Long time no see...

Wow, it's been a while since I wrote anything here. Let's recap: I went to Bill's celebration of life service back in September, it went well overall. It was sad, but I was able to read my little speech during the service without getting choked up so it all worked out okay. After the church service there was a reception across the street at the place Bill used to go for his AA meetings. It had a nice back yard area with a walking path and benches that were dedicated to some of the people who attended AA meetings there and had passed away. Bill's bench is at station number 8, and it's theme is "Love". Very appropriate for Bill, I think. I'm always going to miss Bill, he was a huge influence on me growing up. But he had a good run, even with the health issues he had toward the end of his life. I'm staying in touch with his wife (now widow) Jan. She looked great, the same as she always has, and was very cordial and sociable with everyone who came to the service and reception. After the reception we had another small service at the church for family and close friends where we laid Bill's ashes to rest. Then everyone said their goodbyes and went home. I got a little choked up there in the car at the very end of it all. But I regained my composure and went back to my brother's house, where I stayed during this trip, and having him, his wife and his kids around me was good. The next day I flew home, and that was that. Now for some new events: tomorrow I start attending class for graduate school! Last fall I applied for graduate school at a local college and was accepted, and classes start tomorrow. The program is called their informatics program, which is similar in some ways with the web design stuff I studied for my undergrad degree in that it's about presenting information in a way that makes it easy to understand. There's a cybersecurity and privacy specialty I'll be pursuing, but that comes later down the road. The course material and lectures are all online so I'll be able to work on it while I'm at work sometimes, and do the rest from home. I'm excited to get started on this new chapter in my life. I'm expecting it will take a full two years to complete everything, but for the moment I'm just taking one class at a time. The course schedule is accelerated, meaning that they have two sessions in each semester. For the first session I'm taking their informatics fundamentals class, and for the second session I'll be studying project management. I haven't planned out the course schedule beyond that for the time being, but I expect I'll be taking one more class this summer, and two more in the fall. Which class in particular remains to be seen. I had to work through Christmas and New Years Eve this year, but that's okay because I spent Thanksgiving at my brother's house. My mom and stepdad flew in a few days before me, and my niece and her husband were there too so there were a lot of people there. My sister in law did a great job cooking, she made everything from scratch this year and we all ate too much. I was a little sad to leave. Work has been the same consistently these last few months, slow and boring which is good because I can focus on other things while I'm at work. For about 12 weeks now I've been working through some cybersecurity tutorials I found on one of Cisco's websites, as a way to prepare me for the cybersecurity stuff I'll be studying for graduate school. I've seen some of the course material before in my other studies, but there's a lot of it that is new for me. I've learned how the bad guys operate when they hack a system, what software tools they use, social engineering techniques, etc. It's been interesting, but unfortunately it will have to take a back seat to my graduate studies so I may not be able to finish the material I'm currently working through. But that's okay, because if I want I can pick it back up where I leave off at some future point without any kind of penalty. The Cisco material is all offered free of charge on their netacad.com website, so it'll be there when I'm ready to work on it again. Well, that's about all I have to say for now. Hopefully I won't leave this blog hanging for 3 months again, we'll see. Now I'm off to study my Cisco material again, whee!