Thoughts

I've come to the conclusion that I need shorter friends but I wouldn't trade these three for them.

These are some of my closest friends, Charlie, David and John. We've been friends since high school years. Contrary to conventional wisdom, I have found as time marches forward these type of friends in your life become more important not less.

This morning, we woke up to a record low temperature in Sioux Falls, SD with the mercury dropping down to -17°F. This beat the previous record for March 3rd of -15°F established in 1916 and tied again in 2014.

We have had colder temperatures of course, but when these cold temperatures and the snow are seen in early March...it feels like Spring is never going to reach South Dakota. Normal high temperatures for this time of year is in the mid to upper 30s with lows in the teens (above zero!).

It's a record breaking day here in Sioux Falls and in many areas.

We've checked the boxes for three of these records, will we complete the sweep? pic.twitter.com/2MedTc9uKW

I've been using MeWe for a few weeks now and while I haven't decided if I'm there to stay, there are a number of things I'm impressed with this "next-gen social network". Despite MeWe's cluttered user interface via a web browser, the actual layout of the post itself is well done.

Life is so much fun when you have someone to share it with. Close to this day, eighteen years ago I proposed to this woman. She said yes and we've been by each other's side ever since then.

Following the footsteps of people bigger than me, like Mike Elgen and Dries Buytaert, I've decided to focus this year on my personal blog and spend less time on my other websites and social media networks. This has been a long time coming but probably the straw that broke the camel's back was Google's decision to shutdown my favorite social network, Google+. 

Earlier this year, I started a new blog in hopes of me getting back to dedicating more time for my writing. The goal was to write one article a week as I had finally broken free of my burnout from blogging. In the first few months of the blog, I wrote about half a dozen posts but by Spring new articles were no longer being published at Fifty-Two Posts a Year. I once again found the demands of work, family, outdoor hobbies, and managing my other websites were of higher importance. So, time marched on and I now find myself with one more website that started with good intentions but now resembles a ghost town with too few visitors and too little new content.

My son recently finished another season of hockey. This year he was on one of the traveling Bantam B-teams of the Sioux Falls Flyers.  For those that don't know hockey, the "Bantam" means that he's playing with a team of 13 and 14 year old's. Some of his teammates he's played with since he was six years old (they were called Atoms back then).

It's no secret that I am a science fiction fan. When dating my wife, one of our first kisses was from me becoming overjoyed after I found out she stayed up too late the previous night watching a "dumb movie" on the SciFi channel. In my book, a girl willing to lose some sleep watching science fiction on TV was a girl worth dating.

I'm late, so you think. I promised you a weekly post this year and I've already neglected to provide you last week's story. Last weekend was a busy traveling hockey weekend for my son and me, but nevertheless you think that's no excuse for having failed you. The old me would have agreed with you. The new me says, that's bull.

Here is a fun fact. I've never lived more than 363 miles from home. To be exact, outside of my college years, I've always lived exactly 363 miles from my childhood home in Kansas City, Kansas.

My first job after graduating college landed me a job at a Weather Service Meteorological Observatory in southwest Kansas. My apartment was 363 miles away from my parents' driveway. A couple years later, my next job took me to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. To my surprise, on the first visit from Sioux Falls to Kansas City I found that I added exactly 363 miles my truck's odometer.