The phrase Spring Break conjures up images of partying in Florida that I never did in college. So when my kiddos had Spring Break this week, where that strangely came to mind, in reality it was a road trip to Ohio and a short but nice staycation. I even took a few days off of work, and actually unplugged from the office for most of it. Seriously.

No fooling – Thursday was the first day of April, often called April Fool’s Day. A couple of clever things I found were Synology’s FreshStation and the Nielsen Norman Group’s article on how much users love constant change. I opted to not write on this day, especially as something I wrote a decade ago on Google removing the search box from their home page not only fell flat but turned into a self-fulfilling prophesy with how mobile and home speaker devices listen to you constantly these days.

Capitalist tradition – Many times I have referred to the tasty meat products produced by Jacobs Meat Market, a local legend here in Northeast Wisconsin. This article tells well the story of the three-generations business tradition Jacobs is.

I gotta update what? – If you are a non-technical Web site owner and have gotten emails about updating Google Analytics code and don’t know what to do about it, you are not alone. Perhaps you may not even know what Google Analytics is, but that’s a topic for another time. The search behemoth has made changes to this free service of measuring traffic to your Web site. For those with Squarespace Web sites this article on how to integrate the Google Analytics changes is helpful as I needed it myself for some I help support.

Physics 101 – Not all doll heads turn. If you happen to force it to turn, good luck reattaching it.

You get a train station, and you... – Amtrak this week came out with a map of “aspirations” for how to expand personal train riding across the US. These are merely proposed ideas, and have no budget or approvals from governmental bodies or the conglomerates who own the train tracks. Where it’s nice to dream, until Amtrak can operate without heavy government subsidies per ticket, these new lines on the map may remain just in someone’s head.

All Things In Depth – A relatively new Web site in my area All Things Appleton has become a go-to for me for depth in news that is sadly missing from the newspapers of record. Just about every major newspaper in Wisconsin is owned by Gannett and is under the umbrage of USA Today Wisconsin. This goes beyond branding, and has consolidated printing facilities and reporters, leaving what I consider a poor overall product. Yet I still subscribe, as it gives me the headlines that I need to look into further elsewhere, like on independent Web sites like All Things Appleton.

Banked Billions – I finished binge-watching Billions. It’s fifth season was cut short due to COVID-19, and left me wanting more. In short, I liked Axe over Chuck, and Wendy over both. I have no idea if this is truly what it is like to be a billionaire hedge fund manager, but the optics are enticing.

How Are We Meeting? – Last week I took a class at work on effective meetings taught by Anthony Mersino of Vitality Chicago. The greatest thing I learned from him was to have meeting retrospectives. Often we have regular meetings and after a while they are so routine that we’re not sure if they even effective. By hosting an occasional retrospective, we may find ways to make the meeting more effective, efficient or perhaps decide to not have it at all. I plan to take this to task with regular meetings I facilitate and participate in.

At the corner of Style and Price in Chicago – A few weeks ago Irish discount clothing retailer Primark opened a store in Chicago at the corner of State and Washington Streets in the Loop. This space sat empty for years and was previously an Old Navy and Gap store. The kiddos give it high marks, and will certainly be a stop on our next visit back to the Windy City.

Partially righting a wrong in Chicago – Overdue news came this week as the Chicago Park District announced it was replacing a slide at Maggie Daley Park that has caused many injuries to people who went on it. Those injured include my kiddos, who both got scrapes and were bleeding after their first rides on the slide, prompting us never to return.

The playground was part of the new park which replaced the former Daley Bicentennial Plaza, a lovely park that needed to be ripped up to repair the parking garage below it. I lamented and paid homage to what I called the “locals park” when it closed. I felt the replacement park was too much of a showplace and not functional. A parent did not have complete line of sight over the entire park, and with little kids that can easily get lost (and did) it was problematic. Plus the bathrooms were too far away, requiring the placement of porta-potties by the playground. Add the slide to the mix, and it was a one-and-done visit for many.

