There's no better preparation for Halloween like good horror stories. A few years ago I shared some spooky stories of Web site content horrors. So forget getting trapped in a car and hearing scratching sounds on the roof, as these stories of misadventures with domain names will certainly curdle your blood! Names have been changed to protect the innocent... and frightened.

Gone Killin'

Preparations were going well for the launch of the new Web site. In our weekly meeting we agreed we could confidently schedule a launch date and all marked our calendars. When launching a new Web site with different hosting than the current site, changes are required to the domain name settings (DNS) of the domain name. In the case of this client, the domain name was managed by their current hosting vendor. Knowing this at the beginning of the project, I tried to convince the client to transfer the domain name to their own domain registrar account. Sadly, my advice was not heeded, and that decision almost came back to haunt them.

With the date in hand I contacted their current vendor, who was aware of the project, told him the date and asked for confirmation he could make the necessary DNS changes on the launch date. He acknowledged, though I left the call with a queasy feeling, one I felt after most conversations with their vendor. It was a combination of what he said and how he said it - always very casual and somewhat dismissive. "Yea, I can do that" with someone whom I've yet to have a track record with doesn't give me a lot of confidence, but it's the best I can work with. I decided to send multiple reminders leading to the launch, all of which he responded to in the affirmative.

On the launch day I contacted their vendor with the DNS change information – I sent an email and followed up with a call that went right into voicemail. The email had a read receipt request I never got. I gave it about an hour, and then called again, and got the same voicemail. In the interim, several times I checked if he just made the DNS changes and failed to reply to me, which wasn't the case either. I then called the client to tell them the situation. They were prepared for this as I had shared with them my gut feel on their soon-to-be ex-vendor. They then gave me his mobile number – he was a small operation - and I called, again with no answer. This was followed by a text message and another call, which was answered.

In short, he forgot he had to do this and since it was a nice day out he decided to go fishing. Where he called from had poor service plus he did not have a computer and as he was out on a lake. But he said he would be able to take care of it later in the day, the time depending on how well fishing was going. After I hung up I decided I still needed my phone and throwing it across the room was not prudent. I called the client back and told them my news, to which they reluctantly accepted as we both knew we were at his mercy.

Later in the evening he made the changes though he did not call to tell me he did it. In subsequent days, after the shiny new Web site was up and running, I later facilitated the client transferring their domain name away from this scary vendor.

Frankendomain

As I monitor domain names and Web sites for my clients, I was alerted a Web site went down, and upon further review I found the domain name had expired. Unfortunately this is a common occurrence, but one that can be quickly remedied by logging into your domain registrar account and renewing the domain name. That is, if you can log into it.

Right away I emailed and called the client and advised them of this, and offered my help. Later I heard back from them that they were not able to login, as their domain registrar account was challenging them with two-factor authentication and it was trying to text the code to the previous head of the firm who was let go under less than acrimonious circumstances. After that leader had left, nobody bothered to change the contact information on the domain registrar account, and thus their peril.

The quickest way to resolve this issue was to get a hold of the previous leader and ask them to send an authorization code when texted to them. The chairperson of the firm tried this to no response (maybe as they were the one who let go that person had something to do with it?). What to do next?

Following that failed Plan A, Plan B was to contact the domain registrar, explain the situation and submit payment over the phone so the Web site would come back to life, then try to retrieve the login account later. For some strange reason I was never able to understand, they wouldn't take payment over the phone - we weren't trying to take over the domain name, just reactivate it. They said the only real Plan B was to reclaim the account.

Reclaiming a domain name account is something I personally have been through too many times myself, as it is a straightforward but long, arduous process of submitting paperwork proving who you are - individually and as an organization. This typically requires items like a copy of your driver’s license, IRS EIN letter which lists your tax ID number, articles of incorporation, state or federal licensing information, et. al. With this proof, you should be able to get back the account within a few weeks. Yes, weeks - which meant the site would be down that long.

But there was a wrinkle, a huge, ginormous wrinkle - the firm did not have a copy of its IRS EIN letter. They knew their EIN number, but didn't have "proof" of it in their vital records file (well, I never asked them if they had such a file, as I did when I had my own business, but I digress). They then contacted the IRS in order to get one. Now here's where the ginormous part comes in - this was June of 2020, the country was in the midst of lockdowns, the IRS was working remotely and not issuing anything in paper form or digitally for that matter. In short, the firm was not able to prove who they were!

After learning this, I contacted the domain registrar myself, explaining the situation and asking if we can simply make a payment. They refused. What? I was pissed. I won't say what I said to them, but it wasn't civil. I slammed the phone down and vowed bloody revenge. But we still had a domain name to deal with, and it was getting close to the 30 days after it expired. Why was this important? At the 30-day mark the domain name would be listed for auction by the registrar as an abandoned domain name, and 15 days later it would go up for auction.

