An Update on The Disembodied Female Voice Called Alexa That My Kids Always Hear Me Talking To

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When I last wrote about my Amazon echo I said I would be trying to teach it some smart things commands. Yeah, so I didn’t do that. Since setting up my Logitech Harmony with my echo to turn my TV on and off I haven’t really spent much time with the echo teaching it anything new. I’ve continue to use the echo. Apparently not as much as other people who are very vocal about how awesome it is however I am using it. My use case has become listening to music and checking the weather. Of course the main reason I bought the echo in the first place was I wanted to use voice commands to listen to music and my phone paired with a Bose Bluetooth speaker wasn’t doing that very well. With that fact in mind the echo is extremely successful at what I originally purchased it for

I did have hopes of using it for more than just music. I’m not sure if it’s usefulness hasn’t improved for me because I do not use Google for contacts, calendars, tasks. I also do not currently get my news from the radio or TV. I could see using an echo in my bedroom to listen to news stories as in getting ready in the morning however I don’t see the cost benefit of buying another device to do that specific task. The current echo I have is in our living room and suits its primary function very well in that location.

I could see over time having another device in different rooms however I’m holding back on that partly due to curiosity if Apple will release something to compete against the echo. They likely will however what the product turns out to be is anyone’s guess. And plenty of people are guessing, so I’m not going to. Until Apple makes an announcement I keep reading the weekly updates I get from Amazon on what new tricks the echo can perform to see if there’s any new features that will peak my interest. So far I’m still waiting.

One thing I do want to find time to focus on is ;to see if I can integrate my smart things with the echo a bit. That project however is not on the top of my hobby project list. Of course there’s a lot of specific things I want to do with my smart things that I haven’t done in over a year. Since we want to get a house at some point in the near term investing in any fixed devices such as power or light switches in this apartment doesn’t seem worth the value or time. All this extra integration might just wait until after we move.

The W Sisters and The Bedtime Stories Circa 15-August

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What I have realized even before I had little kids was that parents of little kids find the most normal or minor actions from children to be pretty funny. Even when I was not apparent I could totally get the point. I am not sure of everyone else does however I keep saying my kids are my entertainment budget. They really are. And I love it. Instead of writing little blurbs on Facebook like I know some people do I’ve been trying to turn comments are funny things I remember in two small stories.

I’ve been in a good place when it comes to writing recently so I have a backlog of things to publish and write about. This scratch that these minor anecdotes are from August 15.

Prior to getting ready for our bedtime routine T was complaining to me about something Amelia was doing wrong. I think Teagan takes it upon herself as big sister to do that. Or she just wants to annoy us, I’m not really sure. Now that T is understanding things more I try to explain to her stuff. That is probably not the best use of my time in a lot of instances however I try. In this case I tried to explain to T that she should worry about herself and not worry about what Amelia was doing if it’s not directly impacting her. I will give myself credit since I thought but didn’t say to her and nobody likes a rat. Teagan’s response to my commenting to her was that I shouldn’t worry about her and I should worry about myself. Touché Teagan, touché.

Later that evening I was reading stories to the girls. In recent months A likes to snuggle and have my hand around her waist. She says that she’s buckled in when I do that. T is hit or miss on the smuggling. For a few weeks she will needed to do it and then she stopped for a little while. As I was reading A blurts out “no, no, no, hold on”. She then proceeded to take the book and flip back a page. She had unanswered questions about the picture that she wanted me to address.

I believe this was also the same night that the girls insisted on having me have Alexa (aka our Amazon Echo) play the song “Fight Song” about three or four times. They danced around during the whole song. They even got crazier in their dancing is the temple of the song picked up for the chorus. I was lucky enough or smart enough to remember to take a video of one full song so I could send it to M and share it with our parents. I think Teagan started liking that song from Morgan’s bat mitzvah otherwise I have no idea where she heard it from. I would like to give a shout out to my brother-in-law Michael for the “Dance Party” idea. I can sometimes get them to dance around to other songs however this is their favorite one. Based on the lack of response from our downstairs neighbor pretty sure he works late during week.

