Viewing Category: Personal
I was at The Museum of Useful Things last week...what a great store! The website doesn't do the place justice; they carry much more than is shown online! I was excited to see they carried the Ex-cell Noteminder Check Rail, which is used by restaurants to hold orders in the queue.
I've wanted one of these things for years, thinking it would be useful for prioritizing my own tasks. I got the idea by watching a worker at McDonald's manage a priority queue during a busy lunch period. She put the priority items (for cars) on the left, scanning the tickets constantly to stay on top of what food needed to go in which bag . I was impressed; apparently I am not alone in this observation.
Now that I have my check rail, I need something to put in it! This type of task management has been on my mind a lot since I re-evaluated The Printable CEO™ series and noted that there were two major missing elements:
- Something useful for focusing on a single task
- Something useful for very high level strategic planning
Today I'm addressing the first one. Introducing the Task Order Up!
UPDATE: I changed the name from "Task Order Slip" to "Task Order Up" after reading Damien Tanner's trackback...much cooler sounding! :-)
The Big Idea
The main idea of the Task Order Up is maintaining context and continuity for a single task. With previous incarnations of The Printable CEO&trade, the various forms addressed groups of tasks, and are therefore more usfeul as "big picture" tools. The closest tool is probably The Task Progress Tracker, which was designed for managing tasks like a To Do list with finer-grained progress measurement. The Task Order Up ticket is similar in that it is also a form of To-Do list, but it ideally focuses only on one thing at time. One task, one ticket.
One of the original inspirations is my belief that, in a trusting work environment, all an employee needs to know are the following two things:
- What I am supposed to do?
- When is it due?
The manager / producer needs to know:
- What the employee is doing?
- How long did it take to finish?
- Is the employee being effectively utilized?
From the employee's perspective, the tangible work ticket allows them to manage their own tasks. It ameliorates the distractions that occur in a busy workplace too, since the work ticket becomes a visual anchor. Where was I? Oh, the ticket is right here in front of me. Once the task is complete, the ticket is also useful to review what happened that day, which makes filling out the weekly timesheet a little less onerous.
From the manager's perspective, being able to see what's on an employee's plate at any time without having to explicitly ask helps you from becoming needlessly annoying. The work ticket is a minature contract between you and the employee, outlining the essentials of what needs to be done by when. By observing the state of the check rail, one can get a quick picture of how loaded someone is at any given time.
While comparing our hip New Media lifestyle to short-order cooking may seem unglamourous...have you seen how productive those places can be? It's amazing. The really good places don't even need a check rail, but in fast food environments these things help maintain context and continuity. That helps with focus. I'm also thinking that having these slips of paper may help disambiguate the process of communicating what tasks are actually "on-deck" at any given time; that's always a challenge in a small business environment.
The Setup
Here's a more illustrative view of the check rail w/ three task slips. The idea is that you mount the rail near your primary work area and keep a bunch of these "current task" slips on them. Maybe at your workplace you use it to jot down quick tasks and hand them off to other people; I'm still working out the logistics.
The photo here is a temporary setup rigged for the purposes of this blog post, but I am planning on building some kind of holder out of 2x4s over my monitor.
Features
The form is split into 4 visible sections. Note the header at the top is designed to disappear under the check rail's gripping mechanism.
Task Description -- What you are planning to do in terms of producing a tangible result. Tasks that don't produce tangible results are not really to-do items.
Date / Due By -- The optional due-date of the task. There is also a visible weekly calendar so you can make a mark when it's due. The theory behind the calendar is that this allows you to visually sort dates instead of doing comparisons in your head. You can mark something due as either in the AM or the PM by filling in the box or putting an X in it.
Procedure List -- Write down the things you need to do to complete the task. Use the bubbles on the side to track the amount of time you spend on the various subtasks if you like; they are supposed to be 15-minute bubbles. I find that visually this isn't quite working well, so this part of the form is still not quite ready. The original idea was that I'd write the procedure down like a receipe so I wouldn't have to think so much as I work, but that's a topic for another post.
There are small tick marks to align subtasks on the left. The tick marks on the right are for putting Concrete Goal Tracker points; for example, if one of your subtasks produces a result that is CGT-worthy, you might write "+2" in that column.
Hours & Points -- After the task is complete, finalize the task by filling in the amount of time you took. Also, sum up any Concrete Goals Tracker points that were earned; you can use the ticket to later fill in your weekly timesheet or whatever. Finally, there's space for a job code, if you're in an environment that uses them. Otherwise, you can just write down the name of the project or other note in the space.
