This week I watched a lot of video, and you can to with the links below among the few things I actually read.

Networking Back Where I Left Off – The last in-person networking events I went to were in mid-March of 2020. There 2 in one day and the first of them was the grand re-opening of UrbanHub, a co-working space in nearby Green Bay. This week they announce their grand re-re-opening (?) in a few weeks with this throwback video and you can sign-up here for this free event in this cool space.

Product Owner Prep – Next week I am excited to take a course to prepare me to be a Certified Scrum Product Owner. What’s that you say? It’s a vital role as part of using the Scrum framework for getting things done. Last year I took a course to be a Certified ScrumMaster and was intrigued by the Product Owner role, as it sets what will be done. The course I am taking is remote, and will be taught by Scrum veteran Mike Cohn of Mountain Goat Software. For the course this week I watched prep videos which are not only informative but of high quality. I can’t link to them outside of the course Web site, but expect to hear more from me on what I learn this coming week.

Improved Accessibility Checker – This week Siteimprove released an updated Web site Accessibility Checker Chrome browser plug in. This can be used by anyone to check the Accessibility of a Web site, and ideally you would use it on your own. For many, it’s like drinking from the proverbial fire hose with the amount of detail given. For those of us who work in the Web, it’s also a reminder of what we really need to do on-going to achieve Web sites as Accessible as possible.

May The Fourth Be Cute – This past Tuesday was May the Fourth, also known as Star Wars Day. There was no shortage of memes and jokes about it, and by far my favorite is this video mashup of light sabers and oral health.

Elevated Throwing – Defenestrate is a fancy word for throwing something out the window, which was new to me.

Groundbreaking Throwing – I discovered Pitch, a 2016 1-season TV series about the fictional story of the first female pro baseball player. It says the show was produced with “cooperation” from Major League Baseball, however it’s more like it is a co-star. I liked the story line a lot, and was sad to see – now 5 years later – that it didn’t continue beyond 10 episodes.

Ciao Calibri – Microsoft is looking to replace Calibri, the default font used by its Office software suite, with a new one. This story features the designer of the font, which rumor has it was made to use less ink. There’s a link in the story that shows the possible replacement fonts, to give you a glance into what you could be looking at a lot in the future.

Get Right on the Mac – I forget that the default settings in MacOS, the operating for Apple computers, doesn’t recognize right-clicking with a trackpad, and you need to make a setting change to do so.

Crazy Drafting Memories – This past weekend was the NFL Draft, where college football players are selected by pro teams. For me, it’s the start of the football season as I don’t really follow college ball, and I start familiarizing myself with who was signed. As I got alerts to the signings and saw a picture of the first player drafted by my New England Patriots, Alabama quarterback Mac Jones, holding a #1 jersey, I had a flashback to someone else with a similar jersey about 15 years earlier, none other than Ozzy Osbourne as you can see in this video.

Why was he there? Since the Kraft family bought the team in the early 1990’s, for every home game the Pats would come on to the field to Ozzy’s song Crazy Train. Years later when Ozzy’s wife Sharon was at Boston’s Dana Farber Cancer Institute, the team reached out to him and told him of the tradition, to which he said he didn’t believe them. After the team created a video montage showing it, he was thrilled, and they later invited him to perform the song live for the season kickoff game in 2005. I was at that game and it was insane – the top of a helmet opened like a clam shell and there was Ozzy, all smiles and clearly having fun. I took a video of this but it’s so bad as I was as excited as he was.

Hopefully Not a New Trend – Now that it’s warmer for my kiddos to go to local playgrounds, I am there too. Walking around one of them I found what is pictured above, an upside down picnic table. Really? Why? How long was it there? Was I the first to see it? After snapping this photo I flipped it over to its more optimal position. I hope not to see more of these going forward.

Happy Mother’s Day to all who are Moms, Grandmoms, Godmoms, Auntmoms, Cousinmoms and any other similar roles!

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

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Basking in the glow of being complemented with “... thank you for your warm approach you gave on the chat, it was indeed a great pleasure assisting you today...” from the Amazon customer support live chat person I interacted with this week (guessing most don’t go so well), I share with you what else the week that was for me.