Securing Email Isn’t Only For Spies, Dissidents, & Journalists, Right?

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Over the past year and a half I have been taking lots of steps to secure my digital life. I’ve written a lot about the different aspects of that. My migration from Google mail and other services to more secured options.

One thing I’ve known has been a concern that I’ve not yet addressed the quantity of data online. For example even though I moved my mail to a Swiss based provider I still had my entire email archive available. I have mail going back as far as 1997 I believe. I have been wanting to take that archive off-line and out my email provider’s servers. Over the years I’ve had the packrat mentality where I want to keep all of my messages. Recently I’ve grown to not want many of the messages I received. I’ve been deleting stuff that are unnecessary however there are still things that I get a do want to keep. In general I would like to keep the archive, especially my personal correspondence.

The challenge that I have is that I’m growing less trustworthy of any service provider. Even though my email hosting company is in Switzerland they take no extraordinary security precaution so the system is just as susceptible to hacking as most. That means my mail at rest is in the clear, unencrypted. But I want to do is take my mail and store it off-line so I have more control over it. I currently plan on keeping it in a local archive on my Mac at home. I will also have it backed up on my bit torrent sync network.

The first step in this process was for me to copy all of my mail to a local application. For my purposes I found the built-in Mac mail application to work the best. Once I had a downloaded copy of all the mail I was able to export it to an mBox formatted archive. At the same time I took the opportunity to recategorized how I organized my mail. In the past when I was using Google I had been using tags extensively. When I exported out of Google I went back to a folder structure where each high-level tag was its own folder where I put received mail. When I exported the mail to a local folder I put all sent mail in one folder and all received mail and another. Using mail tags I was able to continue to tag and make smart queries of the male if I ever needed to get a hold of the categories that I used in the past.

Once I had the off-line mBox files I put them in an archive on my BitTorrent Sync network. I kept the live copy in my Mac mail on my computer in case I need to search for and email in the archive. Over the past few weeks after I’ve done this I’m surprised how often I do go back and reference old emails for things like key codes or when did I buy something. After I was satisfied that the mail was backed up I deleted it from my hosting provider.I did leave this calendar year’s mail on my hosting provider. I figured that was a good round number to keep online. I can annually do an archive. Having to be at home or to remote into my home computer to perform mail queries has become a slight inconvenience however it hasn’t been the end of the world.

In addition to moving my entire mail archive off-line I want go further and start using a secured email provider like proton mail that takes extraordinary steps to encrypt the data at rest.I do not need that level of security for all my mail however does come in handy for some of it. There’s been several messages I’ve been hesitant to send or had no choice but to send that contain sensitive information such as bank information or Social Security numbers in the past that I would prefer not to use via email. And of course that’s not my paranoia security experts say never do that. Having a secured provider that encrypts the mail at rest and also has mechanism for sending secured mail to others could be useful. Really what he secure mail is doing is it sending email to the recipient with a link back to the website that secured that contains the actual message. I need to provide a password hint in the body of the mail I send. It’s not perfect however in most cases it will solve the problem of sending outbound secured man.

One of the challenges in a system such as proton mail is that at present there is no mechanism to import or export mail. That means anything I receive is locked into that system. On day one that’s not a problem however I like to have data portability. Protonmail says they are working on that function however who knows when or if it will ever come to pass. I may still use them for some correspondence only and in essence had two private email addresses one for security and one for unsecured messages. That way I can route one I want secured to the encrypted system.

I’ve also been looking at Tutanota as an alternative to proton mail. It appears to have the same import and export limitations however otherwise seems like a very similar and comparable option. Both systems offer a free tier.I signed up for both services to play around with them. I’ve since signed up for a month-to-month service with both of them and them in the process of pointing in unused email domain to Mutant, while I’ve already completed setting up proton mail. Protonmail so far seems like a slightly better option in terms of usability however it is significantly more money per month than Tutanota. The only reason I signed up for the paid version of Tutanota after I signed up for Protonmail was because it was less than two dollars a month.I hope to give both services try for a month or two before settling on one or the other.

