KD – Barely Right of Center

The Move Back

Well, the move to the Midwest didn’t go the way I wanted it to go. After starting in northwest Indiana, my company had me take on the largest client we had, which was located on the Loop in downtown Chicago. So instead of relocating to Indianapolis, as was the original plan, I moved a bit north of Chicago and began working out of our Lake Forest, Illinois headquarters.

In retrospect, it was a terrible move for me. I was only 3 weeks on the job when the very large client was assigned to me. I was really excited and flattered to be given such a large client to begin with and my ego was boosted to the point where I thought that it was going to be easy. I was delusional to say the least. I was so new to the job that I didn’t know how to do my job, let alone help manage a global customer. My ego truly got the best of me.

I’m not going to get into individual personalities, names, or even company names as that is all irrelevant at this point. Suffice it to say, after nine months, I was done. I realized that leaving California for a fresh start in the Midwest was a bad idea. Despite the fact that my whole family was behind the move, I still blame myself for being the match that lit the fire to move. Thankfully, the rest of the family had not yet made the move as there was a combination of finishing the school year and finding good jobs before they made the move.

After a number of other setbacks with the family and my health, we decided it was not in the best interest of the family to make the move. I decided to move back to California. The only problem with that is that I had purchased a very large home and then invested a lot of money fixing up some things that needed to be done. That house is not for sale and unfortunately the housing market in northern Illinois is not that good right now. I’ve got a lot of money tied up in that house and a very large mortgage payment that I would sure like to get out from under. The house may be a topic for another post at some point.

Needless to say, I am back in California, looking for a new role, and enjoying back with my family, whom I missed very much while living away. There are some interesting opportunities on the horizon career-wise, so I’m pretty optimistic about the future…so long as we sell a house in Illinois. By the way, if you or anyone else is looking for a 7 bedroom, 4 bath house with 5,500 square feet northwest of Chicago, hit me up!

The Move

My father-in-law died. I was truly saddened by that and still in mourning over his loss. He was the last of our parents. Just another sign that I am getting older. It was time to make a major life change and we decided to go for it. He was the on the only reason we were still in California.

My career has been good, but not great because I have been stuck in a mid-level market that for my industry has been serviced mostly from the San Francisco/Silicon Valley or Sacramento areas. As such, not many IT companies locate offices in Fresno despite there being almost a million people in the metropolitan area.

I am long past working for mom and pop companies who can’t pay enough and I was really tired of working for out of the area companies working from home. I spent 15 of the last 18 years working from my home office. I am tired of that. I miss the camaraderie of an office with coworkers and the hallway conversations where we can exchange ideas and I can learn from people who have been learning together for years. Because of my father-in-law, we stayed in Fresno at the expense of my career.

My wife told me it was time to look at a move. I certainly didn’t want to relocate to the Bay Area, Los Angeles, or anywhere else in California. I wanted out of that cesspool. Six weeks after I began looking for a new job, I am living in Northern Indiana and working for an amazing company, Impact Networking. I am in a role like one I did for three and a half years and so far I feel like I fit in well. The office I am in is great as are the people and leadership.

I don’t think this is the final location for me as I am tentatively scheduled to settle in Indianapolis early next year. That was the initial target destination and my offer letter was for Indy. For now I’m doing what I was asked and filling in until the office here gets fully staffed.

So far, I love Indiana. The people are great. I’ve been here a week and I haven’t seen homelessness, red light runners, or rude people. What a change from California. This was a smart move for me. Now I can’t wait for the rest of my family to move here too.

The Madness of Putin & Trump

The war in Ukraine is really bothering me. In my not so humble opinion, Vladimir Putin is an evil tyrant warmonger who has no positive moral attributes. His leadership style, leadership by intimidation and fear, is what has led to the failure of the Russian military’s failure to defeat Ukraine after 15+ months of fighting.

How many leaders of the forces in Ukraine has he burned through? How many tens of thousands of young Russian soldiers have been lost to his foolishness? How long before Ukraine’s counteroffensive punches a significant hole through Russian defenses and begins retaking large territories of their land. Oh, and did you catch that…Russian defenses? Since when is the aggressor in a war on the defense so much except when they were drastically overwhelmed and losing the war? Think Germany from mid-1944 until the end of the war. Russia is behaving like that today.

