Eulogy for Arlo

Our dog, Arlo, went to his rest on March 29, 2019. He was 12 years old, and he is greatly missed. Arlo came to our family as a shelter dog. He was intended for one of our children, but ended up being “Dad’s dog”. Andy took great pleasure in walking Arlo, playing with him and taking care of his needs. Arlo loved it when the family would get home in the evening, and would be ready for dinner and a walk. Arlo was an older dog when he came to us (seven years old), so he was not as active as a younger dog. However, that was the right kind of dog for our family. His favorite place was the bed in the master bedroom, where he would take naps during the day, watch TV with us in the evening, and sleep with me and my wife. He was a great snuggler, and was always ready to be close when someone was having difficulty and needed some love. Arlo was Andy’s first dog, and it was in his 50’s that Andy discovered he was a dog person. Arlo will always have a special place in our hearts. We love you, Arlo.

 

Marking the passing of a good friend.

Arlo 2007-2019

How do consumers protect themselves from surveillance and start to restore some semblance of privacy? Services like Google and Facebook have many settings where you can limit your privacy exposure. This article doesn’t cover those, however, as much already has been written about that. What follows is more like what Doc Searls calls a “wizard kit” of various open-source technologies that I have adopted and customized over the years to protect my own privacy.

A lot of good tips for protecting your privacy.

The power of cleaning up your kanban backlog

When I restarted working with my kanban board in January 2019, I did not remove any of the items in the backlog part of the board.  Last week, I had to move to a different cubicle last week, and I took all the backlog post-it notes off the board with the intent of adding them to the board in my new cubicle. On Monday, I started creating new post-it notes for my current work, and decided to not look for those old backlog items just yet. I rapidly built up a new backlog (as I captured every task I thought of (step 1 in Getting Things Done)), but have been completing tasks at a much quicker rate than in early January (completed at least 10 tasks a day through Wednesday). I think not having those old items has helped me to feel more motivated about completing tasks on the board. Whatever the reason is for the increased productivity, it feels good!