Thus Plan C was crafted to "win" the domain name auction and get the domain name back. Yes, it meant a month and a half of the Web site being down. Sure, we could have gotten a new domain name and started over, but then search history and SEO gained over the years would be lost. Plus I have never, EVER lost a domain name and was not about to now, lockdowns be damned! I explained all of this to the chairperson of the firm, who agreed with the approach and authorized the expense.

Daily I monitored the domain name until the auction took place, and let the games begin. I previously registered as a bidder with the registrar, and then entered the auction with a low entry bid. I forget the set duration of the auction but it was maybe 30 minutes to an hour. As the domain name was a longer, unique name, I did not expect many if any additional bids. Interestingly with about 10 minutes left in the auction a few additional bids came in, which I quickly outbid. Some registrars have been accused of having staff bid in active auctions to drive up prices, but I don’t know if this was the case here. In the end I "won" the auction with a high bid of around $30, but with all associated fees it went just over $100. Within a day I had the domain name in my personal account at that registrar and the Web site was once again alive.

After the 60-day transfer hold following the auction I transferred the domain name back to the client, but in a new registrar account with a different registrar with their new and accurate contact information. Where the registrar that refused to help gained from the auction process, they lost a customer for life.

Deconstructing Domain Name Horror Stories

The tales told here were indeed scary, but in both cases certainly avoidable. You should always have your domain names in an account you control. Setting a couple of calendar alerts and verifying the login and contact information on a domain registrar account semi-annually is the largest hurdle. Logging into the account and setting a domain name on auto-renew and verifying the credit or debit card will not expire before the auto-renew date will ensure the annual renewal happens. You can even extend the registration out a decade so you don't have to pay for a while. All of these steps will ensure you have no domain name skeletons in your closet.

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

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On a family road trip to Yellowstone National Park and Mount Rushmore a few years ago we included a stop in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The decision to make a layover there was due to several factors including its position along our journey, interest to see the eponymous falls of the city, as well as the fact that we once considered moving there.

The following is a tale of potential opportunity, deception and emotions as part of a career change. Names have been suppressed to protect the offenders.

When I was at a crossroads over the direction of my career among the channels I was exploring was postings on LinkedIn. One day such a listing caught my attention – a Director of Technology for an organization in the Greater Minneapolis / St. Paul, Minnesota area. Leading tech in an org in an area where individually both my wife and I had once considered living, plus an area where we had friends and not too far from our then home in Chicago, it seemed logical to consider. Before even checking with my wife, I applied. Granted I told her later that day and she was encouraging of my choice.

Within a few days I heard from the human resources / recruiter, and their message started as typical about receiving my application and interest. It then pivoted in a way I was not expecting. The recruiter said the position was actually in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. They continued that they had problems finding candidates for positions in the past, and thus had advertised it as being in the Twin Cities. Their message concluded by asking if I was still interested.

To put this revelation in context, it is approximately 237 miles from Minneapolis to Sioux Falls, with a driving distance of close to 4 hours. To say that Sioux Falls is in “greater” Minneapolis/St. Paul is like saying New York City is in “greater” Boston! Look on a map if you don’t believe me, but certainly nobody would ever say there’s such a tie between the Big Apple and the Hub.

This was the first deception, and though I say that today I didn’t necessarily say that then. Looking at the description of the role, and with a few other questions answered and in consultation on the home front, I decided to move forward with my candidacy.

This forward motion included further discovery about Sioux Falls and took a two-prong approach – by reaching out to the local chamber of commerce as well as our dentist who was from that area and still had strong ties with it. Again this is discovery – could we consider relocating there, and what were factors to consider. After reviewing materials received and a few conversations, we decided I should continue the interview process. To be honest my wife and I moved to Chicago with less research on the city than we did on Sioux Falls, but that being said Chicago is a much, much different city.

That next step was an interview with the hiring manager, who was the Director of Marketing and whom this role, the Director of Technology, would report to. The Marketing director was part of the parent organization of this new one, and was to move over into this org. Where some may have thought this in itself as a red flag, I didn’t. Over the years I have seen various configurations of organizational structure and have had clients who were in similar roles and I worked well with them. So in a smaller org, I did not see this, in itself, as a concern.

Then came the interview, which would be done over the phone – remember this was over a decade ago, and video interviews weren’t as common as today. I prepared as best as I could for an interview with a Marketing director, including questions that would determine to me their knowledge of technology as well as other factors such as goals, budget, staffing, etc. I also anticipated questions that may be posed to me and appropriate answers for the level of Technology director.

