scott

My Story of A Tail of Two Credit Card Concierge’s

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I can calculate how long I have had an American Express card in Decades not years. During most of that time I have been aware some of the benefits offered that I never took advantage of.  One of those benefits is the personal concierge service. For years I knew it could be a valuable tool yet I only once used it. Thinking back I cannot come up with a good reason not to use this service. Maybe it was because I am a control freak. I like researching things on my own. When I worked at Datastream Systems they had their own travel people in house.  The job required constant travel. I still would research what I wanted and call the travel people and tell them to book me on specific flights. So either I was a control freak or just lazy not wanting to talk to someone to make plans with a concierge. Either way this potentially valuable service went unused. With an upcoming trip I decided to change that.

My mom came to visit and we all went to Paris. She has been great and offered M and I to go on a date night while we are there. Not knowing the city i figured why shouldn’t i try the American Express concierge and see what they can come up with based on the criteria we have. We want a restaurant no more than 30-45 min from our hotel on the metro. We are looking for a French place known for their sea food. We also want a place that has good cocktails. I also provided the two dates we were looking at for possible reservations. The requirements were simple enough.  I did not want to spend hours on tripadvisor or whatever review site is popular in Paris trying to find a place.

The call to the Amex Concierge was simple enough. Using the mobile I had on file and a preset code I created when setting up the account I was authenticated and ready to go when the representative got on the phone. When I spoke to the representative I gave her my criteria and she said she was going to email or call me with options. I chose for her to email me.

Once i was done with American Express I decided to source options from somewhere else and turn this experiment into a full fledge comparison. I just got a VISA card that offered VISA Infinite concierge. I was curious if they were any good either so I figured why not try them out too. Calling VISA was slightly less straight forward. I had to provide my card number twice to an automated system. Once I got someone on the phone I gave the VISA people the same criteria. The lady i spoke with was super friendly and helpful. Like the person I spoke to at AMEX she offered to call me back or email me. Again I opted for an email.

American Express sent me an email within an hour of our call with four options. They also gave me a PDF guidebook of restaurants where they have special offers in Europe. One specific thing that was annoying was I told them we were going Sunday or Monday night. One of their suggestions wasn’t even open those days. All the options they gave us did look great. We had two favorites right away from the list we were given.

Visa infinite said they would send details up to four hours later. Because of the time we called I didn’t read their email until the next day. They sent a PDF with the options included. The format was definitely nicer looking then AMEX. After looking over the options M didn’t like any of them. I didn’t have time to look at it myself so I won’t directly comment on the quality. I will say that the customer service rep I spoke to from the visa infinite pointed out that many places are closed Sunday or Monday in France and would be on the lookout for that in selecting options. That was a good catch especially since the American Express rep sent us an option we couldn’t even use.

if i was rating on how long it took to get my information, AMEX won. They were quick and looked pretty spot on even though they skewed a little pricier than I asked for. For presentation of the information VISA one out over AMEX. It was easier for me to understand the visa concierge as well. That was because it was during US business hours and I got a native English-speaking person in the US. The American Express concierge I got someone who was native Italian speaking so it was a little more difficult for me to understand however she actually lived in Paris and was very knowledgeable of the neighborhood we were staying in. I’ll give both of them even scores for different reasons.

In the end I’ll give American Express the win since M like the restaurant options. When I called back to book the reservation we wanted to put me on hold to try to reach the restaurant in real time. They were closed. The lady I was speaking to quickly checked and confirmed that there was availability and we could book online. She offered to call back later when they were open to book the reservation directly or to have us book online ourselves. For whatever reason they were unable to book electronically for us. It was trivial for me to make the reservation so I just did it myself.

While I was sorting out the details for dinner in Paris we were also looking for somethingg to do for an upcoming date night in London right before our trip. Having my mom visiting is a huge treat that we can get some date nights and I get to see my mom. It’s been 6 months since we last saw her.. For our London date night M’s local friends gave her several ideas. One of them was Sushisamba. It looked great to me so we wanted to get a reservation. There are online reservation system said they were unavailable night we wanted to go. I figured it was a long shot however I called the concierge folks at American Express to see if they had any special way to get reservations. That is what concierge is known for anyway, right? For this request I only called the American Express people. I will try the VISA people again but for now AMEX seemed to be “get” what we were looking for. When I called the lady I spoke with confirmed that they do have relationships with many restaurants and had fielded several requests in the past for this particular one that we wanted to go to. After some checking unfortunately she was unable to get us a table. Knowing that they could be useful in the future I file that information away.

