It seems like I was just finishing up my Thanksgiving dinner grace that the first Christmas card came in the mail. Where I can’t control what others do, I am enjoying the holiday weekend as much as possible, along with hanging up that first card.

ICYMIY – In case you missed my post that appeared to most on Thanksgiving, here’s a link to it. It was either people were too busy celebrating the holiday or perhaps they just didn’t care to read my takeaways from yet another Patriots book?

262 – Congrats to my smokin’ hot wife for running her 10th marathon last week. I’ve long believed running a marathon is more mental than physical, and just thinking about it is making me tired. It’s quite an achievement to run one 26.2 mile event, but 10 is certainly a feat of feet.

WhatOps? – For those more technically inclined reading this, you may be familiar with the term DevOps, which is all the rage for how developers are working with delivering more in an orderly fashion. But have you heard of DesignOps? If not, this is a link to several articles to get you thinking more about DesignOps. I’m still going thru it myself, but it’s good to see everyone wants in on a more sane way of creating great things.

Back with a Bash – Last week a great tech in-person networking event was held in the shadows of Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin called Tech Bash. Several tech firms and meetup groups presented and were in attendance to connect with the community. It was also an opportunity to learn about Livex a New York City-based firm that is a global leader in livestreaming who also has operations in the area. They also have a livestream platform called Rivet that I am exploring more for how it could work with swim meet livestreaming. It was a great event and even greater to shake hands with people I hadn’t seen in in real life in a long time, not to mention seeing first-hand the thriving tech scene in the area.

Back to the Email – I posted a survey on LinkedIn asking how people tackle their email inbox after being away from work for a while and there’s still time to chime in on it. That is if you are on LinkedIn. And if you are and you’re reading this, let’s connect.

Arizona Election News You Likely Haven’t Heard Of – There has been a lot of news about 2020 elections in Arizona and its recount done by the Cyber Ninjas. However there has not been much coverage about an alternative approach to recounting the ballots, by a diverse team no less. This group calls themselves The Audit Guys and has been involved with this recount as well as other analysis on the last US Presidential election. In past What I Learned posts I have included links to info from Larry Moore, one of The Audit Guys and someone I had the good fortune to work for in the past. The Audit Guys’ latest article is their review of the Cyber Ninjas recount. I recommend checking back on this site for more analysis you won’t find elsewhere but should.

A Focus on Reducing and Reusing – The 3 R’s of the environment were taught to me as Reduce, Reuse, then Recycle. However it seems the emphasis over the years has been on the last one, where I would have thought it would have been on the first two. This is a good, detailed article on problems with recycling and a program called Loop that is working on reusable product packaging. It is led by major corporations, and it will be interesting to see how they do and how it cascades through all aspects of the economy.

Another Reason for Another Cup – If others can pick and choose their medical studies, so can I! Here’s one on how coffee can lower the risk for stroke and dementia.

Go Ahead, Be “Unsafe” on the Web – One of my biggest pet peeves with Big Tech firms is when they decided a Web site would rank lower if it didn’t have an SSL certificate (a.k.a. the S in https) even if the Web site wasn’t processing sensitive information, such as a blog. Then these firms decided their Web browsers would give a warning and try to block you from seeing the Web site without SSL. But leave it to the developers of the browsers to build-in a workaround, as was new to me in this article about the phrase “thisisunsafe.” Granted this isn’t easy for the non-technical user, but for those of us who make their living on the Web, this will make life much easier.

Seeing the Forest for the Fallen Tree – When on a trek through my friend’s hunting land last week, I was keeping an eye on the ground as I walking on something that was far from a groomed trail. I came across the above-pictured log, covered in moss and though barely visible was new-fallen snow on it too. Just after taking this photo and noticed the sight of the forest and sky around me. Often I take for granted the beauty of my surroundings. This time I took in and took photos of all around me.

