Month: September 2016

The Story of Why I Make Short Blog Posts and Link Them to My Social Media Accounts

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In the summer of 2013 I made the decision to delete my Facebook profile. I wrote about it at the time here: I wanted to delete a large amount of content I had created and there was no way to do it without individually deleting things. I did not want to take the time or effort to do that so the only alternative I had was the so-called nuclear option of completely deleting my account. At the time I even thought I might not come back. I still think about getting rid of my account again however it is a good place to share photos and what’s going on with friends and family I don’t get to normally see. Communicating in other ways might be problematic so for now I keep my Facebook account.

The reason I wanted to delete all the content from the account in the first place was because when I initially signed up for my account somewhere in 2007 or 2008 my expectations of privacy were vastly different than what you are today. There wasn’t anything incriminating, illegal, or anything like that posted however with Facebook continuing to inch people to share more I was uneasy with a large amount of information that I hadn’t vetted since I published it was solely in their system. I didn’t like that so I removed it all. In the fall of 2014 I did the same thing with Google.

Those actions do not mean that I don’t publish personal things on the Internet. On the contrary anything I post nowadays I do so knowing full well that is public on the Internet. The only exception would be photos on Facebook that I post however I do it in such a way that I delete them after three months.

Some people including my wife have pointed out in may have made fun of the fact that I link very short status posts from my blog to Facebook. I do that for a specific reason. Normally I do not make status posts at all however there are times when the situation warrants it. My opinion might not have any bearing on anything however I would rather have something posted on my blog and crossposted to Facebook and/or Twitter then have it exclusively within the control of Facebook and their systems.

Now that I’ve started blogging more I post my writings to twitter and Facebook because that’s where the people I know go to browse. By sending the link instead of writing directly within Facebook their system only has the URL and may be a snippet from my blog. They don’t have all of the content. Like I said I don’t know if doing this has any bearing on anything however it’s my little way of controlling information I generate. I can control who spiders my blog and I can get analytics on who’s going to my blog whereas I have no idea what Facebook is doing with my data. Worse yet I have a bad idea about what they’re doing with it and it doesn’t have my best interests at heart. They’re not evil however there trying to make money for my information or information about me. That compels me to limit what information I provide to them. If you’ve actually read this far into the post and you feel that I might be getting my tinfoil hat out again I recommend you watch the 2013 documentary terms and conditions may apply. If you do you understand how disturbing and prevalent mining data about you really is.

So there you have it. You might think it’s silly however I feel I have very good reasons why most comments, status, updates I make on Twitter and Facebook are generated from my blog no matter how short it may be.

Inbound Network Lockdown With an SSH Proxy

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Ever since I started working on building my backup network using raspberry pi’s and BitTorrent Sync I’ve started a list of other home projects I want to do with technology. One of the things that’s been in my head however not high on the list actually do was create a VPN endpoint with my home router so I could VPN in while remote. I tried to play around with open VPN and ran into some pickups. Didn’t have all the time I really needed to sit down and figure it out so I gave up on the project. Even while I was trying to set up an inbound VPN friends of mine at work were saying it was probably overkill anyway.

At least one if not more people recommended that I set up a SSH proxy on one machine and use that to connect to all the other resources. I like the idea but never gave it much focus until recently. I have a Zotac ZBox C Series Mini Computer that I have been running Ubuntu Linux on for a while. I’ve been baking it in as a next-generation BitTorrent Sync machine for my network. I hadn’t deployed it yet and figured I would try using that as my SSH proxy.

The proxy itself was trivial to initiate to the box. Deciding how I would configure my computer was not difficult however it took some thought so I could be connected to the proxy in one web browser and not affect all other Internet traffic. I opted to try FoxyProxy in Firefox. I do not normally use Firefox on a day-to-day basis so being able to dedicate that browser for direct proxy connections to my home network seemed reasonable.

