As the week progressed, including three days off of work, I tried to focus on what I observed and was doing and not what I should have been doing – preparing for the ultimate swim meet in the upper Midwest, the Bird Bath Invitational. At least I tried.

• I caught up on a couple of webinars I signed up for but was not able to watch live. Both were on the topic of Agile and Scrum and were well worth the watch. The first one was on Adopting a Tiramisu Mindset. Yes, tiramisu, as in the Italian dessert. It is a great presentation, all the way through to the Q&A. My biggest takeaway from it is that Michelangelo was a Scrum Master centuries before there was Scrum!
• The other webinar was presented by Women in Technology Wisconsin on Agile in a Virtual World. It had a great panel of Agile and Scrum practitioners talking about their real life experience, especially over the last few months.
• Nobody questioned or responded to my blog post last week titled Contact Us. It is for literally what it says, a contact form for my blog, as part of enhancements I made to the content on the About page. Well, I think they are enhancements, what do you think?
• I got notice of yet another class action lawsuit, this one about the performance of older iPhones. I haven’t submitted a claim yet, but I will.
• Another band from the 80’s re-recorded one of their hits in separate locations and stitched together. This time it was Modern English’s Melt With You and another one I learned from the 80’s music blog Slicing Up Eyeballs.
• When your coffee of choice is Trader Joe’s Bay Blend and you no longer live within a few miles of where you can buy it as you have for the majority of your adult life, you stock up on it when you actually get to a store to get some.

Here we go again!

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

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There are certain things in life we seem to remember forever. It could be a song, a saying or advice that really resonated with us. The latter happened to me, and it is something that has been a positive message to me over the decades of work and into these current times.

What was it? “Don’t get used to a desk.”

The Origin of It At a Desk

Shortly after completing the multiweek training program at my first job after college, I would be sent off into the wild to add value for clients of the consulting firm. Or in this case to the “bench” – as there was not a billable project to work on, I would await one while working on internal, non-billable projects. But before I was released, I was to meet with the vice president of HR for the firm.

For some reason I can still remember the scene – he sat behind his large desk in his large office. There was some small talk, then he espoused the wisdom that stuck with me, “don’t get used to a desk.” Being the naïve early-20’s kid that I was, I didn’t question it, simply said thank you and went on my way. My first desk was a traditional metal desk with a large cathode ray tube, or CRT, workstation on it in a large room in the building that was called a bullpen, that I shared with several other recent trainee-graduates. Certainly I didn’t want to get used to this desk.

One of Many Career Tools

As I progressed along in my career, I collected a wide variety of tools that I carried in the metaphoric toolbox I brought to work every day. Some were major, like what I learned about programming in the “real world” as compared to what I taught myself and learned in college. Some were minor but no less significant, like the soft consulting skills I learned the hard way that I was never formally taught anywhere. Not getting used to a desk was one of them.

This advice came in handy many times over the years, namely due to the variety of desks I have had. I had my share of folding banquet tables, namely in temporary offices setup for the work I was doing at the client. But that wasn’t the worst case, as that honor goes to the plywood-walled off section of a dimly-lit warehouse of a defense contractor during the Persian Gulf War. To the other extreme were nice cubicles in an office environment, and some of them even had a window view. But nice wasn’t just for the office equipment; for on one project I worked on we had a “war room” where the entire team was in one high-collaborative space. Some of the offices even provided me with a nametag, and in most cases my last name was spelled correctly.

Where the advice really resonated with me, however, wasn’t directly related to the esthetics of the desk or workspace itself. It had more to do with the fact that where I sat or stood to do work really didn’t matter. Despite the worst of the scenarios (did I mention I had to wear my winter coat in the dimly-lit warehouse as well?) I was able to be productive and get my job done. Sure, I have preferences to where I would like to work, but for the most part my physical surroundings have been a non-issue to where I have worked over the decades.

Coming Full Circle

As this advice was given to me long before social media, eventually I connected with the person who offered it years later on LinkedIn. When I did I shared with him that his advice stuck with me and was vital to me as I worked in consulting and for companies.

His reaction? He laughed! In addition to being a senior leader at the firm I first worked for, he is an extremely talented improvisational musician. Though he wasn’t able to recall the meeting as vividly as I did, he admitted he often would improvise such advice to young employees of the firm as the started on their careers. He was grateful I remembered it and that it served me well.

Deconstructing Not Getting Used to a Desk

There are many things we learn informally in life and our careers, many of them are soft skills that never appear in any text book or course material. Where many go by the wayside, some stay with you over time. I believe these that do are situational, especially ones that are put to the test and work to your advantage. Not getting used to a desk served me well, not only in the midst of a less-than-ideal work location, but in the hope of a better one to come along in the future.

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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 week went on, I didn’t feel like I learned much, then again, it was a short work week.