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

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In a time of non-stop 24/7 sports coverage it’s hard to imagine this has not always been the case. I have to go back to my childhood to recall this, before getting cable TV and that little cable channel created by a former local sportscaster from my area called the Entertainment Sports Programming network, or ESPN for short. Prior to the late 70’s you literally had to be there to see the finer details of a game beyond the radio broadcasts and occasional local TV coverage.

This is why books like The Most Memorable Games in Patriots History are not only important but highly nostalgic. The core of the book is literally play-by-play of 10 games over the history of the New England Patriots football team. The narrative is by the authors Jim Baker and Bernie Corbett, heavily complimented with interviews and short pieces from many of the players and people at these games. It is a very detailed story of a sports team that almost wasn’t, and one nobody thought would be the global sports dynasty it is today.

As this Patriots fan read the jam-packed pages of this book, these are some of the many takeaways I had.

Unknown Facts – As the team began playing before I was born, I was expecting to learn a few minor details about the early days. A major one was that the Boston Patriots (as they were then known) and Boston Red Sox baseball team could have built and moved into a retractable roof stadium in 1964. In order for that to happen, the Massachusetts legislature wanted long-term commitments from all of the major sports teams to stay in the capital city. However the deal never happened as the Boston Bruins hockey team wanted more of the Boston Celtics concessions money. What could have been!

It Started in Foxboro – The concept of selling the naming rights to sports stadiums is commonplace today, and the first-ever corporate named stadium was the first permanent home of the Patriots. The team was building a new stadium in the town of Foxboro, Massachusetts, about a half-hour south of Boston, and they were short on funds. Rather than outright ask for more money, founding owner Billy Sullivan offered to sell to Schaefer Beer the naming rights to the eventual Schaefer Stadium. Thus a trend was started in sports which many people are less than keen on. And before I hear from Chicago Cubs fans, the Wrigley Gum family owned the Cubs.

Early, Gritty Days – The big-money that swirls around professional sports today was hardly the case in the early days of football and most other sports as well. The Patriots almost weren’t a team due to financing and played home games in various stadiums around the Boston area – even in the state of Alabama – before opening their own low-budget home field over a decade later after their American Football League merged into the National Football League, or NFL, and required them to. Player salaries were nothing like they are today, and most players had jobs outside of the sport in order to live. These stories are woven throughout tales of early games.

Despite my allegiance to the team, I came into this book with an open mind – it wasn’t going to be awesome simply because it was about the Pats. Fortunately I wasn’t disappointed. The stories of the specific games were extremely detailed and told as play-by-play announcers would on a broadcast. The quotes from past players, ownership and sportswriters added greatly to the feeling for those games. In between each game story were “appendices,” full chapters in themselves, detailing stats and other detailed information related to the Patriots and all of the NFL.

The Most Memorable Games in Patriots History was published in 2012, and has not been updated. I got the book sent to me by a book publisher back then as I got a lot of books because I was blogging about a lot of books I read. Yes, I held onto this for almost a decade, and after finishing it I wish I had read it earlier. I recommend this book to Patriots fans of all types and interest levels, as well as anyone who follows football and has an appreciation for such detail. As for my copy of the book, I am sending it to a friend who has an appreciation for the nuance and details of the teams and their games, as well as their stadiums.

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

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Where I would like to blame missing a week on the disruptions of the new features and settings in iOS 15 on my iPhone that are supposed to cause less distractions, alas I truly cannot. Perhaps I am the only person who loves all notifications and not grouped, but that’s another post for another time.

Grands – I appreciated the few kudos on reaching 1,000 blog posts, especially from long-time reader and fellow blogger Matt, who pointed out another word for one-thousand is chiliad. I am still trying to find a way to work it into a sentence without sounding snooty.

Nice thinkin’, Ray – Next week the Ghostbusters original story becomes a trilogy. I came across this video clip with Ivan Reitman, the director of the first 2 installments and Dad of the director of this one, showing a video to Bill Murray of how the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man has evolved. It opens in the US next week, and finally I have a reason to return to a movie theater.

