truth. Few things will frustrate someone like answering a question with a wrong answer while feigning complete confidence. No one likes that, and to be frank, it’s really pretty disrespectful. If you don’t know the answer, don’t blow smoke up somebody’s ass in lieu of telling the truth. I’ve been lied to in the past my people in training positions, and I just don’t get how some people might be so worried about fracturing their own ego that they are willing to lie. Here’s an idea…

Set aside your ego.

Then it won’t matter as much.

Be humble.

Be honest.

Be sincere.

Your audience is there for a reason. They’ve given up valuable time to attend whatever talk you’re giving.

Give them the respect they are due.

I hope I never forget that.

Peace y’all.

It’s a little after 9:30 on a Monday night, this last Monday night in the month of October. I have had a full day of Azure Fundamentals training, along with a moderately satisfying proctored testing session to get another group of IT professionals certified on Azure.

My life is curious. I’m traveling, living a life that many of my peers would envy – not all, though, and I completely get that. I spend years on the road, and I spent years coming home to sleep in the same bed every night. I gotta tell you , I wish there was a way I could adventure out and see the world and do it side by side with my wife and out fur babies. That’s a lot easier said than done.

I’ve got a lot on my mind right now, with professional stuff, and personal stuff, dreams of where I want to be ten years from now, and, of course, the family stuff that just throbs at the back of my mind like some sort of internal bruising, just throbbing and aching, reaching out to me when I least expect it. It’s that part of me that rears its ugly head when I think I’ve cleared some obstacle n my life and says. “Hey, bud! Remember me?”.

I wanna kick that goat bastard’s ass. It haunts me, some ethereal karma spectre that kicks in to remind me of my bill… my karma bill.., from all of those times I was an asshole when I was a kid. I get that I’ve got a debt to pay, but does that debt have to be paid by others? That’s some bullshit, Mr. Karma.

Then there’s the oblivious nature of the pain…some don’t even know they’re being hurt.

I need to shut this down before I go off on some rant.

Peace, y’all.

It’s 9:42 on a Sunday night at the Courtyard by Marriott closest to the airport in Minneapolis-St. Paul. I’m in my hotel room, partially satisfied by the late Grubhub delivery of cold Chinese food.

The Chiefs and the Packers have put on a good show so far, but the Chiefs put the ball on the rug, and now they are closing out the third quarter with a turnover and the Pack about to score, the only thing in question is whether they score six or three.

There is another alternative ending I suppose, to this drive, and that would be a turnover going the Chiefs way. Yeah, I should be happy that the Chiefs are keeping it competitive with Patrick Mahomes and so many other players sitting out with injuries.

Well… crud. The answer to the question above was a six… Green Back just took a touchdown lead over the Chiefs.

I wasn’t really expecting to be in this game to be honest. We’re just not th same team without Mahomes. I will say that the defense has stepped up some, and had some great moment in this game with the sacks and the stops, but this offense is just too much to overcome in light of our offensive output – or lack of it.

Enough for tonight. Best to you.

Peace y’all.

Hey everybody! It’s old fat Grampa Bob coming to you live on a Saturday night, October 26, 2019… sometime before the coming fall of civilization.

I hope that turns out to be a joke.

I have about two hundred words to crank out, so this is going to follow my typical format of going off on a rant over something most likely meaningless in your day and age.

It was an interesting day in college football. K-State beat Oklahoma, and the Sooners came into the game undefeated and ranked number 6 in the country. I have a feeling that number will likely change on Monday.

TCU’s Horned Frogs pulled off a win against Texas.

But the big news of the day, for me anyway, is that Kansas pulled off a conference win against Texas Tech.

In the past, losing to Kansas pretty much meant that a coach was on the hot seat and likely to lose his job.

At least, that’s been the history of Kansas football and job relations over the last few years.

Kansas beat Texas Tech. And they did it with a balanced rushing and passing attack, with Pookah Williams getting a whole lot of respect, and Carter Standly getting a couple of quarterback breakaways as well.

It was an interesting evening.

Tomorrow I head off the the Twin Cities.

I hope all is well in your little corner of the world.

Peace y’all.

It’s a Friday night i rural Douglas County, and I’m thinking about dancing.

Yeah, weird, I know.

But seriously, I’m watching “Raising Dion” on Netflix, and the side arc about Dion’s mom being a dancer reminds me of some of the people I was friends with back when I was at Wichita State.

