Where I would like to blame missing a week on the disruptions of the new features and settings in iOS 15 on my iPhone that are supposed to cause less distractions, alas I truly cannot. Perhaps I am the only person who loves all notifications and not grouped, but that’s another post for another time.

Grands – I appreciated the few kudos on reaching 1,000 blog posts, especially from long-time reader and fellow blogger Matt, who pointed out another word for one-thousand is chiliad. I am still trying to find a way to work it into a sentence without sounding snooty.

Nice thinkin’, Ray – Next week the Ghostbusters original story becomes a trilogy. I came across this video clip with Ivan Reitman, the director of the first 2 installments and Dad of the director of this one, showing a video to Bill Murray of how the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man has evolved. It opens in the US next week, and finally I have a reason to return to a movie theater.

More proof the Cloud is simply someone else’s computer – Open-source file management and application platform Nextcloud has announced a new app to allow for peer-to-peer backups. All you need is someone else who uses Nextcloud and you can backup your files to theirs, encrypted and compressed of course. I have used Nextcloud for years, though ironically I don’t know anyone else who uses it.

Snap up 80’s music lore – When I read about Deirdre O’Donoghue being “the most influential American DJ you’ve never heard of,” I said to myself, “self, I never heard of her, and I am intrigued.” She was a DJ on a public radio show in Los Angeles that featured interviews and a great mix of 80’s alternative music. Though she is no longer on this mortal coil, the tapes of her shows have been recovered and a podcast series called Bent by Nature has been produced from them. The first few episodes are fun, and if you’re into the best music era of all time on this earth, give it a listen.

Time killers as we await Valentine's Day – I was sad to hear that Christkindlmarket will not return to Milwaukee this year, though it will be back in its original Chicago location. Where trekking that far south may not be in the cards for me, trekking a little south to Milwaukee for the Noel Light Park and Christmas Market sounds like it may make up for it. No definitive word if they will have boot mugs though.

Crafting I could tolerate – New to me is Cricut a line of computer-driven cutters that can be used to make car window decals, and likely other crafty things. But car window decals! They also make a mug press for dishwasher-safe printing on coffee mugs, though it looks like supply chain issues have hit their larger mug sizes. This would certainly make for an interesting hobby, and a nice Christmas present for me.

Make Images Vital Again – Back in the old days of the Web people would upload a ginormous image to their Web site, and you could see it slowly loading a line of pixels at a time. Sadly that is still going on over a quarter of a century later. I learned about TinyPNG a Web site where you can upload and optimally compress the size of image for a Web site – note that a picture straight off of your phone is likely too big for a Web site. I saw this service listed on this great article from consultancy SmoothFusion on overall improvements you can make to your Web site.

Mixed feeling about this phone repair – Apparently if you crack the screen of your iPhone 13 and bring it to a non-Apple authorized repair place, Face ID on your phone will no longer work. Where I don’t use Face ID on my non model 13 phone because of risk and security concerns, it goes against your right to have your phone repaired wherever the heck you want to which clearly Apple, et. al. don’t want you to do.

Rudy Reminder – While watching All-American with one of my kiddos this past week there was a mention to a “Rudy moment” and guessing (correctly) she didn’t know that reference, I proceeded to give her the top-line story about Rudy Ruettiger and mentioned the movie about his life. I also recalled in the closing scene of the movie, there’s a shot of Rudy being carried off the field of Notre Dame Stadium, and sticking out among the dark clothing is my friend Tim, waving while wearing a white cap and bright blue jacket to the left of the on-screen which you can see at the 3:37 mark of this video words. He just happened to be at an actual Notre Dame game when this scene was filmed.

FILO – If you are a regular reader of my What I Learned posts or anything I write here at this humble blog, you will notice I like to include some original photo, artwork or even screenshot. As I looked thru photos the last few weeks, there wasn’t really anything to choose from. So I scrolled back to the oldest photo on my phone and I have added it above; it’s a photo of a mural on a park pavilion in Redgranite, Wisconsin, taken this summer. It caught my eye, and hopefully does yours too.

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

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

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This past weekend I did something I have contemplated for a while but couldn’t get myself to do. I deleted my Twitter account.

Some of you may be surprised, especially those who knew how much I promoted Twitter over the years. Others may not be, especially as I haven’t been actively using my account for well over a year and a half. Though I deleted the app from my mobile phone and stopped checking it several times daily back in March of 2020, I was hesitant to drop it altogether.

