scott

The Story of My Chuck Taylor Dilemma

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If you know me now you may have noticed that most of the time I am wearing trainers (aka sneakers). Specifically Converse Chuck Taylors. Surprisingly it is a relatively new phenomenon for me. It was only maybe five years ago that I started wearing them.

When i first started wearing Chucks they were not that comforatable. I tried insoles and they were ok. I was about to stop wearing them when Convese announced their Chuck Taylor II’s. They claimed they would be even more comfortable. I was curious. I could not wait unitl they came out. When they did i got bought a pair. They were very comfortable. I ended up buying pairs in several colours, both high and low top. From then on that was pretty much what I would wear everyday.

I ended up buying about three colours in each of the hightop and the low top variant. I like the hightops for work and the low’s are easier to get on and off when I am home and out with the kids. So I own several pairs.

Since I have several I don’t wear any one pair down very quickly. Right before we moved to London I think I had to replace one pair for the first time in a few years. When I did so it was no problem to get a new one.

Last fall i had two pairs of hightops that had the souls start ripping. They needed replacement. When I went online to buy replacements I was confused not to see the Chuck II’s anywhere. What I did not know was that the Chuck II line of shoes was cancelled after about a year or so of production. Apparently diehard fans were not a fan of the new look. The look was not bad for me. The big deal was that they were much more  comforatable than the traditional model. When I previously bought replacements they must still have just had stock of them. Now no one had them.

I tried the Converse one Star as an alternative. I wasn’t too happy with the way they looked however I needed something so I tried them. They were not comfortable at all. It was a total waste of money from me.

Then I tried what are used to do before the Chuck II’s came out. That was purchase a regular pair and put an insole in them. It was what I did to the dress shoes that I used to wear before wearing the sneakers to work. Oddly after wearing the really comfortable cushion on the Chuck II’s the same insoles were not as comfortable anymore. I did force myself to wear that one test pair with the insole for a while. I am still wearing it and they are totally fine however not nearly as comfortable as I used to have. I could buy more of those however I was trying to find other alternatives before I did that.

My next step was to go to eBay where I was surprised to find a half way decent selection of gently used Chuck II’s. I was hesitant on buying that sort of used stuff on ebay. The prices were super cheap so I gave one a try. They turned out to look exactly like the picture and were in fantastic shape. It was like they were never used. I was able to buy one or two more like that however then the supply dried up. I realise I needed to find a better long-term option. Since I was totally over thinking my solution at this point i continued my investigations.

In my research I keep coming across comments about the Chuck Taylor 70. People had said that they were definitely more comfortable than the originals.  Some people were also comparing them to the II’s that i had. Then one or two people said they probably were not as comfortable but close. Since I was running out of options I decided to buy one pair of the Chuck Taylor 70’s high tops. I was hoping to see how they fit.

The first pair I got was definitely way too big. I bought the same size I wore in my other chucks. I quickly returned them back to converse. I then went looking for 1/2 size smaller of the same shoe. I could not find it anywhere in stores. Most stores didn’t even have this model at all. I finally did find one store that had them in stock. Unfortunately they were only one size smaller. The sales clerk said they don’t stock half sizes. I tried the one size smaller and it was too small. With that information I rolled the dice and ordered the half-size smaller than the original one I bought online.

When it arrived, I realize it fit a little bit too big. I decided that would work good enough since the full size smaller was too small. I have been wearing this pair for a while now. I even took it as my only pair of shoes on a week long holiday. I can’t say for certain if there as comfortable as the II’s. They are comfortable enough that I can use them as my day-to-day shoe. Since I was able to buy a few cheap pairs of the II’s on eBay I haven’t had a need to buy any new 70’s beyond the first pair I bought. At least I know now that when another pair wears out I have an option for replacement.

W Sisters & Swim Class

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London Aquatics Center Pool

This term we sign the girls up for swim class. This was something we wanted to do for a while. They haven’t had proper swim lessons since camp in the summer of 2018. After doing some research M settled on a place. She settled on the London Aquatic Center. It is pretty spectacular that if the girls are going to have swim they have it at a pool that happens to be a former Olympic arena. It was physically further than multiple options for us. Yet without a car it was one of the most convinient to make regularly.

That means when it’s my week to take the girls swim I get to hang out in what was once the Olympic swimming stadium in London. The picture above says it all. If you want to inspire someone to swim somewhere this is the place. Full disclosure the girls are in training pool as 180° around from where I took this picture. Either way pretty impressive to come here as a regular thing. The girls think so also. After their sessions they like to sit on the ledge and have a snack and watch swimmers. Every so often it is very crowded with a tournament. It is pretty cool.

