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A day at the ballpark
Welcome to Wrigley! Originally uploaded by josh.ev9. Today was a great day. Jason and I headed to a Cubs game at Wrigley. Man, that place knows how to turn a relatively slow, boring game into an unforgettable experience. There’s just something about the old fashioned style, the sense of history and cameraderie. You can’t help…
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I’m Addicted to GoodReads
You know, every once in a while you start to use a really great social networking tool, like LinkedIn or Facebook, and the time just flies by. Thanks wholly to Karen, I found a new one…GoodReads. There’s a lot to like. I’m constantly on the lookout for a good tool for keeping an index of…
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Turn off your Blackberry
If you’re going to accept a meeting invitation and come to the meeting, make sure you’re not sending mail on your Blackberry throughout said meeting. Get off the phone, and pay attention. Please. Oh, and if you pick up the phone when it rings, I swear I’ll…
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Never a City So Real
I’m generally not the kind of person that makes a it a point to read books about cities. Even if I’m visiting or traveling to or even living in an interesting place in the world, I haven’t been known to read about that place. A few weeks ago I picked up Never a City So…
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"Pretty" Software Applications
One of the most difficult expectations for me to overcome with respect to my coworkers is the idea that I’m here to simply make the software look pretty. It’s difficult for so many to understand. I do understand principles of typography, layout, color, and design in general…and yes, I do have the ability to decorate…
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Taxi-cab confessional
I almost missed my flight this evening. Nearly every Sunday for the past few months I’ve taken a flight to Raleigh, NC. This flight is preceded by a trip in a taxi from my house to the airport. Except tonight it didn’t go as planned. As routine turned to complacency, I wasn’t alarmed when the…
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On the Misleading Lexicon of Agile Development
Whatever happened to clear, consistent language? Why do we use words that have inconsistent meaning in contexts where they’ll be unfamiliar? Why, oh why? Day in and day out I work with clients in an Agile development setting. I use words that have been trained into me, that I’ve been taught over and over again.…
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Agile Design, a response to my friend’s quandary
This evening Kynthia‘s thoughts got me thinking. Among other things, she said: “[W]e design heads get in this place where, just because we wouldn’t be caught dead releasing something into the wild, we think there is nothing to learn from it.” My brain took her thoughts on a tangent and went this way: So since…
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Agile anti-pattern: Developer-focused retrospectives
On most software projects, there is a far higher percentage of developers on a team than any other role. In general, this works to the team’s advantage. The developers, after all, are the ones who make what everybody else works for come alive. In a retrospective, however, it is important that no one group of…
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Meet Josh: Allergy Edition
Josh is officially allergic to the following allergens: Grasses: Rye Redtop Timothy Bahia Johnson Trees: Ash Birch Maple Oak Walnut Cottonwood (Popular in Chicago!) Cats (Not all, but some) Weeds: L. Quarter Ragweed Thank you, Dr. Rogers, my new allergist for shining a light on the status of my allergies. Let’s hope the new prescription…