For now the combination of moving my mail off-line and having a encrypted provider as needed suits my needs. These changes are all still pretty new so I will see how things pan out over the next month or two before I decide to make any tweaks or to let the situation be as is for the time being.

The Coffee Making Equivalent of Pandora’s Box

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I finally got around to making some cold brew iced coffee using the Brewer I bought the other week. In retrospect I should never have bought it. I should never of learned how easy it is to make cold brew concentrate. I had my 1st cup of it yesterday. It was fantastic. I put too much sweetener in it but it was still really good. The next cup I made I put less sweeter and it was perfect.

By the time we put the girls to bed last night it was late for them at 8:30 PM. I had to fight the urge t make another cop since I wouldn’t sleep with that much caffeine at 8:30 PM.

This morning I got the swinger to coffee to water ratio perfect at breakfast.
Now that I have this knowledge I cannot unlearn it. It’s like I opened Pandora’s box and it was delicious crack.  Mmmm so delicious.

The W Sisters and The Story of A’s 2nd Birthday Cake We Don’t Really Talk About

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As of me writing this post in late August M and I were talking about planning out T’s birthday. Inevitably the conversation we talked birthdays leads to birthday cake. As we were talking about the cake M is planning we were reminiscing on Amelia’s second birthday cake.

M’s Facebook friends might recall that she made a fantastic fandant Paddington Bear themed cake. It was pretty damn awesome. People were commenting that they could not tell one was food and one was a stuffed animal. Needless to say she was very proud of her awesome cake design. That cake was the cake we had for her birthday party with the family around New Year’s. One of M’s brother and family were in town so we had her birthday party when they were around. It was the weekend after A’s birthday. I mentioned that because since all the ladies in my house my wife included love cake M decided to make a smaller cake specifically for Amelia on her actual birthday.

I am not 100% clear on the specifics around the cake making. If I recall I think M ran out of convection or sugar and gave it a go making frosting with regular sugar. It was either that or using regular sugar was an accident. In any event towards the end of the preparations it was clear that using regular sugar was a problem. M warned me about it however we both agreed we have a three and a two-year-old and its cake. They weren’t going to really care. As it turned out they didn’t. They ate that cake up or at least the one slice they got each.

We gave A the cake and had a little ceremony after dinner. Our babysitter was still around since it was early. I believe we want her not to have it. Both of us on the other hand tried it anyway. M had a small slice and I don’t recall if she finished it. I had a smallish, probably regular size slice and I finished it. It was crunchy and it shouldn’t of been. It was also superset.

Overall the cake was pretty bad. That’s why it’s sad for me to say I went to go get a second slice and M had to throw the cake out to prevent me from doing something we both knew I was probably going to regret. Yet another reason why I love my wife. She’s trying to look out for me.

8 Years and Counting

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Today is the eighth anniversary of my starting to work at Thomson Reuters. On one hand it does feel like I’ve been here for a long time. On the other hand it’s still challenging to grasp that it’s been eight years. One of the things I’ve learned that’s good about a large company is it changes as well as your role changes so even though it’s been eight years I’m not doing the same thing I was doing when I started in September 2008.

Thomson Reuters for me by the numbers was something I was thinking about in my head the other day. In the eight years that I’ve been working here lots of things have changed for me. I have managed five different groups. Six if you count the one I had for about a week or so however I don’t. I’ve had five different positions. I’ve gone through three different managers. Funny enough I switched between all them within a three-month period that started with a voicemail when I was returning from my honeymoon. I have worked out of three different offices as well as working from home however if you really counted out I’ve gone from Office 1, to Office 2, to Office 3, back to Office 2.