To Keep or Cancel Linkedin

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In my part 1 of My Great Social Media Purge of 2019 i outlined my objectives with assessing my use case of each social media platform I use. Part 2 covered Twitter. Part 3 covered Reddit. In Part 4 I will cover Linkedin. its a short one since the decision was pretty straight forward.

Linkedin is a tough one. I feel for professional reasons it is necessary. The data mining that is creepy in other platforms may land me a job opportunity on Linkedin. Funny irony right? I would like to remain blissfully unaware of anything creepy that happens on this platform or what they do with my data. That way I will not dig further into it and get spooked by whatever I find.

I even need to use this platform more to promote myself professionally. Its a keeper. So if you have creepy stories about LinkedIn, I do not want to know.

To Keep or Cancel Reddit

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In my part 1 of My Great Social Media Purge of 2019 i outlined my objectives with assessing my use case of each social media platform I use. Part 2 covered Twitter. Part 3 covers Reddit. Yup i started reading some stuff on Reddit.

I started using Reddit in 2019. I broke down and signed up. I haven’t posted anything. I joined a few sub-Reddit’s. That in and of itself helps build a profile on me and what I like and read. I am not a fan of that. I do find following along in each community I find informative. It is targeted discussions and some of them have been useful. That value however comes at the price of Reddit knows I am interested in specific things. For now I am not really sure if my lurking there for some information is worth that model on what i am interested in. For now I am paying that price.

I may just cancel my account and have direct links to some sub-Reddit’s i want to read. Then i could try to use a TOR Browser on VPN to just read without having the linkage to me. That work around does require much more effort to do so not sure if the cost benifit is worth it.

In the end I think I “should” delete Redit. That being said the cost “i think” for keeping it is low compared to other providers so I am neutral on it, for now.

To Keep or Cancel Twitter?

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In my part 1 of My Great Social Media Purge of 2019 i outlined my objectives with assessing my use case of each social media platform I use. I am starting off with Twitter.

I surprisingly find value in using Twitter. I only ever post to twitter to share links to my blog. My reasoning is my blog is public anyway. At this moment I do not believe there is a downside to the linkage of my blog to my twitter account. I may come to regret that however for now I am ok with that linkage. I do have lists of peoples twitter accounts that i follow. Mainly i look at FinTech companies twitter accounts. Some security journalists and a few tech industry people. I also will look at a few comedian’s or The Onion. Even that information starts to build a profile on me. The limited amount of value there I am ok with.

Other uses for Twitter have been in the past I found huge value in having a list to track emergency management accounts. When i was in a pure operations role that came in very handy when Hurricane Sandy hit. Or when a few other big snow storms hit NY. Some of that linkage i am not happy with however that linkage would exist if i followed some of these companies or twitter accounts via Twitter or if i used an RSS feed.

As I wrote this post I unfollowed a bunch of people and friends who never post. What is left i am happy enough with. I think i will have to revisit Twitter again in the future however for now i am ok to keep using it the way i do. I may limit my usage (again) to a secured VM).

Verdict, for now a Keep.

Oi, Why Didn’t Any Tell Me About Gavin and Stacey Until Now?

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On Christmas day M made a fantastic lunch just for the four of us. For dinner we went over to a friend down the road. They had a bunch of extended family over and had invited us for a buffet dinner. By around 7:30 the party was wrapping up. Our friends mum and along with her sisters family was heading home. They wanted to be home in time to see the Gavin and Stacey Christmas special. Up until hearing about this Christmas special I have never heard of this show before. We were told we should watch it.

M and I went home and put the kids to bed. We then proceeded to start watching the first season. By the evening of New Year’s Day we had finished the entire series including the most recent Christmas special. Since I am writting about it you must gather I really liked it. And I did.  It is now one of the top british shows I have seenn.  It is probibly one of the best shows i have seen in several years.

After watching the entire series and really liking it I wanted to know is how all of my local friends have utterly failed me. How is it that no one pointed out this show even existed until this week? It was really funny. I consider this one of the largest pop culture failures in recent history.

Now I have to wonder what else I might still be missing?

My Great Social Media Purge of 2019 (Part 1)

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In recent months i have been thinking (again) about my digital data in relation to my privacy. I have been thinking about what my objective is regarding keeping my digital data safe. From who, and why? This is topical because more and more details have been coming out about Facebook and other social media’s use and collection of data.