Since SushiSamba was not available to us we still needed to find a place to go on our date night in London. When we got the recommendations from American Express for the Paris date night they also sent along a PDF. It listed restaurants in Europe where they had special relationships. Each one had some sort of discount or deal through American Express. Looking through that PDF I saved several places that looked really good for us to try at some point around London. I showed M my top three places I liked as date night options and she agreed that my first option would be really cool. It was the bar restaurant at the Savoy hotel, Kasper’s at the Savoy. Now that we had settled on a new destination I went online to try to book a reservation. For the day that we wanted the only offered counter service. For date night I prefer the table so that wasn’t going to work. Our date was not flexible. It was that night or not at all. I then decided to try American Express again. The lady I spoke to this time was not sure if they had a relationship with Kaspar’s. With a little bit of digging she confirmed that they did have a relationship. She was able to get us a table around the time we wanted to go. That was pretty awesome.

I’m writing this before having gone to either of the restaurants we booked through American Express concierge. The overall experience was also extremely positive. That is saying a lot for me since I refuse to even call a restaurant for take away. Let alone trying to help me with specific details of a request. Unless the recommendations turn out to be horrible for some reason I anticipate using them again. I also can’t see how those recommendations could be bad. They gave us the ideas however checking out TripAdvisor both places have fantastic reviews. The fact that they can also get me into a place that I could not get into myself was pretty awesome.

This is one of those things where I’ve known for ages I should be trying yet I didn’t. If I do start using the more I will wonder why I was so lazy over the years when I had it as an option.

That Story Where I Write A lot About Tea Kettles

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Since way before I met her M has had an old-school metal tea kettle. She uses it to heat up tea and hot water for her coffee funnel. It’s as basic a solution as you can get. It also works surprisingly well. In the past year or so I’ve started to use it to heat water for my French press.

The thing with boiling water on a stove is that it can take a few minutes. I never thought anything of it. It was just how long it took to heat water. When we got to England we needed to heat water for coffee. I can’t remember if we brought our kettle in our luggage and the stove didn’t work. Or we simply did not have our kettle. In any event our stove was not working when we first moved in. We needed coffee. That meant we needed to buy something.

I knew about existence of electric kettles. I even remember my friend “A” who came from England to the US talking about how bad they were in the states. At the time I didn’t quite understand what he was complaining about. American electric kettles if I recall take around the same amount of time to make hot water then boiling it on a stove. If I’m wrong on that that is my recollection. I don’t really have direct knowledge on it. Going into this situation however that was what I was thinking. Electric kettles are slow.

I made one of our several trips to the local Sainsbury’s those first few days and picked up a cheap electric kettle. Once I got home I set it up and started to make enough water for 2 cups of coffee. I remember turning on the kettle and preparing to go do something while it heated the water. I got distracted talking to M for a moment. By the time I got back to realizing what I wanted to do the kettle clicked off indicating the water was done. At the time I thought something was wrong with it because it took maybe 1 to 2 minutes at most. I poured the water into the filter and sure enough it was the perfect temperature.

For what I am told the high-power quick teakettle is thanks to a more powerful power grid in England. I know everyone talks about the fact that the US is 110v and England is 220v however to see it in action was pretty interesting.

The electric kettle was so effective that M even agreed to get rid of her vintage stovetop one. That was a major development in our house.

The lesson here (if there is a lesson to learn) is even if someone explain something to you sometimes it doesn’t fully click until you experience it yourself.

W Sisters Shorts on Have You Met Steve?

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The girls have access to a large cache of Lego thanks to my parents storing the majority of my old Lego in a VCR box for 20 years. I wrote about that previously. Thanks to that and several new Lego kits the girls have a great exposure to Lego.

T and even A to a degree has been building the kits with varying degrees of assistance. They are both getting good at building their own stuff too. I love it.

When we were in Bournemouth back in May i believe the girls had some Lego with them. A started referring to this lego guy pictured as Steve. None of the other lego people have names. I figured she would forget about him after a few days however she didn’t. Flash forward a few months when A is playing with lego she goes looking for Steve by name. it is pretty funny. What is also amazing to me is that figure is at least 35 years old since it is one of the ones we gave them when we got my lego.