Some of my friends were dance majors.

And that was pretty cool.

David. Kevin. Tim. A few others….

I have respect for that area of study, that discipline. Humanity needs avenues of expression. We need to be able to play instruments and compose new music for the ear. We need to create pictures and paintings, and artwords steeped in texture.

And we need to dance.

I was a dancer. Nothing special. Not on any level above amateur, but I will confess I placed and even won some dance contents back when I was a kid. Break dancing. Club dancing. Krew dancing. It was a fun time. All those many years ago, I loved body mechanics, whether it was about the way I moved to music or how I moved approaching a high jump bar, or a pole vault pit.

That’s enough for tonight. I’m tired. I wish you all the best.

Peace y’all.

It’s a Thursday night in rural Douglas County. The trash can has been taken down to the road, and the take-out barbecue leftovers have been put in the fridge. Kansas played Fort Hays State tonight in an exhibition game, and came out with a 30 point win, as predicted by yours truly (I have witnesses).

I took a long look at where I was at with my writing numbers for the month, and here I sit, the 24th day of October, and I really ought to be looking at a word count right at 4,800 words, and I am way shy of where I ought to be. I need to get focused and stay focused on my writing through the end of the month. I have yet to fail at meeting my monthly pledge, and I’m kind of proud of that. I haven’t always been real consistent about making better habits, but this is one I have committed to, and I will continue to keep writing.

I’m going to take a look at some of my ebooks soon, and think about the month of November. I’m not saying I have an idea ready to go, but sometimes you just have to put pen to paper and see where the ink takes you.

Tomorrow I need to practice some flexibility. I have some work to get done, and I have some personal obligations to attend to as well. I also need to take a look at moving some of my guitar stuff down stairs to get it out of the way. I have some expense reports to attend to, and I need to spend some more time with the new version of a popular class I teach.

I am trying to relax as much as possible with the short time I have t home this week. Got home yesterday, worked from home today, and I will do the same thing tomorrow. Saturday, I have to admit that I don’t have any serious plans other than getting ready for my travel for the week.

I did go to the doctor today. My back is giving me some fits, the end result of a protracted stretch of sleeping on unfamiliar beds, sitting in uncomfortable airplane seats, and carrying 40-50 lbs of electronic gear in my backpack, too many times slung over one shoulder.

That’s not good for your spinal alignment.

Anyway, I’m feeling better now, and I hope to get a good night’s sleep.

And to that end…

Peace y’all.

OK, I missed a day yesterday, so you know what that means – some ridiculous stream of thought blog entry that covers way too much territory in four hundred words, and when you luck at the blog entry as a whole, it is somehow less than the sum of its parts.

I had a pretty good delivery in Dearborn yesterday. Not a whole lot of originality, just a pretty straightforward Azure fundamentals delivery. Today was going to be a testing day, but things didn’t go that way, so I headed back home, and I must admit, I am thankful that I have a couple of days here at the house before I have to head out again on Sunday.

I’m looking over my schedule and where I’ll be traveling through the end of the year, and I have to admit, life is good. I get to make a Tulsa run towards the end of the year, so that could be fun. Might need to look up some friends in the neighborhood. Might need to get my hands on some Tulsa barbecue while I’m down there as well.

I’ve got quite a bit on my plate the next couple of days. Lots of stuff to address here and around the house as well as some professional stuff to get through.

I’ve been listening to a decent audiobook series, “Commune” by Joshua Gayou. I’m a couple of chapters into the third book, and I have to confess tht the author has done a better than average job creating solid three dimensional characters.

Lisa is in her chair, and she’s tired. There are some rather obvious give-a-ways. I’m tired, too. After all, I just make another time zone change, and 9:30 today equates to 10:30 yesterday.

Looks like I’m not going to get to four hundred words tonight. I hope I get back on my schedule tomorrow with a solid three hundred word blog post to get me back square with the pledge.

I wish you all the best.

Peace y’all.

You know how have those nights where ripping off two hundred words is the easiest thing in the world? Tonight is not one of those nights.

The funny thing now is that I get to thinking about the day, the good things and the bad things that kept me grinding through the day. I could easily crank out a couple hundred words of pure unadulterated stream of consciousness bullshit. The reality is, tonight I am tired and I just want to call it a day.

I’ll get halfway there. I’m not going to create a hole so big I can’t dig my way out of it.

Peace y’all.