Mojitos Box is Open

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Mixology Tiki Bar

I keep forgetting we have fresh mint in our garden. Finally M reminded me while we were out so i could remember to get fresh Lime and club soda so I could try making Mojitos. We love them and it is one of the drinks i have been meaning to try at home. Our first two test drinks were both pretty good.

That means that Pandora / Mojitos box is open. I am told and can independently confirm we have a good supply of mint in the garden so my only limiting factor is how many limes we have on hand.

Now I have a good use for our Tiki glasses. Next up is trying to make Pims now that i got real British lemonade.

Underground vs Subway Showdown Part 1: Take My Money

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While I am still settling into writing routine I figured I would start off with some comparison posts. I know its a bit cliche to do comparisons. I also know people who have moved countries say you shouldn’t really do it if you want to enjoy your new home better however with some things my mind just goes to comparisons. And no comparison between New York and London would be complete I feel without talking about the subway and the Underground. FYI I refer to the Underground a lot in this post. I do that instead of saying the Tube mainly because my Dragon Anywhere dictation had trouble getting Tube correct in all the different contexts I was using. I really mean the Tube and the DLR in my comparison since I use both systems daily.

Payments

The Underground and the subway are in some ways similar and yet are so starkly different. First difference between the systems that stands out for me how you pay. In New York the subway is a flat rate to go anywhere. You can also purchase a daily, weekly, monthly unlimited card. The flat rate of the unlimited cards were pretty awesome. That is where the awesome ends with the Metro Card. You see for those of you that do not live in NY the Metro Card requires you to use a magnetic strip reader that was semi new and cool when introduced in the mid 1990’s. Ah the aggravating memories of having to stand at a turnstile swiping my card 15-20 times before it would work. Or swiping it 15-20 times only to have it say just used when you did not just use it because you were standing there for 5 minutes trying to get the dam card to work. Wow, I just had bad flashbacks about that. That is just two typical issues I had with my Metro Card.. I sum up the Metro Card experience by saying it is 1990s technology that has not aged well. At present there’s only a rough roadmap to replace the system.

The underground on the other hand you pay based on where you are and where you’re going to. I get the reasons for this however in practice it costs me more. Payments on the underground are contactless. I had the oyster card when I visited for moving here. On the last trip or two visiting I realized I could use my iPhone with Apple pay to tap into and out of the system. Since I’ve been living in London I have an Apple watch series 3 and now am able to make payments via my watch.

Head-to-head contactless payments for the Underground wins. Even if it costs a bit more money the Metro card is crap. I had countless issues with it. The simple fact that I can pay for my trip using my watch will win anytime.

In Part 2 of The Underground vs Subway I will ponder why in the world stuff breaks so much on 100+ year old infrastructure.

This Is 10:14 PM

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I know this is normal in London. I am just not sure if I will ever get used to twilight at 10:14 PM. Or dawn at 4:30 AM or whatever crazy early hour it happens now a days.

W Sisters Short A’s Bedtime

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Me while tucking in A, “are you tired?”. A replied “how do you know i am tires?”. I replied “are you tired?”. She replied “yes”.

I said “you look tired”. Sounding surprised she responds “oh”…

The Great Facebook Purge of 2018

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With the news in April about a 3rd party company stealing tons of Facebook user data is in the headlines it envouge to delete Facebook accounts.  For me I have limited my Facebook exposure for years.  I deleted my account once a in 2013 and started over with no content.  I have also limited what goes onto the platform.  Prior to deleting my account i looked for a way to purge en mass content.  Facebook suprise doesn’t make it easy for you to do that.  That was why i deleted my account in the first place.

Early last year I stopped looking at and updating Facebook.  Late last year I came back for specific reasons I wrote about here.  Those reasons still are valid so I do not want to go as far as deleting my Facebook account however I have little trust in their motives to collect so much data about me or their ability to safeguard that data.

Instead of deleting my account I found a script that sort of worked to remove content or hide content from the past 6 months. It scrubbed posts, likes, etc.  It is perfect for my use.  It should have worked for my entire timeline however i had issues with it. Thankfully I have been very sparce on my usage of Facebook over the years so cleaning up manually was not too bad. For anyone who used it every day for years may not be able to do the same thing.

What I am now left with is simply posts from my blog that are public on the internet. A few group discussions i took part in and mainly birthday posts from people. What I am not able to get rid of easily is tags of me in posts. I had to settle for manually hiding them from my timeline.

For many what i did in an hour or two would not be possible without significant effort due to the volume o content people post and the fact that Facebook does not let you easily get rid of stuff.