They both are a few years away from the entire Hogwarts kit however they are off to a great start.

Underground vs Subway Showdown Finale Etiquette

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London Underground

In the final post about the Underground vs Subway Showdown I compare the people when I look at etiquette on both systems.

I probably have written about this before when living in New York. People can be rude on the subway. Well, maybe not rude but self-centered. It’s easy to say that in any densely populated area you get some percentage of clowns. In New York I would constantly have to walk around someone sitting on stairways. Tying their shoes on a busy stairway. Walking against crowds on stairways or hallways. Then there are the people who walk into a relatively empty train and stop right at the door. The door huggers are likely the same people that won’t move into the middle of the car when it’s super crowded and there’s plenty of room in the middle. It feels like mad Max underground sometimes.

In London I was surprised that people do walk the wrong way and a hallway or on the stairwell. I thought that was a big no-no here. Just like cutting the queu is. Some people do it however it’s not terrible. I will say that in all the stations there are signs and barricades to herd the people in a much better way than I’ve seen in New York. Generally people follow the signs. The only exception is the overpass at the station by my house. For some reason people do not read what it says keep left.

In London pregnant women can get buttons so people know to stand up and give them a seat. I have seen strangers tap people sitting down to make room for ladies with the button. That is a stark contrast to New York when my wife was pregnant she would have to rub her belly or just tell people they needed to get up from the handicap seats because otherwise many people wouldn’t get up.

When I go anywhere with the kids even if my wife and the kids get seats people offer to get up for me to. I almost feel awkward to take it but everyone is pretty friendly. When it is just me in New York everyone was generally equally very friendly. Yet if it was a crowded train the kids would typically get seats only. I am generally impressed with the level of effort people goto to help a family out.

After I wrote this post I came back and had to make updates to it. I  taking the escalator down the platform in Canary wharf to catch the Jubilee line. It was rush-hour and it was crowded. And I saw a large amount of people standing on the platform. Always interesting to me was that everyone was standing in a line by where the door for the train would open. This station is relatively new so there were glass doors between the platform and tracks so you know where the doors will open. People line up on either side of those doors and wait in queue for a train to arrive. I remembered I’ve seen that before at rush hour in that station. That visual alone in my opinion gets London the win. I cannot remember ever seeing such an orderly display of waiting in New York.

As you might’ve guessed the winner here London, easily. I still think New York gets a bad reputation for people being not nice. On the subway there is some validity to that.

Winner

If you’ve read this far you can tell that there’s no contest for me here. My unscientific rating system is the London mass transit system (Tube & DLR for me) is just better. There are some aspects of the New York city transit system that I miss. They just aren’t that compelling enough to come anywhere near swaying the decision. For example I irrationally miss a good express train. Even when the Tube trains I take generally feel like (and i have been told they actually do) they move faster than an express or a local in New York.

My New New New MacBook Pro

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Yesterday (as of writing not publishing this) I got my new MacBook Pro for work. I requested it in May and due to several factors I only received it in late August. The good news about living through a huge lead time was that after the new model was announced I got automatically switched over get that one since they couldn’t source the old one. Turns out they will order you a new computer when the battery starts bulging on the old one to the point where it won’t lie flat on the desk anymore. On top of the fact that it was out of warranty.

Thew new MacBook Pro is pretty nice. It is a well-equipped 15″ touch bar in space gray. I spent all of my spare time over the past two days including last night on my couch trying to set it up. In many ways this computer is more powerful than the 2015 13 inch pro I have. In others it’s not. It has the same amount of RAM. It also comes with the same SSD size. The processor is several generations newer. There is a discrete graphics card in it and it is the same weight as my old 13″ model since prior generations made the machines lighter.

The biggest first world problem I have with it is that it’s a 15″ machine. It doesn’t fit into the bag I have and love. It may be the same weight as what I had previously but compared to a new 13″ model it is a pound heavier. One of the reasons I opted for the larger one is that a lot of time I work from an office that I am not officially based out of that is nearby. I don’t always have the opportunity to get a desk with a monitor. Working off a 13 inch screen with my eyes isn’t the most fun thing to do in the world. The 15″ is a bit better but still not obviously the same thing as sitting in front of a 24″ or 27″ monitor.

