Andre Alforque

Dear Mom & Dad, Please practice social distancing, and adhere to calls to shelter-in-place. Early results from clinical studies indicate a significant number of people infected with SARS-Cov2/COVID-19 show no symptoms. These carriers are unsuspectingly spreading the virus and the disease it causes. Already, there are 16 positive tests confirmed in Lancaster, California as of Tuesday, March 24th. Today, LA County reports 1,216 confirmed cases, including 21 lost souls. Compare that to Illinois which was at 1,285 positive tests confirmed 3 days ago, and today is nearly double at 2,538 positive tests confirmed; across both urban and rural areas of Illinois. Our duty to slow the spread of this virus is two fold: 1) buy time for a cure and vaccine to be produced and distributed, and 2) prevent our existing medical structure from being overwhelmed. Remember that while this pandemic is occurring, people still have urgent medical needs. The current system has finite capacity in terms of...

I am trying. I am doing my best not to panic, to keep anxiety at the level of concern. But it's difficult and I'll tell you why. Right now, social distancing seems to have started, fueled, and caused by communities needing to act. They feel that need to act because we have no faith in our government leaders at any level. We have no faith in our government leaders because they did not have a plan, nor have proposed a plan, nor have put into action anything resembling a plan. We don't have a plan because it takes hard work and determination, it takes grit to create and maintain a plan against a future foe that will take an unpredictable form. And nobody in the government took that time and effort and grit to create the plan. And since we have no plan, we have no leadership. And since we have no leadership, we have no faith in leaders. And since we have no faith in leaders, we simply return to basics. We look after ourselves. We selfishly do the things we can to control what w...

Alexis will be participating in the Stallion Stampede walkathon on  May 11th .  Please help support her school.  Click here to donate . 

Dear Alexis, The past year you have experienced an immense amount of mental growth. From speech to emotions, you have been inundated with many difficult situations. For me, it's a harsh reminder of the black-and-white views of my own past, and the difficulty (near impossibility) to instigate change in people. On the optimistic side: as parents we learn and employ varying tactics to help you gain empathy, and for you to learn to keep an open mind in this seemingly unfair world set against your joy and happiness.  Regardless of how you act/react, I always love you. At times you have bent me beyond my personal breaking point. Looking back it's difficult to understand the exact factors both within and outside my control leading to that point. But because it's you, I must find ways to deal with it and move on. There's no giving up. I must have pliability both with my memory and my emotions. Despite the absurdity of your stubbornness and your demands, we still need to...

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...

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.