On a personal side I have lived in three different apartments. I have dated, got engaged, got married. Oh and I also two kids within those eight years. In context my life is vastly different than it was on September 8, 2008. On a personal and professional level far better off than where I was. In anti-climactic fashion I realized about a year and a half after it happened that I have been at Reuters longer than any other company.

The W Sisters and The Story of Their Love of Cake, Cupcakes Work Too

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I am not really sure where or when it started. On Teagan’s first birthday M made her own smash cake. It took a little bit of prodding to get T to dig into it. We had to cut it before she would grab a big piece of it. A week after her first birthday we did a photo shoot with a cake smash. Half the photos she’s having a blast kicking and grabbing the frosting. There are others that she’s a little disturbed by the cake.

A on the other hand had an epic meltdown when she did her first cake much on camera. M even put rice crackers in the cake that she loved hoping that she would grab at them. We think it only made her sad that the crackers were surrounded by this sticky stuff. My favorite photo of A’s cake smash is her off to the side of a photo studio where you can see the edge of the backdrop. Amelia is lying on her side looking sad and exhausted the little bit of frosting on her nose.

From those humble beginnings of cake eating to today is somewhat fuzzy. This is one of those instances where I should’ve written about this a long time ago and of all the story as it happened. That way I would remember more details.

For T at least ever since she could speak she would be interested in cake. Whether it was someone’s party where she would ask “Cake?”. Or as she grew older “We have cake?”. She always seem to be interested in parties and the inevitable cake or cupcake that go along with it. My unscientific theory is that we limit the sweets the kids can have. Parties with cake or cupcakes are generally where have them most regularly. I can see where they would grow fondness for the cake and cupcakes because we limited their exposure overall. It’s not like we don’t let them have anything ever. M and I love cupcakes. And since M is a fantastic cake maker we love cake too. Maybe that’s why the girls love it. They see how much we enjoyed it as well.

A has also come along way. For her second birthday and more recent cake eating experiences she will clutch the cake and frosting in her hands you cannot get rid of it until she’s done without an argument. A still doesn’t like frosting on her hands. She’ll ask for or motion to you to get wipes to clean your hands shall forget about that while grabbing hold of a piece of cake were eating frosting right off of it.

My children are if anything but persistent. Whenever we say we’re going to a party to matter what kind of party it may be T asks will there be cake. For my niece Morgan’s Bat mitzvah I was describing all the awesome food that would likely be there. All T wanted to know was would there be any cake. To get to the bottom of that question I called my sister and put her on speaker phone with T. T was sad to hear that there likely wouldn’t be cake even though there would be tons of other sweet desserts. In the end there was cake and T had a blast of a time. A was interested in the cake question also was not is generally focused has Teagan was on it.

As I write this T’s birthday is coming up. She’s been talking for months about what kind of cake she wants M to make. Now M did originally bring up the topic however T has been consistent on her answer for some time. She wants and Elsa cake. For her third birthday she wanted elephant and piggy. For her second birthday she got a monkey like her favorite monkey stuffed animal. For her first birthday she got duckies. A on the other hand got Paddington Bear for her second birthday. She got a winter snowman and snowflake theme for her first birthday. Even though we’ve been talking to T for months on what she wants for her cake I do not recall A having an opinion one way or the other at this point. I am going to have to remember to ask her about that.

So please if you’re going to invite the T & A to a party let there be cake or cupcakes work too…

The Blog Post Were I Write About Watch Straps for Seven Paragraphs

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Can you tell the difference between these two watch straps? Visually there isn’t much of a difference. Holding them they feel pretty similar however there is a noticeable difference between the two. What distinguishes one from the other? If you look closely enough can see that one of them has the word Omega etched into it. That little etching equates to a vast difference in price.

Is the Omega strap better? After wearing  both for a while I would say yes. Is the Omega strap much better even slightly more comfortable than the other one? I would say yes. Is it worth many times more money than the generic one? Probably not.

