Evie Day 386

Friday! It’s Friday! Woot!

Hi folks, and welcome. Today is 5 April 2024.

I wrapped up my class yesterday afternoon, and it was a positive week. I finished all of my lectures and closing prior to lunch yesterday, then helped out with labs in the afternoon. About a half hour before the formal close of class, I noticed that the last lab had closed out, so I closed things out at that point. It was a private class with a number of folks that all work together, and they were a great group to work with.

Today I have to get caught up on the other stuff. When I’m in deliveries, I tend to stay focused on the delivery. Some of my teammates are far better at multitasking than I am, but I do a pretty good job reacting for my students when they need a hand. I can get in a little reading, but I tend to prioritize my learners… as I should. That also means that there are a number of recorded meetings that I need to follow up on today, as well as some new coursework I need to spend some time with. AI over here, AI over there, AI everywhere. The time is going to come that I’ll put together a task list, open up my email client, and ask my CoPilot to organize my day and tasks into time blocks.

It’s Friday, so that also means I need to get the trash out to the pickup spot in the driveway.

This weekend I will be focused on getting the yard where it needs to be, and getting some plants in the ground. Lisa planted some peppers that are starting to sprout, so I’ll get my collection of pepper pots (no pun intended, Gwyneth) and get those sorted and watered. It’s kind of crazy to think that we’re less than 6 weeks out from opening up the pool for the summer.

I better check to see if I need to crank out a Youtube video for work… other than that, I hope you have a great weekend.

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 385

Good morning, and welcome to the last day of class for me this week! Today is Thursday, 4 April 2024.

Today is the last day of my cloud admin course. We’ve had a good week. Day 1 had a couple of moments, but I think I’ve shown them a few things that can genuinely help them in their respective roles. A little demo from yesterday showed how they can use generative AI to help with projects, and the comments were quite complimentary.

My little attention-grabbing demo was quite simple. I was discussing App Services and App Service Plans when I explained that I hadn’t written code since the 90s. I then opened up CoPilot and asked for some .NET code for a simple tic-tac-toe game. I then had CoPilot do the same thing for Python. Then, icing on the cake moment, one of the attendees did the same thing, but asked for HTML, and he was quite pleased that his request also generated the CSS and Javascript files to support his app request. Yesterday was a good day.

I’m excited to use the AI tools at work. I think it can seriously impact my productivity.

Lucy is in the kitchen, barking at some phantasm that only she can see. I worry about that dog. When she looks at me in the right light, I can look into her eyes, and there appears to be cloudy patches in her eyes.

After I get done with class today, it will be time to pivot toward a certification I need to nail down. Fiscal year is winding down and I need to nail a couple more credentials down. There are always a few extra projects that need some work.

I need to spend some time with a guitar. Maybe more than one.

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 384

Good morning, and a happy Wednesday to you. Today is 3 April 2024.

We enjoyed out tacos last evening… I know that many folks have had that question weighing heavily on their minds.

Today I will get into my third day of cloud administration with my private class, all attendees are from the same company. Monday wasn’t as productive as I would’ve liked, and I felt we didn’t have enough time for labs. Yesterday was more efficient, and we had an hour more lab time yesterday than we had on Monday. I’m hoping we have more of the same today as we address storage, virtual machines, and Platform-as-a-Service solutions.

It’s not unusual to have some significant weather events in Kansas this time of year. We had some thunderstorms roll through the last couple of days, and it always kind of cracks me up the way my big boy behaves. Odin the Odiferous, first of his name, does not like thunder. He’ll whimper and scramble for the nearest human lap to seek comfort. The other dogs – Lucy, Rosy, and Lilly – aren’t quite as anxious as the boy.

News this morning is focused on an earthquake in Taiwan. Some of the footage was terrifying.

I don’t have a lot going on right at the moment. Coffee pot awaits my attention, and there’s a low-carb bagel and cream cheese to compliment my favorite morning caffeinated beverage.

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 383

Good morning, and a happy Taco Tuesday to you all! Another weekly celebration of the world’s most perfect protein delivery system! Today is 2 April 2024.

I did a pretty good job avoiding any pranks yesterday, but Dane and I were chatting a bit when a story caught my eye… and it wasn’t a minute or two later when I realized I had been had. It was a story about Robert Kraft putting up the New England Patriots NFL franchise, and I got pulled in. I was thinking about the situation and what may have led to that move by Mr. Kraft, and then it hit me like a sportscar coming out of my peripheral vision. Well played.

