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...

As some of you already know, I ride a Can-Am Spyder which is a motorcycle that is a inverse trike (two wheels in front, one wheel in back). Unfortunately, I live in South Dakota where the climate around here isn't too favorable for riding from November through March. By this time of year it's not too uncommon to see snow on the roads or temperatures well below freezing.

The normal high temperature for Sioux Falls this time of year is 37 deg F. But yesterday was a different story as afternoon temperatures on December 1, 2021 reached to a high of 61 deg F. I took advantage of these warmer temperatures by riding my Spyder at the end of my workday through downtown Sioux Falls and Falls Park as sunset approached.

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.

I have spent the last five years trying to teach Jasmine, our family dog, to fetch my paper. As you can see in the video, she wants nothing to do with the paper. In fact my friends will argue she has taught me well in picking up my own paper.

With snow on the ground and long stretches of subzero temperatures, I wasn't sure I was going to get in a motorcycle ride for the month of February. Then on the second to last day of this short month, the temperatures rose to the lower-mid 40s and the roads were mainly dry. That was good enough for me as I took my 2017 Spyder RT out for a 20 mile ride from home to downtown Sioux Falls. 

As I write this blog entry, I just completed shoveling a couple inches of snow from my driveway. The streets and the lawns are covered with a new fresh layer of white snow from our latest winter storm. Earlier last week, knowing that new snow and colder temperatures were fast approaching, I decided to take my Can-Am Spyder for a spin on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2021. The trip was short with only 18 miles for the round trip to and from work but I was all smiles the entire time I rode my three-wheeler.