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From Sceptic to Subscriber: Beginning of My AI Story

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I can’t believe I’m only now really starting to talk about some AI stuff, and ChatGPT launched in November 2022.

Looking back, I really didn’t do very much with it for over a year. The first six months was kind of like, okay, that’s cool, fine. I did a lot of reading about it separately, but I really didn’t do a heck of a lot until February 2024.

So over a year later, things were mature enough that I decided to take the plunge and try one of the paid services. Through the summer of 2023 I was definitely doing things here and there, but I was sceptical on what it could do. I was sceptical on its privacy. Well, I’m still sceptical on its privacy. But I didn’t pay for anything, and I was what you’d consider a light, casual user.

February 2024, I upgraded to Copilot. I also upgraded the family to the Microsoft 365 family plan at the same time, which you kind of need for Copilot Pro, or don’t, I forget. But there was a reason I did both at the same time. I treated it like a trial. Paid for it, but gave myself 30 days to see if I’d actually use it.

And I liked it. But the main reason I’d gone with Copilot was for the Microsoft Office integrations. That’s what sold me on it for personal use. In practice though, they just didn’t meet expectations at the time. And once I started talking to friends about it, the logic became pretty clear. Copilot is powered by ChatGPT anyway, and ChatGPT at the time had more plugins and a lot more flexibility. So why was I paying for the middleman?

I only used Copilot for about a month before switching to ChatGPT in March 2024.

I started using that on and off. In the beginning I’m not sure I really got my money’s worth, but it was worthwhile to have something and actually use it. I was able to use it for things like tutoring the kids — there’s literally a way to set it up so it won’t just give them the answer, it walks them through the problem. Stuff like that. A whole bunch of different use cases.

But what became apparent straight away was that there were things I was very hesitant to do with it, because it was, and still is, unclear what they actually do with your data.

For context I ran this story through an AI image generator to get a banner for this entry and after 3 tries it came up with what I used.

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.

Always Have a Ticket From The Airline Flying the Plane

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There are some travel lessons you only learn the hard way, like never packing a full bottle of shampoo in your carry-on, or trusting that a “short layover in Paris” (or worse, thinking you can sprint between Terminal A and Terminal D in Atlanta) will actually go smoothly.

But the one lesson that’s stuck with me through years of work trips and personal travel is this: always have a ticket from the airline flying the plane.

If the aircraft says Virgin Atlantic on the side, buy your ticket from Virgin Atlantic, not from Delta, not from Air France, not from whoever happens to be codesharing that day.

I learned this the hard way, a few times.

Once, I booked a Virgin Atlantic ticket from London to New York. Except it was actually an Air France-operated flight. I didn’t think much of it at the time. A plane’s a plane, right? Wrong.

Everything was fine until the airline changed the flight with a new time, new number, the usual shuffle. Our assigned seats (carefully picked because, you know, kids) vanished.

I logged into Virgin Atlantic’s website to reselect our seats, only to find that Virgin politely told me to contact Air France. Air France, to their credit, were actually very helpful, they just couldn’t do what I needed. The systems didn’t talk to each other properly, and no one could fix it. Since the schedule change was on their end, I had the option to cancel, which I eventually did. I rebooked with my lesson learned and, thankfully, no price change.

Fast forward a bit and you’d think I would’ve remembered that rule. But no.

This time I had a Delta ticket for a Virgin Atlantic flight. Thanks to my American Express Platinum card, I should’ve had access to the Delta lounge. When I showed up, they told me I wasn’t eligible because the flight was operated by Virgin, not Delta. Same metal, wrong ticket. No lounge.

It’s one of those maddeningly small distinctions that make perfect sense to no one but airline lawyers.

From now on, I’m sticking to my own rule: always have a ticket from the airline flying the plane. If you don’t, be ready for drama.

I wrote this late last year. It appropriately is posting while the girls and I are on a plane off on a holiday. And yes I have learned my lesson it’s the same airline flying the plane that is on our tickets.

