Month: April 2026

Explaining Technology One Pop Culture Reference at a Time

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I sometimes describe my job as “using pop culture references to explain technology to people, or security to people.” It started as a joke, but honestly, it’s not far off. I do that. A lot.

There’s something about a good movie quote or TV moment that just clicks when you’re trying to explain a technical concept. It makes it human, relatable, and a little less dry. So yeah, I lean into it.

But here’s the tricky part: I live in England now. I’ve been here almost eight years, and I’ve learned that some of my go-to cultural references don’t always travel well.

Every so often, I’ll start telling a story and then have to stop myself mid-sentence to ask, “Have you ever heard of…?” And depending on the answer, I either get to deliver a perfect analogy or end up staring into polite, confused faces.

Sometimes I strike gold, but other times there’s deafening silence. Office Space is hit or miss. The Simpsons are more universal, but even that’s patchy. And there’s that moment where I think, never mind, not worth the detour.

It works both ways too. My British colleagues drop references that go straight over my head. My response is to politely tell them I have no clue what they’re talking about. We usually get a laugh out of that.

Still, every so often, the worlds overlap beautifully. For example, I once used a Highlander reference, “There can be only one,” in a meeting. It landed with absolutely no one. Then, a week later, one of my coworkers heard someone else use it (a Brit, no less), watched the movie, and loved it. More recently, my boss used the same line in another meeting. I always knew it was a thing.

Maybe that’s the fun of it, figuring out which cultural shorthand actually connects across different backgrounds. Some hit, some miss, but when they do work, it’s this small, shared spark of understanding. And honestly, that’s kind of the whole point.

Photo is the hallway set from the Big Bang Theory. My sister, mom and I were on the backlot for my mom’s birthday last year and I got some really good photos. Appropriate since I use that show as references, although it would have been better if there was a set from How I Met Your Mother since I quote that show much more!

The Great Hotel TV Failure

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hotel tv media centre

This is an older story from April 2024. We were visiting M’s parents and staying at an Aloft Marriott. Pretty good hotel, actually. Kids didn’t like the breakfast, I did. There was a pool. Close to the in-laws. Great value overall.

There were a couple days where M had the car and it was just me and the girls at the hotel. We decided we’d watch a movie, which kicked off the classic “how do we get the thing on my device onto the TV” problem.

I’ve debated traveling with an HDMI cable. It works. It’s just annoying to bring, and I never feel like packing it. So when I noticed the TV actually had an AirPlay option in the menu, the tech part of my brain started geeking out. This felt like one of those rare moments where hotel tech was finally catching up with reality.

At least in theory.

In practice, it refused to work. At all. I tried everything. And as someone who works in tech, there’s always that moment of “I cannot be defeated by a hotel TV,” but eventually you either give up or swallow your pride. I called their support guy. He came upstairs. He didn’t even know the feature existed until I showed him the menu for it. Still no luck. Completely dead.

So now it’s me, two kids, and no movie.

My workaround? I ended up ordering a Chromecast through DoorDash. Someone literally drove to a store, picked it up, and brought it to the hotel. Kind of wild. I don’t even know if that’s a thing in the UK. If it is, I’ve never tried it.

The Chromecast itself was tiny and cheap and came with its own little HDMI tail. Plugged it in, powered it up, connected it to my phone, and that was that. The hardest part was waiting for the movie to download on the hotel Wi-Fi. After that, everything just worked.

We watched Ghostbusters: Afterlife. The kids loved it so much we ended up seeing the sequel in the theater later.

The bigger point here is that the fancy casting feature Marriott advertised was a complete fail. Maybe they’ve fixed it since. I hope so because letting people cast from their own devices is safer and easier for everyone. I’m definitely not signing into a hotel TV with my Netflix credentials. No thanks.

I still have that little Chromecast. I don’t use many Google devices anymore, but this one is so small and so useful that I keep it around. Do I actually remember to travel with it? No. Should I? Probably. But whatever.

Planes, Trains, and Getting There Anyway

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After I got the word that my brother in law had passed away, I immediately booked plane tickets. We found a flight out of Heathrow at 12:50 p.m., planned a normal morning, and headed to the airport.

It was not until we were already on the Elizabeth line, almost there, that I noticed the alert. Our flight had been delayed by seven and a half hours.

We needed to get to New Jersey that day. The funeral was the following day, and missing it was not really an option. Any flight leaving London the next day would get us there too late. So once we arrived at the airport, we went straight to the airline’s Special Help counter to see what could be done.

They were able to get us confirmed seats on the 6 p.m. flight. Technically, that was an improvement. It was about an hour and a half earlier than our newly delayed flight. But it was still very late. It would get us into New Jersey that day, but very close to midnight local time.

The only other option they offered was standby on the noon flight, which was actually earlier than our original departure. We went through the security routine, grabbed some breakfast quickly, and then went to the gate when they called it for the noon flight.

When boarding finished, there was exactly one seat available.

My wife and I talked it through quickly, and I got on the plane. She stayed behind with the kids and planned to try to fly standby on the 3 p.m. flight, and if that did not work, take the 6 p.m. flight we already had confirmed.

The idea was that I would meet my mom, get a car, and head either to my sister’s place or the hotel.

That part did not work out.

I landed without issue and got an Uber to the hotel. My mom’s flight was cancelled entirely. She was rebooked to JFK, while I had flown into Newark. From there, she took the AirTrain, the Long Island Railroad, and New Jersey Transit, and went straight to my sister’s.

My wife was not able to get on standby for the earlier flight and ended up on the 6 p.m. flight after all. She managed to rearrange the rental car and arrived at the hotel close to midnight New York time.

So in the end, we all got there. Just not together. And not in the way we expected.

To be fair to the airline, there had been a major blizzard the day before. By the time we landed, things were slowly getting back to normal. Still, the whole experience felt like planes, trains, and automobiles in real time.

Hectic, exhausting, and strangely memorable, for all the wrong reasons.

Minor note. I wasn’t sure when I was going to post this one. Since it involves travel and today the girls and I are flying home from our term break holiday I thought it was appropriate to post it. If all goes to plan we should be boarding the plane home a few hours after this posts.