I'm about a month and a half into my second year of driving my big yellow school bus. A number of things have stabilized to make my life easier. First, this is no longer my first year, so while I'm still finding new things, there are fewer of them and that helps keep me from being surprised. Second is the fact that I have my own assigned route this year. I'm only driving in the mornings, but it's always the same route and I got used to it pretty quickly. I was going to drive afternoons as well, but I'm doing some part-time computer work with a friend and so I let go of my afternoon route. This actually worked out well, because one of the other drivers really wanted it.

I drove a route for summer school this year and that helped get some of the students used to me. They now get quite excited to see me when I'm picking them up at their stops. Some of my students are quite rowdy, but I'm used to telling them to settle down, so I always win the battle of wills that ensues. It doesn't hurt that I can write them up and get them progressively punished, all the way up to their bus riding privileges being revoked.

I guess I'm just lucky (and you certainly can't rule out the possibility that I'm highly blessed and favored of the Lord), but in over a quarter of a century of professional IT software development, I have been on more successful projects than unsuccessful ones.

Full disclosure demands that I admit that some of those projects were declared successful by management despite a complete lack of evidence of any actual success, but as a humble developer on said projects, we would all get tarred with the success brush, so none of us minded that.

Through conversations with co-workers and using my observational skills, I quickly learned that successful projects are few and far between. I suppose you could argue with my definition of successful project, but that's also part of the problem, that there is no widely accepted definition of what constitutes a successful project. Within corporate IT a successful project is generally one that is declared a success by management. When this happens a party is scheduled, everyone gets cake and coffee and if there's anything left in the budget the developers get a t-shirt or a hat.

By BBC_Micro.jpeg: Stuart Brady derivative work: Ubcule (talk) - BBC_Micro.jpeg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11672213

I do not remember after all these years, the circumstances under which I obtained my BBC Micro. This was a good 30 years ago now, but I do remember that I loved it and it saw me ably through the start of my Computer Science degree at the University of Plymouth.

As you can see from the picture, my neighbor, Bill, and I enjoy relaxing around a camp fire and solving all of the world's problems, while keeping a careful eye out for satellites passing overhead. You may also notice a recorder (a Zoom H2 Handy Recorder, which I believe is no longer produced) with which we are recording ourselves for the purpose of podcasting.

I have been an avid listener to podcasts for many years now and several people have told us that we should start a podcast of our fireside chats. Most everyone who has been with us for our evening chats have commented that they enjoy them immensely.

It's been a 2Cellos kinda morning, so I have been enjoying this and a good number of other tracks by the guys. I looked at my blog offerings and to my horror realized that I had not shared this gem to date.

Whole Lotta Love is, of course, one of the classic tracks by Led Zeppelin from their album Led Zeppelin II. At mumble, mumble years old, I am just old enough to remember when it was the primary theme music for Top Of The Pops.