Happy Fall! Or at least the first weekend of it.

Fall, also known as Autumn, is my favorite season. Why? Here’s my top 10 reasons.

10. Summer is wicked overrated. There is too much pressure to have your fun and vacation in the summer, when there is just as much to and plenty of time to do it in the fall.

9. Everything is cheaper in the fall, from hotel rooms to gas, as demand is higher in the summer due to the reason above. For what it would cost you to do what you do in the summer, you can do more – and more of it – for less in the fall.

8. It’s a lot cooler in the fall than in the summer. Walking from your front door to the car won’t cause you to sweat profusely. It’s a great season to get outside and have a nice cool breeze going for you.

7. Fall colors are amazing. Growing up in New England, for me a short drive to the shopping mall gave me an amazing view of some of the best foliage in the world. Not to forget the fall colors you wear are equally striking.

6. Crunching leaves make for a great sound.

5. Fall is all about heartier foods. The meats and vegetables, and the soups and stews and meals they make, warm on the inside and are a great compliment to the weather. Fall even has its own fruit, the pumpkin (yes, it’s a fruit, not a vegetable).

4. Halloween comes at almost the halfway point of the fall, and is a great celebration of fun and mischief for people of all ages. Plus the annual visit to the pumpkin farm prepares you for the night of bewitching.

3. Fall is when you go back to school. Where some kids like that and others don’t, most parents agree and like it.

2. When you change your clocks at the end of Daylight Savings Time in the fall, you get back that hour you lost in the spring.

1. It’s football season – the American kind! From playgrounds to the pros and everywhere in between, it’s the time to cheer for your gridiron champions, not to mention the tailgating parties that go along with it.

It was somewhat tough to choose what order to put some of these in, as they all contribute greatly to my favorite time of the year.

What do you think? Do you agree or disagree on my favorite season? Or do you have other reasons to love fall? Please share your thoughts in the comments to this post,

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

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Change can often be a very good thing. But when that change comes with moving – moving yourself and all of your stuff can be a burden and sometimes unbearable. The idea of packing up all your things, moving them to a new place then unpacking them, figuring out what you want to keep, what you want to get rid of and then buying new things to supplement them that work better in the new place… it is something that once it is all over it is fulfilling but during the process itself it can be arduous.

As I have hinted here in some of my recent posts at The Hot Iron, my family recently moved. We are not too far from where we lived before, but still a significant distance and significant effort involved in the process. In the past, I used to say that traumatic experience of moving comes only second to the death of a family member. As extreme of thought that that is, it was something I always believed in. But with this last move my opinion has changed.

As I write this we have completed our move, but there are still a TON – and I mean a TON – of boxes to unpack and things to put away or get rid of. As much as I'm not looking forward to that whole process, I know that going through it all is going to be something that I'm going to enjoy because it will allow me to take a fresh look at things I haven't looked at in awful long time. You see, the last time that I move over 10 years ago so I've been in the same place for 10 years accumulating stuff along with the stuff that never unpacked from our last move. That is something that I'm hoping to change with this move where as we go through things, box by box, analyzing and determining what is the best course of action to do for these things. So far I've gotten rid of a lot of things and consolidated a lot of things and I'm enjoying actually the process of going through everything and trying to simplify my life.

This is a type a change I feel is good for me now and is something I am looking forward to. It will also be a big part of my goal to simplify my life this year. Now let's see how long it takes to unpack and get down to the very last box.

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

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Available September 1, 2014 is a unique loft-style, 1 bedroom and a den condo for rent in the Chicago Loop with a storage unit on the same floor. This rental features high ceilings, modern kitchen, bath, Elfa shelving system in both of the walk-in bedroom and front closets, washer/dryer in unit, and a 6x9 storage unit perfect for storing bikes.

This rental condo is located at the corner of Wabash & Madison, at "L" stop for Brown, Orange, Green and Pink lines and main stop for CTA buses, and is around the corner from Millennium Park and short walk to Lake, Museums, shopping, dining and services. Heat, cooking gas and basic TV are included, and the tenant plays electric. Discounted parking for extra available at Grant Park North garage under Millennium Park.

For more information and photos, visit the Web site for this Chicago Loop loft condo at FiveNorthWabash.com. To schedule a showing, contact Ryan Newberry L'Heureux.

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

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As the last 2 weeks have been a whirlwind for me, it’s only fitting I post them together, on a Friday no less and on time for the second week. Yes, on time!

