It was a short week workwise, and though I was wicked busy, I seemed to be more on auto-pilot than anything. Looking back, about the only real thinking I did was whether or not I wanted to get the early child tax credits the US government for some reason is handing out this year ahead of next year’s taxes.

Do and Deduct Accessibility – Speaking of taxes, here’s a tax credit for small businesses that makes sense. US tax code says you can deduct some expenses to make your business accessible. Though it doesn’t explicitly state you can deduct Web or digital Accessibility, why not? A great question for a CPA or tax advisor as I am neither of them.

Camp and De-Google – For the last several years I have been using Matomo on this very blog. Matomo is a free, open-source alternative to Google Analytics. Though I work with Google Analytics, or GA for short, as part of my job, for myself the less Big Tech I am involved with the better. So I have been experimenting with Matomo along with GA, which I still have here as well. With that long setup, there’s plans for a MatomoCamp in the making. A “camp” is really an informal conference, and this would be for people to learn about and expand their knowledge of Matomo. It looks like there’s a ways to go in planning, but it will be interesting to see how people are using it, especially as I am the only one I know who does.

Elton Encore – Tickets went on sale this past week for Sir Elton John’s farewell tour when it hits the home of my New England Patriots next year on my birthday. While seeing this performance would be a treat, it wouldn’t be the first time I saw him in concert at Gillette Stadium, and up close too. Back in 2004 I was at the season opener of the Patriots as they celebrated another Super Bowl championship. I took the train to the game and it arrived later than planned. As I was running through the concourse to my seats, I came head-on to security clearing a path for a golf cart, and on it was none other than Elton himself, complete with a scared look on his face! Moments later Elton John performed with the Boston Pops, as you can see in this YouTube video. That experience would be hard to top.

Good While It Lasted – Amazon announced it is ending its 2% reward when you load at least $100 into your account with the Big Tech retail giant. You have until the day before my birthday to take advantage of this gain, which has a better return than most bank savings accounts offer. Clearly this means Amazon worked out a better deal on credit card processing, which I presume is why they offered this alternative in the first place. You can still load manually or automatically to your account, and if you do the latter they will give you $5 for the first time you do it.

Make Your Own Final Countdown – In recent years I have warmed back up to countdown clocks on Web sites. Perhaps it is because there is one on the swim meet Web site I manage? I have also seen such clocks in email messages and wondered how those were done. This past week I finally looked into it, and this post explains the why and how to make your own countdown clock for email and Web too.

Keep ‘Em Separated Or Else – I have always been a firm believer in the separation of personal and work email. My reasons have been mainly for organizational purposes, but also because your work email belongs to your employer, so why use it for personal use? A group called the Wisconsin Transparency Project wants to make this law, making it illegal to use private email for public business. Their argument, beyond organizational purposes, is that it adds complexity when open record requests are made for emails for a person, and their personal accounts have to be scoured as well as work accounts. Though I am not someone who advocates for legislating common sense, I can get behind this one.

Train Keeps A Rollin’ – A consistent commercial during the 1970’s was for Wausau Insurance. Here’s an example of one, which features the train station in the north central Wisconsin city where the insurance company was based, that was animated in the outro of all of their commercials. As the spot said, the trains aren’t running anymore, and haven’t ran past this station in decades. Heck, the company was acquired by Liberty Mutual Insurance and is no more. This past weekend I went there and took the above photo, as the for the past few years the station has been home to Timekeeper Distillery. I also went in and sampled their tasty spirits, taking home a bottle of their Straight Bourbon Whiskey. This will be a new auto stop for me when driving “Up North.”

Happy US Independence Day!

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

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