Progress in United States

To Senator Dick Durbin, Senator Mark Kirk, and Representative Mike Quigley, In light of US Attorney General investigations into Chicago PD, I want to know what is being done to protect both the rights of citizens and the lives of our law enforcement personnel? How do we balance the 1% of criminals ruining the every day lives of the 99%? It's understanding that this is a difficult question but changes must be made towards progress in the United States. As a constituent I urge that we work in small strides towards the ultimate goal of eliminating private ownership of firearms. RE: http://artandeverythingafter.com/i-fit-the-description/ Similar incident happened to a friend that was riding a motorcycle. What's worse: his incident included a helicopter with night sun, and a taste of pavement as an officer dug a knee into his back to detain him. As they left the officer muttered, "you fit the description of someone fleeing police on a Ninja motorcycle." He was riding a Yamaha, not a Kawasaki. On the flip side, the job of law enforcement is not to be taken without suspicion. Stories of officer shootings are all too common, and some very disturbing (http://abc7.com/news/dash-cam-images-of-west-covina-traffic-stop-shooting-released/989093/). We train officers to respond to worst-case-scenarios with assault weaponry because it's the current norm of society. Something needs to change. We cannot continue as-is because the current laws by which we're governed and the state of our current societal norms: all are barely hobbling through year by year, day by day, minute by minute, second by ticking second. Innocent people are being wounded, some are sadly dying. It will be a long journey to a better US but we know it will be worth the effort. Please help us get there by proposing and/or supporting legislation that continues progress into a better future for me and my wife, our daughter, US society, and humanity in general. Regards, Andre Alforque

Review: Scrum by Jeff Sutherland

Quick book review:  http://amzn.com/038534645X

This book inspires me to be a better Scrum Master for the team. It provides solid advice to incrementally improve not only our team performance but also my personal skills.

Biggest takeaways: Work as a team in an honest, safe environment. Find weaknesses of the process to solve missed deadlines, poor performance, or large amounts of technical debt. Always improve or evolve, never be complacent with status quo.

Pros: Great anecdotes regarding Scrum origins, and also successful transformations from waterfall into Scrum. Sutherland discusses common struggles of implementation, and prescribes fairly simple cures.

Cons: Overly optimistic view with little to no stumbling once Scrum is in place. Very few concrete demonstrations of blocker removal in a software development environment. Large assumption that Scrum implemented across entire organization.