More proof the Cloud is simply someone else’s computer – Open-source file management and application platform Nextcloud has announced a new app to allow for peer-to-peer backups. All you need is someone else who uses Nextcloud and you can backup your files to theirs, encrypted and compressed of course. I have used Nextcloud for years, though ironically I don’t know anyone else who uses it.

Snap up 80’s music lore – When I read about Deirdre O’Donoghue being “the most influential American DJ you’ve never heard of,” I said to myself, “self, I never heard of her, and I am intrigued.” She was a DJ on a public radio show in Los Angeles that featured interviews and a great mix of 80’s alternative music. Though she is no longer on this mortal coil, the tapes of her shows have been recovered and a podcast series called Bent by Nature has been produced from them. The first few episodes are fun, and if you’re into the best music era of all time on this earth, give it a listen.

Time killers as we await Valentine's Day – I was sad to hear that Christkindlmarket will not return to Milwaukee this year, though it will be back in its original Chicago location. Where trekking that far south may not be in the cards for me, trekking a little south to Milwaukee for the Noel Light Park and Christmas Market sounds like it may make up for it. No definitive word if they will have boot mugs though.

Crafting I could tolerate – New to me is Cricut a line of computer-driven cutters that can be used to make car window decals, and likely other crafty things. But car window decals! They also make a mug press for dishwasher-safe printing on coffee mugs, though it looks like supply chain issues have hit their larger mug sizes. This would certainly make for an interesting hobby, and a nice Christmas present for me.

Make Images Vital Again – Back in the old days of the Web people would upload a ginormous image to their Web site, and you could see it slowly loading a line of pixels at a time. Sadly that is still going on over a quarter of a century later. I learned about TinyPNG a Web site where you can upload and optimally compress the size of image for a Web site – note that a picture straight off of your phone is likely too big for a Web site. I saw this service listed on this great article from consultancy SmoothFusion on overall improvements you can make to your Web site.

Mixed feeling about this phone repair – Apparently if you crack the screen of your iPhone 13 and bring it to a non-Apple authorized repair place, Face ID on your phone will no longer work. Where I don’t use Face ID on my non model 13 phone because of risk and security concerns, it goes against your right to have your phone repaired wherever the heck you want to which clearly Apple, et. al. don’t want you to do.

Rudy Reminder – While watching All-American with one of my kiddos this past week there was a mention to a “Rudy moment” and guessing (correctly) she didn’t know that reference, I proceeded to give her the top-line story about Rudy Ruettiger and mentioned the movie about his life. I also recalled in the closing scene of the movie, there’s a shot of Rudy being carried off the field of Notre Dame Stadium, and sticking out among the dark clothing is my friend Tim, waving while wearing a white cap and bright blue jacket to the left of the on-screen which you can see at the 3:37 mark of this video words. He just happened to be at an actual Notre Dame game when this scene was filmed.

FILO – If you are a regular reader of my What I Learned posts or anything I write here at this humble blog, you will notice I like to include some original photo, artwork or even screenshot. As I looked thru photos the last few weeks, there wasn’t really anything to choose from. So I scrolled back to the oldest photo on my phone and I have added it above; it’s a photo of a mural on a park pavilion in Redgranite, Wisconsin, taken this summer. It caught my eye, and hopefully does yours too.

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

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

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This past weekend I did something I have contemplated for a while but couldn’t get myself to do. I deleted my Twitter account.

Some of you may be surprised, especially those who knew how much I promoted Twitter over the years. Others may not be, especially as I haven’t been actively using my account for well over a year and a half. Though I deleted the app from my mobile phone and stopped checking it several times daily back in March of 2020, I was hesitant to drop it altogether.

But I did, and I am great with that decision. Allow me to indulge why I did, but first how I engaged with social media and its positive and negative impacts on my life.

The Good Ol’ Days... in 2007

Social media in the mid-to-late 2000’s was not completely new, as I had a MySpace page and this blog you are reading was also new to me. As I grew followers and made connections with both platforms, I learned about Twitter, and thanks to my friend and fellow improvisor Christopher, I got an account.

