It was a week that started so beautifully that leaf raking was a fun activity, and ended with the leaves wet and nearly frozen… ah, fall in the upper Midwest of the United States.

Thanks for not noticing – I didn’t want to mention it last week as I hadn’t actually published anything to the blog yet, but last week I upgraded the software that makes The Hot Iron tick. Note this was just the back-end so nothing looks different to you the reader. Taking the sage wisdom from a thoughtful engineer from afar, I first did a test upgrade then after defining the steps, executed it on the live site. So 16 hours of measuring twice before 5 hours of cutting once. Now to learn the new features, or as I have discovered so far, less features that need to be compensated for.

I was not alone – Where I only focused on the back-end here, my good friend Emily Brackett dropped a new design for the Web site of her marketing and branding firm, Visible Logic. While you’re there subscribe to her blog and check out Branding Compass, a unique service to create branding for your business or organization.

Gimme what you need – I saw a unique user experience with a Web form this past week I had never seen before or even thought of. When I went to submit it and if I had a required field blank, it would remove all of the other filled-out fiends from view and just show me what I needed to fill in. Where I don’t think it would work with every form, it did in this case. And this case was a customer service survey for Kroger supermarkets.

Painfully lonely – Hubie Halloween was the best Halloween movie I watched last Saturday night. Did I mention it was the only Halloween movie I watched last Saturday night?

Not just another day – This past Monday was Columbus Day in the US. It is a federal holiday and is in honor of Italian explorer Christopher Columbus. In recent years there has been a lot of scrutiny of Columbus and what he really did when he sailed the ocean blue in 1492. This scrutiny has been a challenge to Italian-Americans who consider Columbus a hero and the holiday one for celebrating all Italian American heritage as well. But as Italians are not known for being shy, the Italian American Podcast has been talking about this over several episodes. I haven’t listened to all of them, but I recommend it as issues like this need to be discussed.

It’s here, get used to it – Just about every day I hear some sensationalized story about the logistics of the 2020 elections. I use the word “sensationalized” as there is a lot of extreme opinions on voting, from in-person to by mail. But what about online? Yes, voting for the President of the United States online. And the kicker is, this is not even extreme. If you don’t believe me listen to this interview of Larry Moore by Josh Dukelow on his Fresh Take show. Larry has been a founder and leader at 2 digital voting firms, and is now an advocate for it, including with The National Coalition for Accessible Voting. Listen and learn, just as I did… from my old boss, as I worked with Larry at a previous job.

Be successful again and again – I finally got to watch this presentation offered by the Scrum Alliance back in July, and I am glad I did. Richard Kasperowski is a Boston-based teacher and coach and presented on High-Performance Teams: Core Protocols for Psychological Safety and Emotional Intelligence. This is a great presentation, and if you have any interest in team and inter-personal dynamics, it’s worth the hour watch.

This past weekend I finally got down to the new trestle trail bridge and walking trail along and over part of the Fox River here in the childhood home of Harry Houdini. Appropriately, there’s an artwork piece dedicated to late illusionist. But it was far from the only sight along this trail, as the leaves changing colors along the waterway was certainly something to see, especially with the previously-mentioned warmer weather earlier in the week.

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

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