David Whelan

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Latest from David Whelan

Reading Time: 7 minutes
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. One of the things I’ve been looking forward to in my new role is teaching. The calendar has rolled around and I was asked to teach next fall, which is really exciting. I’ll be teaching a course on law

Reading Time: 9 minutes
I got a new driver’s license. It is my ninth one, as I’ve moved around a bit and all the jurisdictions in which I’ve lived have required you to get a new one. The visit to the Department of Motor Vehicles wasn’t too bad. You can imagine, though, that not everyone

Reading Time: 7 minutes
I attended a conference focused on online learning. I’ve been making a push to firm up my understanding about teaching and this was an accelerator. It was noted more than once how dissonant it was to have a conference about online learning where the only way to attend was in-person. The

Reading Time: 6 minutes
I’ve spent a lot of time talking to people about myself and my family over the last half decade. It’s not something I was terribly comfortable doing. In part, this was because it was a persona constructed for the purpose of those interactions. I am now at a point where I

Reading Time: 7 minutes
My brother was a Russian hostage. That is now in the past but I am still processing it. But as his release started to appear on the horizon, and I was preparing for the media, I put a lot of thought into how to maintain some control in these final moments.

Reading Time: 9 minutes
It is not uncommon to lump similar people together, based on their job titles, or similar organizations, based on their outward facing appearance or context. I tend to avoid this. Even statements as simple as “library directors do X” may be sprinkled with caveats. Do they? Do all directors do X?

Reading Time: 6 minutes
Multi-factor authentication is now a permanent part of life. Unfortunately, it is implemented in so many different—and not always secure—ways that it can require a lot of tools to manage. I had done pretty well until recently by relying on Duo’s products. They have a really nice free MFA (or 2FA)