From Social Certifiable to Certified – Where many of you reading this would likely concur I am certifiable, I crossed the chasm to certified... in social media that is. I completed the HubSpot Social Media Marketing certification course and became Social Media Certified. The course itself was very well done and engaging. Even though my own personal use of social media has decreased significantly, it’s not that I don’t believe in it at all. This is a great course for anyone who is using social now for their own business, as it provides great structure and tactics.

Social Flashback – Back in the day when I was much more involved in social media, I was all over the original post my friend James Whatley re-shared this week about the human element in social media. It was also nice to re-read my comments on it too.

Why My Snow Blower is Gassed and Ready – Last week we got more snow here in Dairyland, but it was unlike what I had ever seen before. It resembled those small styrofoam balls that stick to whatever Ikea furniture you are trying to assemble. In talking with a friend, there’s a name for this kind of snow – graupel.

Get a Bonus to Pay for Snow Blower Gas – Where I got no “bonus” when I moved to where I live now, there are cities across the US who will pay you to move there. Why? Some places need more residents, so they are paying people who are remote workers to live there, and will pay more if you get a job locally. The Web site Make My Move lists such locales. For example, you can get upwards to US$15,000 to move to Vermont. That money will come in handy buying gas to clear the snow as well as all the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream you can eat at the factory there.

Not Breezing Through the Windy City – Only 11 Intersections in Chicago Have Accessible Pedestrian Signals but I know many more have red light traffic violation cameras.

Glad This Is Here – I am a fan of Adam J. Kurtz’s work. 1 Page At A Time is a great creative journal with amazing prompts. Things Are What You Make Of Them is a great compilation of motivational stories and quotes. So when I heard his latest work, You Are Here (For Now): A Guide to Finding Your Way, is available for pre-order, I jumped on it. His simple yet elegant art coupled with quirky yet thought-provoking narratives are a nice departure from the everyday rat race.

My First Clubhouse – This past week my friend Eric Patel invited me to co-host a “chat” on Resuscitating Underperforming Friendships on the relatively new audio-only social media platform Clubhouse. If you’re not familiar with it, anyone can do a “chat” or talk (or whatever they call it) and people can listen and be brought up to the stage to participate. Not sure how many people were listening, but at a minimum it was good practice at public presentation. This was also the first real time I used the app, and the jury’s still out as to how this will mix in with the few podcasts in my queue I don’t have time to listen to.

Because It Needs to be Repeated – Many have heard actor/producer/media mogul Tyler Perry’s award acceptance speech from last weekend’s Oscars awards. If you haven’t, or even have, it’s worth watching again and every once in a while.

A Database That Hopefully Won’t Be Needed Much Longer – I came across the Canceled People database where people who have been canceled in business, politics and popular culture are stored and can be queried. It’s sad something like this even exists, let alone the data that is populating it.

You Get a QR Code, and You Get a QR Code – You’ve seen the square bar codes called QR codes just about everywhere these days. They have been around for a long time, and about a decade ago there was a big push to use them, but they never took off. Why? Because Steve Jobs wouldn’t build-in a QR code reader on the iPhone. As there is one there now, you see them much more often. If you have ever had the inkling to create one, check out QRCode Monkey where you can create one or more for free. They have other paid options for tracking snaps, etc., but for free you can do a lot.

A QR code fun fact is that the code doesn’t always have to go to a Web site. You can even embed a message in one!

A Class Action Out, A Check In – In the same week I heard about this anti-trust class-action lawsuit against BlueCross BlueShield I got a check in the mail for another class-action lawsuit over text messages sent without the recipient’s opt-in. It comes as no surprise I spent the US$2.50 all at once.

This is My Kind of Camping!

Still Sticking – As my new co-working space is in a downtown area, I have been getting out at lunch for walks and noticing things I hadn’t before. One such is this advertisement pictured above for Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum painted on the side of a bar. Clearly it’s been there for a while, and it was nice to capture this sign from a time where such painting was prevalent.

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

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On this day in 1939, Ted Williams hit his very first home run. Or as I and my fellow Red Sox fans call it, one down, 520 to go. Not bad for a 2-decade career that was interrupted by war and no pliability studios near Fenway Park as they are today. More closer to the twenty-first century were a few this that hit it over the Green Monster for me.