But I did, and I am great with that decision. Allow me to indulge why I did, but first how I engaged with social media and its positive and negative impacts on my life.

The Good Ol’ Days... in 2007

Social media in the mid-to-late 2000’s was not completely new, as I had a MySpace page and this blog you are reading was also new to me. As I grew followers and made connections with both platforms, I learned about Twitter, and thanks to my friend and fellow improvisor Christopher, I got an account.

But at first, I didn’t get it. What the heck could I say in 120 characters? And who would want to read it? I slowly started following and connecting with people, and using it as a way to promote my blog. Twitter inspired me to build a Web app that is resting in my project graveyard but even then, I wasn’t using it all that much.

For me, it took seeing Twitter in action – literally – to believe in it, and that didn’t happen for another year when I went to Helsinki, Finland as a participant in Nokia OpenLab. There I met people from around the world who were heavy users of Twitter and other social media channel, and I experienced for the first time a group of people tweeting each other as they sat together. Where that latter fact was not what made me the true believer in Twitter that I became, it was continuing the connections with these people who brought me to the platform and kept me there.

Behind the short messages were people, and I got to know people not only around the world but around the corner as well. People who were interested in meeting those whom they only saw an avatar of would host Tweetups – in person meetups of Twitter connections. There are several people from tweetups I still keep in touch with today.

Beyond Shiny to a Utility

As I evolved my use with Twitter, the platform evolved as well. Business, traditional media and more individuals were coming on board, and the “invention” of the hashtag made the platform even more useful. It was becoming my primary source for news, as I could follow networks, stations, newspapers and especially the reporters of those outlets. One example of the power of Twitter was one early evening in Chicago when I saw Blackhawk helicopters flying around the Loop. I immediately took to Twitter, and right away people were chiming in on their own sightings and the media was also on the case. It was a Chicago Tribune reporter who then found an obscure mention on the city’s Web site about a Blackhawk training exercise and shared it. Shortly afterwards it made the paper’s Web site.

Twitter became a customer service channel as well, which truly embraced the collaboration that was a hallmark of social media. Starting with Comcast Cares, an account run by a Comcast employee on his own, customer service evolved on the platform, slashing through obnoxious telephone menu trees to get to the people who could make a difference. This extended beyond business, as my former Alderperson in Chicago was an active user – one day on the way to work I tweeted her a picture of a downed tree in my neighborhood, and on the way home it was gone.

The ability to connect and communicate with people you normally couldn’t or wouldn’t be able to connect with was another uniqueness to Twitter. One time I tweeted to Jack Welch, the infamous former CEO of GE. It happened to be at the time the New England Patriots were in the playoffs, and Welch, who was a Boston-area native, replied to me, “Go Pats!” Though not an intellectual conversation to say the least, it was a pleasant surprise. As I was writing book takeaways here at The Hot Iron, I was able to connect with authors and publishers to share my thoughts, as well as the occasional newsmaker and reporter covering them.

What’s Offline is Online Too

Twitter was not in its own world, as it’s obvious it was made up of those from the “meat space.” Over time I saw Twitter conversations becoming more political and divisive. As this was not just impacting Twitter but other social platforms such as Facebook, driving me to quit that platform years ago. Despite this exodus, I still held hope that Twitter could be different and more tolerable to me.

Over the last 5 years though it was really off the rails for me. I would often joke that, though not a financial advisor, I strongly recommended investing in heels, as people were simply digging their heals in and holding their ground and shouting at others. This was far, far from the Twitter I remembered from almost a decade earlier, and one I was not liking. I went as far as deleting all of my old tweets (after backing them up, for some reason) as who knows what I had said in a short message years ago that I didn’t want to come back to haunt me. Over time I was checking the platform less and less.

The Final Straws

As the lockdowns were taking effect in early 2020 and people were at home, angry, scared, or whatever they were feeling, the tweets were reflective of this. It got to be too much, and I deleted the app from my mobile device. Granted I did not shut down the account, but not having Twitter literally at arm’s length for most of my day was actually refreshing. I would check it maybe once a week from a Web browser, then every couple of weeks, then maybe once a month. As Twitter was also a way for friends to connect with me, I was sharing with them over direct messages, or DMs, my decision and my phone number and email if they didn’t already have it. I didn’t make a big deal publicly of my cutback on its usage though.

In between those checks, I really didn’t miss Twitter. I was still on LinkedIn and starting to experiment with Mastodon, an open source, federated (or shared) protocol of connecting individual social media instances together. I was also blogging more, going back to my “roots” of social media – look at my early posts, and I had many commenters, many more than I do today.