When the phone rang, I popped into an empty office in my co-working space and took it standing, wearing a headset and holding notes in one hand and using the other for note-taking and being expressive! The Marketing director seemed a little hurried in their banter at the beginning of the call, and then asked me to tell me about myself. As I talked about the breadth of my experience, they cut me off at one point and asked me about something I just mentioned, specifically about email marketing. I proceeded to describe how not only have I setup email campaign platforms for clients but also had developed a product offering around email marketing. Again I was interrupted and asked about details of what I did for clients, and talked about developing goals to tactical email templates as well as managing their email lists. Again, I was stopped midstream and they asked for more specifics about how I setup the lists, to which I talked about working with the customers as to whom opted-in to receive email, and once again I was stopped. They then asked if I could populate an email program with email addresses, to which I replied yes, but it seemed the word took a while to come out of my mouth as I started thinking hard about where the line of questioning was going. They then asked if I was able to take email addresses from different kinds of files and put into one database. At this point I was confused and asked why they were asking questions about this level of work for a position that had Director in its title.

The reply was not what I was expected, where the interviewer asked, “I need to know how low can you go.”

It was that one statement that made the ambiguity I had of the call crystal clear, and exposed the second deception – this role was not at a Director level, rather it was for a marketing or technology analyst at best. There is nothing wrong with those roles, but that’s not what I do or bring to the table, not to mention where I was at in my career. You may as well be asking a brain surgeon to put bandages on skinned knees! I then somewhat tuned out the ramblings of the interviewer and told them I am not the person they are looking for, and thanked them for their time. I was polite on the outside but infuriated on the inside. The HR recruiter had followed-up with me and I chose to take the same high road with them too – I didn’t have to and my inner Italian wanted me to let them have it. But I did not, and don’t look at that decision with any regret.

In the end, what was presented as a job I would have to move several states over for was a job I wouldn’t cross the street for!

Other than my wife I only followed up with our dentist and told him about the debacle to which he was sorry to hear. Where over the years I have had poor to bad experiences with recruiters and HR departments, this was and continues to be the worst of my multi-decade career. And I hope it is never superseded by anyone or anything else.

Deconstructing Deceptive Recruiting Practices

We all face challenges in life and work that sometime seem insurmountable. It is in these times that creative, fresh ideas coupled with openness and honesty are needed to achieve our goals. Using deception and justifying it in the name of the challenge is not only wrong, but can have unknown repercussions on you or your organization. Where I let this one pass me by, someone else could have taken this to social media and caused a problem for the upstart organization. Taking a 360 degree view on their decisions, and considering the candidates for this role, could have avoided all of this.

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

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Consistency. Some say it is a sign of complacency, where whatever you do is merely repetition and there’s no change or innovation. I like to think consistency is more of a mindset than whatever it is you are executing upon. To this, I have a now defunct Chinese restaurant to thank.

When I last lived in the Boston area I was in the city of Waltham. It was a city of many faces – its past was industrial manufacturing, among other things the birthplace of the microwave oven, and now the home to universities and high-tech firms along Route 128. That transformation is not complete, as the neighborhood I lived in then was still in transition. I was just off of Moody Street, known as the city’s “restaurant row” as it was zoned for locally owned businesses and the home of some great non-chain restaurants.

Among those restaurants was Hong Kong, a take-out Chinese restaurants just around the corner from home off Moody Street. For myself and my newlywed wife, two working professionals, we frequented ordered from there. As one would expect from a local establishment, we got to know the manager and she always recognized us when we phoned in our ordered and picked it up. Sometimes an order was placed for just one of us, often times both, and we’d also order when entertaining friends. No matter the size of the order, no matter the time, the friendly voice of the manager told us the order would be ready in 10 minutes. Always 10, consistently.

For my wife and I, it was almost comical that any order would take the same amount of time no matter the quantity of food. We were only 10 minutes from a fresh, hot and delicious meal.

New Year, Same Consistency

Soon after moving to the Boston area many years before I learned of the “tradition” of ordering Chinese takeout for New Year’s Eve. The concept was then and likely still is now so popular that you had to place your order days in advance of December 31 to ensure you could get it that night. One New Year’s Eve my wife and I decided to stay in and watch Dick Clark and the ball drop in Times Square, and followed tradition and placed an order days in advance at Hong Kong.

When I went to Hong Kong to pick up our order at the appointed time, I was greeted with the usual warm welcome I was accustomed to from the owner. But the happy expression on her face quickly turned to concern as she told me that she did not have an order ready for me, though she remembers taking the order from me earlier in the week.

Grabbing a piece of paper, she retook my order and proceeded to the kitchen. What followed was a very spirited conversation in Chinese. I didn’t know if she and the cooks were yelling or what, but it was something reminiscent of my Italian heritage, just in another language. After a few minutes she came back to the front counter, smiling, and told me my order would be ready... in 10 minutes! On the busiest night of the year, and at the last minute no less. I took a walk around the block, came back for my order, and went home and told my wife the story as we dove into our delicious dinner.

