This week I watched a lot of video, and you can to with the links below among the few things I actually read.

Networking Back Where I Left Off – The last in-person networking events I went to were in mid-March of 2020. There 2 in one day and the first of them was the grand re-opening of UrbanHub, a co-working space in nearby Green Bay. This week they announce their grand re-re-opening (?) in a few weeks with this throwback video and you can sign-up here for this free event in this cool space.

Product Owner Prep – Next week I am excited to take a course to prepare me to be a Certified Scrum Product Owner. What’s that you say? It’s a vital role as part of using the Scrum framework for getting things done. Last year I took a course to be a Certified ScrumMaster and was intrigued by the Product Owner role, as it sets what will be done. The course I am taking is remote, and will be taught by Scrum veteran Mike Cohn of Mountain Goat Software. For the course this week I watched prep videos which are not only informative but of high quality. I can’t link to them outside of the course Web site, but expect to hear more from me on what I learn this coming week.

Improved Accessibility Checker – This week Siteimprove released an updated Web site Accessibility Checker Chrome browser plug in. This can be used by anyone to check the Accessibility of a Web site, and ideally you would use it on your own. For many, it’s like drinking from the proverbial fire hose with the amount of detail given. For those of us who work in the Web, it’s also a reminder of what we really need to do on-going to achieve Web sites as Accessible as possible.

May The Fourth Be Cute – This past Tuesday was May the Fourth, also known as Star Wars Day. There was no shortage of memes and jokes about it, and by far my favorite is this video mashup of light sabers and oral health.

Elevated Throwing – Defenestrate is a fancy word for throwing something out the window, which was new to me.

Groundbreaking Throwing – I discovered Pitch, a 2016 1-season TV series about the fictional story of the first female pro baseball player. It says the show was produced with “cooperation” from Major League Baseball, however it’s more like it is a co-star. I liked the story line a lot, and was sad to see – now 5 years later – that it didn’t continue beyond 10 episodes.

Ciao Calibri – Microsoft is looking to replace Calibri, the default font used by its Office software suite, with a new one. This story features the designer of the font, which rumor has it was made to use less ink. There’s a link in the story that shows the possible replacement fonts, to give you a glance into what you could be looking at a lot in the future.

Get Right on the Mac – I forget that the default settings in MacOS, the operating for Apple computers, doesn’t recognize right-clicking with a trackpad, and you need to make a setting change to do so.

Crazy Drafting Memories – This past weekend was the NFL Draft, where college football players are selected by pro teams. For me, it’s the start of the football season as I don’t really follow college ball, and I start familiarizing myself with who was signed. As I got alerts to the signings and saw a picture of the first player drafted by my New England Patriots, Alabama quarterback Mac Jones, holding a #1 jersey, I had a flashback to someone else with a similar jersey about 15 years earlier, none other than Ozzy Osbourne as you can see in this video.

Why was he there? Since the Kraft family bought the team in the early 1990’s, for every home game the Pats would come on to the field to Ozzy’s song Crazy Train. Years later when Ozzy’s wife Sharon was at Boston’s Dana Farber Cancer Institute, the team reached out to him and told him of the tradition, to which he said he didn’t believe them. After the team created a video montage showing it, he was thrilled, and they later invited him to perform the song live for the season kickoff game in 2005. I was at that game and it was insane – the top of a helmet opened like a clam shell and there was Ozzy, all smiles and clearly having fun. I took a video of this but it’s so bad as I was as excited as he was.

Hopefully Not a New Trend – Now that it’s warmer for my kiddos to go to local playgrounds, I am there too. Walking around one of them I found what is pictured above, an upside down picnic table. Really? Why? How long was it there? Was I the first to see it? After snapping this photo I flipped it over to its more optimal position. I hope not to see more of these going forward.

Happy Mother’s Day to all who are Moms, Grandmoms, Godmoms, Auntmoms, Cousinmoms and any other similar roles!

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

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