Life, Kids, Technology & that move to another continent
scott It may be just a flashlight however it something I’ve had for 25 years. The batteries are corroded and I cannot get the hex screw out to try soaking it in lemon juice. It’s now off to the recycle center and I need to shop for a new one.
I remember carrying that around almost everywhere when I was volunteering as an EMT in college.
I may have broken British law several times this morning calling a crumpet Scones to my kids. I knew I messed up right away when my older one got excited and looked at me funny as if to say we don’t have scones.
Hi IRS robo-call that sounded like you were from the movie War Games. Here is the thing. You called on a number I do not think I gave the IRS. You sounded very threatening. Good job scaring people however I don’t think the government will do that. Also how is 2 phone calls all you give to warn people? The real IRS has reached out to me in the past. it is several letters, not just two calls. Nice try.
The best part about this is when I called the number you called me at you answered the phone right away. Like one ring. Do you really think i am going to believe that a government agency like the IRS is going to pick up in one ring with no IVR saying hello IRS? I was tired so I didn’t decide to play with the guy who I got on the other end of the phone but I thought about it before I hung up.
All of that and a simple internet search of the number you used for your caller id: 347-966-5628 comes back with reports of spam. https://www.callercenter.com/347-966-5628.html#complaints
I should be annoyed however I was slightly amused.
Not quite 3-2-1 Backup at the time however I have resilient copies of DVD backups from 1999. Both still work. I did become fully 3-2-1 backup compliant years later when I made an ISO on a hard drive and then backed that drive up.
I can’t bring myself to part with one of these. And on top of that I have the same double backups for every year throughout the 2000’s on DVD.
No I do not have a good answer why I didn’t purge this before I moved to another continent.
Some would say i am a pretty organized person. I sometimes it doesn’t feel like that, however most of the time I would say i am generally pretty organized compared to most people I know. My problem has sometimes been my tracking of what i need to do has gotten too complex.
For several years I had been trying (and sometimes succeeding) at following the Getting Things Done approach to taking care of my actions. I had been using a web service called Remember The Milk to do that. I have written about it a few times in the past. RTM has iPhone and iPad apps that made it easy to take my actions lists with me and edit them offline. I was content using it for several years but sometimes I dabbled with other systems trying to find something better. I never really found anything and always ended up back with RTM.
Back in 2014 I started implementing a kanban approach to some procedures we do at work. Reading up on kanban has gotten me to think adopt some of the concepts to my personal life. That line of thinking got me to branch out from RTM. A big part of kanban is visualizing your work. RTM just generates basic lists. I tried having several lists to denote different steps on a personal kanban system but it was lacking a lot of the visual element when i couldn’t see all the steps at the same time. I also had challenges with sorting projects in RTM. I could create them but that required a smart list for each project. That caused me to have a ton of different smart lists that i had to look at in order to see my tasks. RTM also had a limitation in that they didn’t offer sub tasks for a task so in order to group several actions together i had to create a project even if it was small and could be represented by one “card” and several sub tasks.
In searching for several different options I came across Trello. After testing and playing around with several similar applications I settled on moving my work and personal task management to Trello. Since the summer of 2014 my use of Trello has exploded. Not only do I use it for personal and work boards. I track meeting agendas in it. At one point we had a training schedule at work using it. For personal projects such as planning for vacation we use it. I have a board for places we want to try or like to go to for lunch at work. The board I like to show as an example of how to use it when people ask is my Mixology board. There I clipped from the web recipes of mixed drinks that I want to learn or have already mastered creating. I try to share a few family boards with my wife however she is not as big on task organization as I am.
The biggest drawback to Trello originally was the fact that there mobile applications didn’t really handle off-line synchronization. In the past year however they’ve added that functionality so while I’m on the subway I am able to update a board or individual cards and they sync up to the cloud when I get network signal. There are some small limitations to this however not something that has prevented me from using it. Things like checklists don’t load when you open the card without network signal.
I’ve been happy to pay the five dollars or so a month in their Trello Gold subscription. I almost want to pay for the full $15 a month professional plan however no one else I interact with does that so functionality would be limited.
In the several years that I’ve been using Trello (I didn’t realize it has been over 3 already) I have tried to look for alternatives. Not because I’m unhappy, just because I’m always looking for the next great option. Folks at work have used the GIT task board. I have played with Microsoft office 365’s task boards and neither of them come close to ease-of-use or functionality. So for now Trello it is. Until at least Atlassian messes it up now that they own it. Here’s to hoping they don’t.
Prior to my big move while I was on the topic of writing about target and NFC payments regarding Target I had to go to CVS and pick up something. While I was waiting to check out I was reminded that CVS has the shiny new point-of-sale terminals with the big logo for tap to pay that doesn’t work. If I remember correctly they used to allow it and then when Apple Pay came out they turned it off. It was because they were a partner of CurrentC and didn’t want their competitor to work.