Sanitary for your protection – For our staycation we went to a local hotel under the Hilton umbrella. I can count on one hand how many hotel night stays I have had in the last year, but I digress. When we arrived at our room the above-shown “seal” was on the door. This brought back memories of the 1970’s when you would stay at a wayside motel and there would be a “sanitary for your protection” ribbon on the toilet seat, causing me to wonder how clean it real was. The Lysol branding on this sticker put the image of housekeeping staff fogging the entire room. Once we entered we found a nice room and had no concerns of its cleanliness. Despite the thoughts of the chain’s CEO, we left a tip for housekeeping.

"To hold a pen is to be at war..." – Voltaire

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

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If a day goes by where you don’t learn something new, what good is it really? Sometimes that new nugget of knowledge is welcomed and cherished, and sometimes it is scary as all hell and you wished you didn’t know it. Nonetheless, learning is what we do on this journey of life, whether we like it or not.

What you just read was how I opened a post on March 27, 2020, when I brought back the concept of writing on what I learned in the previous week. This was also how I opened the original series of these posts, which I started on a Friday back in 2014. As lockdowns and shutdowns were underway and everybody was now working at home, I thought of resurrecting this idea. Call it a distraction, call it a way to breathe new life back into The Hot Iron, I figured I’d give it a try.

A year later I am still at it. Every week without fail I wrote what crossed my purview the previous week. Some weeks it hit on Friday, other weeks on Sunday, but nonetheless it did hit. Looking back on these posts, as well as the year in general, here’s what I learned on this strange trip.

I’m not tired of doing this – Going into the first edition of the series last year, I had no plans for how long I would do this. I looked back at the first run and I ended it after 8 months, and wrote a summary like this one a few months later. Trying to recall my thinking 7 years ago, I wanted to get back to writing standard, one-topic tomes rather than weekly summaries.

This time, I looked forward to compiling my weekly notes. I still do. I also tried to write one-topic posts as well, and I was relatively successful at that over the year. I continue to strive to do those as well.

This serves as a personal archive – Years ago I had a separate blog called sourcegate where I posted tech tips. Although I was glad to contribute contextualized tools to the world, its true catalyst was a personal quick reference library. My What I Learned posts ended up serving the same purpose, especially chronicling such gems as the link check tool and better meme generator I found.

People are reading it – If you know me, you know I am not exactly an introvert. My ego, though kept in check through marriage and fatherhood, is still alive and kicking. However over the years I have never assumed anything I wrote here was going to be a runaway hit. Often I wrote something for a specific purpose, striking the iron while it is hot, but much of the content here has been to share my thoughts and observations in the realms of business and technology, with the occasional diversion.

As I wrote What I Learned columns, I got feedback from people. It came in the form of comments to a post, as well as a reply to the email they received through their subscription or even a text message. And the feedback was positive! I appreciate that my thoughts in digital form resonated with people, and that has been a part of why I continue doing this.

With this I will pat myself on the back and continue looking out there. Whether it’s on the screen in front of me, the podcast playing in the background or the people I meet (and hopefully much more frequently going forward), I enjoy learning new things. Maybe you learned something new yourself?

Photo collage of images from past What I Learned posts made with Canva. Yes, this is an affiliate link.

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

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About a year ago someone ahead of me at the Dairy Queen drive-thru paying for my order would have been the sole highlight of my week. Fortunately times have changed.

MAzing – An afterschool field trip with my kiddo took me to MToxins, one of the few venom labs in the world in nearby Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Here they extract the venom from poisonous snakes, by hand no less, which is used to create antivenom medication. I was able to see up close (with plate glass between us) an extraction as well as other reptiles and rescued owls. It is an experience I certainly was not expecting to see, and recommend you do the same.

Thoughts on Thinking – The Scrum Master Toolbox podcast I have mentioned previously will run bonus episodes on the weekend that go well beyond the realm of Scrum. A week ago I heard an interview with Shawn Livermore talking about the creative process. It’s worth checking out this thoughtful half-hour talking about the myths of business genius.

Taking Up Valuable MySpace – When Googling myself I ran across an extremely downsized but similarly looking version of my MySpace page from the mid-2000’s. Why it is still there I have no idea, but it certainly wasn’t worth linking to.

