Life, Kids, Technology & that move to another continent
scott 
Today is T’s 13th birthday. She asked for a video from the time she was born. I wasn’t really sure why, but M remembered and we both took videos today at the time that corresponded to when she was born in New York, accounting for the five-hour time difference.
I am not at all ready to be the parent of a teenager. Over the weekend T baked chocolate chip cookies, and as a small reward for making it through the first morning of having a teenager in the house, I had one with my coffee.
I wrote this one over a year ago in July 2024, however still super cute.
The other day when walking home from school, I reminded the girls that they had less screen time today due to timeout from yesterday. I told them I couldn’t recall the exact quantities so I said let’s call it 10 minutes and 20 minutes respectively. A’s response was yes let’s, and she smiled. She and I both knew that she probably had more time than that, but I didn’t want to guess a much higher number so I gave her the benefit of the doubt.
I’ve had an American Express card since university. My dad used to joke that I was the youngest person he knew with an American Express Gold Card. He gave one to my sister and me for emergencies when he and my mom weren’t around, so we had it pretty young. The only reason it was that card was because that was what he had to supplemental cards to.
After university, I got my own Amex in 1998, and since then, I’ve racked up a lot of Membership Rewards points. Not millions, but hundreds of thousands at least. Back when I was traveling for work, no one cared if you earned points on your personal card for work expences, so I accumulated them pretty quickly.
At first, I didn’t do much with them. But as the balance kept growing, I figured I needed a goal to work toward. A regular plane ticket didn’t seem special enough—though I probably redeemed points for one or two back in the day. Then I saw something in the American Express points catalog that caught my attention: a Concorde flight from New York to London, with a return ticket on British Airways, for 200,000 points.
I’d always wanted to fly the Concorde, but it was way out of reach financially. So, I thought, Why not make that my goal? I was almost there when the Concorde accident happened, and the planes were grounded. With my hopes of flying the Concorde gone, I didn’t know what to do with my points anymore. So, I kept saving them, not realizing that holding onto points is actually one of the worst things you can do. Their value drops over time; you’re better off spending them.
Eventually, I started redeeming points here and there. A few years after the Concorde dream died, I used some to buy M a MacBook. I know merchandise isn’t the best way to redeem points, but I think I got a decent deal on that Apple redemption. Around the same time, we used points to save almost half the cost of our honeymoon. Those two redemptions happened within about a year, but even after that, I still had hundreds of thousands of points—and I kept accumulating more, despite knowing it was a bad idea not to spend them.
Finally, in 2017, I decided to burn through everything I’d built up. Once again, I ignored the “best practices” and spent the points on merchandise. While I could’ve gotten double the value if I’d used them for travel, the item I bought had been on my wishlist for a long time: a really nice watch. So nice, in fact, that the points only covered about half the cost. Even though I didn’t maximize their value, I don’t regret it. The watch was worth it to me.
Since then, I haven’t let points pile up the way I used to.
I’m not sure what triggered the memory of the Concorde, but I made a note to write about it. Taking that flight would have been legendary, but the watch is still a pretty great consolation prize.
Today marks my 17th work anniversary. I haven’t done a retrospective of the numbers involved in a few years, so it felt like time for an update.
It’s still only been three companies: Thomson Reuters, Refinitiv, and now LSEG. Back in my 2022 update, I mentioned I was moving into a new role. Three years later, I’m still in that role. So here’s how the breakdown looks on this workaversary:
8 offices 2 continents 12 managers (4 of them just in the past 3 years) 7 different groups across those 17 years (though the lines blur a bit, since lately I’ve been helping out in a group outside my own)
The most important part isn’t the numbers, though. Even if it can feel a little discouraging to watch people you’ve known and liked move on, I still find the work exciting, the problems worth solving, and the culture a place I want to show up to every day.
It’s pretty likely that the first movie I ever saw wasn’t actually the one I’m talking about today. What I’m going to talk about is the first movie I remember seeing. I don’t even recall being in the theater for the entire thing, but I know I was there because I have one vivid memory from it. Based on the release date and my approximate age at the time, I must have been pretty young. Looking back, the fact that this movie is the first one I remember says a lot about me.