Started Locally, Acting Globally – This past Thursday was Earth Day, an annual recognition of the planet and environment that, unbeknownst to me, started here in Wisconsin. One of the original organizers, William Cherkasky, is actually from the city I now live in.

Not Worth the Servers It Runs On – Starbucks periodically has “games” – Web sites where you can play each time you make a purchase. Without fail, each of them tends to be a less than stellar experience. Their latest one, Starbucks Earth Month Game, sadly took that track record to an extreme. Of course playing is not required, and I have endured one of these for the last time.

FeedBetter? – FeedBurner started as a start-up in Chicago in 2004 where you could run your blog’s RSS feed thru their service and get analytics and add advertising to it, among other features. After Google bought it three years later, slowly many of those features were discontinued and its user interface remained frozen in Web 2.0 time. Out of the blye this past week Google announced it was going to move FeedBurner to a “more stable, modern infrastructure” (whatever that means) and kill off its email subscription feature.

The very blog you are reading still uses FeedBurner for RSS feeds, after moving email subscriptions to Mailchimp several years ago. Why Google isn’t killing FeedBurner altogether is somewhat of a surprise, as it killed off Google Reader, an RSS feed aggregator, over a decade ago. I think it’s time to finally move the feed out from under FeedBurner.

Another Look on Voting – U.S. Senate bill S1, also known as the For The People Act, has been presented to create federal reforms to voting. Among them is a mandate for paper ballots. Where many will not have a concern or worry about this, it could present an Accessibility barrier to those with disabilities. In defense of this, the National Coalition for Accessible Voting has presented this statement on S1.

What could help those with disabilities? Purely digital voting. Many do not know that some US States are already voting electronically. Where it may take some time to adjust the paradigms of the masses to voting online, a paper ballot mandate won’t help with the research and testing needed to make digital voting more of a widespread reality.

Yes Kidding – I recently discovered tasty goat’s milk cheeses made by a local dairy LaClare Creamery. A trip to their facility last week was a treat, complete with a café to taste their great cheeses, baby goats you can pet and even full-sized goats you can pet when they are not climbing the above-pictured, several-storied wooden silo. Shopping local also helps the earth, right?

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

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I tried not to preoccupy myself with the new user interface for Amazon Fire TV. Ok, why the main navigation is down the middle of the screen is odd. I did figure out how to change the default apps with enough clicks of the remote. And the issue with the back button not working seemed to go away when I restarted the Fire TV device. Perhaps I did obsess a little on it?

Trell–oh! – I have been using the Web-based productivity tool Trello for some time now, but I always felt there was more to learn. After taking the course Trello Essential Training on LinkedIn Learning I now understand it writ large. This 2+ hour course is lively and covers many features and how to use power-ups. My biggest takeaways were on checklists and how to copy them, assignments, due dates and covers.

Clarity on Privacy – I also took a course offered by Siteimprove Academy on the European Union privacy law GDPR. This course is only available within a customer account, and was a good high-level overview of GDPR and provided me with the areas I need to dig deeper to understand and verify plans are in place to comply.

And if you ever saw it... – An interesting idea I ran across is Nosy which is a filtered covering for your nose and your nose only. Seeing is believing for me and likely for you. I didn’t dig deep enough though to see if it would fit over a nose as grand as my own.

Proclamations to Nobody – I read earlier this week that April 5 was Golden Rule Day here in the childhood home city of Harry Houdini. This of course was well after the day. Had I not read this on the All Things Appleton site I mentioned a few weeks ago, I wouldn’t have seen it elsewhere. Perhaps it was posted on social media and no other place? Am I overanalyzing this like the Fire TV UI?

The Frozen One – Congrats to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (better known as UMass) for winning the NCAA Mens Hockey Championship. I remember when UMass started a hockey team and joined the Hockey East conference where my team, the Boston University Terriers, dominated for so long. As someone who often, um, socialized on the state university campus when I was matriculating elsewhere, Go Minutemen!

Can You See My Email Now? – I often get text messages from friends saying email from me goes into their spam or marketing folders in their email program. I then tell them to setup a whitelisting rule so that doesn’t happen. They then give me a strange look. I found this week a list of how to whitelist email addresses on popular email platforms from Progress Software.