But at first, I didn’t get it. What the heck could I say in 120 characters? And who would want to read it? I slowly started following and connecting with people, and using it as a way to promote my blog. Twitter inspired me to build a Web app that is resting in my project graveyard but even then, I wasn’t using it all that much.

For me, it took seeing Twitter in action – literally – to believe in it, and that didn’t happen for another year when I went to Helsinki, Finland as a participant in Nokia OpenLab. There I met people from around the world who were heavy users of Twitter and other social media channel, and I experienced for the first time a group of people tweeting each other as they sat together. Where that latter fact was not what made me the true believer in Twitter that I became, it was continuing the connections with these people who brought me to the platform and kept me there.

Behind the short messages were people, and I got to know people not only around the world but around the corner as well. People who were interested in meeting those whom they only saw an avatar of would host Tweetups – in person meetups of Twitter connections. There are several people from tweetups I still keep in touch with today.

Beyond Shiny to a Utility

As I evolved my use with Twitter, the platform evolved as well. Business, traditional media and more individuals were coming on board, and the “invention” of the hashtag made the platform even more useful. It was becoming my primary source for news, as I could follow networks, stations, newspapers and especially the reporters of those outlets. One example of the power of Twitter was one early evening in Chicago when I saw Blackhawk helicopters flying around the Loop. I immediately took to Twitter, and right away people were chiming in on their own sightings and the media was also on the case. It was a Chicago Tribune reporter who then found an obscure mention on the city’s Web site about a Blackhawk training exercise and shared it. Shortly afterwards it made the paper’s Web site.

Twitter became a customer service channel as well, which truly embraced the collaboration that was a hallmark of social media. Starting with Comcast Cares, an account run by a Comcast employee on his own, customer service evolved on the platform, slashing through obnoxious telephone menu trees to get to the people who could make a difference. This extended beyond business, as my former Alderperson in Chicago was an active user – one day on the way to work I tweeted her a picture of a downed tree in my neighborhood, and on the way home it was gone.

The ability to connect and communicate with people you normally couldn’t or wouldn’t be able to connect with was another uniqueness to Twitter. One time I tweeted to Jack Welch, the infamous former CEO of GE. It happened to be at the time the New England Patriots were in the playoffs, and Welch, who was a Boston-area native, replied to me, “Go Pats!” Though not an intellectual conversation to say the least, it was a pleasant surprise. As I was writing book takeaways here at The Hot Iron, I was able to connect with authors and publishers to share my thoughts, as well as the occasional newsmaker and reporter covering them.

What’s Offline is Online Too

Twitter was not in its own world, as it’s obvious it was made up of those from the “meat space.” Over time I saw Twitter conversations becoming more political and divisive. As this was not just impacting Twitter but other social platforms such as Facebook, driving me to quit that platform years ago. Despite this exodus, I still held hope that Twitter could be different and more tolerable to me.

Over the last 5 years though it was really off the rails for me. I would often joke that, though not a financial advisor, I strongly recommended investing in heels, as people were simply digging their heals in and holding their ground and shouting at others. This was far, far from the Twitter I remembered from almost a decade earlier, and one I was not liking. I went as far as deleting all of my old tweets (after backing them up, for some reason) as who knows what I had said in a short message years ago that I didn’t want to come back to haunt me. Over time I was checking the platform less and less.

The Final Straws

As the lockdowns were taking effect in early 2020 and people were at home, angry, scared, or whatever they were feeling, the tweets were reflective of this. It got to be too much, and I deleted the app from my mobile device. Granted I did not shut down the account, but not having Twitter literally at arm’s length for most of my day was actually refreshing. I would check it maybe once a week from a Web browser, then every couple of weeks, then maybe once a month. As Twitter was also a way for friends to connect with me, I was sharing with them over direct messages, or DMs, my decision and my phone number and email if they didn’t already have it. I didn’t make a big deal publicly of my cutback on its usage though.