• This flyer that came in my mailbox piqued my interest. Not only is it a divorce auction – which means there is such a dispute among assets that they have to be sold this way – but it is an urgent one as well. Why urgent?
• This past week I was formally elected to the board of directors of Barrel of Monkeys, a Chicago non-profit organization that teaches inner-city kids creative writing skills, then takes what they write and creates sketch comedy which is not only performed for the kids themselves but in a weekly show called, That’s Weird Grandma. It is an amazing organization and I am thrilled to be involved. How I got involved with them was through a LinkedIn search for local people who were interested in being on a board, which was only heightened by my good friend Linsey being one of the performing company members. You will be hearing more about BOM in future installments I promise you!
• My word for 2 weeks ago was lodgment. I was asked if this word was appropriate in describing when a mobile app was available in the app store. I admit I guessed the etymology of it, but still looked it up. I recommended simply saying it was available. Apparently lodgment is the preferred term in Australia.
• My word for this week was steganography. It is the concealment of a message within something else, or hiding something in plain sight. There are a lot of ways to do it, and it is a fascinating concept, and one which many of us – including myself – may have done at some point without even realizing it.
• Now that I am no longer building eCommerce sites with the technology, Miva Merchant is holding their next MivaCon conference in Chicago in September. As I would once again choose Miva Merchant if I were to build an eCommerce site, and it’s like fifty dollars to attend, I may still go. It would be an opportunity to meet some of the people I have talked with over the years, and I am sure I could score some cool schwag in the process.
• As I got a new work PC I had to once again lookup how to send a Word document as an email message body within Word.
• I found out a friend is a Dad by a random comment he mentioned on his podcast. Granted we aren’t all that close, but it was nice to hear. Got a picture of the little bundle of joy, and am overdue in replying to him. Why didn’t I hear? As much as my friend is on social media, he didn’t want to do that to his kid without their permission… something I do as well.
• The movie The Wizard of Oz premiered 75 years ago. It seems like only yesterday that the Munchkins were causing me nightmares as a child after watching it on a black and white TV no less.
• Tried the new Sofritas vegetarian option at Chipotle this week in a burrito, and I will definitely get it the next time.
• This week’s video is far from one I have learned in the past few weeks. It is a Sesame Street video about brushing your teeth featuring Elmo and several celebrities. Somehow we found this, and the song is long enough for them to fully brush their teeth as recommended by dentists. Sometimes it takes the start of the video to get the kids into the bathroom and loading up their brushes. Though not new to me, perhaps it is something you can learn for this week as well.

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

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Writing a catchy opening to the presentation of what really resonated with me over the last week isn’t always as rewarding as the things I learn, so this time I won’t dwell on it.

• It’s one thing to accuse Hallmark or other greeting card makers of creating holidays to sell more cards, but I never thought retailers would go to the depths of segmenting seasons. Granted the cooler temperatures here in the Windy City may cause some to think about what to wear in a couple of months, but I am not one of them.
• Feedback is a dish best served hot and fresh, right out of the over, and not several months later, as it sits on the counter, covered with something but allowed to rot and not satisfy anybody.
• A while back ago I registered the domain name SayMyNameRight.com, with the idea of having a Web site where people could post videos of themselves saying their name. If I recall correctly, it was after having lunch with my good friend Tom Ordonez that the idea came to mind. If you click the link it’s clear I didn’t do anything with the domain name other than point it right back to this very blog. Yet for some reason over the past several weeks it has been getting a noticeable amount of traffic. Maybe now is the time to act?
• I was reminded not everybody knows what a “hashtag” is.
• Where the bidding wars over the potential mergers of “dollar” stores is going on, one thing piqued my attention, that the “activist investor” Carl Ichan was involved. Personally, I don’t get the guy. Granted, I am no student of finance or investment wiz, but is someone who buys a ton of stock in a company and tries to get them to merge really an activist, as in the same term that can be prefaced with the phrase “civil rights?”
• Keeper Security, the Chicago-based app for secure password storage, just announced file storage. It is being pitched as a way to store images of a driver’s license or passport in case it is lost or stolen, or any other important personal files. As a current user I can get 5 free file uploads and then pay an annual fee from $10 a year and up, depending on the space used. I need to think about this, and where to best spend money on “cloud” services, or on my own server.
• In my quest to try new restaurants I finally went to Protein Bar, a Chicago-based chain of healthy quick-serve food. And I have to say, upon my first visit I have become a fan. I was impressed with the store, the menu selections and most importantly the taste. The price is comparable to even Subway and other restaurants in the city. They also have locations in the Washington DC area and in Colorado.
• For as many times as I have referred family, friends and complete strangers to get from point A to B with my friend Rashid, Chicago’s premier cabbie and expert on customer service, who goes by the trademarked name of ChicaGoCabbie™, for reasons that I don’t quite know for sure, I have never ridden in his cab. Granted, because of his work with cab-hailing service Hailo I am a loyal customer. Perhaps it is timing, I am not quite sure. But he has delivered both pizza and cupcakes to me in his chariot!
• This past week Boston Red Sox pitcher Jon Lester was traded to the Oakland A’s. For several weeks leading up to it, my sports mobile app was buzzing non-stop with alerts on rumors and speculation around the trade. It got so bad I almost turned off the alerts altogether. Unfortunately that is the business of sports today. When I was a kid, I had no idea what any of the players on the Red Sox made, nor did I care.
• One of my favorite blogs is Brand New which features logo, design and branding, especially changes to brands. They recently featured a YouTube video interview of the creator of the Hartford Whalers logo. For those not familiar, the New England Whalers hockey team moved from Boston to the capital city of Connecticut in the 1970’s, then moved to North Carolina in the late 1990’s and became the Carolina Hurricanes. They played not too far from where I grew up, so I was familiar with the team and got to go to many games. Though the team is long gone, the defunct team’s logo is almost a cultural icon and is being worn by trendy celebrities. The interview on Hartford’s Channel 3 is embedded below or follow the link above to watch it. Note the mention about who really owns the logo, which is something that I wouldn’t be surprised would end up in court someday.

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

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