If you know me, you might have guessed that the first movie I remember seeing in a theater was Star Wars: A New Hope. It came out in May 1977, which would have made me a little over three years old. I’m not sure how long it was in theaters, so I can’t say exactly when I was taken to see it, but for the sake of argument, let’s assume I was about three. Was that a movie a three-year-old should see? The short answer: probably not. And, in full disclosure, before writing that sentence, I looked up when I first took my own daughters to see a Star Wars movie in theaters—it was Solo, the Han Solo film. They were five, so I think it’s safe to say that three was probably a bit young. (I’m not a hypocrite on this!)
I don’t recall if my mom was there. She isn’t in my memory, nor is my sister. That’s why I think my dad might have taken me by himself. All I really remember is getting up—or maybe sitting down—during that scene where Darth Vader is choking the general who, frankly, was being a bit cross with him.
That’s it. That’s all I remember just that one vivid moment. But I have a pretty good feeling that it set the stage for my love of the genre. With me wanting to write more recently this was one of those topics I wanted to write about. It also should come first before me talking about other stuff about me slightly older anyway.
Today was A’s first day of Year Seven. For her, it’s the start of high school, and she’s been excited about it for weeks. For M and me, it’s also a milestone: our youngest is now in high school.
For Americans, the translation is that “high school” here is closer to what would be middle school in the States. But regardless of labels, the feeling is the same. When T started last year, or whenever she reached some other milestone, my quiet consolation was always that A was still little. She hadn’t crossed that threshold yet, so I could still tell myself I had one more kid who wasn’t quite there.
Now that A has made the leap, that excuse is gone. My little baby is officially in high school. It’s a strange mix of pride, nostalgia, and the creeping realization that time really does move too fast.
Hopefully she had a good first day. She certainly looked adorable in the uniform, which feels like its own rite of passage.
Today’s musing is just me trying to catch up emotionally to where she already is: ready, eager, and growing up faster than I’d like.
This blog has been around for 22 years, so there are definitely themes I circle back to. One of them is my strange, recurring relationship with Android phones. Even though I’m primarily an Apple user, I’ve probably owned more Android devices than most self-identified Android fans. The pattern is always the same: I buy one as a secondary device, I use it for a while, then it sits unused, and eventually I sell it. Time passes, I forget why I swore them off, and I start the cycle again. I even wrote a note to Future Scott to warn me away from doing it again.
In principle, I avoid Google services wherever I can. I don’t use Chrome, I don’t use Gmail, and I shut down Google accounts once I’m done with them. And yet, every so often, I’ll find myself picking up a Pixel or some other Android device, which of course requires opening yet another Google account. I tell myself it’s just a dabble, nothing serious.
Late last year I bought a Pixel 8. At first, I was happy enough with it. It was a solid device, smooth to use, and it scratched that itch of trying something different. But right after I bought it, Google announced they were changing how tracking would work on their phones and browsers. Instead of traditional identifiers you could reset or mask, they were moving to device fingerprinting. In plain terms, that means every Google phone and browser gets a permanent, unique tag. You can’t get rid of it, you can’t change it, and you certainly can’t hide from it.
For someone like me, who’s allergic to oversharing by default, the idea of being permanently tagged at the device level was a dealbreaker. It didn’t matter how polished the hardware was; I couldn’t stomach it. I did a bit of threat modeling on my own use case, read up on the details, and then stopped using the Pixel. A few months later I sold it. I should have sold it sooner, but it was only a secondary device and I didn’t feel much urgency. I defaulted back to an older iPhone I had lying around.
Not long after I sold the Pixel, Google partially backtracked on their fingerprinting plans. Sort of. The walk-back wasn’t enough to matter to me. By then I had already closed out my latest Google account, and I’m hoping that’s the end of the cycle. No more Groundhog Day moments of buying another Pixel, dabbling for a bit, and regretting it all over again.