I have been pondering what my own personal next actions on my social media exposure was. Then I watched the Netflix Documentary The Great Hack. That movie reinforced to me that I am not able to justify keeping my some social media accounts. And the way I use others needs to change. First thing in my mind was do I keep or cancel Facebook. Even after scrubbing data off the account regularly there are just some things you cannot get rid of. I have been diligent not to post almost anything that is not already public. I just haven’t been 100% great at it all the time. The question that kept bothering me is what will I / can I do about it. That brought me to question what I was worried about? From there I started asking myself what my threat model.

I had to think for a while to figure out what is my threat model for data collected by social media companies. At first I just feel it is a bit creepy that any one company can have that much information on me. That is not a threat model. It just got me to further realise in this day and age there will be data about my life leaked to companies. What I do not want is one or a few companies having a huge collection of my life. That morphed my objective to see how can i minimise my data leakage so to speak. At the same time still getting value out of some of the services i use. That for me is the key. What am I really getting value out of? That is subjective to everyone. For me it came down to what is my social media use case? If I am going to keep hugging Twitter, Facebook, and even LinkedIn I should be clear to myself what my use case is of each of those services. Only then can I weigh the risks of what each platform collects on me. After that I can decide what I want to do about it. I use each platform and others for different reasons so each one has its own use case.

I got analyitcial and wrote up my own assesment of my use for each. As I wrote them out I realized this is more than one post. I will publish each as a post with their own summary of what i am going to do with the service. At present there are about 6 parts (this is part 1). First up on my list is Twitter.

This post is titled My Great Social Media Purge of 2019 (Part 1). I wrote it in the Fall of 2019. It is still very relevant however I only now am getting around to posting it.

The Story of The Comic Strip That Defined The Last Decade

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One day over the holiday break we took the girls to a Planetarium show and the Cutty Sark in Grenwitch. They always enjoy the Royal Museums Greenwich. We only buy a few memberships each year.  This is one of them.  It by far pays for itself more than any other. I think we got triple our moneys worth if we were to have paid full price each of the times we went to the Maritime Museum, planetarium show or Cutty Sark.

Since we went during a school break there was an arts and craft activity on at Cutty Sark. M and I grabbed some coffee while we assumed the girls would be working on a project. When I walked over to the activity area with the coffee M was the only person working on a project.

I am not sure what the original project however they had paper with three comic strip boxes. In them she drew a comic of her and I meeting, getting married, and as we were today with the girls. She is very creative and artistic unlike myself. I thought the comic strip was so awesome. It is now the banner on this site.

Reflecting On New Years Eve

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The end of the year/decade always gets you thinking back. I know everyone is doing it. It’s hard not to. So much has changed in my life from 10 years ago. I met M. We got married. Had kids. Moved to another country. I don’t think in my wildest dreams I would have been able to predict correctly I would be where I am right now 10 years ago.

For new years eve we were having another family over our house for a mini party. It was just the four adults and four children total. I had to run over to Sainsbury’s for some last-minute things I forgot to order when we put in our Waitrose order earlier in the week. As I was walking around Sainsbury’s I was thinking how I have never seen it so busy. That confuse me since I remembered when we just moved in I had to run to Sainsbury’s on New Year’s Day and it wasn’t that busy. Then I realised I was comparing New Year’s Eve to New Year’s Day.

New Year’s Eve two years ago we barely got the heat fixed in our house. Some of the furniture we ordered from Ikea had arrived and M was putting it together. We slept air mattresses. M worked till 2 or 3 AM in the morning New Year’s Day trying to get the girls bunkbed built.

Reflecting on how different life is now than it was when we first arrived confirms previous thoughts I’ve had about how adjusted we have become to living here.

The most profound takeaway I have from this experience for future Scott is don’t go to Sainsbury’s on New Year’s Eve. Going on year’s day is probably okay.

Two Years and Counting

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It took me until around 7:30 PM to realise that today was our two year anniversary of being in England. We were out one of our neighbours for drinks and appetisers for the holiday. Somehow in the conversation the topic came up on how long we have been living here. I had to think about it for a few seconds before I realised it was almost down to the hour two years.

I thought about the anniversary coming up quickly earlier in the week however today it slipped my mind with all the people doing on our holiday.

In some ways it feels like no time is pastorale. In other ways our world is entirely different than it was two years ago. What hope we love the next two years here as much as we did the last two…

NOTE: I forgot to post this on the 29th so I am posting it in early Jan with a retroactive date stamp.)