The setup worked with less than 30 minutes of configuration. Once I was able to prove to myself that I can do this and maintain I needed to figure out what my permanent solution would look like. The Zotac likely won’t stay at my house and I’m using it for other things. If ongoing have a proxy I use often I want isolated and basically have it do one thing only. I opted to set up one raspberry pi as a dedicated SSH box. At the moment I have enough spare pi’s to dedicate one. I initially had concerns about the 100 Mb limit on the network card however I doubt I’ll be doing anything of high traffic that I should worry.

My set up for now is simple enough. I have a plain-vanilla Rasbian install on a Raspberry Pi 2 with a 16 gig SD card. I have the pi plugged into an ethernet jack on my router. Besides SSH I installed Fail2ban to protect myself from potential attacks on the Internet. I also used a password of significant complexity for the login details. I have a dynamic DNS entry set up so it’s easy to connect from anywhere.

This setup works well on my laptop however I am not sure if I could get it working using my iPad. That’s one trade-off with this configuration however most if not all of the services that I previously exposed to the Internet should be fine with this limitation. If anything I can use remote desktop software from an iPad to connect to a local machine and then bring up those services.

The next thing I want to do involve making it easier to access my home network while on my laptop remotely. That mainly involves configuring Royal TSX sessions to use my proxy details. I also would need to set up the proxy connection within royalty TSX. I also need to finish creating localhost entries for my home network services as well as bookmarks within Firefox to make accessing everything easier. As much as I want to do that all up front it’s a little bit of effort that I will probably just take care of as I need it.

An additional enhancement I would like to make is to go beyond having Fail2ban and a strong password to enabling to factor authentication. That will require A bit more skill for me to learn and at least one hardware USP token. For now I consider that a reach goal.

I still want to find some time to play with inbound VPN configuration. Even if it’s just to show myself I can do it. For now however the SSH proxy more than meets my needs and is working today. There are other projects on my “Technical Maker Board” that I set up that I’d like to get to next.

The Apple Event

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By many I am considered a fan of Apple products. I guess I am however that’s only because they make good stuff. When they stop making goods product I’ll stop buying them. That’s an old argument since many don’t realize I’ve owned many an android device so I have my opinion of Apple-based first-hand experience between both platforms.

I have mixed opinions on the product updates that Apple recently announced. For the Apple Watch I am very curious if the series 2 watches are fast enough that there is no lag when I lift the watch to my face to look at the time. That was a huge annoyance for me and one primary reason why I sold my original Apple watch. I will wait until the series 2 watches are available in the store to test it myself. Until then I  am still happy with a nice classic analog watch.

When I first saw the specifications for the iPhone seven I realized there was no compelling reason for me to upgrade. I have a success plus as my personal phone and there was virtually nothing that stood out and said who I need to have that. Last year forced touch was compelling enough for me to try it however afterwards I realized it wasn’t a worthwhile upgrade. I had several conversations with friends about the same topic. Then I spoke to someone I met via the parent meet up groups. I think even admitted wasn’t much of an upgrade however he was upgrading anyway. It got me thinking why he would do that. It turns out you might be right. I buy my phone out right when i get one. I have for doing that because I set aside money every month for my “tech fund”. Why sell something on eBay I put it back into the fund. When I buy a new iPhone I typically sell the old one on eBay and put it that sale amount towards buying the new phone. I usually get about 30 to 50% of my money back depending on the condition of the phone. What this friend said was that you could do the same thing with apples purchasing plan and still get a new phone every 12 months. I did the math last year and for some reason didn’t think it was compelling. Looking back I think it was because I didn’t want to be locked into something and also because apples purchasing plan includes the extra cost of AppleCare. Thinking about it now I want AppleCare anyway and the price of the phone is no different than me buying it unlocked. The fact that it’s still an unlocked phone even though I’m in a purchase agreement doesn’t matter either.