Small Plate Double-Take – The French word for small food plates is “assiettes” as I learned when looking at the label on a package of paper plates which was translated in several languages.

Live Free or Die With Gold – New Hampshire joins Nevada and Utah in offering Goldbacks, local currency that is recognized by state law. They are somewhat similar in appearance to those in the other states, but with the Granite State’s famous motto, Live Free or Die. Wyoming is apparently next to offer these shiny notes.

Trash on Trash – I heard a story that off-beat posters were appearing in New York City about keeping the city trash free, and appearing like they were from the city’s sanitation department. First I heard about ones saying supporters of former President Trump were trash. When I heard there was also a poster calling New England sports fans trash, I knew they were bogus. Why? The hate that fans of the Red Sox have for the Yankees is far, far from reciprocated, as Yankees fans couldn’t care less about the team northeast of them.

Chaos Ending – I saw the movie Chaos Walking this past weekend. It is a story of a world where there are no women, and the men can hear the thoughts of other men. Where the premise was initially odd to me, the movie has an interesting story, though the ending was rather abrupt.

Mask Up Tax Down – Last week the IRS issued a statement that expenses on masks and other personal protective equipment is tax deductible. By now my taxes information has already been sent to my accountant, and many people in the US have already filed their taxes. Now I know why the tax filing deadline was extended by a month.

You Light Up My Zoom Life – My desk at home is not in a well-lit area for video calls, and I finally decided to do something about it. After much searching and comparing models I decided to get the above-pictures “clamp lamp” – an LED circle that can clamp to a desk and can be positioned with its gooseneck. It comes with 3 lighting modes and the brightness can be adjusted. So far so great and now my entire face can have the same lighting, for better or for worse.

Happy Birthday Thing 2! Your infectious smile and energy both bring me joy and challenge me daily!

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

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It was back to the pool for me, as a last minute call for volunteers got me to see my kiddos swim in person for the first time in over a year. Where some swim teams haven’t even tried hosting meets, others have, and they have done it right and with virus safety in mind. The kiddos did some big swims and I was proud of their performance. I also got to perform, for during one session I was back at the mic as meet announcer.

That’s 920-867... – Local calls in Wisconsin will soon require the area code to be dialed first due to new cross-state area codes. Or in other words, Dairyland will now be in line with dialing habits in most every state in the US.

One-Tap Scroll to Top – New to me, and likely many of you too who are reading this, is that you can tap the “status bar” on your iPhone or iPad to scroll to the top of what you are reading. The status bar is the space at the top where the time and other information is displayed. Where this function is not in every app, most Web browsers I tried can do it. And for those who don’t know, Safari is a Web browser. Special thanks to my friend Stefanos for pointing out this feature in his latest blog post.

Overplanned obsolescence – A warning message about updates to my Chromebook led to this information that the Internet device will not accept updates after this coming September. There’s a term for this – planned obsolescence. It’s when someone who makes hardware or software says that after a certain date you need to buy new hardware or software from them as they will no longer support what you have. Of course what you have will still likely work, but I digress. The Chromebook was a hand-me-down from a friend who was downsizing equipment and came in handy when schools all went virtual a year ago. Even though the Chromebook will still work with Google’s Chrome OS, I may look into alternative, non-Google operating systems for it like GalliumOS.

De-Googling May Not Be a Bad Idea – This article in The Hacker News shows what personal data Google captures on its users. The search-and-more giant was called out by smaller and less-capturing DuckDuckGo. Check out the chart towards the bottom of the article for the gory details.

Random Journey – Now that people are starting to get out more, why plan something when you can just go someplace random? Also new to me this week is Randonautica an app that uses quantum random number generation to send you someplace close by or elsewhere. Think Geocaching to a different level. I haven’t tried it yet, but my friend Randy who told me about it highly recommends it.

Last Run – This week Dick Hoyt passed away at the young age of 80. For decades he ran the Boston Marathon and races and triathlons around the world while pushing his son Rick. I met him a few times over the years that I had volunteered for the Boston Marathon, and he was a class act. The story I linked to here is by Boston sportscaster Steve Burton, someone else I have met before and equally a class act.