The decision I had to make was what has become the typical laptop trade-off question. Do I go for size at the detriment of performance? Or do I go for the bigger much more powerful machine? In my case I yin-yang and went with the larger MacBook. The final deciding factor was simplicity. The size and configuration I ended up with is a standard offering. The smaller 13″ MacBook would have to be a special order and thus take more time. The feedback I got from friends who tried it said just buy the 15 inch and be happy with it. So I did the opposite of what I did several years ago when I went from a 15″ to 13″. I went from small to big. My reasoning changed because my situation changed.

One of the huge downsides of the new Macbook’s are the fact that they require USB C. Since most devices are not USB C I need dongle’s. I have two USB to USB C adapters in my bag. A USB C to DVI adapter in my bag. On top of that I have a small dock in the office I travel to and a full dock at my regular office. Hopefully more USB C native devices will come out however its been a few years since these models were launched and its not much better than it was when they first came out.

Next up is getting my stickers on it…

It Is Setting In That I Do Not Live in NY Anymore

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airport display boards

I think it is starting to settle in that I live in England. When M’s The other parents were visiting we were discussing our plans to visit New York area next year. They asked if we were going to fly in Philadelphia due to wearing New Jersey we were going to go. I was about to say a course were going to go to JFK then I realized I don’t live near there anymore. We’re just visiting we can fly into whatever the closest airport is.

Such a minor thing to discuss however it is something like that that my brain clicks and it is like oh yeah.

My 10 Year Anniversary

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It was 10 years ago today that i started with Thomson Reuters.  It is the most recent chapter in my career.  it is also the longest.  Last year I did a run down of some statistics.  This year I add moving two offices and a continent to those numbers.  Lots of work changes coming up.  In some ways work here is still as interesting and challenging as it was 10 years ago.  Having several roles, managers, office locations over those 10 years helps make everything new again every few years.

With big changes on the horizon with the organization I am curious on what is to come in the upcoming year.

The Best Way to Make Something a Permanent Solution is…

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The best way to make something a permanent solution is to call it a temporary one. That is one of my motto’s at work.

Note that is not any data center at my company.  Although I did used to walk by a desktop computer in a hallway that had a big sign on it that said do not shut off, production.  Production for what i had no idea nor did i want to ever find out.

My Dad’s Stories and His Idea Of Urgent

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At the time of me sitting down to write this post it’s been about seven months since my dad passed away. Just dictating that sentence got me choked up for second. I finally feel comfortable enough to start writing a few little stories I’ve been wanting to tell about my dad. I jotted down a bunch of ideas in January and I hope to remember more of them. Some stand on my mind more than others. Here goes.

My dad was a physicians assistant. Since I was pretty little he had worked in an emergency room. He loved the excitement of a good trauma. From every indication he was really good at it also. Being trained in medicine and working in an emergency room you tend to gauge or triage things differently than someone who probably doesn’t save lives for a living.

When someone would ask him to do something, usually my mom and claim that it was urgent to him. His response would be something like how badly are you bleeding? If the answer was not a lot or not at all then he would reply that is not urgent.

So basically to him unless you’re bleeding it’s not urgent. To take it a step further he said on several occasions that you’re not really bleeding unless blood shooting across the room and splattering on a wall somewhere. He was basically describing an aortic bleed.

That was my dad. He was pretty black-and-white on those kind of things. Of course I knew exactly where I stood when you needed him to make an urgent priority call.

Who Knew My URL Vanity Would Hurt Page Rank

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At the tail end of last year I retitled this blog. I did it to better represent what it had evolved into. It also represented future ventures I was going to have after moving. The other reason is I really didn’t have any sort of name for it. It was a sad state of affairs.

At the time I made a conscious decision not to change the URL of the site. That was because over the years I had changed it a few times and really got no value out of making the change.  I wrote about the history of this site here. I kept simply blog.Scott.ac. It represented one of my oldest domains and that this was a blog. I also liked the simple domain name scott dot something.  Since then I’ve had some time to read about how page ranking works in search engines. Apparently the fact that my site is a.AC domain significantly hurts searches. That is because it gets priority in the country localization that is the Ascension Islands. I generally write this blog for me however I do put some effort into it so having an optimized to get more views is a nice bonus. Who knew that the reason I liked the old URL was causing it to not get much visibility like it used to.

Having used the site title “A Scott Odyssey” for about seven or eight months now, I kind of like it. I relate a lot to the theme of the Odyssey, journey that I wrote more about it on this blogs “About Blog” page.