It’s that time of the year... when I wonder why people still stand in line at the post office to ship packages. As I dropped off cards and packages the other day, it was clear so many have not bought a simple, inexpensive postal scale and chosen to generate postage online.

As a service to my loyal readers, allow me to suggest a postal scale like this (yes, it’s an affiliate link) and to create a US Postal Service online account and use their Click-N-Ship service.

With all of this free time on my hands as a result of these tools, one may think I would have gotten this list of what I learned out a few days earlier if not on-time, not to mention writings on other topics. Let’s just move on.

Toasty Hot – I was skeptical when I saw Starbucks Toasted Graham coffee Keurig cups (yes, another affiliate link) on the supermarket shelf the other day, but bought them anyway. For me flavored coffees are usually a disappointment, and are typically artificially flavored to add to my aversion of them. That skepticism evaporated like the steam of a fresh-brewed cup of coffee. This is a delicious product – both the smell and taste were amazing, and the package states it’s flavored with unspecified natural flavors. I’m not sure how long they will be around but I will stock up on my next shopping trip.

Keeping Password Safe and Sane – With the flurry of last-minute online shopping, I almost forget the memory muscle of using my password manager Keeper. I have been using the product daily for over a decade to manage all of the online accounts for home and work. I recommend you try it out, and if you use this referral link we both get something in addition to what you get for the sanity of organized account information accessible online and offline and across all devices and computers.

Unique Encryption – In a conversation about securing purely digital voting machines and the safe transmission of the voting results over the Internet, I learned about Diffie-Hellman encryption which is a process of providing unique encryption keys for each voting machines and their unique communication to a central server. Note this is not anything new, as the method was first published in 1976. Without getting into encryption details and causing some of my reader’s eyes to glaze over, it differs from common encryption – say, a Web site – where there’s a public key that any Web browser uses as compared to unique keys for each machine. Just providing some unique information you likely haven’t read in all that’s being covered about the last US election.

Devolving Opinion – I will join the masses in highlighting the stupidity of Joseph Epstein’s “opinion” on whether Dr. Jill Biden is a real doctor. In saying this note I am not pandering to my audience as many of them have a PhD (yes, it’s a small but mighty readership here at The Hot Iron and I know most of you). I have many friends who use the title Doctor before their name, and knew most while they were studying and writing their dissertations for it, and I have great respect for what they went through. However lost in story this is devolving of what the opinion or editorial “pages” of newspapers have traditionally been. Perhaps it’s because I have recently finished reading Charles Krauthammer’s book on his opinion pieces over the decades of his career. Whatever it is, if there’s questions of what is considered “news” today, adding “opinion” to it in this format doesn’t help for the long-term viability of the mainstream media.

May I Have a Second Opinion? – I reminded myself this week that in software as in medicine, and with the repair of just about anything, it’s important to have a second opinion by an expert. Many times initial triage is done on a situation by someone without a high level of experience, and as a result their recommendation reflects that. Many people offering that triage don’t like to go directly to the person eventually offering the second opinion for many reasons, everything from ego to not realizing they should. So I raise my glass to those offering second opinions, and for reducing my stress a little over the last week.

Chatbots on my Horizon – A couple of weeks ago I participated in a webinar titled The Power of Chatbot offered by Women in Technology Wisconsin. The driver for me was that I really didn’t know much about chatbots. To that end, the webinar opened my eyes to the possibilities of their use and the power and cost-savings they can provide. The recording of The Power of Chatbot webinar is available here. One takeaway I had from this was the human involvement in creating and continually improving the chatbot experience. The value with that is humans are still needed to answer the question once, rather than repeatedly for the multitude of people asking.

Keep Those Ugly Sweaters Clean – My local favorite dry cleaner came out with a good video on keeping your winter clothes clean and fresh. The video is a little long but in the end was worth the time. I also learned from this that the company, which went to a full-delivery model during the pandemic, renamed itself from Donaldson’s Cleaners to Donny On The Spot. The name may take a little getting used to, but their great service is a family tradition.

Robots Speak Italian? – For the last few months I have been trying to learn Italian using the Duolingo app. Where so far so good, but I would likely crash if immersed into a conversation in my ancestral tongue. This week the app introduced 2 new voices, a male and female, to replace the existing ones I have used since I started over the summer. They sound horrible – I can barely understand them, and they are far from fluid and natural like the ones I started with. So far I am plowing through new lessons and hope it learning Italian will continue to be una bellissima esperienza.

Speaking of my heritage, this week I made a batch of pizzelles. They are a traditional Italian cookie made in something similar to a waffle iron. Where there are many variations and flavors, I make them thin and with my Mom’s recipe with anise. Where I would love to ship them to all of my readers, they unfortunately don’t travel well. I have also adapted a grain-free version of the recipe (sorry, Mom) and am going to make them and another batch of the traditional ones leading up to Christmas just as she used to do.

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

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