Two Decades and Change

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23 years in and I’m still doing this.

I’ve taken breaks. I’ve also posted several times in a single day. It’s been wildly inconsistent at points. But here we are, two-plus decades later, and I haven’t quit.

At some point I got into a rhythm of writing a bunch of posts at once and scheduling them out. Which means I’m not burning myself out trying to come up with something every day, but the blog keeps moving. Turns out that’s a sustainable approach. Only took me about 20 years to land on it.

The thing that gets me is this: if my blog were a person, it would be old enough to drink. Here in the UK, at least. It still couldn’t get a discounted car insurance rate though. That doesn’t kick in until 25. So it’s got a couple more years before it’s truly sorted.

I’ll take it.

Photo montage of the blog theme over the years. I didn’t realise I had taken so may screen captures. The bright orange profile was very early on in 2003.

WAY BACK MACHINE SNAPSHOT
My blog theme before I changed it, again
WAY BACK MACHINE CAPTURE
My first wordpress theme.

The One Where I Was Terrible at Football

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Both of my girls are playing football now. A started last year, and this summer, T decided to join too. I suspect the end of season party had something to do with her sudden interest. But whatever works.

One of my earliest memories is going to play football. Yes, football, not soccer. I live in England now, so we are doing this properly. My dad used to take me to these fields right off the Grand Central Parkway in Queens, near Little Neck Parkway. I can still picture them, green spaces right by the highway where you could literally see the games as you drove past.

My first team was the Blue team. I remember the jerseys, the cover photo is me standing around during a game or a practice.. Playing was my dad trying to get me into sports. Spoiler: it did not really stick.

I did play for years, probably until I was around eleven. I never had a real knack for it. My mom likes to tell people I was terrible, and she is not wrong. I daydreamed. I lost track of the ball. I think I spent half my time wondering when the snacks were coming.

At one point, my dad started helping coach my team. Then eventually, I think he was the coach. It is funny to look back now, because some of my best childhood memories connect to those seasons, even if I was daydreaming while everyone else actually played the game.

Football also shaped little corners of our family life in unexpected ways. For example, the beach club we joined later was connected to one of my coaches. A whole chapter of my childhood followed from those football years: summers, cabanas, the smell of sunscreen and chlorine.

I played both outdoor and indoor football growing up. The indoor version was wild. No outs, no throw ins, the ball just bounced off walls like some kind of playground pinball machine. Here in England, the kids play outdoors year round unless the ground freezes solid or turns into a swamp. They have trained in rain, cold, wind, everything.

I love it. Watching them do something I did as a kid but better feels oddly full circle. I never pushed them to start early, but I am glad they found a girls club where they feel at home.

My bar was pretty low, to be fair. So the good news is, they have already cleared it.

3000 Days

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I’ve known for a while what I wanted to write about today.

When I wrote the December 29th post about our England anniversary, I did what I always do: calculated the number of days since we moved. It’s become a thing. I like the number. It feels more concrete than just saying “seven years” or whatever.

This past December the number was creeping up toward 3,000. Which made me curious. So I did the math. When exactly would we hit 3,000 days?

I cannot make this up.

Today. My birthday. March 16, 2026 is exactly 3,000 days since we landed in England back in 2017.

I find that unreasonably satisfying.

Not a ton else to report on the birthday front. But honestly, that little numerical coincidence is enough. Some years you get a big revelation. This year I got a very pleasing number, and I’ll take it.

No fancy cake for me this year, M and I are going out but the photos are a montage of my favourite cakes M has made for me to date. The best so far would not be one for me though!

The Uncle Michael Turkey

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After my brother in law, Michael, passed away, I wrote down a few small stories about him. Not the big ones. Just the ones that made me smile when I thought about them. This is the first.

We were at my sister’s place after the funeral, when M told this story. When the kids were little, they used to do the usual school projects. One year, A made one of those classic hand turkeys. You trace your hand, turn it into a turkey, and on each finger you write something important to you.