For me, the line was crossed when the tag became something I couldn’t remove. Control matters. Once that was gone, so was my willingness to keep using the phone.
Here’s what I mean: I talk a lot about privacy and the steps I take to keep my digital life locked down. For years, I’ve been a DuckDuckGo loyalist. I dropped Google search ages ago, and I don’t really miss it. But somewhere along the way, I stumbled across the idea of hosting your own meta-search engine, and of course, I had to try it.
So no, I didn’t invent an algorithm that crawls the internet. But I did spin up my own private search setup. I started experimenting with SearX, and eventually migrated to SearXNG, which is the more actively maintained fork. I run it locally on a Raspberry Pi 5, which already pulls duty hosting a handful of other media services and Docker containers. Through Tailscale, I can securely reach it from anywhere on my devices. In practice, this means I get a private, ad-free search experience that no one else can see into. It’s not flashy, but it’s mine, and that feels good.
Has it been life-changing? Not exactly. It’s cool, and I like knowing I have it, but more and more of my “searching” these days gets funneled through an LLM. That workflow is a whole separate rabbit hole I’ll save for another post.
For now, though, I can say this: if you’ve ever wondered what it feels like to run your own search engine, even a “sort of” one, it’s empowering, surprisingly doable, and it gives you just a little more control in a space that usually takes it away.
The other day my oldest daughter asked me about the screensaver on my computer. Mine is set to a retro alarm clock face. I like having the clock there, and I like the old-school look of it. She wanted to know why I picked it and what other options there were.
That kicked off a conversation about what screensavers actually were for. I explained that once upon a time you really needed them. The name wasn’t just decorative—it literally saved your screen. CRT monitors could burn in if the same image stayed on too long, and screensavers kept things moving. Back then, you could download or buy screensavers of just about anything: flying toasters, bouncing logos, underwater fish tanks. It was an entire genre of computing culture.
I tried to find her a YouTube video of CRT burn-in to make the point, but all I could dig up were examples from plasma or LCD screens. To her, CRTs are just ancient history. I explained that even early LCD and plasma panels had the same issue, and together we managed to find an example or two of that on YouTube.
Of course, I didn’t help myself when I mentioned that my old iMac had a burn-in issue around 17 years ago. That was all she needed. She laughed and said something along the lines of, “Well, you experienced that because you’re old.” That’s the price of trying to explain vintage tech to a modern kid you end up becoming the vintage part of the story.
We’ve just come back from a week in France. Two whirlwind days at Disneyland Paris followed by a slower stretch at a resort. The rides, the food, the lounging by the pool… all wonderful. But the thing that surprised me most wasn’t the fireworks over the castle we didn’t actually see because by then we were too tired and had already headed back to the hotel. What stood out was that I managed the entire trip without touching a single euro note or even pulling out a physical card.
If you’ve read my past posts, you know I’ve been on a bit of a mission to go wallet-less. In daily life at home, I rely almost entirely on my phone or, even better, my watch for tap-to-pay. The convenience is unmatched. That said, whenever I travel abroad, I usually hedge my bets. Extra cards tucked into the bag. Mental note of where the nearest ATM might be. Because international trips can be tricky: not every place is set up for seamless digital payments, and the last thing you want is to be stranded without cash.
But this time? Smooth sailing. Disney was as high-tech as you’d expect, and even the resort didn’t skip a beat. From meals to souvenirs to a quick coffee at the pool when we didn’t have our wallets or phones, a tap of the watch worked perfectly. No fumbling with euros, no need to break a bill just to grab a snack. I didn’t expect it to be this easy.
Back in the UK, it’s already rare that I run into a situation where cash is essential. Even the local ice cream van has a contactless reader these days. And while I know France isn’t representative of every country in Europe or the world, it was reassuring to see just how far tap-to-pay has spread.
The takeaway? For certain destinations at least, traveling cashless is no longer a gamble. It’s becoming the norm. That’s one less thing to worry about when packing, and a little more space in the pocket for, say, an extra croissant or two.