Month: September 2019

W Sisters Short on My Haircut

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The other day I got a haircut. For me that’s a pretty rudimentary thing to do. I get one every couple of weeks. The girls like to rub the back of my semi-shaved head. They think the short hairs feel good on their hands.

This haircut however T for some reason was patting my head. Then she started measuring how much hair I had with her finger. She proceeded to tell me that I had a lot of hair. The funny thing is I don’t. I keep it pretty short. Compared to her I have almost no hair. She then said she wanted to see me with more hair. I told her I was not going to grow my hair out.

I did let it grow a little in High School. Never liked it. I then told her that my dad, her puppy used to have a really long/big hair. She didn’t really believe me so I offered to show her and A picture.

When I shoulder the picture she said something like “Oh my gosh”. Then she asked if that was taken long ago. I said it what is however I remember his hair that long.

It reminded me of a funny story my sister told me. A few years ago my mum was wondering out loud to that strange man was standing next to her in a picture. My sister said that dad. I can only assume he had a huge head of hair at a time

So I Went and Got a Facebook Page

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So funny story. In the effort of evaluating my social media use I went and got a Facebook page. For friends and family please like and follow it. I will be posting blog entries to there and not on my wall going foward.

The backstory to this is in July and August I sought out to decrease my social media usage and data exposure. I wrote about it and will post that series in a bit. As i was doing that I (yet again) attempted to get rid of Facebook. I realized that I do use it to push updates to my blog. My blog metrics show that is a lot (for me) of traffic. I decided since my blog posts are public anyway why not do a facebook page. It allows me to stop posting on my own timeline. It also lets me schedule updates to my blog. that is something i cannot do anymore since Facebook killed that years ago. If i do that i can post to facebook blog entries without actually logging in. No distractions for me!

So please like and follow my page, or not…

A Note To My Future Self On Why I Do Not Use Android Phones

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In July before my trip to Bangkok i picked up a mid range Android Phone. I opted for the Motorola G7 since it offered dual SIM cards. I got the phone for less than 200 pounds. An iPhone that would do that was several times more than that. My need was for a dual SIM phone so i could keep my UK SIM and have a Bangok one. Then when I went to NY for most of August I would also have a US SIM and my UK SIM card.

My intentions mostly worked out the way i wanted it. As much as I prefer iOS for many reasons the new Android was ok. I liked the big screen for a cheap price. I wasn’t happy about some of the security trade off’s however i was letting that go and being in deial about it.

I then put in a Pi-hole as my DNS at home. Looking at the metrics from that made it impossible to be in denial as to how bad my Android phone probibly was to violating my privacy after i clicked on agreeing to whatever terms and conditions. The cover photo is a graph of my entire DNS queries in my house for a 24 hour period. The part on the right where there is a huge spike is purely my Motorola G7 making calls out to the internet. Doing what i am not 100% clear since i wasn’t using the phone. It just got on wifi and started phoning home alot.

The photo below shows that the same Android phone is one the chattiest device on my network at home and also gets its requests blocked more than any other device. For a phone that i dont use alot and wasn’t in my house for most of the 24 hour period measured that is pretty creepy. To put it in context M and i have iPhones and iPads and none of them get blocked or “talk” on the internet that much if we are not using them.

The Motorola G7 in question is being reset to factory defaults and wiped as I write this article. It will get sold on ebay shortly. This entire episode highlights why I had reservations about Android as a technology in the first place. It is slick however the trade off on my privacy is not worth it. i would rather save longer and keep using iOS.

The W Sisters and The Story of the Pizza Tables

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Our girls love pizza. They are little kids so that’s not a shocker. I am glad that they are enjoying pizza even after moving from New York to London. For me the pizza in London is not the same as NY. It is however not bad. For the girls they are happy enough with it.

On nights when we order in pizza there is one thing above all that is the most important. Who gets the Pizza Table. Or is everyone else must know it as the white plastic thing that sits in the middle of the pizza box to keep the box from touching the pizza. I don’t know when it started to be a thing. Probably a year or more before we moved to London. I believe it was T that started asking for it. Her sister seeing that she wanted it was quick to follow. If we ordered one pie we would have to be sure to take turns on who got the table.

Sometimes we would get two tables in a pie. Then the girls would be able to share. In London the diameters of the pizza pies are much smaller than NY. I may end up writting about that on its own at somepoint. We learned this very quickly when we order take away. One large pie is not enough for all four of us. Two large pies depending on how much the girls eat is more than enough. That means nowadays we get two pie’s so more than enough tables for both to have one when we order take away. The night this picture was taken I cannot remember if we had an extra table in one pie or we just had three pies. It was like the girls won the jackpot.

The Story of My Site’s Hopefully Last Name

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It’s another year so its time for me to overthink my blog setup. Alright maybe i dont do it “every” year however sometimes I do. Last year I changed my blog domain name to scottodyssey.com. I did it in 1, hopes of getting more google rank vs my obscure .ac domain. 2, to better reflect what i was thinking the direction of the site was. Flash forward to now and i am thinking of simplification. For years i have lived with the delusion of anonymity on this site by obscurity. I knew if someone wanted to find me they could. THe illusion felt good though! Now a days thinking abut personal branding using just my first name or a cute blog title isn’t what i am looking for. Instead i am simplying to scott.weinstein.me. I owned the domain name and used it for some email for years. I figured why not simplify.

The change for me is minor. The bigger changes are in how i use a bunch of other domain names behind the schemes for mail and other things that is bigger. My plan is to downsize and save some money on a few more expensive domains that i am under utilising. For some of them it may take a while to move all the things i use them for off of them. In the long run it likely makes sense.

This change allows me to have a simple domain that reflects me. It is my name after all.

www.scottodyssey.com will stick around mirroring my new URL for about 10 months until the domain expires.