• We finally went to Thai Ginger Bistro, a new restaurant in town that had numerous delays in opening even before the pandemic, and finally opened in the last few weeks. I heard about their Facebook page, but realized they have no Web site of their own. Under their full control. With things like online ordering. I would have hoped with the lack of control people have on social media platforms, not to mention people leaving them, that businesses still solely rely on Facebook for their presence online. Fortunately their food is delicious and I will be back.
• Have you ever taken a screenshot of something and posted it online, and used basic editing features to mask sensitive information? If so, or have thought of this, watch this great video from my college Andrew on the blog for his service Proceed.app, where he describes the proper and most effective way to obscure sensitive information for anything you post online, or in his app for documenting processes.
• French’s makes a Dijon mustard that is delicious, and rivals any true authentic French (without the apostrophe S) mustard. Thanks for the tip from John C. Dvorak who mentioned it on his news analysis podcast (of all places) The No Agenda Show.
• Piers Fawkes shared an email with items in the same vein as this post, and one of them was on “mi casa, your casa”, a social art exhibition where house “frames” have hammocks in them, and can these days be positioned six feet or more apart. Though nothing new, it fits well in today’s world.
• I worked for Larry Moore back in the dot-com days, and I still remember the conversation I had with him and others after the 2000 election on how to technology can be used to securely and efficiently eliminate the issues in voting then, and today. Larry went on to work with firms in this space, and is now on the advocacy side. Listen to this podcast interview with him and learn about tech in voting, even if you think it’s the furthest from what we need now.
• I don’t talk nearly about Nextcloud, the self-hosted private cloud platform, as much as I should. They just announced the features for the next version of the Nextcloud iPhone app, and I am looking forward to seeing it when the next version of iOS comes out. Clearly I need to share more so that you can understand my excitement over this.
• When is the last time you checked the links on your Web site? Try Dead Link Checker probably one of the best tools I have found out there to do so.
• Debbie Harry turned 75 this week. I found this out along with this video of her singing the Blondie classic Call Me with The Muppets. Happy Birthday to this rock diva!
• I finally turned in the Rice Bowl to my church. For those unfamiliar, a Rice Bowl is a way to raise funds for Catholic Relief Services over Lent. As Easter came and went without going to church, I held onto it, placing whatever loose change I had in there. It came to $28.51. So I cashed it in with one of those Coinstar machines, took the amount as a Starbucks gift card so I wouldn’t lose any money from it, then sent a check to the church for the full amount.

Happy Independence Day!

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

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

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Timing is everything, and the timing of rainfall this week seemed to be perfect for not disrupting my schedule, among other things I observed, saw, learned.

• When I opened the Amazon app on my iPhone earlier in the week, it asked me if I wanted to (and I forget the actual term) integrate Amazon Smile into the app. If you go to smile.amazon.com instead of amazon.com, a small portion of your purchases will go to the charity of your choice, which in my case is my kiddos’ school. As Smile has been around for years, it’s nice to see this finally available in the app.
• This quote from fellow New Englander Robert Frost rang true to me, "A person will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body – the wishbone."
• I watched a couple of documentaries this past week, the first being End of an Era - Radio Shack. Technically it was a documentary, with footage of closed stores and somebody narrating over it, stitched together with classic Radio Shack commercials, which made it worthy of the 10 minutes I spent watching it.
• The other documentary was All Things Must Pass, chronicling the rise and demise of the Tower Records chain. I was a late-comer to Tower, only shopping them in the 90’s when I moved to the Boston area. This was a rather detailed history, including the founder and various staff and customers including Elton John and Dave Grohl. It was directed by Colin Hanks, son of Tom, and if you are nostalgic for the good old days of music I highly recommend this entertaining film.
• Not a day goes by when I see someone post on LinkedIn on the topic of “failing fast” in business. I could write a whole post on this, and maybe I should, but the bottom line is that not everyone knows what this means. Trust me on this.
• HBO Max, a new “network” from HBO, is available for free to AT&T mobile customers, among other services. However, the app is not yet available for the Amazon Fire TV as the 2 corporate behemoths are debating who makes what. In the meantime, I found a way to “sideload” the HBO Max app onto your Fire TV.
• In the latest edition of The Dispatch newsletter there was a mention of “2020,” a new song by Ben Folds, appropriate for being at the almost halfway point in the year where he talks about having multiple years inside of this one. It’s an interesting song and as they say on Triple J, “language warning!”
• In the wrap-up discussion of the study group I was in for Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, the topic of hobbies came up. One of the 3 of us, Alan, suggested that my hobby may be blogging, as I enjoy it, and do it for fun and not for profit. I am still digesting this.
• I rented a U-Haul to move some stuff to storage for someone, and low and behold there was a lock attached to the back of the truck. For all of the years I have rented trucks for various moved I always had to buy a new lock because 1) I needed to lock the truck and 2) I never could find the last lock I bought. Well done, U-Haul.

Hey, Jurasick!

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

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