Over the weekend I happened to check Twitter and the only mention I had in the month since I last checked it was a tweet from a complete stranger asking me to DM him about a business opportunity. I paused for a moment, and said to myself this was it. It had been almost 18 months since I retreated, and I really didn’t miss it at all. Sure, the ol’ days were good – heck, even great – but today Twitter has lost its luster. Note that in what I have said so far I haven’t mentioned de-platforming, algorithms controlling what you see and don’t see, and the useless testifying of Twitter’s and other social and tech CEOs in front of Congress. Where these certainly played into my thinking (like not believing Twitter is a public square, rather a private space off of it) I had enough reasons to delete my account, and my proof is with the screenshot at the top of this message.

Will I return? I do have access to other Twitter accounts for organizations that I have helped manage, but personally I don’t see it. But never say never, and who knows what else is right around the corner.

Deconstructing Deleting Twitter

Social media was and continues to be a game-changer for how we communicate in the world, for better or for worse. The opposite of social media is not anti-social, rather I see it as returning to the roots of collaboration that the Internet is. My decision to quit Twitter was personal, but not entirely unique, as I have known others who have quit other social media platforms. Where everyone has their own reasons, there is a common thread of the negativity that is gnawing away at the good that social media enabled. It’s this good that I seek, whether on another platform or with a simple hello to someone, online or in-person.

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

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Many terms can apply to political institutions throughout the world – some I can say here on this blog, some I choose not to. One word can apply to them all, a word which I have observed myself personally – tradition. Whether for everyone or just for those who hold office themselves, activities have happened in these legislative bodies over the years that continue throughout their existence.

A tradition in the US Senate is where Senators sign the drawer of their desk in the Senate chamber. One desk is number 88, which has been occupied by members of the Democratic party. The current occupant of the desk, Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, wrote a book several years back about some of the people who preceded him there in the aptly titled Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America.

When I, someone who does not align with any political persuasion, received this book from a friend who is closely aligned in political ideology with the Senators in the book, I was intrigued about what I would learn and, of course, take away from the stories.

History through a partisan lens – Senator Brown is a progressive Democrat and he doesn't hide that fact. That being said, I was able to separate historical details and tales from his opinion and did learn about the individuals who sat at this desk over the years. What I read also inspired me to do other research on these Senators outside of the book. As I digested these stories from the book, I was reminded of another book I read, The Fight for the Four Freedoms, which was written by a college professor who also had strong political opinion woven through its pages.

A former KKK member was on the Supreme Court – Senator Hugo Black of Alabama, who was later nominated to the US Supreme Court by President Franklin Roosevelt, was previously a member of the Ku Klux Klan, or KKK as it’s abbreviated. In his story, Brown opens stating Black’s membership, saying political motivation drove him and said Black didn’t really have a choice in order to fulfill him political ambitions. Clearly I don’t buy that justification! Black most certainly had a choice not to join a domestic terrorism organization. As this book was written in the early days of the cancel culture that has sadly permeated our society, to simply gloss over Black’s one-time membership in the Klan, though he later renounced it, is hypocritical.

A fitting bible quote – I noted the following bible quote from the book, "for they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind." - Hosea 8:7. This is very applicable for the spin and churn that goes on daily in Washington, DC that yields little to nothing.

Where Desk 88 is a partisan book, I did enjoy the anecdotes and tales told to Sherrod first hand from people who personally knew the subjects of the book, from Robert F. Kennedy to George McGovern to William Proxmire. In between each Senator’s story is “Thoughts form Desk 88” which is Brown’s political opinions that is loosely inspired by each Senator’s story.

If you are interested in political history, or are a progressive Democrat, Desk 88 may be a book for you. As I give away all books I read, this one is going to a friend who is more aligned with the overarching theme of the book than I am.

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

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As I try to clear the nagging debate out of my mind over whether the movie Jaws is a horror film or not, I am fortunate to have had more cerebral encounters over the past week.

But were those cerebral encounters optimal? – New to me is ultradian rhythms although I don’t quite fully understand them yet. Apparently these are a level lower than circadian rhythms, where we have cycles throughout the day, and need “rest” in between them. I put this at the top of this week’s list as I need to re-read this (again) and try to find where my peaks and troughs are throughout the day.