Whatever happened to companies going sure I will take any form of your money so you can buy our stuff? It reminds me that I wanted to create a web series about “Please Take My Money”. It started with Macy’s. I wrote about it a few years ago: If I wrote more about it, I would chronicle all the challenges I’ve experienced with companies not simply letting me buy their stuff or give them money when it should be really easy. In CVS’s case it’s they want to save money on the transaction fee they pay credit cards. To do that they turned off all cordless payment systems that competed with CurrentC. Thankfully that service that was only good for the retailers and not the consumers failed. Apple Pay still not working at least at my local CVS.
One day at dinner before we moved to London I was discussing with the girls one of the things we can do when were in England. The girls love princess stories so MC and I talked up the fact that we can go see all sorts of different castles. This was something we’ve discussed several times and both girls had been excited about it.
This night T was still excited and wanted some more details. A on the other hand wasn’t so excited. I asked her why. She said she was going to be bored. She wanted to see just one castle and that was enough.
After a statement like that I didn’t really know what else to say except to confirm that’s what she meant. She did. Then I went about eating dinner…
For a little over a year I was using Dragon Anywhere on my iPhone to dictate my journal entries and this blog. I found it very useful. It was pretty accurate. It was much better than Siri however not as good as the Dragon Desktop app on my Mac.
The app was great for when I was walking and could dictate things I was thinking about. I found myself doing much more writing when I could reliably use that app. The downside however was the price. It cost around $15 a month. Over the summer I stopped using it for a few weeks and got wondering if I really needed it.
When I started to use dictation again it was right around the time that iOS 11 gold master was available. I was trying that out along with the dictating some texts. I noticed that the dictation function was more persistent than previously. That means I could talk for longer without it dropping off. The user interface also stayed on screen for the dictation icon instead of reverting back to the keyboard all the time. This made it easier to actually dictate more in the native keyboard. On top of that it seemed that Siri had gotten much better at dictation. It is still not better than Dragon however it is much more compelling to drop the $15 a month expense of dragon now.
Interestingly I’m not missing dragon that much. I am however not dictating as much as I did previously. I’m not sure if that was just a psycho I’m going through where I write less and then go back to it. Or if ease of using Dragon really is worth it. Right now my primary objective is to cut costs so in unnecessary $15 charge is gone something else to replace it however I feel that’s much more compelling and on related. That’s for another story.
I find time to write when I’m walking. This blog entry for example is being written, dictated while I’m walking to pick up my kids from school. It’s a great time filler and allows me to clear my head. What I really need to do is set aside time when I’m home and use my computer and the dragon software there. It’s much better at recognizing words however it requires dedicated personal time but I’m not always willing to give up..
In my walk to the tube station this dark Tuesday morning I walked past the sanitation guys in my neighborhood doing the weekly collection. I was surprised when I got a hello mate from all of them when I walked past each one.
It wasn’t on my block and they didn’t want anything. New Yorkers are pretty friendly however maybe not so outgoing. This was an encounter that I never had in NY.
Most of the other things I’ve written about are completely possible or even required to be done out of the country. There is only so much you can do regarding finding a place to live without actually looking at houses. M is really fantastic at looking at online listings and narrowing down what she wants and what she thinks won’t work. So basically she did all she could do remotely.
Even with M’s house investigation skills we realized early enough in the house finding process that we needed help. Based on a recommendation or two we settled on a relocation agent. Their job was to help us find a house to live in. We had several criteria. We wanted to be an area with a lot of green space. We also wanted a house with the backyard. This is something that M has wanted for a while and we promised our kids. One of the biggest priorities was proximity to good schools for the girls. We also wanted to be a reasonable commute will be located. And obviously we had a budget to stick with. With all that information in hand we let our relocation agents go to work. At the same time I had spoken to several friends from work who currently live in or around London. I also spoke to a friend of mine who is in New York who was relocated from London. After a lot of back and forth we suggested to the relocation agents that we felt our criteria would be met in a few specific neighborhoods.
After their research the relocation agent’s agreed with us. We then started focusing our efforts on the surrounding neighborhoods that we felt were a fit. The relocation agent sent several house examples to us. They were only examples since we learned that most property gets rented very quickly so we needed to see what was people out there however we would not have the specific listings we were going to see or possibly rent until right before we went to look.
Finding a house however does require some on the ground work. All of the research that M has done and all the work done by the relocation experts leads up to an on-site house viewings. The question became when could we go. We knew that when we started finding the right time to go was always a big question. Originally we were hoping to go in early October however childcare was a challenge. We also learned that to rent a house you need your visas done already. Our visas weren’t ready in October. We also learned that you have to view a house right around when you want to take it since they go quickly.
