It was sunny. It was rainy. It was warm. It was cool. It was this past week.

• A healthy, fine-tuned database server will go far in the performance of a Web site or Web application. Never assume your database server is in that positive state.
• I went to Door County, Wisconsin for the first time last weekend. Door County is a peninsula that is about a couple of hours north of me in the northeast part of the state – I often say if Wisconsin is the right hand, Door County is the thumb. As we traveled though, it reminded me a lot of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, and ironically there is a motel named Cape Cod off the main road! We had a simple day trip to do some biking in a state park, but we will definitely be back to this beautiful area.
• This past week my favorite news and information radio show, Fresh Take with Josh Dukelow, went on a furlough schedule, going down to 3 days a week from 5. Alas it is another victim of the pandemic as advertising revenue is likely down. Where it’s unfortunate to all, from Josh to us listeners, hopefully the station will bounce back stronger after the reduced episodes are planned to resume a normal schedule in July.
• On recent episodes of Fresh Take I learned about TheDispatch.com, a news Web site that launched last year. Though the staff largely came from the former conservative publication The Weekly Standard, I have found their coverage to be very objective. It’s primarily a paid service but has no annoying ads for the free content they offer.
• I posted an item on eBay for the first time in a while, and found some additionally robust features, yet still as familiar as used to be. In case you’re looking for a lift rocking chair, the auction is open through this Sunday night.
• When going thru some old links while in my recently-reopened co-working space World HeadQuarters this past week, I found this article about my past co-working space in Chicago, OfficePort. I had clearly saved the article as a picture of me is in it.
• I got an email to say I passed the ExO Foundations certification exam I took last week. Fueled by my friend Eric’s passion behind exponential organizations and the start of his consulting firm BostonExO, I decided to take this free base-level exam. It was comprised of watching videos, taking a multiple-choice exam and writing short essays. Where I got a score for the exam right away, it took a few days before they reviewed my essays.
• Continuing in the vein of learning, I completed the first course as part of the Microsoft Cloud Skills Challenge for the month of June. The training is on their Azure cloud hosting service, and is relevant as at work we are planning to move our programs to this platform. These courses are free, and by taking them you can earn a free Azure certification exam.
• As I have been venturing back out to restaurants, I have found many are adopting contactless, online menus that people can access by scanning a QR code with their smartphone. The fact that Apple now has QR code scanning built-in to its iOS operating system has allowed this to be a viable option. Had QR code scanning been built-in years ago, who knows how pervasive QR codes would be today?

Peace, Duane.

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

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