Vote For New Paradigms – This week Apple CEO Tim Cook said on a podcast that he would like to be able to vote from his iPhone. Shortly thereafter Ohio’s Secretary of State expressed his disagreement.

I’m on the side of Cook on this one, and have been for a while. Digital voting is already being done in some US states and around the world. The comparison to billions of dollars of transactions every day is a valid one. Will someone try to hack a purely digital system? Of course. Computer security is a constantly moving effort – now and in the future. The benefits of digital voting go purely beyond convenience, as many who lives in lower-income areas use mobile devices as their computer as well. It also addresses issues of Accessibility, and as I have said on this little blog before, Accessibility efforts help everyone. Digital voting must be invested in for it to become a valid reality. And with that, I will step off of my soapbox.

Just Didn’t Do It – My friend Nick Gracilla wrote an inspiring piece on the word “just” being a four-letter word to him. There are many words and phrases which, you know, like that can easily be replaced or edited out of a sentence altogether, and just is one for him.

Out of Time – This week I participated in some of VirCon, the virtual conference offered by HighRoad Solutions. The conference had a Back to the Future theme, and some good topics. That being said, as it was in the middle of the workday, I registered but only caught live a few sessions. My plan was all along to watch the recordings after the fact, and being live in some was a bonus.

Time On My Side – Shortly talking with Kim at HighRoad Solutions about VirCon I pulled up along-side the above-pictured original DeLorean modified to look like the very car Doc Brown enhanced. I see this car around a lot, and the timing of it all was intriguing.

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

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Without further blather...

A work (State) view with brews – I just joined Stateview Commons, a co-working space located on the main street in my fair city. It’s a great, stylish and practical space and has already helped my productivity. Although there’s always the adverse happening as it has a view to not one but two great brewpubs across the street.

Studying in former style – Former mall store spaces, abandoned due to both the shift in retail shopping as well as poor business choices, are being reimagined in varying ways. One example is a recently-relocated high school in Burlington, Vermont. As many of the store fixtures are still in place, perhaps it should be called a haute school?

Maybe this is why the store closed? – Vermont doesn’t have any billionaires living within its borders and it is not the only US state without a resident with all those commas in their net worth.

Reasons to go OTG – For as much as computers have improved our lives, it seems at every turn there’s some application of them that at least I wish wasn’t there. Google has started testing its new ad “targeting” technology in its Chrome browser whether you know it or not. There’s some solace from Apple as they are rolling out a new feature in iOS that will allow you to see what apps are tracking about you. There’s no shortage of reasons to go off the grid, even if for a few minutes.

Swimming with more purpose than usual – One of my kiddos former swim teammates is taking his swim game to a higher level. This summer he will swim 10 miles across the width of Lake Winnebago in Wisconsin, and during his training he is aiming to raise $50,000 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. You can support his worthy effort here as my family has. Go Ian!

A less desirable swim thru Accessibility law – If you have a Web site you should have some basic familiarity on Web Accessibility. If you don’t, this presentation I did a year ago on Web Accessibility is a good start. Even if you do, the $100,000 question is what laws apply to it, if any do. This week a ruling came down that the Americans with Disability Act did not apply in one case. To add to this, a bill is floating around Washington, DC to attempt to tie the Act to Web site. In the meantime, work with whomever manages your Web site to ensure you have the basics covered.

Minority Report – This week I watched a recording of Advancing Leadership Agility offered by the Scrum Alliance. Even if you’re not interested in the topic, fast-forward to around the 25 minute mark on a survey on employee engagement. Spoiler alert: only 35% of surveyed employees said they are engaged in the workplace!

Solid state Spring cleaning – For Mac owners, here’s how you can search and identify if you can make more space on your hard drive by deleting old log files. Sadly this didn’t yield me much more room, hopefully you’ll have better results.

Gables soon gone – I have often admired the craft that went into the design of the gables on this house. I see it often as it’s across from the local facility where my kiddos swim. Sadly its days are numbered, as the house, long empty and slated to be demolished, will finally be torn down in the coming weeks. In its place will be a parking lot for said local facility. Where such moves are always in the name of progress, hopefully what comes of its demise will sprout something else great.

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

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