In addition to realizing how much I and my kids miss hearing the words “take your mark” in a competitive swim meet, or in this case a fun swim meet, my brain was enlarged a bit with the below things as well as squeezed by a continuingly hectic schedule.

• My friend Tiffany has started an eponymous home-based bakery called Tiffany’s Brownies and Treats and was recently featured on a Boston TV station. For my readers in the Boston area and across the Bay State, you can buy them locally or have her deliciousness shipped to your door. For the rest of the world, we will have to visit the Commonwealth to get them. That is, unless, one of my Boston-area readers wants to buy some and resend them to me...
• Thinking I have too much in my head and not as much documented on life, I sought a tool to help log all of the minutiae. I found Big Book an Excel spreadsheet for structuring the information. Now to start putting it all down.
• While trying to contribute to the elimination of shortage of coins in America, one coin kicked out of the Coinstar machine that I didn’t recognize. After looking it up I found it was an Andrew Johnson Presidential dollar coin. I had no idea they made such coins. Granted I am no numismatist, but I thought I was aware of all currency out there.
• Though it has been around for several months, many are not familiar that Appleton, Wisconsin, along with other municipalities, are using the locally-created app You Get It First. Though the user experience of it is a little clunky, it gets the word out on major accidents or police actions to avoid.
• There is such a thing as renewable natural gas.
• When I had the wild idea or recording myself speaking blog content and wondering how to convert it to text, a colleague recommended Temi as he uses it himself. I have tried other voice to text methods with varying success, so I may give this a shot.
• I found another online course that I haven’t had the time to take. This time GitLab, the Web based system development and operations platform (or DevOps for short) is offering a remote work certification which I have added to my growing list. Granted I have been working remotely for years, but likely there is something I will take away from it.
• There needs to be more teen/pre-teen movies like Teen Beach Movie.
• I attended my first in-person networking event in about four months. It was held at my co-working space and they are planning them on a regular basis. It was a great opportunity to meet the others I see in passing there, and reminded me networking is not just for yourself, but networking for others is equally as important.
• The somewhat newish Microsoft Edge Web browser recently release a “feature” where it would ask you every time you want to launch an external program, like say Zoom, from a link. As I launch external programs like say Zoom all the time, this was annoying. Fortunately this week an update allowed you to check a box to dismiss the ask.
• As school systems across the US and likely the world are coming up with their phased / hybrid / contingent plans for the new school year, likely something missing from each and every one of them is a way to make it easy for parents to know where their kids need to be. I posted about it here on LinkedIn but the post didn’t get much traction. Am I the only one thinking this?
• Speaking again of school at home, Numb is a short film made by a 15-year old Canadian student about her at-home studying this spring. Sadly, this represents the same experience of many kids around the world.
• Finally on schools, I found the above-pictured display of school supply donation kits at a local market. You buy these for $7, and the market donates them to a local school. In past years I would add one to my shopping order as a small way of giving back and perhaps buying some karma. Though nobody told this year’s checkout clerks as mine was at first bagged with my groceries until I called it out. Likely these will be sent home with students and their Chromebooks for this school year.

I was serious about someone shipping me brownies.

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

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