Posts by lennys (74)

lennys January 11, 2026

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!

lennys September 22, 2025

Bill

So I've got this memorial service coming up. It's on this coming Friday, 4 days from now. I have a 2-minute speech I'm going to read at the service, to let everyone there know who Bill was for me. He had a heart of gold and would go out of his way to help just about anyone who crossed his path. The world is a lonelier place without him now. One of my favorite memories of the time I spent with Bill happened when I was 26. We had bought tickets to go see a movie, and during the previews there was an off-color joke that caught Bill by surprise and started him laughing uncontrollably. It was the kind of laugh that makes you have to sit down for a minute to regain your composure, and I smile every time I remember watching him laugh back then. Bill encouraged me to go back to college when I was in my 20s. I had a decent job, but it was a dead-end position that didn't have any growth potential. I couldn't see that at the time, but Bill did and he gave me the initial push to start taking classes at the local community college, as a way to get over my first college experience (which was a disaster) and move forward. It took a few years, but eventually I was able to enroll full-time and earned myself my bachelor's degree. Bill was there to help me along that path too. Knowing Bill showed me that not every family in the world was dysfunctional like mine. From the beginning when I first met him, you could tell he was the kind of person who had his shit together. He didn't even curse - I can't recall a time when he did. He had a nice house with a pool, two nice cars in the garage that were relatively new and paid for, and always had money in his pocket. It was a far cry from what I was used to. Bill loved having fun. He would always have at least one funny thing to say when we were together. I remember we went to a go kart racing track once when I was maybe 13 or 14 years old. He bought a whole bunch of racing tickets for me without me even asking, and stood at the fence watching me race around this little track for something like 45 minutes. I ran the go kart out of gas, I was out there so long. He didn't mind a bit, that was just the way he was. If he could create some fun for me on our outings he got a kick out of it just as much as I did. Spending money was never an issue for Bill. I never asked how much money he made through his business, but it must have been a lot because he always spent it like it didn't matter to him. He wasn't extravagant or anything, but he drove nice cars and always shopped at the best clothing stores. I always felt bit uncomfortable when he would spend money on me, as though I was undeserving of it or something, but he never had a problem with it. We even argued about it occasionally, but in a good way. If I insisted on paying for my own movie ticket, once I got it I would turn around and find he had bought an armload of sodas and popcorn for us both. I once mentioned to him that I'd like to have a TV in my room at home, just as a casual remark, and when my birthday came around a couple of months later he got me a 13 inch color TV. I didn't ask him to buy me anything, but he would always spend the money on me whenever he saw an opportunity. After I got to know him well I tried to make a point of not asking for anything, just so I wouldn't feel guilty about him spending money on me. This trend continued into my adulthood, too - Bill helped me financially when I was working my way through my bachelor's degree. I tried to talk him out of it by telling him I didn't deserve it, but he insisted on helping me. He was just like that. He saw something in me that I couldn't see myself, and for him that was a good enough reason. Now Bill is gone, and I miss him. I'm going to do my best to honor his memory on Friday, and hopefully I won't cry very much while I'm doing it. It will be hard to keep my composure, but I'll do the best I can.

lennys August 14, 2025

Sadness

I had a friend who passed away last month, on the 18th. He was living in a nursing home and couldn't do anything for himself any more, so it was not a big surprise that he had passed on but it was still such a shock when I got the message. I had known him since I was a young teenager, and he was one of the few adults I had in my life who was always there for me, no matter what. I got to visit him in his nursing home back in late April for a few hours. It was good to see him but sad to see the shape he was in. He had a TBI with a stroke on top of it, and while I could tell he was still in there, he couldn't talk hardly at all and had to be tended to 24-7 by the nursing staff and by his wife. She did an amazing job of advocating for him and seeing to it that he was comfortable and well cared for. There will be a memorial service next month. I'm going to say a few words. That's all I have to say for now.

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