After weighing all the options using apples purchase plan in essence you can’t get a new phone every year. Now if I was a different person  this might not make sense. If you upgrade annually you’re constantly in an agreement to pay for phone. If you want to upgrade every three or four years then upgrading constantly is not for you since you wouldn’t want to be continuing to make payments. For me however buying the phone every year or two anyway. Even if I did an upgrade to the iPhone seven this year I would definitely be upgrading next year. I amortize the price out over two years that means I’m always paying a fee for my phone anyway. By buying into the Apple purchase plan it just makes it easier to get a new phone every year.

The W Sisters and The Story of A’s Paddington Bear Origin

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Paddington Bear No Arms

I previously wrote about T and her Dee Dee monkey http://scottodyssey.com/2014/11/29/the-story-of-dee-dee-and-that-other-monkey-we-will-never-speak-of/. Today I wanted to write a bit about A’s favorite stuffed toy. For one thing I believe it’s a good story however my driving force for writing it down is so I will remember it.The first thing I want to get out there is I thought I wrote about this a while ago however searching my own blog I noticed I never actually wrote any stories directly mentioning how A came about to have her Paddington bear.

The story begins with a trip I took late April into early May 2014. I went to London for some training with my group right after a reorganization. Since I was going to be in London that week I was missing in other culture training that was being held in the US at the same time. As I was canceling that culture training it was mentioned that the same training was being held the following week in London. I wasn’t sure it would’ve been possible to stay for the training since I would already be in London however I figured I would ask. It turned out that my boss thought very highly of the training and said it was worth it for me to stick around if I could for the second week in London. What I didn’t realize at the time of booking the trip was it was a national holiday in the UK the weekend I was staying over. Apparently I found out later that means if you’re “in country” you get a holiday. This is all relevant because usually when I’m traveling you do not have a lot of time to do anything other than work. For this trip I ended up having a three-day weekend to myself. It was an odd change of pace since home I had a five month old and a year and a half-year-old.

One of the things I want to do while I was there was some shopping. As I was wandering around the city I stumbled across Hamlets. I really didn’t realize where I was or that it was a famous store. I was walking by and I saw there was a toy store and figured I should really get something for the girls. It was a pretty cool place however walking in I had visions of FAO Schwartz in New York City. Both are cool places, even though FAO felt more over the top I have bad memories of being stuck there listening to the welcome to our world songs over and over again so children’s toy stores aren’t exactly on the top of my fun list. Since I took the time to get a local Sim card for my iPhone I was able to have high-speed data coverage my entire stay. Since we live in the age of wireless data I decided to Face time with M at the store to see if she liked what I was thinking about getting.

For T I saw a cute bear book bag. For A I saw a my first little stuffed bear. When I showed M she was like oh yeah it’s Paddington Bear let’s get it or something to that effect. I had not really known what Paddington Bear was. It made sense that he was famous since the store had tons of them. With those gifts picked out I paid for them and went about my sightseeing for the weekend. I was just glad I remembered to get something. Side story it took me until being at Heathrow on the way home to find what M had been asking for.

When I got home we introduced both gifts to the girls. Writing this years later it’s hard to remember if A immediately took to Paddington Bear or not. That of course is the reason why I am journaling in the first place so I can remember the details over time. What I do know is definitely within a few months A had herself a Dee Dee. That was the name of T’s lovie animal. We were not wondering where A got back from. Once it became apparent that Paddington bear was the one and only stuffed animal for A I scrambled to order additional clones of him. I’ve written about how we did something like that with T. I was lucky to find a store on the Amazon marketplace that was selling the British version of the my first Paddington Bear. I bought two of them so we had enough of them in case something happened to one or even two of them.

Thankfully with T her three monkeys have been plenty. A on the other hand has grown fond of biting her Paddington bear. She will bite his hat. She will bite his arms. She will bite his arms until he frays and then she will pull all the stuffing out of his arms. That is what she did to two of the three original Paddington Bears. M

sewed one of them up but he had stumpy looking hands. We could really use him since he wouldn’t look like the others. Then A ate the second one and we had to with defects. For some reason we couldn’t find the third one and we were getting very concerned. That is when I bought two more of them online.