I had my first day of my cloud administration class yesterday. It went OK, but I did have a learner ask me to try to allocate a little more lab time. I absolutely agreed with her. I had some challenges getting into a flow yesterday, and then I’d get a question that required a little more in-depth explanation, and then I had to break out the road map to figure out how to get back onto the highway. I hope I can do a better job keeping my lectures flowing and on-topic today. It’s networking day, and there are any number of rabbit holes I might find myself falling into.

We watched some basketball last night. We got to see the Iowa Hawkeyed defeat the Lady Tigers of LSU to move on to the Final Four. We watched some of the Southern Cal versus UConn game, but we were tired – Lisa had gotten up very early on Monday – so we called it an early night. I just checked the score, and it looks like the Huskies pulled an upset, and number 3 knocked off the number 1 seed. The women’s Final Four might have more compelling story lines than the men’s side of the tournament.

Time for me to get a pot of coffee going, and get my low-carb bagel in the toaster.

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 382

Good morning, and a happy April Fool’s Day to you all. Today is 1 April 2024.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to do anything weird… well, not any weirder than a normal blog post, anyway.

The news is on, and coffee is calling. I received an order of low-carb bagels last week, so I’m set on breakfast for a while. Add in some cream cheese, and maybe a couple of slices of bacon, and I’m in good shape.

I’ll be back in my virtual classroom a little sooner this morning. I have a four-day class that runs on Eastern time, so rather than an 8:00 AM start, I pull back to 7:00 AM instead. Next week will be a little lighter, but I’m planning on tackling a certification exam at some point next week. I have a certification goal I’m trying to cover, and I’ll be the first to admit that I have been deferring this exam for some time.

We had a pleasant Easter Sunday here yesterday. All of the kids were here, and our granddaughter was here as well. It was a good day. I missed hanging with the guys on Sunday afternoon, but there will be more chances for that. Wednesday night and Sunday afternoons are my social outlet, hanging out with the crew, and making the Forgotten Realms safe for all, with the possible exception on necromancers, cultists, and evil beings from beyond the prime material plane.

It’s time to brew a pot of coffee. The Hamilton Beech coffee maker has sort of given up the ghost with a broken hinge, so we’re using a new coffee maker Lisa picked up from Ninja. It makes coffee a little bit faster than the old drip coffee maker, and I might try to get a more accurate timer on it. The old maker would take about fifteen minutes a pot. I’m guessing the new one cranks a pot of coffee out in about seven or eight minutes.

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 379

Good morning, and a happy Good Friday to you all. It is 29 March 2024.

I’ve been involved in deep negotiations with my senior dog, eventually coming to terms that provide her unfettered access to my legrest, and in return, she stops pawing at my leg until it bleeds.

It’s my last day of class after a four-week excursion through cloud solutions architecture. We start off with over 100 attendees, and today I fully expect to have fewer than 100 attendees. It’s a work holiday for many of our international learners, and my training partner from Canada has a national holiday as well.

My talk this morning will be a bit of review, then a slide over into closing out the course. I doubt we’ll use the entire two-hour time slot. After four weeks, folks are probably a little tired.

Lisa and I talked a little bit about our weekend plans. We’re going over to some friends’ house for a bit tomorrow. They have set up a “stations of the cross” experience on their property. It will be nice to see them.

The kids and our granddaughter will be over on Sunday for Easter dinner. That will be nice.

I’m back in the saddle on Monday, ready to deliver an admin course to a private customer. I’ll have a prep week after that, then back at it for a few weeks to follow. I like the variety – some of it anyway. We’re being asked to tackle some new delivery styles, and I’ll adapt to the needs of the environment.

In the meantime…

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

Peace y’all.

Evie 378 

Good morning! Today is Thursday, 28 March 2024.

I’m back in my virtual classroom in a couple of hours, with discussions on Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery/ MIgration with my attendees. I’m looking forward to nailing it down for my last couple of talks, BCDR/Migration in the morning, followed by a case study this afternoon. Tomorrow, I’ll be giving my training partner a break – she lives in Canada, and Good Friday is a national holiday there, and another trainer offered to jump in to cover any overflow of the chat that I can’t handle.

No gaming last night. A couple of the guys had scheduling challenges. One of my buddies is a high school drama teacher and he had a technical rehearsal for his new show. Another had family visiting, and another one of the guys has been under the weather. We’ll pick it back up where we left off soon enough. I love getting together on Wednesday night and Sunday afternoon, but we all have other responsibilities, whether it’s work, family, or health.