Concluding Thoughts
I'm still working on this form, as there are two significant drawbacks:
It's hard to sum-up the hours from the bubbles in the left column -- They are supposed to be 15-minute intervals, but I think they tend to read as hours. If you don't fill them continuously, then you can't just count big groups for hours.
The "best" way to fill-in the To Do list portion is not clear -- If you use the bubbles as an estimate of time per item, then you have to skip lines or draw arrows to connect a set of bubbles to a particular line item. That would be similar to using the form as an emergent time tracker, but the results are visually cluttered.
The horizontal format of the Emergent Task Timer and Task Progress Tracker is more suitable for this, so I have some ideas on how to bring that back in while maintaining the vertical format. In the meantime, you might just treat this as a fancy todo list and see what uses emerge over the next few days.
This is potentially a very wasteful paper process. I personally like making forms so it's fun, but ultimately this should be a software-based system. I have most of the essential design concepts finalized now through previous iterations of The Printable CEO™; it's time to put some of my Actionscript experience to work.
BTW, if you're grouchy about not having a check rail, just use a big clip like this!
Download The 2010 Printable Task Order Up Forms
This year's updates make some cosmetic changes to the typography, including darkening some of the background tints which were printing too lightly.
Standard Format
3x5 Index Card Format
4x6 Recipe Card Format
» More on The Printable CEO Series
Yesterday I launched a discussion area, with the vague notion that there might be a number of people interested in discussing issues of importance to me: empowering yourself, finding other people doing the same thing , and sharing tips. I wasn't really sure what would happen, especially since I had added the requirement of posting a backstory about yourself as a condition of registration. The reasoning behind that: only people who really want to participate will follow-through, which helps self-select the type of people that would make the forum work.
The first day, we had about 8 people sign up, using various pseudonyms. The backstories themselves have been wonderful to read...I'm asking permission from people to post them publically. The shape of the forum is changing as I'm adding new discussion areas, but so far this is what I've got:
Background Stories -- Each Active Member has a folder that has their backstory (what they're doing, how they got there, and where they want to go). The idea behind this is that it becomes an area where one can maintain their personal continuity through dialogue with other members. This is something that's often lost in other forums, I find.
Talk It Up! -- The general discussion board. I'm realizing that this is an area where I can start to formulate thoughts before I write about them on this blog. That other people can do the same, and also comment, is very cool. Not that it's yet happened, but the potential is there. This is also good in the sense that it means the forum becomes part of my personal workflow, and thus will retain its own vibrancy.
The University -- I've mentioned before that I'd like to start my own school. While I don't have the bucks, I can start a forum for posting the curriculum and ideas behind it. I'm imagining this might end up being a cool repository for people to collect tidbits they've learned. For example, "how to start a web design agency", or "how to become a graphic designer". Stuff like that. I'm leaving this folder public read-only, because I believe in sharing this kind of information. Only active members can create and post, however.
Jobs & Project Offerings -- One of the rules that I'm maintaining is NO SOLICITATION FOR WORK. However, one thing I've learned from the New Media Group is that people inevitably will have work that they need to have done, and once you've gotten to know someone you'll want to ask. So I've created a forum area for posting project and job listings. There aren't any there yet, but at least there's a place for it. I figure as people post more about what they're doing, ask questions, and we critique each others career strategies, we'll get an idea of who to ask for what.
Off Topic -- You always need one of these in any forum, as community begins to form. It's too soon to tell what kind of community we may or may not have, but I'm obsessive about setting up forums and I had to create it :-)
So that's what's going on! The forums are very new, and they are visible only to people who have taken the time to register and post their backstory. More as events warrant. I've missed adminstrating a forum...hopefully this is an energizing experience.
» Read How To Join
no lurkers...sorry!
I've had many interesting conversations with people over the past few months, all revolving around the question: How Do I Become What I Want To Be? There's a lot of passionate and talented people out there trying to create something uniquely suited to themselves. The variety is great: there are developers switching to design, engineers getting into music composition, usability experts banging their heads against client ignorance, and designers trying to differentiate themselves in crowded markets. I find it all very inspiring.
While I don't have the answers, I'm on the same journey of exploration. I've written on this a few times:
These have struck a chord in many of the people I've been emailing. At the end of each thread I've thought, "you know, this stuff might be interesting to other people I'm talking to." Keeping everyone in the loop is becoming a logistical problem, so I decided to set up a private forum on my unused davidseah.net domain.