We warned A that she has to be careful since we might not be able to “fix” Paddington if she keeps biting him. We said that as we gave her a new one. A proceeded to destroy the arms of that one. My memory is a bit fuzzy on if we did give her yet another one and she destroyed those arms as well. I could go check in my stash of Paddington bears however is lazy so let’s call it that she definitely eat one if not two more of them. It was then that I ordered yet another one or two from the same shop. At that point I said I’m done and no matter what she does these things I was not going to buy another one.

I do not know if we just got lazy or we wanted A to understand the consequences of the biting so we have not replaced her bare with no stuffing in his arms. I had the idea to take the hands with no stuffing and stick them inside the coat that the bear wears. She’s been generally good with that so we haven’t replaced the ripped bear with a new one. We still have at least one if not two new ones in a box. After I got the last batch of bears I just left them in the shipping box that they came in and through them in my closet somewhere.

T is probably too smart for her own good since she is almost ratted us out on the whole Bear conspiracy a few times. At one point she told A that daddy was going to buy her a new bear. T also hinted at the bear replacement a few other times however specific details are eluding me as I write this. I’m not really sure if she understands what we’ve done or if she’s just saying stuff. I don’t recall ever actually talking about buying a new Paddington Bear in front of T so either she’s guessing or we’ve slipped up. On the other hand on some level I feel like A knows and doesn’t care that Paddington is more than one bear. To be safe nobody reading this should say anything about it to her. By the time she finds this post and can read our own am pretty sure it’ll be safe for her to know what went down.

The Story of My Slow Road to a Coffee Habit

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I never drank coffee in college. I was never into hot beverages or coffee specifically. I used to say that even know I didn’t eat very well I didn’t smoke, drink very much, or drink coffee. I’m not sure if it was the flavor or just hot liquid that turned me off to coffee. By the time I was out of college I didn’t mind that I wasn’t drinking it since I knew it could be back for you. I figured I had enough things wrong with my diet that I didn’t need to add anything else to it that was not good.

The history of me and coffee I think started on a flight from New York to Los Angeles while working at Datastream. I got an upgrade to business elite on the Delta flight I was taking and the flight attendant convinced me to try and Irish coffee. It might have been several years after that before I had my next cup.

Starting around my early 30s when I decided to get serious about dating I would have cappuccino here and there after dinner with dessert. I remember one dessert place in Little Italy that I found with friends that was good. I would always get some sort of dessert and a cappuccino. It was nice. That segued into going back to the same place sometimes with a date. That in turn evolved into having a cappuccino here and there after dinner.

It wasn’t until I started working at Thomson Reuters that I started drinking coffee a little more regularly however not all the time. By that time around late 2008 I knew I liked the cappuccino. I would sweeten it up a little and the milk sugar mixed with the coffee was pretty good for me. I wasn’t that into regular drip coffee. That’s why I was intrigued when the coffee machine at the office was in had cappuccino. What I knew at the time but didn’t care was it really wasn’t a true cappuccino. It was espresso roast coffee with a peppered milk and water combination that was sort of a cappuccino. For me a coffee newbie was perfect. At that time didn’t go to the office all the time and work remote for at least part of my week. When I would go to the time square office I would treat myself with the Flavia cappuccino. I remember distinctly the first time I had 2 cups in a row. I was in a long meeting and thought the extra caffeine would help. I was amazed at crazy I felt after the 2nd cup. I didn’t understand how people did that regularly. To this day I rarely have 2 cups in a row.

My coffee habit evolved further when I started dating someone who thought it would be fun to get me to drink more of it. That was her take on the situation. The reality was by simply regularly dating somebody I hadn’t done in a while I had more opportunity to be out and have more coffee. After we stopped eating however I still like the idea of a cup more frequently than I previously had. One of the people I work with at the time had mentioned they had a Flavian machine at their house and that it was pretty decent. I didn’t need anything fancy and its research. I found that could indeed by personal machine for around $100. I decided to go with the Flavia instead of a Kurig because Flavia offered the cappuccino pouches. It was at this point that I started drinking at least one cup a day on most workdays. At the time the Flavia machine was a easy low-cost option for me.

