[Book] Oracle Year by Charles Soule (No-Spoilers)

I read this book in only two days, which is way shorter than I usually read, especially a book of 416 pages.  I generally only read on weekends, and usually only for a few hours at a time.  This book really had me hooked from start to finish.  I definitely lost sleep for reading. Will Dando, a struggling New York musician, dreams up 108 predictions.  A line of information and a date for each....

3 Jun 2018 · 2 min · Gary Allen Vollink

The Agony of No Heat

Or: The Longest Move 15 days without heat.  25 days to complete a delayed move, because we really couldn't live without heat.  History and some details below. Jen and I moved to New York in July of 2011, and we've lived in the same apartment ever since.  A two bedroom, one bath apartment that is quite comfortable in a relatively well maintained building in the Bay Ridge neighborhood in Brooklyn....

22 Jan 2018 · 4 min · Gary Allen Vollink

Agile Development on Infrastructure

After a friend asked about using agile, I started thinking about the skateboard to car drawing.  The author of this, Henrik Kniberg, wrote a really good blog breaking this down, called Making sense of MVP (Minimum Viable Product).  This model is absolutely important, and makes a very good case for going about building something brand new. I've spent most of my post-Agile time doing infrastructure projects.  I'm not building a product for end-users....

21 Oct 2017 · 3 min · Gary Allen Vollink

Tired of Panic - Paris Climate Accord Edition

The President of the US, Donald Trump, has decided to push for the US to leave the Paris Climate Accord.  The world is imploding!  Well, looking at Twitter it seems the world is imploding. There are certain hot-takes that basically suggest that the world will drown in 3, 2... There are certain hot-takes that basically suggest that we are aligned with Syria by doing this.  (There are those that mention Nicaragua, but that country's non-participation is much more complicated)....

3 Jun 2017 · 3 min · Gary Allen Vollink