In between those checks, I really didn’t miss Twitter. I was still on LinkedIn and starting to experiment with Mastodon, an open source, federated (or shared) protocol of connecting individual social media instances together. I was also blogging more, going back to my “roots” of social media – look at my early posts, and I had many commenters, many more than I do today.

Over the weekend I happened to check Twitter and the only mention I had in the month since I last checked it was a tweet from a complete stranger asking me to DM him about a business opportunity. I paused for a moment, and said to myself this was it. It had been almost 18 months since I retreated, and I really didn’t miss it at all. Sure, the ol’ days were good – heck, even great – but today Twitter has lost its luster. Note that in what I have said so far I haven’t mentioned de-platforming, algorithms controlling what you see and don’t see, and the useless testifying of Twitter’s and other social and tech CEOs in front of Congress. Where these certainly played into my thinking (like not believing Twitter is a public square, rather a private space off of it) I had enough reasons to delete my account, and my proof is with the screenshot at the top of this message.

Will I return? I do have access to other Twitter accounts for organizations that I have helped manage, but personally I don’t see it. But never say never, and who knows what else is right around the corner.

Deconstructing Deleting Twitter

Social media was and continues to be a game-changer for how we communicate in the world, for better or for worse. The opposite of social media is not anti-social, rather I see it as returning to the roots of collaboration that the Internet is. My decision to quit Twitter was personal, but not entirely unique, as I have known others who have quit other social media platforms. Where everyone has their own reasons, there is a common thread of the negativity that is gnawing away at the good that social media enabled. It’s this good that I seek, whether on another platform or with a simple hello to someone, online or in-person.

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

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Many terms can apply to political institutions throughout the world – some I can say here on this blog, some I choose not to. One word can apply to them all, a word which I have observed myself personally – tradition. Whether for everyone or just for those who hold office themselves, activities have happened in these legislative bodies over the years that continue throughout their existence.

A tradition in the US Senate is where Senators sign the drawer of their desk in the Senate chamber. One desk is number 88, which has been occupied by members of the Democratic party. The current occupant of the desk, Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, wrote a book several years back about some of the people who preceded him there in the aptly titled Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America.

When I, someone who does not align with any political persuasion, received this book from a friend who is closely aligned in political ideology with the Senators in the book, I was intrigued about what I would learn and, of course, take away from the stories.

History through a partisan lens – Senator Brown is a progressive Democrat and he doesn't hide that fact. That being said, I was able to separate historical details and tales from his opinion and did learn about the individuals who sat at this desk over the years. What I read also inspired me to do other research on these Senators outside of the book. As I digested these stories from the book, I was reminded of another book I read, The Fight for the Four Freedoms, which was written by a college professor who also had strong political opinion woven through its pages.

A former KKK member was on the Supreme Court – Senator Hugo Black of Alabama, who was later nominated to the US Supreme Court by President Franklin Roosevelt, was previously a member of the Ku Klux Klan, or KKK as it’s abbreviated. In his story, Brown opens stating Black’s membership, saying political motivation drove him and said Black didn’t really have a choice in order to fulfill him political ambitions. Clearly I don’t buy that justification! Black most certainly had a choice not to join a domestic terrorism organization. As this book was written in the early days of the cancel culture that has sadly permeated our society, to simply gloss over Black’s one-time membership in the Klan, though he later renounced it, is hypocritical.

A fitting bible quote – I noted the following bible quote from the book, "for they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind." - Hosea 8:7. This is very applicable for the spin and churn that goes on daily in Washington, DC that yields little to nothing.

Where Desk 88 is a partisan book, I did enjoy the anecdotes and tales told to Sherrod first hand from people who personally knew the subjects of the book, from Robert F. Kennedy to George McGovern to William Proxmire. In between each Senator’s story is “Thoughts form Desk 88” which is Brown’s political opinions that is loosely inspired by each Senator’s story.

If you are interested in political history, or are a progressive Democrat, Desk 88 may be a book for you. As I give away all books I read, this one is going to a friend who is more aligned with the overarching theme of the book than I am.

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

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