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It has been no secret that since the start of the pandemic, I've been obsessed with vinyl records all over again. Part of my interest is out of nostalgia for my old records but I've also bought a lot of new music also being released on vinyl. And you know what? I'm not alone. Weekly sales in the United States of vinyl albums jumped to their second largest week since the MRC Data tracking of sales in 1991. According to Billboard.com:

The third feature release of Drupal 9 recently became available. New features and improvements in Drupal 9.3.0 include:

Well we made it to December, but it won't be long before Sioux Falls other parts of the upper plains get hit with it's first Winter Storm. Here in Sioux Falls, the current forecast is calling around 9 inches of snow during the day Friday. Snow amounts in a forecast are subject to change as the actual event arrives but overall our local National Weather Service office does a great job in forecasting these winter storms. The above graphic and the below description is from the NWS Weather Story that was posted on their page late Thursday afternoon, December 9, 2021.

For two-wheeled motorcyclists a 382 mile trip is quite doable but can still be a challenging trip when crossing the high plains and mountains. Only the dumbest people would do such a lengthy trip two-up on a mini bike though. If you recall that's what exactly happened in the movie Dumb and Dumber with the shows two main characters, Lloyd Christmas (played by Jim Carrey) and Harry Dunne (played by Jeff Daniels).

But if the mini bike scene in the movie isn't funny enough for you, what would happen if you made this same trip from the plains of Nebraska to Aspen, Colorado for real? That's exactly what Zack Courts and Ari Henning did in a YouTube video for RevZilla and Common Thread XP.

It was early 1981 and my Dad received an offer from Columbia House to join the Columbia Records Club. For one penny a person could get eleven vinyl records by joining this music club. Better yet, fill in the "secret bonus" 12th box with your album of choice and you got an additional album for free. Nevermind the marketing ploy here that you would be committed to buy additional albums at full catalog price in the months to follow...my dad was about to receive a dozen albums from his favorite bands all at once. So many albums were about to come through the door, that my Dad let my sister and me each pick out a record for ourselves. Whether my Dad liked my choice or not I can't remember, but I picked AC/DC's Back in Black.

This is old news but I thought still worth mentioning. Last month Drupal 8 reached its end-of-life. This means that all versions of Drupal 8 core and Drupal contributed project releases that are compatible with only Drupal 8 have been marked unsupported and are no longer supported by the Drupal security team.

Drupal 8.0.0 was first released on November 9, 2015. The last version was released on November 17, 2021. With the end of life approaching, I also updated my two websites from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9.

The date was December 3, 2005 and all of Sioux Falls gathered around in the neighborhood or around their television sets for this event. The Zip Feed Tower was scheduled to be demolished to make way for new real estate projects.  At 202 feet, it is believed that the Zip Feed Tower at this time was South Dakota's tallest building. Explosives were used to bring down the 48 year old structure. A raffle was even held to see who would be the one to trigger the blast (proceeds going to the Dakota Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society). The raffle along with corporate sponsorship raised nearly $140,000. Thousands of people, including national media, lined up to see the tower go down. The stage was set!

Then this happened...

Blogging has always been a way for me to express myself creatively as I hide away in my home office for "me time". Unfortunately, the COVID-19 Pandemic changed all that with my day job requiring maximum telework which in turn transformed my creative personal space into a remote office that work owned eight hours a day. For my mental and physical health, once those work hours are up I have made the conscious decision to walk away from the computer. I now find it more necessary to find something else to do that doesn't involve screen time. This shift in priorities unfortunately reduced my writing time.

Life has a way of distracting us from our goals. Four years ago when I decided to retire CMS Report, I did so in the hope for opportunity to find a new voice in my online presence. It didn't work out so well. Instead of being more creative in my writings, I spent more time maintaining the nuts and bolts to my websites and publishing other people's articles than I did expressing my own thoughts and ideas. I know for many of you, you find yourself in a similar predicament. Between career, family, and other personal interests we have had too many reasons and made up too many excuses for not writing despite valuing our time spent blogging.

A few months ago, I reviewed six different vinyl record turntables due my renewed interest in listening to music pressed on vinyl records. Despite all six vinyl turntables being good choices to consider, I still needed to select the turntable I would bring into my home. In the end, it was the Fluance RT82 Reference High Fidelity Vinyl Turntable that I chose as my latest stereo component.