This is a situation where I’m reminded of the Steve Jobs biography where the author discusses Jobs theory on best versus average of something. I think the used knives for the analogy. The point was do you buy a cheap $10 knife. Do you by a $75 knife or do you buy the top-of-the-line $400 knife? If your chef you might need that extra bit of “better” you get from the $400 knife. In most other cases you’re probably best served with the $75. I think the argument was average were really good to the best ever is only about 10 to 15% in a lot of cases. I know that any number like that is suspect however the sentiment I think holds true.

With these NATO watch straps I think the sentiment also holds true. The Omega one is better. At least in my opinion. It is a much more flexible and comfortable my lawn. It feels more sturdy.The clasp is a bit easier to get on and off. Overall I think it’s a better band.  Using the analogy from the jobs biography however it’s only probably better 10 to 15%. In my opinion it’s not worth the massive price premium I paid for it. I still don’t regret the purchase. I am even considering possibly another one.

Why am I talking about watch straps anyway? For starters I’ve spent a bunch of time in recent months researching and buying a few NATO straps for my watches. Since this is my blog and all I felt like writing about it.

I wore a NATO strap 2 summers ago. I wore one for a few months on my X-33. I liked it however at the time I missed the metal band and switched back to it after a while. In recent months I’ve liked the idea of switching out my watch bands more often. It’s a little bit of extra style and I thought it was cool to be able to do that without having to go to someone to swap out a leather or metal band.

In June I took my X-33 in to have its metal band removed so I can use a NATO strap. At the same time I splurged and picked up the black and green Omega NATO strap. After getting the Omega strap I bought two more straps that were significantly cheaper online so I had a variety. Who cares if you can swap out straps to watch when you only have one of them or in my case two of them that are identical. I purchased a thick nylon band in a gray green. I also picked up a black leather one. After wearing all them I ended up liking the Omega one the best however the leather one is still pretty good. The gray green nylon one is a bit too stiff and I won’t be buying that brand nylon strap again.

After a few weeks of wearing a variety of bands on my X-33 I took in my speed master to also have its leather straps removed so I could use interchangeable NATO straps. I was very tempted to buy the leather NATO strap from the Omega store. The leather strap seemed more reasonably priced in comparison to other nice leather bands however I wasn’t sure if I liked the color so I passed on it for now.

Since swapping out the bands on both watches I have bought another nylon band in a different color pattern. I plan on getting a few more however i have enough of a variety now to keep things interesting for a little while. I am still not 100% sold if I will keep using the NATO straps on all my watches however for now I am pretty happy.

If you are a James Bond fan then yes another cool thing about these gray and black NATO strap is that it looks like the classic James Bond Goldfinger strap. I was surprised when I previously researched that many people pull off nylon straps on my fancy watches in fancy dress clothes such as suits or tuxedos. For me that was the final deciding factor on they will work with any style clothing. Of course that same research yielded me wearing Chuck Taylor’s with khakis and dress pants. The Internet is a wonderful thing.

The W Sisters and The Story of T and My Laundry

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When I get home from work I usually change out of my work clothes. I got into a habit of doing that when T was a baby. It was out of necessity since I didn’t want shall we say “fluids” on my relatively nice work clothing. Nowadays I am less worried about fluid stains that I am about being in something more comfortable.

The girls eat with the babysitter prior to me getting home or are finishing up right around when I get home.  That means I don’t get a chance to eat until I put them to bed. That means dinner does not start to be prepared until at least 7:30 PM. Historically that’s late for me and I’m really hungry by then. What I’ve been doing his having an energy bar when I get home to hold me over until it’s time to eat. This schedule may change in a few weeks however this is been my routine for over a year.

Both girls know the routine and quickly finished dinner if they’re still eating it when I get home. They want to come with me into my bedroom when I change. I think it’s partly because they want to spend time with me. It’s probably mainly around them being able to play M & my walk-in closet however I’ll delude myself and think they want spend time with me. Amelia and Teagan both go into my closet and say I am home and proceed to close the door. They do not seem to care that the light automatically shuts off when the door is closed. Both girls but Amelia especially now a days also like to take any pair of my Converse and put them on her feet and try to tie the laces.

