It was a short and somewhat quiet week, at least on the work front.

• Among all the bills passed and rules changed in Washington DC regarding the pandemic, a change to Flexible Spending Account (FSA) allocations was made. If you’re unfamiliar, an FSA allows you to pay for medical and related expenses with pre-tax deductions from your paycheck. You can reduce the amount you originally signed up for, and if you haven’t heard from your employer’s HR department then you should contact them. That, or spend your larger-than-expected balance at the end of the year on Band-Aids.
• Two of the greatest summer swim meets are now canceled. With the City of Appleton, Wisconsin FINALLY (emphasis intentional) announcing if it’s going to open or close its 2 great municipal pools – yep, they will be closed – the 8th Annual Summer Classic in June and the 22nd Annual Bird Bath Invitational in July, a meet which attracts over 1,000 athletes from around the state and region are now canceled. Where the fact that they wouldn’t happened was inevitable, the reasons why decisions were prolonged baffle me. And others.
• Not to dwell on agitation on what is preoccupying most of the world right now, but this post on the Brand New blog has the tone of something I have written in my head many times in the last few months.
• I get daily Google Alerts on my last name, which likely everyone reading this does too, right? A hit on this unique product on Amazon came up and made me wonder if it’s an automated product customization feature of the retail giant?
• You need to be 18 to buy Super Glue in Wisconsin, and not a malfunction with the self-checkout register that was prompting a store clerk to come over to approve the purchase. I didn’t inquire further why the rule or law was in place, but now I have something to look into if I am really bored.
• This article brought the inner-child geek in me – it is about how you can access the software and data on an old computer cassette using a vintage computer emulator on a modern computer. Apologies if I lost anyone there, but as I have several old tapes from decades ago – if they haven’t demagnetized, they’ll be fun to explore!
• This is my 900th post here on The Hot Iron. It shows as post 901 as the first post I made to this blog 13+ years ago was likely a test and deleted. It’s a nice milestone, and now I can’t wait to get into quadruple digits.

Happy Anniversary Sweetheart!

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

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