It wasn’t until I met MC in the summer of 2010 that I started learning and getting schooled in what good coffee is. Back then to me good coffee was Starbucks. MC is not a fan of Starbucks. I’m still okay with it however grown to learn that there’s much better options out there if you know where to look. When MC eventually so my apartment she rightfully scorned my Flavia machine and called it hot brown water. Let’s face it looking back she was right. We moved in together or around that time we decided to go and get an Nespresso machine. MC knew I liked cappuccinos and thought if I wanted to have cappuccinos we should do it right. I had been researching machines on my own and when she encouraged me to look for a better one I decided to take the plunge. We opted for an Nespresso machine without the milk frothing option. We bought a separate milk frothing device from Nespresso. I figured if something went wrong with one of the pieces of the multifunction device (IE espresso machine or milk frother) the other half would be useless. I have not been a fan of all-in-one devices in a while. The price was comparable to get the two devices versus the all-in-one. With the milk frothing device and true espresso machine I was able to experience much better cappuccinos at home cheaper than going to the store. The cost is still high per unit however it was cheaper than my other options at the time.

For years I enjoyed that espresso machine. When I was losing weight I would have a skim cappuccino almost as a snack substitute since it’s only 80 cal. I found that when I was losing weight I actually started drinking more coffee. It wasn’t a surprise that I was doing that. It was almost deliberate knowing that it could offset my hunger a little. I was still only having about 2 cups a day.

At some point I was concerned about the total cost of owning the Nespresso machine. Each pod is around $.65-$.80. If I do double shots once or twice a day it adds up. I had researched alternative espresso machines and didn’t want to deal with the expensive costs associated. I stumbled across the old-school European idea of the mocha pot. I picked up a small one on Amazon for about $25. I was able to use the same Lavazza or Illy coffee that MC used in her drink coffee since she always buys espresso roast. The mocha pot coffee was not quite the same as espresso but it was pretty potent and I like it. The problem with the mocha pot is its pain in the butt to clean.

At this point with my espresso machine and new mocha pot we had four different coffee delivery mechanisms in our house. In addition to those two MC has her ceramic filter she uses for making old-school drip coffee with a teakettle. That is what she uses when she’s just make coffee for herself or one or two people. We also have a full-size 12 cup coffee maker for drip coffee that we keep in a closet for when we have company.

After I lost weight and was able to eat more calories in a day I was less concerned about staying full. At that point cappuccino was counterproductive since I didn’t need the 80 cal of milk. It was around then that someone at work who was also relative, sore on the subject suggested I try Americano’s. I didn’t realize that the flavor profile of the Americano was that much different than drip coffee. I decided to try it out and was surprised that I actually liked it. Over a few months I slowly moved from having cappuccinos most of the time to having Americanos with some cappuccinos here and there. At home I would boil hot water with her teakettle and poured into a double shot of espresso I would make with the Nespresso machine. It was a good solution although it was $1.25 per cup.

At this point I was curious about coffee alternatives for the house that were not drip coffee. By now I’d have drip coffee here and there when I couldn’t get an espresso-based drink. There were plenty of times before then when I simply would not have coffee if I couldn’t get an Americana or cappuccino. As I started drinking more coffee if they didn’t have an espresso-based drink I would just “suck it up” and have drip coffee. I still wasn’t a big fan of it however I was curious what alternatives I had two espressos or Americanos. Talking to friends and researching lead me to want to try a French press. It was relatively low-cost and from what I read relatively high quality coffee. I bought one on Amazon for under $30. The hardest part for me was finding coffee I wanted to get that was ground course for French presses. I ended up going to Gregory’s coffee where I get my daily mid-day work coffee and picked up a pound and had them grind it for me. I was very impressed by how the French press coffee came out at home. On the weekends that’s what I make today. I’ve been continuing to buy the Gregory’s coffee since I like it. The other day I picked up some Café grumpy ground coffee to try. The sales lady was very helpful for me to find the right flavor I like. More recently I’ve been going to grumpy’s this summer for my coffee. Nothing wrong with Gregory’s however I like the cold brew at grumpy’s better even though it’s a little bit further of a walk for me. The French press turns out to be the fifth coffee delivery mechanism I own at home.