On many days T also asks me “Daddy you have a bar?” that inevitably is followed up with “can I have a bite?” She’s asking about if I an eating and energy bar. I have gotten into the habit of having one when I get home. I don’t make it home most days to eat dinner with them so hold myself over till after they’re in bed I have an energy bar. I usually eat it while I’m changing. Sometimes if they’re eating dinner I may go and change and have the bar without them. If I do that then T will get sad that she didn’t have a chance to ask for some. What is funny is I almost never give them a bite since they would’ve just finished dinner or are eating dinner yet T still gets sad if I don’t give her any.

Since I’m trying to write more about stories the girls inspire me to remember retrospectively writing this story about something T did on 15 August when I came home to change after work.

A must have been busy playing somewhere or still eating dinner since it was just Teagan and I. Teagan came in to my bedroom like normal and we talked as I put away my stuff from the day. T then proceeded to take my laundry basket out of my closet  like it was a normal everyday occurrence and dump it on my bed. She then looks at me and says “I’m putting the laundry in the washing machine”. After that she makes hand gestures to show me that she’s putting a laundry card into a pretend slot and then makes a sound effect as if machine is starting. She then looks at me and tells me “I’m doing the laundry” and proceeds to walk out of my bedroom.

I’m not really sure where she gets some of the ideas to pretend play however she continues to amuse me often.

That Time Were My Security Paranoi Might Pay Off in a Real World personal Scenario

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In a recent post I wrote about how I had to wipe my Mac Mini at home due to a potential compromise in my chrome browser. The ironic thing with that issue was for months I’ve already started taking steps to minimize the chance of such an exploit. The problem likely began months earlier and didn’t present itself until recently however the damage was already done. It just justifies the extreme measures I am taking taking in regards to securing my web browsing.

At a high-level my approach is isolating some but not yet all of my browser traffic to Linux virtual machine. I know that theoretically a virtual machine is not 100% isolated. I’m willing to chance using the virtual machine over booting into TAILS using a USB key. That level of inconvenience is not something I typically want to be bothered with and I feel that my current solution will be good enough.

Within the virtual machine I installed Firefox and chrome browsers as well as the TOR browser. I also configured open VPN to use my VPN provider. I then set up a visual cue i.e. a distinct background of the virtual machine to note that when I am using it I am in a semi-isolated system.

To protect the virtual machine from most exploits I take a snapshot about every month that includes the latest patch level for all the applications in the operating system. I do not ever use the virtual machine prior to that snapshot to do anything other thank update software or make base OS and application configuration changes I want to be persistent. Once a snapshot is taken I will use the virtual machine and then when I’m done I will revert back to that clean snapshot. I might not revert back to the clean snapshot after each use however I try to do it as often as possible. At minimum when I go to update the virtual machine I will revert back to the last known good “clean” snapshot and upgrade that. Then I’ll take another snapshot.

Late last year I implemented this solution using an Ubuntu 14.04 virtual machine. In April I built new ones using Ubuntu 16.04. Because I own a copy of VMware Fusion for personal use and a work copy of Parallels I have both virtual machine flavors of the operating system image. Other than a few minor tweaks with the new image the 16.04 version is mainly an operating system upgrade. I now have a “secured virtual machine” on all the main computers that I use day-to-day.

The solution isn’t perfect however as a first pass at this I feel that it gives me the best trade-off between additional security and ease of use. The VPN gives me some anonymity. TOR And VPN gives me more. The snapshot of the virtual machine decreases the chance that the system can be infected.

Longer term I want to build a dedicated machine for TAILS or Quibs. That solution would only work at home since I need a dedicated computer setup for it.  For now I will settle for the VM solution I have implemented until I am comfortable using it and able to accept the extra effort involved in a dedicated machine configuration.
What’s interesting or disturbing to me is some corporate executives and even government representatives (NSA labels Linux Journal readers and Tor and Tails users as extremists