As I write this I am sitting inside my front door. By me are a couple of large bowls of processed-sugar-laden candy, complete with a ladle to be relatively contactless. In the background music from the movie Psycho is blasting from SiriusXM Scream Radio. There is trick-or-treating here in the city I live in, though I haven’t seen anyone yet. Despite my kiddos wishes, any excess candy at the end of the night will go to a local police department.

I think I Kanban – This week I started a virtual course on Kanban. It is an Agile scheduling tool that dates itself back to the 1950’s. The course is taught by Anthony Mersino and his firm Vitality Chicago, and I have learned a lot already just about a third through the course. A basic example of a Kanban board is what I wrote about previously and I have learned there’s much more to Kanban.

A New Scrum Guide – The Scrum Guide is the definition of Scrum from its co-creators Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber. This week it was announced a new version of the guide, which was last updated 3 years ago, will be launched on November 18. I have signed up for it and am looking forward to seeing what’s new and changed in what some call the Bible of Scrum.

Me and My Ballot – Did you know it is illegal in some US states to take a selfie with your ballot? Here’s a list of all states and whether it is legal or not to take one. As I have many readers in Massachusetts, Illinois and Wisconsin, I’ll save you the click and bring on the disappointment right away.

May C-Force Be With Your Car – The ultimate car wash solution, C-Force Ceramic, was launched globally this week. Congrats to my wife and her team for all the hard work they put into the product. Look for it at your local car wash – it comes orange-vanilla scent too!

Eleven Seconds Remembered – On Thursday Travis Roy died. Eleven seconds into his first game as a member of the Boston University Men’s Hockey Team, Roy went headfirst into the boards when trying to check an opponent who got out of the way. From the impact Roy became a quadriplegic. He went on to be an advocate and fundraiser for disabilities and a motivational speaker. I still remember the tragedy, 25 years ago, like it was yesterday as I was at the game. In this story on that night, literally minutes after BU hoisted its national championship banner and a goal was scored, is a link to an interview with Sean Grande who was in the broadcast booth at Walter Brown Arena covering the game. His recount is exactly as I recall it.

Sleep Out So Kids Don’t – My friend Omid has been involved with Covenant House California, an organization that works to prevent youth homelessness. He is again going all in with a Sleep Out in the Los Angeles area, where he will be sleeping outside one night to raise money and awareness. You can watch his presentation on it here and pledge him here.

Somewhere, Kirk Gibson Did a Fist Pump – Speaking of LA, the Dodgers won the World Series. I had to actually go out of my way to find this out as I haven’t been following baseball, or much of any pro sports, this year.

He’s Coming To Town Somehow – As pretty much nothing has turned out as anyone would want this year, why should Santa’s time at the mall be any different? It certainly is at least at the local mall by me and as it is owned by a mall conglomerate, it likely will be the same at a mall near you.

IPFS New To Me – Though it has been around for a few years, the InterPlanetary File System, or IPFS, came into view for me this week as I was catching up on recent episodes of the Podcast Index podcast. In short, from how I understand it, it’s a way of having a distributed file system where files can live on any server around the world. This intrigues me and I am going to put some time into learning it this week.

An ongoing battle will come to an end on Halloween over this display. One child of mine thinks that both hands of the zombie to the right should be together, and the other thinks one should be in a potted plant about 20 feet away. The latter is the case when this photo was taken, but I believe it has changed since.

In America, Happy Halloween and set your clocks back Sunday morning!

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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