Early on in the planning my mom had said she would take the girls while we went to look for a house. The best week for her was the week of Thanksgiving. It only required hard to do the school routine two days and then go to my sisters the rest of the week until we got there. That gave us the entire weekend before and four days, Monday through Thursday to do what we needed to do. The relocation people said that the timeframe could work since property would be available for viewing then that we could rent in December. We preferred to rent for January however this was the only time we could go.
Other things we figured out was that you cannot get into a school right away so having a property rented and then starting the process to get the school sorted in December was appealing. The overlap in cost with our apartment in New York was frustrating however one month wasn’t the end of the world if it got us what we wanted.
With our dates settled we booked travel. We waited a bit too long and tickets were going to be pretty expensive for airfare. Then we had the idea to use reward tickets. We each had enough points for round trip ticket and there was availability the days we wanted to travel. The only challenge we had was we had award points on different airlines. We ended up booking the tickets and flew separately. Going out to London our flights were only about 30 minutes apart. Coming back however it was about 2 1/2 hours.
Due to delays M only arrived about 15 minutes before I did and waited for me and read a book right past customs. We were able to ride together to the hotel.
The way the schedule worked while we were in London for our house visiting trip was we had Saturday to rest from our overnight flight to view the neighborhoods we were interested in. We also hoped to find any last-minute houses that we wanted to view on our own. We walked around the high streets of two neighborhoods. We also spoke to one realtor and lined up two houses to view on Monday.
We were only able to view one house Monday since the other one we could get into. The house was lovely however it was right adjacent to the train and we were concerned about that. I thought I would be more concerned about that then it turned out to be however the bigger issue with the house was its distance to the train. It was three quarters of a mile walk. Without a car the girls would have issue doing that anytime we wanted to go anywhere.
Monday night we met up with a friend of mine from work who lives in the neighborhood we were looking at. By Monday afternoon the relocation agents had emailed us the itinerary for our marathon viewing sessions on Tuesday. We were originally going to try to do some houses Tuesday and some houses Wednesday however the schedule worked out that it was all done on Tuesday. Fun fact we learned that house viewing in England is best done on a Saturday or weekdays that are not Monday. Apparently Monday is when they reconcile offers made from weekend viewings.
With our list of houses we reviewed them with my friend at a pub by the office. We got the lowdown on the streets where the houses we wanted to see were. Based off of that and the details from the relocation agents there were no matter what and some that we were really excited to see.
On Tuesday the first house we saw was a disaster, literally. There was what could only be described as a hole in the floor of the kitchen. There were some sort of water damage that had been addressed yet and the entire kitchen was buckled floor. It was a good start of the day. The next few houses were okay but nothing spectacular.
Before lunch we viewed one house that was M’s stand out favorite. The street was nice, the backyard was nice and it was pretty spacious. What we learned was even though we only need three bedrooms the houses we viewed you really needed a 4th bedroom. The reason for that was the last bedroom be it the third or fourth was always super small. We could have survived on three bedrooms however my dream of a home office in a guestroom would’ve been dashed. The rooms were just too small to hold more than a desk or more than a single bed. The single bed even wouldn’t have been enough since we want guests to come and that means usually more than one person at a time. Apparently this size room is typical in prewar houses.
After lunch we saw another house or two we liked. One house with really good location to a fantastic school was just horrible. The last house we saw as M said had terrible curb appeal. It was off of the main Street was a little bit further of a walk than what we liked however it was doable. The thing with that house was once you are inside it was fantastic. There was a pretty open floor plan first floor. The living room was pretty big and there was an eating kitchen. The backyard was huge. So large to the point we could not see the end of it due to the way it was laid out. I wasn’t a fan of the bedroom configuration but it was okay enough.
In the end the decision boiled down to two houses. One was a big four-bedroom with a huge backyard with a swing set. It had if I recall an eating kitchen and a garage with off street parking even had a dryer in the garage. That apparently is very rare for England. It hardly did not come with appliances however the previous tenant had left appliances we could use with no warranty if we wanted.
The other house was M’s favorite that was close to the train on a cute Street. It was a three bedroom that had the attic converted into a master bedroom with en suite bathroom. It did not have off street parking however you can get a permit so parking hopefully should be manageable since not just anyone can park.
We put an offer on the four-bedroom with the converted attic. The final straw was it had several school options that were good. The other house we light had really only one school option and if we didn’t get into it we would have to travel pretty far for in other school. One of the things we said we needed that the relocation agent suggested was a high density number of schools in case your first and second options don’t work out.
Since our original plan was to view houses Wednesday and we had an offer out we had a free day. We went to the Tate and Borough Market along with walking on the river for a while. It was generally restful day before we flew home on Thursday.
As of the time of this writing we have our house. We got the house we wanted and were pretty happy. The relocation agents have already started the process of getting our utilities and other things set up. There helping with things I didn’t realize they would help with. Well I guess I realized that since I did read the terms and conditions however you forget the details. I was getting overwhelmed with the things we need to do and there taking care of many of them.
By the time this blog post is published we should be already living in her house.