Last summer were the summer before that high had tried cold brewed iced coffee. For someone they never drank coffee a lot 10 years ago cold brew is literally an eye-opening experience. Wow it is potent. I liked it however it was strong and rough on my stomach. This summer I realized that was I think due to the Gregory’s coffee specifically. The Starbucks cold brew or the grumpy’s cold brew work much better for me. I afternoon coffee break at work now consists of going to get cold brew since it’s so hot out. I’ve evolved from Flavia cappuccino in the morning to and Americana in the morning with a decaf Americano or a cold brew in the afternoon. I’ve had friends talk about brewing the cold brew at home. at the time of the discussions with them I wasn’t as interested. A few weeks ago I came across an article mentioning that sale on a cold brewing pitcher on Amazon. I researched it and it turned out to be one of the top two best-selling. For the price I figured to give it a try. It came this weekend while we were away at my sister-in-law’s. At the time of this writing but likely not by the time this gets posted I haven’t used it yet. Hopeful it’s not that much of a hassle to clean.

The cold brew making pitcher now makes six separate coffee preparation devices I have in my house. If six sounds excessive you are most likely correct. On a day-to-day basis I only use two of them. MC uses one other one. The coffee maker is only for company and we use it a few times a year however when we do use it it’s invaluable so it’s not something it’s going away. I don’t use the mocha pop often because it’s cumbersome to clean. I like the coffee but it’s not worth the effort. Was also very cheap to get so unlikely I’m going to get rid of it since it doesn’t take up much space. I do use the Nespresso machine several times a week however not usually for morning coffee on the weekends. I’m curious to see if I’ll actually use the cold blue pitcher however I have a feeling it might be very useful for summer months.

One interesting thing that I noticed was as much as I like a cappuccino I find that one of the most basic coffee preparation methods the French press is one of my go to options. I thought of that since I’m reminded of the most basic form of shaving options also seem to be the best. And am loving my new old-school mechanical keyboard. So even though I like high tech stuff I’m fascinated that for some things I’m drawn to old school stuff.

There you have it high 10 to 12 year evolution from not having any coffee to my twice a day fix. Nowadays I do try to have decaf in the afternoon except for when I’m doing colder since let’s face it half the point of cold brew coffee is the caffeine.

T and the Story of Daddy In Disbelief That He Has a 4 Years Old Today

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It really does feel not so long ago when I was holding a little 8 pound girl telling myself holy cow how am I a dad? I still say that myself sometimes. I’m not sure if that’s a cliché or not. There are many times when I stop think it is hard for me to grasp that I’m a dad. On that same thought however I guess I could go further and say I don’t know how I ended up with a wonderful wife and family. Maybe it’s being in denial that you’re supposed to be a role model for a little person that makes me go I don’t feel like a dad. Then of course there’s the times like the other day where I’m just sitting and watching T eat toast when she sick and having a conversation. Even while I was doing it I couldn’t help but smile and money that little girl up because she was so adorable.

That’s what makes this whole post so weird for me. It was only four years ago where I hope this little baby that I knew nothing about what to do with other than I wanted to holder and kiss her since she was mine. Now I have this smart and sassy little person who asks the funniest questions and remembers details from a year ago that I had to stop and think about before realizing she was right.

Four years ago this morning after a long night of not sleeping a little T came into the world. When she did she made my world that much brighter. Happy birthday T.

