Sometimes I wonder about the net benefit of keeping this blog alive. There is a lot of history here, and for the most part it is a pretty accurate representation of the major events of my life over the last 25 years.

But do I really want all of that out there for the world to see?

This came to mind recently when someone we know casually googled my name, found my blog, and decided to use what they learned through that discovery to initiate an unwelcome and unexpected conversation with my wife over some of the events of our lives together.

I want to be clear in stating that I do not believe this was done with any kind of malicious intent, but it was an incredibly bad judgement call and just not good form. I’m fully aware that anyone can search for me, and that there are probably a decent number of people who know me personally who have, but I’ve always thought it was kind of an unwritten rule of the internet that you didn’t actually talk about that kind of thing. Especially when the subjects involved are clearly very personal.

But here we are.

While I’ve done my best over the years to make sure the content here won’t get me fired or embarrass anyone (other than me), who knows how things I wrote back in the early 00’s could come back to bite me in the ass now? Who knows how many times I wrote things that I would regret having people read who know me now and didn’t know me then?

I mean, the chances of really bad poetry happening are pretty high.

I’m not going to do anything about this immediately. Just thoughts going through my head.

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I recently wrapped up my first acting gig since 2022 with a performance in Trust Me at LAB Theater Project. To say that it was a satisfying return to the stage would be an understatement. Honestly? I thought there was a very real possibility that I may not have been able to act again. The fact is that I’m still very much recovering from my surgery last June. Don’t get me wrong – I have come a very, very long way and am in a notably better place than I was when I got home in August, but I still feel like I have a long way to go. My energy levels are still pretty low most days, and I haven’t been able to get the motivation back to start exercising again. I managed to make it through the rehearsal and performance process, but it was pretty rough.

Admittedly the solution to this is to get back to exercising to build up my strength and endurance, but one has to have energy to spend to do so and I’ve been very low on that front. I generally average 8 hours or more of decent sleep every night and I still feel like I need to take a nap every day just to get by. And if I’m being honest, just doing the show and having a slight uptick in physical activity from it made me feel better, so I really just need to get off my ass and do it.

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In other news, and in no particular order…

• I’ve been playing Star Trek: Fleet Command and have been absolutely loving it. I started last year not too long before I went into the hospital, but in the last few months I’ve really gotten into the groove of playing. What I like best about it is that, for the most part, it’s pretty passive. I send my little spaceships out, we do a few tasks, maybe mine for some supplies, and occasionally have some light PVP. I’m taking it very slowly as I progress through the game as I understand that the PVP aspect gets considerably more prevalent at higher levels and I’m just enjoying doing my own thing unbothered for now. It’s nice to have something I can kind of idly poke at throughout the day or while we’re watching TV together at night but that I can quickly put down when I need to. The “canon” of the game is kind of a riot, too. Basically, take everything from every show that has been created in the Star Trek universe, drop it in a blender, and you’ve got Fleet Command. I’ve got multiple versions of the same characters in my officers pool, have gone on missions set in both the Kelvin and Prime timelines, and am working on getting some of the crew from Lower Decks. I think the only show I haven’t seen represented (yet) is Prodigy. Hell, they even have content from Galaxy Quest in the game. In a way it kind of reminds me of EVE Online, but with fewer spreadsheets.
• We celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary back in March, and that fact is kinda wild to me. We’ve been through a lot in the time we have spent together. Much of it good, some of it very, very bad. But in the end we’ve got each other and that makes all the difference. I don’t know if I believe that there is such a thing as a “perfect” relationship, and goodness knows we have our challenges, but I honestly cannot conceive if living the rest of my life with anyone else at my side.
• We’ve been having some work done around the house, the big project being a new exterior paint job and replacing our front door (which I had to damage to get open after it was severely warped during the hurricanes last year). The house is looking great, and we’ve got a few more quotes coming in to not only enhance the visual appeal of the home but to make it safer in future hurricane scenarios (namely looking to have rolling shutters installed, but also getting a quote to put a drainage system in our back yard to prevent flooding there). We also had to have our fence repaired due to some storm-related damage, but really we were fortunate not to have suffered any more losses. Some of our neighbors were not so fortunate.
• Lots of “exciting” stuff going on at work, which (if you work in the Business Transformation/Agile space) I’m sure you recognize as “holy crap the world is on fire” mode. Nothing bad at all, just lots of change happening and my team and I are working with the organization to try and make sure we’re still providing the value needed as we evolve.
  
  My God, that sounds so very corporate speak.
  
  I’ve been learning more about PowerBI and Product Management since I’ve been back to help, and if I’m being honest I’ve had a blast doing it. I’m using Prompt Engineering to help enhance my data transformations, and a lot of that has resulted in learning more about Python. My big frustration is that I’m no longer a developer at my company and I don’t have the access rights I did back when I worked in IT so a lot of my code ends up getting blocked by our security software. Frustrating, but I totally understand why. There’s a possibility I may end up having a virtual desktop created so I can play in our sandbox at work and go through the “proper” code review scenarios, but for now I’m still doing my own thing as much as I can.

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I could probably go on but this is getting lengthy and I’m kind of just rambling for now. [insert promise to write here more often that will go unfulfilled]