After meeting several Ukrainians over the past year, I am convinced that with the continuing support of the west with military and humanitarian aid, they can win this war.

This is one of those times when my “Barely Right of Center” is leaning more to the left.

I am furious at the fool Donald Trump and his lackeys in Republican leadership who want to cut off all support to Ukraine. They are doing so under the guise of not spending money on something that doesn’t directly go into the benefit of the United States. What they fail to realize is that taking Russia off the board as a major military player on the world stage, we win a significant “war” without firing a shot of our own or putting American lives at risk.

I loathe Trump and even though I have tended to vote on the right over the years, I will actively campaign against that moron this time around. I don’t have a legitimate candidate in mind to support yet, but I know I cannot fathom another four years with Trump as President. Or worse, if … and probably when … he loses, another four years of a corrupt Biden presidency.

God help us all.

The Eulogy

My father-in-law is dying. His condition is terminal and there is nothing that can be done for him. It is just a matter of time, but he is a stubborn man and he is fighting to hang on as long as possible. I don’t blame him. I know I’m in no hurry to pass on and I hope I will fight to live when it is my time.

As of this writing, he is very grumpy and impatient, bordering on abusive towards my wife and her brother. I walked out on him tonight as I was getting upset at the way he was speaking to us. Honestly, I don’t want to come back to his house, but my wife is one of his primary caregivers and she needs to spend quite a bit of time there, including overnight sometimes. I was planning to stay tonight, but the way he was talking to us…I’m going home.

So, to the title of this blog. The Eulogy.

My brother-in-law will deliver the eulogy at the funeral. He has been struggling to think of what to say so I decided to take a pass at writing it. I spent some time with my father-in-law listening to his stories again…for the umpteenth time just so I could collect some background information for the eulogy. I got some gems from him about how he met his wife, his time in the National Guard, how he was the student body president in college, his life in Peru and Bolivia when he was young, his business ventures, and more.

So, now I just had to assemble the details into coherent thoughts that could be presented at the funeral. I put together a eulogy that honors him and his accomplishments. It is a beautiful piece of writing. But, I cheated. I didn’t write it myself. I fed the details into ChatGPT and what it produced was brilliant. Simply brilliant.

I gave it to my brother-in-law. He is going to take it and make corrections to some of the names/dates/places that I got wrong, but I’m convinced the vast majority of the eulogy he delivers will be ChatGPT generated. It’s not like it’s a scholarly document that needed to be peer-reviewed. What’s the harm in using a tool to help write something beautiful. None that I can see…at least for now.

Attila the Hen

I have backyard chickens. Five of them to be exact. Yes, living in the middle of a large city, I have backyard chickens. When my wife suggested that we get a “couple” of chickens, I thought “couple” meant two. I wasn’t ready for a small flock. She told me that she got five because she figured that two or three of the chicks wouldn’t survive. She was wrong. While I didn’t want the mess and the hassle of owning chickens, I was really looking forward to having farm fresh eggs every morning. It’s been three months now and only one of them, Henrietta, is laying eggs and not even every day. In this world of instant gratification, I’m not very gratified. There is one negative thing about them so far. They love to eat my wife’s garden plants. They recently discovered the sweet potato plants, causing us to build a fence around them just to give them a chance to survive. Some of the other vegetables…we gave up on them. While keeping them out of the garden is challenging, I have learned that chickens can be good pets too. My granddaughters, who live with us, loves these silly birds and play with them every day. The chickens even follow them around. The most amazing thing has happened though. One of them, Attila the Hen, has been particularly good for my oldest granddaughter, Tova, who has autism. Tova can go sit in the chicken coop and relax with them. She gets totally calm when she is there, unlike other times when she can be explosive. These birds, especially Attila, have become therapeutic for her. So much so that Attila is now on a national registry as an emotional support chicken. She has her own ID card and Tova can take her just about anywhere, in her little pink chicken vest and leash, to help soothe her when times get tense for her. Who knew that our foray into hoping for fresh eggs would turn into the best therapy our granddaughter could get?