An Update on The Disembodied Female Voice Called Alexa That My Kids Always Hear Me Talking To

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When I last wrote about my Amazon echo I said I would be trying to teach it some smart things commands. Yeah, so I didn’t do that. Since setting up my Logitech Harmony with my echo to turn my TV on and off I haven’t really spent much time with the echo teaching it anything new. I’ve continue to use the echo. Apparently not as much as other people who are very vocal about how awesome it is however I am using it. My use case has become listening to music and checking the weather. Of course the main reason I bought the echo in the first place was I wanted to use voice commands to listen to music and my phone paired with a Bose Bluetooth speaker wasn’t doing that very well. With that fact in mind the echo is extremely successful at what I originally purchased it for

I did have hopes of using it for more than just music. I’m not sure if it’s usefulness hasn’t improved for me because I do not use Google for contacts, calendars, tasks. I also do not currently get my news from the radio or TV. I could see using an echo in my bedroom to listen to news stories as in getting ready in the morning however I don’t see the cost benefit of buying another device to do that specific task. The current echo I have is in our living room and suits its primary function very well in that location.

I could see over time having another device in different rooms however I’m holding back on that partly due to curiosity if Apple will release something to compete against the echo. They likely will however what the product turns out to be is anyone’s guess. And plenty of people are guessing, so I’m not going to. Until Apple makes an announcement I keep reading the weekly updates I get from Amazon on what new tricks the echo can perform to see if there’s any new features that will peak my interest. So far I’m still waiting.

One thing I do want to find time to focus on is ;to see if I can integrate my smart things with the echo a bit. That project however is not on the top of my hobby project list. Of course there’s a lot of specific things I want to do with my smart things that I haven’t done in over a year. Since we want to get a house at some point in the near term investing in any fixed devices such as power or light switches in this apartment doesn’t seem worth the value or time. All this extra integration might just wait until after we move.

The W Sisters and The Bedtime Stories Circa 15-August

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What I have realized even before I had little kids was that parents of little kids find the most normal or minor actions from children to be pretty funny. Even when I was not apparent I could totally get the point. I am not sure of everyone else does however I keep saying my kids are my entertainment budget. They really are. And I love it. Instead of writing little blurbs on Facebook like I know some people do I’ve been trying to turn comments are funny things I remember in two small stories.

I’ve been in a good place when it comes to writing recently so I have a backlog of things to publish and write about. This scratch that these minor anecdotes are from August 15.

Prior to getting ready for our bedtime routine T was complaining to me about something Amelia was doing wrong. I think Teagan takes it upon herself as big sister to do that. Or she just wants to annoy us, I’m not really sure. Now that T is understanding things more I try to explain to her stuff. That is probably not the best use of my time in a lot of instances however I try. In this case I tried to explain to T that she should worry about herself and not worry about what Amelia was doing if it’s not directly impacting her. I will give myself credit since I thought but didn’t say to her and nobody likes a rat. Teagan’s response to my commenting to her was that I shouldn’t worry about her and I should worry about myself. Touché Teagan, touché.

Later that evening I was reading stories to the girls. In recent months A likes to snuggle and have my hand around her waist. She says that she’s buckled in when I do that. T is hit or miss on the smuggling. For a few weeks she will needed to do it and then she stopped for a little while. As I was reading A blurts out “no, no, no, hold on”. She then proceeded to take the book and flip back a page. She had unanswered questions about the picture that she wanted me to address.

I believe this was also the same night that the girls insisted on having me have Alexa (aka our Amazon Echo) play the song “Fight Song” about three or four times. They danced around during the whole song. They even got crazier in their dancing is the temple of the song picked up for the chorus. I was lucky enough or smart enough to remember to take a video of one full song so I could send it to M and share it with our parents. I think Teagan started liking that song from Morgan’s bat mitzvah otherwise I have no idea where she heard it from. I would like to give a shout out to my brother-in-law Michael for the “Dance Party” idea. I can sometimes get them to dance around to other songs however this is their favorite one. Based on the lack of response from our downstairs neighbor pretty sure he works late during week.

Securing Email Isn’t Only For Spies, Dissidents, & Journalists, Right?

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Over the past year and a half I have been taking lots of steps to secure my digital life. I’ve written a lot about the different aspects of that. My migration from Google mail and other services to more secured options.