Yes, you read that right: it's private. However, anyone who is willing to write a brief story about themselves will be allowed to register. It just has to cover the following in a paragraph or two:
- Where are you now in your career/life?
- How you get here?
- What is it that you want to do next?
Browse the public forum for more information, then register if it sounds interesting.
There are some rules I'm borrowing from the New Media Group to try and keep maintain high signal-to-noise. I'm not sure exactly how this will turn out, but I'm hoping that it's something good.
UPDATE: By the way, after you register for the forum, you should get a password mailed to you. Since it is generated by punBB, some mail program might flag it as junk mail, so keep an eye out for it.
After you get your password, LOGIN and then enter your story in the "Complete Your Registration" forum topic. Yes, yes, it's a somewhat involved process, but such is the price of entry. If you have any problems, feel free to email me via the contact form.
Marko Mihelcic runs mcville.net, "a community website where you can find smashing articles and interviews with some recognized people, as well as discussions on other topics like design, development, lifestyle, music and film reviews." He just did a quick email interview with me; even I was surprised at how long it got. Goes to show how a little structure in the interview process works wonders for content, when you have the right questions.
There have been a lot of interesting people interviewed on the site, both people I've heard of and people I'm now thinking of tracking. I'm also impressed at the entire concept of mcville: it's a nicely-designed community-oriented site that also serves a bit as a portfolio/promotional piece for a design company, but not in an over-the-top way. It's a fascinating hybrid of community and commerce...I like it!
It's catch-up day! Over the past few weeks I've gotten some interesting email, so I thought I'd share some of them.
Will asks: how do "better living through media" and alcohol go together?
This is referring to the current header image showing the bottles of scotch, and my site's tagline. The short answer is: "There's no relation" :-)
The longer answer: I try to use original photography as much as possible on this site; I didn't even launch it until I had written an image plugin for WordPress that would work with the way I wanted to post articles. This picture of various scotches and whiskeys are leftovers from a cousin's attempt to introduce me to life's finer vices; I don't drink or enjoy the idea of getting drunk. Yep, I'm Mr. "I'll have a diet coke with lime" when I'm at at a bar. I didn't quite get to enjoy Scotch, though on New Year's I had a really amazing one that changed my whole take on it. I wish I could remember the name of it.
I stuck the post-it note on the photo afterwards as a form of "under construction" notice. I thought that the combination "live site updates" and lots of booze would underscore the dangerous nature of this activity. So whenever you see something screwed up on the site, take it as an object lesson in not drinking and updating! I am wagging my finger at you in admonishment!
Dan asked: How do I hide a file in Mac OS X without having XCode installed?
Dan was making his first hybrid CD-ROM that would work on both a Mac and PC, and was using my guide to create a nice clean one. XCode is the development environment used to write Macintosh programs for Mac OS X. It's included free with every copy of Mac OS X, but it's rather large and not installed by default.
I referred him to this article about setting the invisible bit on MacFixit and a utility called XRay. Apparently, this did the trick, and there's one more person in the world who has made their own hybrid CD! That's awesome!
Carly wrote in to tell me how to avoid killing google indexes when changing categories, as I had done a few days ago.
A quick way to deal with it is to create a Google Sitemap that leads to the new category pages. Go to http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemap
You don't need to do the fancy XML stuff either. The TXT version works just fine!
Several people have supplied some LazyImageLayout patches too. I have yet to post them on the LZIL page, but they're in the queue. Feel free to publically post your patches, if you haven't done so already!
I've also been conducting a design knowledge-transfer session through email, with a developer who wants to get more into design. As I'm a designer moving more into development, it seems like an even trade :-) I sent this list of books that influenced my design education:
The first visual book I read was "Sight Sound Motion: Applied Media Aesthetics" by Herbert Zettl. I was in engineering school and for some reason this book caught my eye on a shelf, and it opened my eyes. I was able to think of visuals as ways of expressing ideas; this book became a sort of primer on the grammar of visual communication, told in a very straightforward manner with examples.
After studying design, I realized there's a certain kind of visual design that I like, personified by a design magazine called Critique. It's now defunct (another magazine has arisen with the same name, different subject). If you can find issues of Critique in the library, you might like them...I like them a lot more than Communication Arts. They chose THEME WORDS for each issue, like "Wit", "Humor", etc.