On most of the fingers, she put exactly what you would expect from a three or four year old. Family. Home. Simple, generic things.

But on one of the fingers, she wrote “Uncle Michael.”

That was it. No other specific people. No friends. No teachers. Just Uncle Michael, singled out and given his own finger on the turkey.

Even back then, he just had that way with kids. They were drawn to him immediately. He did not try very hard. He did not need to. They just liked him.

What struck me was realizing how few people knew the story. When we mentioned it, my mom was surprised she had never heard it before. Somehow it had just stayed with us.

It feels like such a small thing. A hand turkey from a preschool classroom. But it says a lot.

Some people leave impressions without even realizing they are doing it. Michael was one of those people.

No photo of the turkey I am afraid. its in storage after thanksgiving and I am not going to hunt for it!

The Slow Goodbye to My Sony Alpha 6000

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When A was around four or five months old back in 2014, I finally went out and bought myself a Sony Alpha 6000. I keep calling it the 8000 in my head, but I am pretty sure it was the 6000. A mirrorless camera. Lightweight compared to the big DSLRs. And honestly, I loved that thing from the moment I took it out of the box.

I had been thinking about buying a “real” camera for a long time, probably since right around when T was born. We had those little point and shoot cameras back then, the kind you take on dates, vacations, and early married life. They were fine as long as the baby was not moving very fast, which babies do not for the first while. Slow focus, mediocre quality, but acceptable.

Eventually we drifted into using our phones. M held on to her BlackBerry camera longer than I ever wanted her to, and I tried to convince her to switch to an iPhone sooner, but that is a whole separate story. Either way, point and shoots faded out, and phone cameras took over. By the time A arrived, I was completely reliant on my phone for photos.

I know this because so many of those early pictures of her are grainy. Not unusable, but definitely early smartphone camera quality. Ten years ago, that was just how phone photos looked. They were fine, but nowhere near what a proper camera could do.

And then I bought the Sony. You can basically see the day it entered our lives just by scrolling the photo library. Everything suddenly goes from grainy baby in poor lighting to “wow, that looks like an actual photograph.” It was night and day.

I did not use the Sony all the time, but when we went to the park, to a family outing, or on a holiday, it came with me. That camera could shoot thirteen frames a second, which blew my mind. Hold down the shutter and it would just fire off shot after shot until the buffer filled. If the kids were jumping off a diving board, I would get every moment of the arc from takeoff to splash. It was incredible.

And the thing is, it is still an incredible camera. It works perfectly. The only thing it really lacks is built in GPS or any sort of modern connectivity. Even back then Sony sold an add on for that, but I never bought it. Aside from that, I truly have no complaints. It is a fantastic piece of kit.

But I do not use it anymore. Hardly ever.

Even though it is mirrorless and not some heavy DSLR monster, it is still extra weight. Unless I am going to a recital or a school performance or sports day, I just do not bring it. On those special occasions it shines. I get great photos. I am always glad I brought it.

But for everything else, holidays, day trips, everyday moments, I just use my iPhone.

The newer iPhones have such good cameras now. The optical zoom is surprisingly decent, the quick capture is good enough, and while it will never match a thirteen frames per second burst, it gets the job done. And more importantly, the phone is always with me. It used to be that the phone camera was “fine.” Now it is genuinely impressive for pretty much all normal everyday photos.

So the Sony sits around. I take it out a few times a year, but that is about it.

Part of me would love to upgrade it someday, mostly for the built in GPS so I could easily geotag everything. I still tag my photos manually because I like knowing where pictures were taken, but upgrading to a whole new camera just to avoid that step does not make sense.

And as much as it pains me to say it, I do not think I will ever buy another dedicated camera. Not because they are not wonderful, but because I do not want to carry one. Convenience wins. Even over something as genuinely enjoyable and high quality as that Sony Alpha.

It is a little sad, but it is also just reality. The best camera is the one you are willing to carry, and these days, that is my phone.