One thing I’ve known has been a concern that I’ve not yet addressed the quantity of data online. For example even though I moved my mail to a Swiss based provider I still had my entire email archive available. I have mail going back as far as 1997 I believe. I have been wanting to take that archive off-line and out my email provider’s servers. Over the years I’ve had the packrat mentality where I want to keep all of my messages. Recently I’ve grown to not want many of the messages I received. I’ve been deleting stuff that are unnecessary however there are still things that I get a do want to keep. In general I would like to keep the archive, especially my personal correspondence.

The challenge that I have is that I’m growing less trustworthy of any service provider. Even though my email hosting company is in Switzerland they take no extraordinary security precaution so the system is just as susceptible to hacking as most. That means my mail at rest is in the clear, unencrypted. But I want to do is take my mail and store it off-line so I have more control over it. I currently plan on keeping it in a local archive on my Mac at home. I will also have it backed up on my bit torrent sync network.

The first step in this process was for me to copy all of my mail to a local application. For my purposes I found the built-in Mac mail application to work the best. Once I had a downloaded copy of all the mail I was able to export it to an mBox formatted archive. At the same time I took the opportunity to recategorized how I organized my mail. In the past when I was using Google I had been using tags extensively. When I exported out of Google I went back to a folder structure where each high-level tag was its own folder where I put received mail. When I exported the mail to a local folder I put all sent mail in one folder and all received mail and another. Using mail tags I was able to continue to tag and make smart queries of the male if I ever needed to get a hold of the categories that I used in the past.

Once I had the off-line mBox files I put them in an archive on my BitTorrent Sync network. I kept the live copy in my Mac mail on my computer in case I need to search for and email in the archive. Over the past few weeks after I’ve done this I’m surprised how often I do go back and reference old emails for things like key codes or when did I buy something. After I was satisfied that the mail was backed up I deleted it from my hosting provider.I did leave this calendar year’s mail on my hosting provider. I figured that was a good round number to keep online. I can annually do an archive. Having to be at home or to remote into my home computer to perform mail queries has become a slight inconvenience however it hasn’t been the end of the world.

In addition to moving my entire mail archive off-line I want go further and start using a secured email provider like proton mail that takes extraordinary steps to encrypt the data at rest.I do not need that level of security for all my mail however does come in handy for some of it. There’s been several messages I’ve been hesitant to send or had no choice but to send that contain sensitive information such as bank information or Social Security numbers in the past that I would prefer not to use via email. And of course that’s not my paranoia security experts say never do that. Having a secured provider that encrypts the mail at rest and also has mechanism for sending secured mail to others could be useful. Really what he secure mail is doing is it sending email to the recipient with a link back to the website that secured that contains the actual message. I need to provide a password hint in the body of the mail I send. It’s not perfect however in most cases it will solve the problem of sending outbound secured man.

One of the challenges in a system such as proton mail is that at present there is no mechanism to import or export mail. That means anything I receive is locked into that system. On day one that’s not a problem however I like to have data portability. Protonmail says they are working on that function however who knows when or if it will ever come to pass. I may still use them for some correspondence only and in essence had two private email addresses one for security and one for unsecured messages. That way I can route one I want secured to the encrypted system.

I’ve also been looking at Tutanota as an alternative to proton mail. It appears to have the same import and export limitations however otherwise seems like a very similar and comparable option. Both systems offer a free tier.I signed up for both services to play around with them. I’ve since signed up for a month-to-month service with both of them and them in the process of pointing in unused email domain to Mutant, while I’ve already completed setting up proton mail. Protonmail so far seems like a slightly better option in terms of usability however it is significantly more money per month than Tutanota. The only reason I signed up for the paid version of Tutanota after I signed up for Protonmail was because it was less than two dollars a month.I hope to give both services try for a month or two before settling on one or the other.

For now the combination of moving my mail off-line and having a encrypted provider as needed suits my needs. These changes are all still pretty new so I will see how things pan out over the next month or two before I decide to make any tweaks or to let the situation be as is for the time being.