One book I found through Critique was "A Smile in the Mind", by Beryl McAlhone and David Stuart. It's about "witty thinking in graphic design". What's witty, what isn't! Lots of examples. Very insightful. Not everyone's cup of tea...a lot of designers I know are interested in pretty techniques and "inspiring work" that they can, um, borrow. More power to them...they're more successful than I by far!
From a design entrepreneur perspective, "Education of a Design Entrepreneur" edited by Steven Heller was very interesting reading. It's a collection of essays covering a broad range of topics from people who've actually done something. Heller has other books in the series for other disciplines...all of them have a high signal-to-noise ratio. I just spotted one on my shelf called "Education of an E-Designer" that I have yet to read...
I like Hillman Curtis' "MTIV Process Inspiration and Practice for the New Media Designer". I just like the way he writes...it's personal, unassuming, insightful, and practical. It's quietly inspiring, and I love his work...you can see it on his website.
For nuts and bolts of layout, these three books will give you 2 years of graphic design school in about 4 hours of reading: "The Non Designer's Design Book" by Robin Williams, "Before and After Page Design" by John McWade, and "Understanding Comics" by Scott McCloud. The first book will review extremely basic but important concepts about page layout and spacing. The second book will flesh out those ideas, and introduce more advanced concepts. The last book will introduce ideas about semiotics in an extremely easy-to-read form. I wish I had a good semiotics book recommendation... that would be an ideal 4th book to tie graphic design to the concepts McCloud outlines.
A good supplement would be Edward Tufte's series of books, "Visual Explanations", "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information", and "Envisioning Information"...personally, I found the books a little dry and academic, but if you can say "Yeah, Tufte" at a design meeting it's almost worth the cost of the books.
For usability, I like the no-nonsense approach of Steve Krug's "Don't Make Me Think". I haven't done much reading in this field, otherwise.
I'm not sure how this happened, but I've been tagged by Mike Stickel to participate in a 4 things meme. I find memes interesting when they're action-oriented viral ideas. In the process of acting on the viral idea, you become a part of community of participation. Weird! I've also been watching a lot of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex lately, so I guess I'm just in the mood for them.
The questions:
- Four jobs I’ve had in my life
- Four movies I can watch over and over
- Four places I have lived
- Four TV shows I love to watch
- Four places I have been on vacation
- Four websites I visit daily
- Four of my favorite foods
- Four places I would rather be right now
- Four bloggers I’m tagging
And the answers...
Four jobs I've had in my life
- AOL Graphics Forum Consultant / Chat Host --- For almost 10 years, but not anymore.
- Graphic Design teaching assistant --- Interesting because my training was computer engineering, not graphic design.
- Video Game Developer / Manager / Designer --- various guises at various companies.
- Creative Technical Director for web firm --- Not the creative director, not the technical director, but an amalgamation of both.
Four movies I can watch over and over
I don't see a lot of movies, but there are some that I relish deeply when I watch them...the ones that pop into my head:
- Dark City
- Amelie
- Raiders of the Lost Ark
- Spirited Away
Four places I have lived
In the past...
- Perrineville, NJ
- Taipei, Taiwan
- Rochester, NY
- Altamonte Springs, FL
Four TV shows I love to watch
- The New Battlestar Galactica
- Homicide: Life on the Streets
- Parker Lewis Can't Lose
- Gilmore Girls
Four places I have been on vacation
- Southern California
- Hualien, Taiwan
- Orlando, FL
- White Mountains in New Hampshire
Four websites I visit daily
Surprisingly, there are not that many I visit daily:
- Player vs Player --- Not only is Kurtz inspiring as a solo artist/writer, he delivers the goods with snap!
- Something Positive --- Dark humor, yet oddly uplifting after you follow it for a while.
- BoingBoing --- I used to read Wired for this kind of buzz, but Boing Boing fulfills that need now.
- 9rules --- A seething mass of creative people making original content and building a community at the same time. Fascinating.
Four of my favorite foods
Argh, just four?
- Curry!
- Spicy Szechuan food from Sichuan Gourmet in Billerica!
- Korean BBQ!
- Gelato!
Four places I would rather be right now
- Someplace warmer
- In my fantasy mansion, counting today's pile of money
- At a workplace leading a hand-picked team of ass-kickers
- On a road trip visiting friends
Four bloggers I’m tagging
The last four that I've chatted with recently but still don't know that well:
When I first started blogging 16 months ago, I was hung up on what categories I should have. I kept adding and removing them until the settled into the list I've kept for some time. That set of catagories is, in essence, my own folksonomy, except I'm the only one doing the tagging.