Temptation – Despite my track record I did not give up other blogging for Lent, and I do have other stories coming. One thing I have been moderately successful at over the period leading up to Easter is not eating meat on Fridays. Today I was successful at it despite picking up a package of beef bacon from local favorite Jacob’s Meat Market. I actually had an order in for this new delicacy of theirs as it has been selling out. By the time you are reading this it should be not-Friday and I will be cooking and enjoying this, and remarking how the above photo doesn’t do this deliciousness justice.

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

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To honor the life of Lou Ottens, the inventor of the cassette tape, I am sitting in a high-armed chair reminiscent of the famous Maxell cassette tape poster as I compile the other things I learned this week. Hat tip to Kim on this news.

Find Me Flaw – It was revealed there was a flaw in Apple’s Find Me app and service that would reveal the location histories of its users. Where this service is used by many, especially parents who want to track the locations of their kiddos, the potential for unintended consequences is high.

Maybe Don’t Use Find Me in Virginia? – Signed this month to go into effect in 2023 is the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act or CDPA. The East-coast Commonwealth joins West-coast California as the only other US state to have its own privacy law. Both are have a similar approach to the European Union’s GDPR. To the average person the acronyms I just threw around may not mean much. However if you are a business in Virginia or do business with people from there, it’s worth looking into to see if or how the new law will apply to you in a little over a year and a half.

Makeup with (Avocado) A-Peel – The other day my kiddo started telling me about a line of makeup that was inspired by the Mexican fast-casual restaurant Chipotle. I was laughing out loud at the descriptions of makeup inspired by their menu items, including a makeup bag that looks like a take-out food bag, thinking she was trying to prank me. That was until she showed me this link to a line of real Chipotle-inspired makeup products. I’ll never be able to look at anyone eating a burrito or bowl who accidently gets some on their face the same way again.

Digital Beanie Babies, Sorta – If you still haven’t grasped the concept of blockchain or bitcoin, then add non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, to the list. In very short, is a way of identifying a unique digital asset and assigning an owner to it. An example is one my friend Craig wrote on where Twitter founder Jack Dorsey is going to sell his first tweet, and the owner’s name will be forever tied to it. Podcasting co-inventor Adam Curry called NFTs “digital Beanie Babies” and I have to agree with him... as I scour my hard drive for something unique to sell to someone.

Managing Communities The Right Way – Agile guru Tom Cagley shared this great checklist for managing remote communities of practice or communities of interest meetings. Even as some events are starting to be planned in person, there are still plenty happening virtually. If you’re going to do it, do it right.

Starting My Birthday List Early – This week audio gear maker JLab announced JBuds Frames, which clip onto your glasses for what they call “open-ear” listening. I’m not a fan of standard earbuds, and having the ability to listen to music or a podcast in a more ambient way will be much more preferred by me. As an added bonus, the mic on the JBuds Frames are not always listening to you.

Boulder Pledge – New to me though far from new to the world is the Boulder Pledge. It was a statement made by late film critic Roger Ebert in 1996 that, in summary, says he won’t do business with spammers. Many people reading this may not have had an email account in 1996, let alone getting much spam in their inbox. This was the early days of the consumer Internet, and it was a prophetic statement. Hat tip to Joe for his mention of this on LinkedIn this week.

You Can't Do That – Presented without further comment, especially to prevent inadvertent offending of my fellow Wisconsinites, is this story about a car that had a lawn chair for its driver seat.

FAQ SEO FTW – In an effort to try to space out acronyms this week yet share with you useful information, I present this thoughtful piece by my friend and search engine optimization guru CT Moore on frequently asked questions (FAQ) and SEO. CT not only knows this topic, he also presents it very well. Where many times I feel updating the FAQs for the program I manage is mundane, its value can be tremendous.

Cordless Not FTW For All – It has been several years since I have purchased window blinds, a streak I broke last weekend. As I perused the big box hardware stores I saw only cordless blinds. A friendly staff at one store explained most all blinds sold today are cordless to prevent accidental strangulation of kids and pets, which I confirmed elsewhere. You can custom order corded blinds, which I will be doing as 2 sets of blinds I bought and installed failed to live up to expectations.

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

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