It’s been a month since I’ve been on Twitter – I didn’t delete my account, just logged off from it. If you’re curious where I am learning over the course of the week, it’s not from there.

• PlayMakers Laboratory is the new name for Barrel of Monkeys, a non-profit youth arts/education organization in Chicago I have support and was on their Board a few years back. Part of their offering is That’s Weird, Grandma, a live performance of sketch comedy adapted from the writing of their students. They have now taken this online and you can watch and support them through Patreon.
• I read a couple of great articles this week. One was by Marc Andreessen with a great assessment of what we need to do to get beyond this pandemic, saying It’s Time To Build. If you’re not familiar with Marc, he’s the co-creator of the first graphical Web browser Mosaic.
• The other article I read was by my friend John Wall on The Great Shutdown. If you’re not familiar with John, he’s been podcasting before most people knew what it was, and is co-host of the long-running and highly informative and entertaining podcast Marketing Over Coffee.
• When everything is important, nothing is important. The same holds true if everything is !important… and the exclamation point before the word is not a typo. It is a “hack” that bad Web developers make when coding the cascading style sheets or CSS of a Web site, and something good developers avoid. As you may guess, I also learned about the bad Web developers doing this.
• Following examples like the one I mentioned last week from Crowded House, the school music teachers in my kids school system did a virtual rendition of the Bill Withers hit Lean On Me, and I think it’s awesome, though I think the flute-playing teacher may not like that she got cut, twice.
• In 2008 I participated in Nokia OpenLab, a social media gathering of people from around the world hosted in Helsinki, Finland by the then-world leader in mobile technology. Leading up to it a Wiki page was created and updated by the attendees to connect, and thanks to Cybette I know it’s still out there.
• Starbucks reopened many stores around the country this week, and mainly ones with drive-thru windows. And just in time for gas prices to rise, but I digress. One thing I noticed in the updated version of their mobile app is the tipping options have expanded to $5.

Congrats Christine and Colin!

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

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Gladly trading my technical firefighter’s gear for a pen and paper to jot down the few things that came to mind this week.

• I broke my streak of writing a full post every week (note, this is not what I consider a full post, but worth reading nonetheless!). I did write something, however it didn’t turn out as I wanted it, so I am putting it aside for a few days and will readdress and hope to hit the mark next week. To paraphrase Paul Masson as told by Orson Welles, I will not publish something before its time.
• I’ve always said, “don’t ask a question if you don’t want to hear the answer.” Of course not taking my own advice, I learned the hard way I should never ask, “so what else could go wrong?”
• Crowded House is a band I liked from my college radio days in the 80’s. This is the 33rd anniversary of their best known hit, “Don’t Dream It’s Over”. To celebrate this, the band recorded a version of it with all its members in their home studios and it was pieced together. The song was surprisingly good, though I think lead singer Neil Finn’s voice has gotten a little higher pitched over time.
• A local museum, The History Museum at The Castle, is asking the public to engage in a journaling project called “Let’s Make History” where people write or record about sheltering at home during the worldwide pandemic. When all is over they will then submit what they created to the museum who will curate it into its collection which includes Harry Houdini’s magic secrets and a giant bust of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Where the idea is intriguing, I am finding writing in general and publishing here to be more therapeutic than simply penning about staying home.
• A local tap room McFleshman’s is now canning its beer as they are not allowed to open for guests to imbibe their cask conditioned beers on-site. When I picked up a 6-pack over the weekend, I noticed the pack ring looked a little different. When I tried separating a can, it was harder than a normal ring. Because it wasn’t – it’s an Eco 6 Pack Ring which is made from what looked like molded paperboard. So if one of these rings ends up in the Fox River, likely they will dissolve before any aquatic life tries to consume them.

Happy Mother’s Day!

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

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It’s May!