Silly Spammers – I couldn’t help but laugh when I got spam email for a spelling check system that opened like this, “...it looks like you have a couple spelling errors on your website such as the word "Blart".” Clearly whatever algorithm this system uses is unaware of the movie that was filmed at my favorite mall in the Boston area, not to mention the grammatical error of putting the period outside of the quote at the end of a sentence. Interesting that their system went back over a year to find a spelling “error.”

Little House Lore – When my family took a road trip out west through Minnesota and South Dakota a few years ago, we saw markers and sites related to the book series Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder. We didn’t stop any as they were out of the way, plus I had heard there was a lot of questions as to the historical accuracy in the series. This week I came across this article that gets into some of the details of Wilder’s stories, including one notable character that was actually a mashup of several people. There was no mention if Charles Ingalls hair was flowing as portrayed by Michael Landon.

Back in a Bash – It’s great that in-person networking events are coming back, and one I am looking forward to is Tech Bash, which will be held at Badger State Brewing in Green Bay, WI on November 15. There’s a vibrant tech scene there, and it’s fueled by their Chamber of Commerce. It should prove to be a lively event.

Ask Him Anything, Really – My friend and doppelganger Mike Gastin has started an “ask me anything” video series, where people send him questions related to branding and marketing, among other topics, and he answers them. One I particularly liked is on how to get new clients for your business. In addition to being informative, his videos are also very well produced. Maybe I should ask him how he does it?

Different country, somewhat similar technology – I have been fortunate to work with some amazing technologists over my career, both close to home and around the world. One of them is from Bulgaria, and this week he shared with me this article about how Bulgaria became a technology leader. I love these kind of stories as it’s great to learn of international parallels to what I was working with and on at different points of my career.

Maybe she is new to the planet? – A woman from New York is suing breakfast food behemoth Kellogg’s over the fact that there are few strawberries in their Strawberry Pop-Tarts. As I read this, I said to myself, “you mean there’s actually real strawberries in a strawberry Pop-Tart?” And here I always thought it was a genetically engineered processed sugar piece of food that is oh, so tasty yet bad for you; did you think that too? Maybe New York is where her spaceship recently landed, as I thought this was universal common knowledge.

Trick or Treat and Camp – Last weekend at High Cliff State Park, which is at the top of Lake Winnebago by me here in Dairyland, they resumed the annual tradition of people camping in cooler weather and having Trick-or-Treating, where the campers go all out to decorate their campsite. It was a jackpot for the kiddos as they filled their bags with candy, however I was more impressed with the “adult” treats of homebrewed beer and a wide assortment of Jell-o shots! The picture above was one of the many elaborate setups on a camp site. After this, having the kiddos go around the neighborhood this Sunday will likely be a disappointment.

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

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My last post at The Hot Iron, Lower the Minimum Age to Work, was the one-thousandth post I have written for my blog over the almost 15 years since I started it.

I say that calls for acknowledgment and some reflection.

Where It Began

Over the years I have often mentioned why I started and have continued this blog. In short, I had a client of my Web business who asked me to stop building them a Web site and build them a blog first using specific software. After building theirs, I realized I had no “showcase” blog to use as an example to future clients. I had registered the domain name thehotiron.com years earlier, as I thought a play on “strike while the iron is hot” was a good name for a blog. At the end of 2006, what you are reading this from was born.

I slowly got into writing, namely as I wasn’t much of a writer previously. Some posts were things on my mind, others were on what was bugging me, and others were a way to promote myself and my business. Types of posts emerged over the years, such as mobile phone evaluations, book takeaways and What I Learned for the previous week. No matter what I wrote, I tried to contribute something unique to the global conversation. Looking back on random posts as I am writing this, I think I did a good job at keeping to this mission.

1,000 Could Have Been Sooner, Thanks Social Media

There’s no doubt on the impact on social media in the world. A little closer to home, it certainly impacted what and how often I wrote on my blog. Something that was bugging me could easily be boiled down to 120 characters in a Tweet or a little longer in a Facebook post. Over time however those social accounts have gone away or ground down to a halt, as I have preferred to write in longer form in a platform I control. Am I anti-social? No – I certainly do share links on social media to my blog posts. However it’s nice to have my collection of written thoughts in one place, making The Hot Iron the center of my digital presence – something I have written about before and will continue to in the future. Judging by the little bit of observing I do of hits to the blog, others do find me here and keep coming back.

What’s Next

A grand of posts down, another to go? We’ll see, as I stopped making predictions here a long time ago. A little celebration to go along with this reflection... now that’s something that will happen for certain.

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

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Announcements • Blogging • Thrive • (3) Comments • Permalink