SlideSold – SlideShare is a social sharing site geared towards presentation slides that was later acquired by LinkedIn. Over the years I have posted a few presentations there, but haven’t used it a lot. This week it was announced SlideShare was sold to Scribd. Interestingly I haven’t heard anything more about this other than the email announcement I got on it from SlideShare. Equally interesting is that Microsoft, who acquired LinkedIn a few years ago, is actually selling something, which I can’t recall them doing before. In any case, it will remain to be seen if I keep using it, depending on what Scribd does with their acquisition.

Not Binging It – This wasn’t the only change I noticed at Microsoft this week. Bing, their search engine, had an element of gamification where you could earn points for searching and daily search-related games, and use those points for a variety of things including gift cards. From typical daily checking of the news and playing said games, I would typically earn enough for a $5 Starbucks gift card every month. This week they change how many points you would earn for each activity, and it pretty much mean I wouldn’t earn much of anything, especially as I use DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine. As a result, I stopped playing the games.

Molto Bene – So what did I fill the 10 minutes of my morning with now that I am not using Bing? I reinstalled Duolingo, the language-learning app, and restarted Italian lessons.

8’s Enough – I’m not a fan of floating shelves, but I am tasked with hanging them. I had to hang a few that came without hardware. After a little research online I learned about figure 8’s which would seem to do the trick though I couldn’t find them in local stores and had to order online.

How Do You Virtually Run? – The whole family signed up for Gourdy’s virtual 5K Pumpkin Run /Walk as friends are going to organize for several families to actually run and walk together. I’ll be walking.

How You Lean Coffee – I participated in my first Lean Coffee this week. What is it? In short, people submit topics, vote on what topics to talk about, then spent 5 minutes to discuss each one. After the allotted time participants then decide if the topic needs more time. It was a fun and energized way to keep conversations and ideas flowing.

Bon Voyager – I finished binge-watching Star Trek: Voyager this week. The biggest think that stuck out for me through all seven seasons is why they never made a copies of the Doctor? For those who never watched it, the Doctor was a holographic program. I am sure there are numerous articles online about this, but I’d rather leave it to my imagination.

Yet Elegant – Simple Mills recently added a line of Veggie Pita Crackers to its stable of grain-free products, and now they’re a delicious part of my stable of what I am eating.

Packing It In – To say fans of the Green Bay Packers are loyal is an understatement. However the pandemic took precedent when their season ticket holders were surveyed and 80% said they would opt out of the upcoming season. Note that the opt-out meant they would still retain their season ticket accounts, much to the dismay of those on the multi-decade long waiting list.

G I Had This? – G Suite, the bundle of apps from Google that includes Gmail and online storage, sent a confusing email to its customers that the search giant was removing support pages. I got emails from my clients asking about this, as they had no idea what they were talking about and knew of no support pages. From some searching I found they weren’t alone in the confusion.

Art 2020 – Though I am non-partisan, I felt bad for the City of Milwaukee, who was banking on banking on hosting the Democratic National Convention. The in-person events scheduled for July were reduced to much smaller, mostly virtual events this past week. Despite this there were still some visual elements, including a replica of the Apollo Theatre sign that turned off a couple of letters to show the word “poll.”

You Never Forget – When I picked up the above-pictures six-pack of Samuel Adams Octoberfest this week I had a realization – it was 30 ago (give or take a few weeks) that I had my first Sam Octoberfest, and thus my first micro-brewed beer. It was shortly after I moved to Boston and my friend Norm came to town, and we stopped at his aunt and uncle’s house and they offered me one. Needless to say this Bud Light drinker changed his ways for good with that first taste a score and a half ago.

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

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