• An anonymous person bought me a coffee last week using the button on my blog for Ko-fi. Whomever they are, thank you! Since I added the button to my blog a few years ago I have only received a few, so it was nice to see the button still works.
• Google is shutting down the mobile app for its AdSense ad program, replacing it with a Web site. The app was a nice way to see what ad revenue you earned on a daily basis... until ad revenue bottomed out for most people who put ads on their sites. Like me.
• This past week the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers Single-A baseball team offered a Ballpark Dinner To-Go program. The dinner for 4 included burgers, hot dogs, brats, baked beans, potato salad, cookies and cotton candy. It went well with watching A League of Their Own
• Draft Kings, the Boston-based fantasy sports and sports betting company went public last week. It’s great to hear about the IPO of innovative companies, and even more so when a friend works there.
• I never heard of oat whiskey until I bought a bottle of Central Standard Oat Whiskey at Tandem, a local wine and spirits store. The clear spirit over ice was very smooth, and the price was right at $8 for the bottle. As it was a closeout, and checking the distiller’s Web site, they no longer carry it, I have to go back and get what’s left.
• My good friend Alex Ryan and her Evolve Solutions Group is hosting a free Webinar next week titled Changing the way we work: Selling Remotely. If anyone can give a presentation like this it’s her, and I will be on it.
• When I registered for Alex’s Webinar through Eventbrite, I subscribed to the calendar rather than just adding it as an event, something I had never done before. It’s not obvious how to undo this on an iPhone, but I found this tutorial on how to unsubscribe to a calendar.
• The other day I walked on the other side of the street from the main street near my home, as usually I walk on the same side. Low and behold, there’s prose in the sidewalk as shown above. Many sidewalk projects in Appleton have some poetry or verses incorporated in them. I enhanced the photo so you can read it better.

So glad you could join me today.

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

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In addition to hearing my long-owned weather radio go off for the first time, there were more positive items and ideas that came before me a little more gracefully.

• The local minor league baseball team is the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers, who are the Single-A affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers. Unfortunately they are not playing now, and as a way to raise money, they are offering memberships. But what really surprised me about them is they are a private non-profit that has not and does not take any government funds. To me that makes supporting them all the more important!
• Sharpie recently introduced gel pens, the S-Gel, and I thought I’d try them as a gel-only user. I didn’t like their feel and their performance was not worth their much higher cost as compared to my long-favorite Pilot G2 gel pens.
• My friend Eric invited me to be part of a study group for the famous book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. As I never read the book, I took him up on the offer to be part of the 8-week virtual program, which started this week. So far I have just read the long intros and first chapter of the book, and it has already got me thinking. I am looking forward to the remaining sessions.
• There are 2 – yes, two – National Tooth Fairy Days – February 28 and August 22. Or numerically they are 2/28 and 8/22. Anyone else see the numbers are reverse of each other?
• I heard of Hanlon’s razor for the first time on Fresh Take, a local radio show hosted by Josh Dukelow that is also available as a podcast. It came up in a segment called The Professors where a history and government professor provide context to news events. I will keep this phrase tucked away looking for a good time to spring it out.
• I have been sending a lot of notecards lately, and I realize that I am licking the envelopes. As this may bother some people I sought an alternative, and found large gold seals will do the trick.
• As I have been spending more time on this blog, I have been re-reading posts and this one, There’s Never A Best Time For Anything, stuck out this week.

Have a great weekend. Yes, the weekend is here.

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

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The idea behind this series of posts on what I learned during the week is that I’d write on things, topics or ideas presented to me throughout the seven days. This week I had the chance to mix it up a bit.

• Scrum – I took a 2-day course towards becoming a Certified ScrumMaster. It has been a while since I have taken a formal class. Originally the class was supposed to be in-person, but was moved to being hosted on Zoom. I did try to postpone it to a later date as my preference was in-person learning for this type of course, however the vendor made it difficult to do so. In any case, it was a great class, and now onto take the exam this weekend – wish me luck!
• Miro – In said course, there would be a lot of whiteboard work had it been taught in-person. To have a similar experience online, the instructor used a service called Miro, which allows for multi-person whiteboard-like collaboration. There was a learning curve to using it and a lot of stepping on each other, but in the end it generally worked well.
• Timer – When we took breaks during said course, the instructor used a Mac program called AS Timer to track the time. It is a free program, and one I see myself using as a countdown clock to better manage my time on tasks.
• Miasma – my word for the week is miasma, which I picked up from, you guessed it, said course.
• Slanted – Actually in full Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism, is the title of the new book coming out by investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson this fall. It is available now for pre-order on Amazon. I have enjoyed Attkisson’s work and writings and have read and written takeaways on her previous books Stonewalled and The Smear, and I sure this will be equally as intriguing.
• Fifty – Easter is actually a 50 day season, with 10 days after the 40 days of Lent, as said by my priest. Yes, this former Roman Catholic alter boy didn’t know that previously.
• Snow – It’s still falling in mid-April in Wisconsin. So much for the groundhogs.
• Withdrawal – I have a lot of friends who are longing for live sports, and it is driving them to watch past games online. And text me pictures from them. And videos too. These reminded me of once when I watched the 1975 NBA All-Star Game played at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, Arizona, after a time when I went down an online rabbit hole trying to remember the name of the arena I had visited in the mid-1990’s. I share the video embedded below, for those longing for the days when basketball shorts were, well, short.

And that’s the way it looks from here right now.

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

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