Very useful in understanding myself, back when I wrote primarily for my own understanding. However, I'm starting to project my energy outwards to see what happens, and I have realized that the old categorization system is not well suited for that. I need to revamp the categorization system so people other than myself can browse the content more easily. That means fewer categories and broader keywords.
However, since the old category list is an excellent snapshot of my interests, I'm writing it down so I don't forget.
The Categories
As of January 1, 2006
Davidocracy (personal section)
- Artsy -- Graphical things I made
- Blogging -- About blogging, the activity
- Booty -- Stuff I want to buy
- Cats -- My cats, and friends cats
- Editorial -- Opinons
- Encounters -- Interesting people I meet randomly
- Food -- Pictures of food, recipes
- Gawking -- Odd things I see that I have to comment on
- Geeky -- Topics of interest to my fellow geeks
- Introspection -- Personal things on my mind
- Making Stuff -- Tools, processes about creating things
- Regional -- Events or places in New England
- Retail -- Retail store experiences
- Suckage -- Stuff that ticks me off
- This Rocks! -- Cool, surprising, inspiring things!
IdeaBox (observations, insights)
* Ideas -- Concepts, "wouldn't it be neat if..."
* Patterns -- "Have you ever noticed...", patterns of all kinds observed and quantified
* PickleJar -- ideas that I want to get back to later
* Productivity -- on being more productive, or not. "What makes work work?"
* Questions -- Why are things like this?
* Tools -- Useful software, processes, or machines for idea generation that get the job done
Working It (business related)
- 10games -- The failed "make 10 games in 2005" resolution
- Flash -- Macromedia Flash related stories
- Graphics -- Computer Graphics
- Gweeping -- Non-programming Tech Noodling
- Inspiration -- Inspiration design work, writing from around the net
- Portfolio -- My dusty archive of work
- Programming -- Topics of interest to programmers
- Trends -- Patterns in business
- Tricks -- Cheats, Twists, and Illusions
- WorkPractice -- Experiences running freelance business (or not)
Ooops
One downside of reorganizing your tags is that it breaks existing search engine links, if they've found your content through a category tag. So beware!!!
I've been drooling over the latest Levenger catalog, which features upscale furniture and gear for the discerning bookworm. Here's a few of the things that caught my eye:
The Scooter Laptop Stand with a single-pole support that you can draw real close; your legs slide by on either side of the pole. Adjustable height via foot pedal, ergonomically designed! And since it's from Herman Miller, I'm inclined to believe that it's a solid piece of furniture, unlike those deathtraps sold at the local mega-officemart. It certainly costs enough...
This 3x5 Card Bleacher is for organizing 3x5 index cards in a storyboard format! There are slots that hold the cards, and places for your pens! Levenger also sells a lot of other gear for managing 3x5 cards, such as their pocket briefcase. I hadn't thought about using 3x5 cards as the basis for organization, but it would be perfect for my kitchen gear mashup project...
The Circa Notebook System uses Rolodex-style rings so you can easily insert and remove paper, and it's designed to fold over flat. It looks awesome; no surprise it won 2005 Organizing Industry Product of the Year from the International Association of Professional Organizers. Levenger also sells a paper punch so you can convert any kind of paper to the system. This is exactly what I need for the next phase of The Printable CEO system. The basic notebook is $16.00, which is a little pricey, but not outrageous.
This Folding Editor's Desk is allegedly modeled after inclined writing desks used by scribes. What I like about the design is the back shelf, which can be used to support reference books you're referring to as you write. When I'm assembling custom reference material, I often get buried in multiple source books; I'll have to look into building something similar.
This Carousel Book Shelf/Stand would look awesome rotating in my fantasy library, wouldn't it? Levenger sells all kinds of neat library furniture, like a circulation manager table for newspapers with rounded shelves that keep magazines from sliding out. Nifty!
I am not a fan of poker, but I could get into Read 'Em. It uses poker rules, but instead of going for the straight flush you spell words using letter cards. The longest word spelled with most letters of the same suit wins!
The Inka Pen is a compact all-weather pressurized pen that can fit on your keychain; it's 3" closed and 5" open. According to the site, it's designed by engineer Greg Adelman, who needed a reliable pen while at sea deploying research instrumentation[.] It apparently even writes underwater. Makes my classic Fisher Space Pen seem a little less shiny...time for an upgrade, I think.