I am thankful my wife showed me how to run the new coffee pot.

Next week I will be teaching an admin course, and that will be on Eastern time, so an hour earlier to start, but I’ll get things wrapped up a little earlier as well. The following week is a non-delivery week, with at least one day off to watch the eclipse.

The dogs have all gathered on my wife’s lap… and just as I type it, Rosy gets up and slides off to my left side, waiting for me to pay attention to her. I do love our furry friends.

OK, I’m boring.

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 377

Good morning, and a happy Wednesday to you all. I’ll be using camels in my AI-generated Teams background later today. The date is 27 March 2024.

We had our little feast from Cascada la Golondrina last night. Dane enjoyed his beef burrito, and I had tacos… as one might expect. We had another order, the “special dinner” off of the “specialties” portion of the menu, so Lisa would have a little choice about what she wanted for dinner when she arrived home a little later last night.

I’m always better when she gets home. She was in DC, and I couldn’t help but wonder if the destruction of the Key Bridge would affect her trip to the airport. I wasn’t sure, in that moment, if she was flying out of Reagan National, Dulles, or Baltimore. I was just happy to have her home… but maybe not quite as happy as our four canine family members.

I had an extra session yesterday, demonstrating a tool created by a friend and co-worker. It was enjoyable, and the attendees seemed to be enthusiastic.

There are other things on my mind as well. Work stuff, personal stuff, matters of mortality. A friend reached out to me yesterday about the passing of a mutual friend’s younger brother. Greg was in my brother’s class, and they were friends. He was part of a group of us that rode the bus together back in the mid-70s. We all played basketball together on a Salvation Army team back in the winter of my freshman year of high school. I knew he had some heart issues, significantly more life-threatening than my own, and he had a heart attack in his forties. He was a good guy, and my thoughts go out to his surviving family.

I can’t help but ponder my own mortality at times like this. Some days, I feel like the luckiest man on earth. I’m a 40 year cancer survivor, had my own heart issues. For all I know, I’ve got a weak blood-vessel in my head that could pop at any time.

I can’t worry about it. I can try to live a healthier life, but no one lives forever.

Sorry… getting a little maudlin.

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day 376

Good morning, and a happy Taco Tuesday to you all. Today is 26 March 2024.

Sad news on the TV… a container ship has collided with the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, and that bridge is in the water. Multiple vehicles are in the water, and the crews on the scene have video footage of the current state, and now, just now, they are showing footage of the collision and bridge collapse from a camera that appears to monitor the bridge itself. This is kind of crazy.

All positive intentions to the families affected by this incident. At least 7 people are missing at this moment. Video can be found here: Moment bridge collapses in Baltimore after cargo ship collision – YouTube.

Lisa gets home late tonight from DC. I hope this bridge collapse doesn’t affect her travel plans.

It’s a little crazy.

I’ll be back in my virtual classroom later today, and I look forward to it. Got socked with a headache yesterday morning, and that just kept me in a pretty bad space most of the day. I’m better today. I don’t know if it was the Tylenol, the ibuprofen, or just time that get me turned around, but whatever it was, I am thankful.

I’m in the passenger seat for class today, and then I move over to the driver’s seat for a presentation at 6:00 tonight on a friend’s project, sharing what he has put together for trainers to use.

After that little project is completed, it’s taco time.

I wish I had a little more to talk about, but this event in Baltimore is really capturing my attention.

I’m going to make a pot of coffee and ponder breakfast.

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

Peace y’all.

Evie Day375

Good morning, and a happy Monday to you all. Today is 25 March 2024.

March Madness has not been kind to my teams for the most part. The Kansas men lost to Gonzaga on Saturday, an outcome I rather expected it, to be honest. The Kansas women won their game against Michigan, but when the 8 seed beats the 9 seed, that just means that the 8 seed plays the 1 seed in the second round… so Kansas will face the University of Southern California later today, and I’ll manage my expectations.

Lisa is traveling for work. It’s always a little harder to sleep when she’s not here.

Got together with some of the guys yesterday afternoon for a little online gaming. We seemed to have survived… well, the party survived better than my power, anyway. Lost my connection just as we were wrapping up yesterday, but I think my character survived another encounter.

I’ve got a busy day today. More than a couple of irons in the fire.

I’ve got a little bit of a headache, to be frank. Might be time to take a couple of pain relievers.

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

Peace y’all.