Deconstructing Consistency

We often see consistency on the surface, however there is likely more as you dig deeper into it. Understanding your product or service, knowing yourself and a commitment to excellence are all part of what delivers consistency. Where the final output may be similar each time, under the hood there is a lot at play that is likely changing and adapting to ensure a consistent end result. Although the Hong Kong restaurant on Moody Street in Waltham, Massachusetts is long gone, its spirit lives on in my own commitment to delivering consistency, and adapting to ensure of it.

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

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With no apologies to The Righteous Brothers, I may have lost that learning feelin’, I want to bring it back but I am conflicted as to how I want to bring it back.

Throughout the lockdowns, people around the world were doing new and different things, and one of them was online learning. Some of it was forced, namely when schools closed their doors and moved to virtual. Then there were people like myself, who purposely sought out online learning. Where this was a global movement of sorts, it didn’t start out that way for me, as I would like to share before I go on.

At First, Forced Into It

My first online course was not by choice. I was signed up to take Certified ScrumMaster training in mid-April, 2020 in person. The course was a 2-day program offered at a hotel outside of Milwaukee, and I was planning to stay the night there to get the most out of it.

Without needing to completely restate that painful time, I was later informed the class was going to be offered online instead. Really? How? You couldn’t take any Scrum classes online up to that point, as they were highly engaging with whiteboards and Post-it notes all over the walls. To compound things the company that offered the course wouldn’t allow me to postpone it and said I (ok, my employer) would lose the registration fee if I didn’t show up virtually. As I wrote about shortly after I took the course and passed the exam to be a Certified ScrumMaster I ended up having a great instructor, great classmates and it turned out to be a great overall experience.

So The Graduations Hang On The Wall

After that first class, it felt like everywhere I turned there were online courses being offered – both at work and from learning platforms for free or reduced prices. Some of these platforms offered free weekends, who couldn’t pass that up? As it was alluring I took many courses online, certainly many more than I had in the past.

At the conclusion of most classes, you could download a certificate of completion in PDF format. Where I knew many people who simply ignored them, I collected them like Happy Gilmore did large checks and printed them out, hanging them inside the cabinet doors of my work desk. As the doors only held 6 certs, I would replace older ones with newer ones, keeping the “major” ones up all the time and replacing them all at the end of the year. The picture above is of the certs I just took down that I earned in 2021.

Is The Feelin’ As Intense Now?

Now we are a month into 2022 as I write this, entering year 3 of restrictions that vary depending on where you are in the world. As I worked from home years before it was, um, trendy, my situation is different, coupled with where I live in Northeast Wisconsin. In short, I am out more than shut-in, have more options and with that normalcy I am not seeking out other things to keep me occupied. Towards the end of 2021 I didn’t end up taking many online courses.

When I took down the above-pictured certs, I started thinking more about learning in general, part of which was the catalyst for me writing what you are reading right now. To try to get some of that learning feelin’ back, I recently took a couple of courses offered on LinkedIn Learning. One was on having a more positive workweek, the other on NFTs. As you may guess, I have the certificates from these hanging on the inside of my desk cabinet doors.

Planning To Bring Back The Feelin’

Even with the few nuggets I learned from those 2 most recent courses I tool, they were not really fulfilling to me. Why? I pondered this and realized there was nothing really driving me to take them. I scrolled through the list of courses on LinkedIn Learning and said, hey, this may be interesting. Early on, motivations like maintaining a shrunken amygdala drove me to take courses. Now I need more than them being a simple prop to occupy my time.

So I am working on a plan. The elements of the plan will include what I “need” to learn and what I “want” to learn.

For what I need, it will include video presentations and books on Scrum, as I need to complete education hours in order to maintain my certification. There is also the software and services I will be using in my work to either get ahead on or for just-in-time training.

For what I want, a few are obvious, but I need to put more time into what else I will take. I want to learn more about livestreaming in general, and specifically around the software and hardware needed to take the basics I know to the next level. I also want to learn more about soccer. As a relatively astute swim Dad, I am lacking in soccer, a sport one of my kiddos has switched to and is doing amazingly well at. However I don’t always see where there’s an offsides on the field, and don’t know a lot of the rules and strategy on the sport. Beyond these 2, I am not sure if I want to take on a new hobby or interest, and am open to suggestions from anyone out there in the peanut gallery.

Deconstructing That Learning Feelin’

We should always be learning ... something, whether in formal courses or from real-life experiences. For the former, there’s an investment required, and with any investment it must be done wisely. Even with different motivations and time schedules, I am excited on bringing back that learning feelin’ and want to make sure I approach it with a purpose-driven plan I have the ability to complete. Do you agree?

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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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