There's more cool stuff on the Levenger website...send away for your catalog! There are also a few retail locations: one's in Boston's Prudential Center, two are in Chicago, and one is in Del Ray, Florida. I'm going to have to check out the Boston location and see if this stuff is really any good.
Dad safely arrived this Saturday, after being delayed by Typhoon Talim in the Pacific...he's here for two months! I'm planning on getting some video on him telling stories about his past (and it's a nice excuse to get that DV camcorder I've wanted, though I have a perfectly good High-8 camera...I should sell it). He's already told us some interesting stories about growing up in pre World War II Taiwan, so I can't wait to get some of this logged. It's Personal History Month here at Casa Seah!
I'm going to again be rather sporadic on website updates this week, but there are some bright spots over the horizon:
I have, for the first time, a vision for the kind of company I want to build! I will be realigning my practice toward this.
The anniversary for the creation of this blog is officially September 12th, and it feels like it's time to change it up a bit. With the new thoughts on what my practice will be, this comes at an opportune moment. The new blog will be more clearly segmented between business and personal interests, though I plan on keeping it highly personable in tone. With the new vision, the business side will be focused on the journey of making it happen.
With a new blog comes redesign. I am not using any WordPress 1.5 features in the current blog templates, having just ported it quickly from 1.2. I'm planning on putting some hours into exploring WordPress 1.5 template features to make something cool. It'll be a good refresher for my CSS / HTML too, which is feeling a little rusty.
On top of these things, there's also a bunch of work-related things to get through:
- Delivering the next release candidate for Showing Evidence next week
- Writing up some documentation
- Prepping new resume / portfolio collateral
- Meeting with potential clients
It's interesting to note that last week's hits dropped to about half their usual level. The cause could be anything: Hurricane Katrina, vacation times, who knows.
I was reading Evelyn Rodriguez's Crossroad Dispatches this morning, which has a retrospective post about her Dad. Which got me thinking about my Dad, who's in Taiwan and probably having an ordinary weekend. In Taiwan, Father's Day falls on August 8...I'm told this is because the words for August and 8 together sound like "Ba Ba", which is one way of saying father in Mandarin. I have no idea if this is really true, but it makes it easy to remember what day it falls on.
Anyway, Dad's an amazing dude. I've become more and more aware of this as I slide out of my mid-30s and start seeing my childhood from his perspective. I didn't understand it when I was younger, but neither did I totally get what his youth experience was like: losing his parents as a young teenager and having to support his sister and two brothers, acquiring an education in post-WWII Taiwan, making it to the United States to study in the 50s, raising two spoiled kids and having to haul them back to Taiwan to rebuild a seminary from less than zero. As I grow older, the more I am impressed, and inspired, by his example. If I have learned I can do anything, it's because I've seen Dad do it, even though I didn't really get it until now.
Up until my 30s, I thought of Dad as being a rather serious and stern individual, mistaking (perhaps like many people) his strong internal discipline and sense of ethics for, well, not being very much fun. In recent years I've had the opportunity to talk with Dad on a more personal level, and have learned more about his attitudes toward life, administration, duty, and achievement. He's a humble man philosophically, but he's also a highly capable and intelligent man who has learned to harness his gifts within an organizational context. That's something I've never figured out, being too irked by dogma to stick around, rubbing people the wrong way sometimes, etc. Clearly, I still have a lot to learn from Dad.
But back to that serious thing...I was looking through some old photos today, and looked for the candid ones to dispell that myth:
The one at the top is taken sometime in the early-to-mid 1980s I think, in his office at the seminary. I can remember the way that office smelled (like books and drying ink). When I would visit it I felt like I was intruding on a very serious workplace, so this picture is a revelation. He's cracking up and laughing...awesome!
The second photo is probably from 1969 or 1970, at Medford Lakes in New Jersey. Was it our godparents parent's log house? He's hamming it up (I think) for the camera, playing some kind of single-stringed chinese instrument. I remember it used to lurk in a closet, next to his violin, but haven't seen it in years. Young father, newly ordained minister I think, before he started his Ph.D. work.
The third photo is at the house in Perrineville, New Jersey. I'm guessing it must be 1974 or 1975. He's barbecueing what looks like chicken wings on that charcoal grill we had. I think I used to ask him if I could light the fire, and he probably always said no. We would set up on tables in the front lawn and eat with our relatives, the Lohs, who lived in Cranbury (according to my Sis, who remembers all). Simpler times!
Happy Father's Day, Dad! Love ya!
