SIM Card

The Story of my Technology Stress Dream

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In the summer of 2019 I woke up to wrote down the details of a crazy stress dream I had. In the dream, I was working for the leader of a country that was just a bit unstable. Everyone around them seemed pretty out of it and I was trying to be reasonable and rationalise my working there.

Then I woke up. For a minute I was really confused and was not really sure why in the world I had a dream like that. Then I told M about it. And as I was talking to her it dawned on me. The night before I had purchased a SIM card from Google-Fi for our trip to New York that summer. Now it was not as difficult as you might think to associate working for an almost dictator and buying a Google-Fi.SIM card. I actually fretted over the SIM card purchase. I had spent many months previously ridding myself of all direct usage of Google services. Now here I am buying their phone service that inevitably was tracking me in ways that if I fully understood I would probably be very concerned. Then I rationalised the purchase because it was inexpensive compared to most other options and gave me a US number for our trip.

If I’m honest with myself I subconsciously associated buying Fi mobile service with going to work for an evil dictator. It’s not however I should have gone with my initial instinct and stayed away from their services. I know that they harvest data from my information and that’s okay if you know that and are okay with it. I’m not ok with it. I typically try to avoid it for my privacy. I’m also happy to encourage others not to do it. That doesn’t mean that Google is a horrible company. They really aren’t. I have friends that work there that love it. I even went to several interviews with them years ago and seriously contemplated working there.

I found it fascinating that I had that particular stress stream the day after I. made that purchase. I did use the service for the month we were in New York. I then cancelled it and have no intention of getting it again. Besides whatever data collection they do when you have the service it actually was pretty good service. And that is the problem. Not many people say google doesn’t offer nice stuff. it is the true cost that I am not ok with.

The Story of My Holiday Travel Tech

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By the time this posts we will have returned from our Summer holiday. We went to NY for a month. I worked for two weeks out of the office in Times Square while M and the kids stayed at my mother and father in laws. I went up for the weekends. Then it was off to my mom’s for two weeks while i had off. I cannot tell you if I had a good time or not. Since i am writing this while still on the flight to NY. I assume it was a fantastic trip. This post isn’t about the holiday itself anyway. It is about the Tech used for this holiday.

FIrst and foremost in my mind when planning what to bring on this trip was how were we going to stay connected. Connectivity (Data, Video, Voice probably in that order) is scarily important in this day and age. It turns out for mobile phones we were pretty set already. M has a 3 PAYG SIM. I never got her on a contact. The cost of what she uses isn’t worth it on a pay monthly plan on EE or 3. In the end she stayed on the 3 PAYG she got when we first arrived. It has been fine. What i like about it is their roaming. The have the best roaming of any provider i have found in either country. With M’s regular plan she can roam in Europe or the US with no extra fee. In the US she can use her voice, text and data like she is in the UK. For data that is great. For texting that works since she uses apple messaging or whatsapp and doesn’t truely send texts often. Voice calls is the only oddity. She can make and receive calls in the US just like she was in the UK. That means in practical sense that she can call friends in the UK with her included minutes. If she wanted to call a US number it would be an international call just like if she was in the US. That’s annoying but not the end of the world. We have a voip provider for those people who don’t have FaceTime or WhatsApp.

For me i was worried i would have a problem. I do not use 3. I went with EE after a few months of being in the UK. I found their data network to be faster and more reliable. They did not have a roaming deal for the US as nice as 3. Their Europe roaming was good. After a bit of research and a call to EE support they told me that i could buy roaming in the US and Canada for £10 a month. I get all my data as well as texting and calling to the US. I haven’t tested this yet however if what they say is right for the £10 i spent i can make calls to US or UK numbers with my minutes. The only downside is people calling me from the US would still have to make an international call. I do have my voip provider with my old US mobile so that shouldn’t be a major issue.

To mitigate any issues receiving calls (if there is any) i did buy a US SIM card for the month. After some research i actually settled on Google Fi. I may not have written about it yet however i purchased a Motorola G7 so i could use its dual SIM function on this trip. I doubt i will keep Google Fi after the trip however i can cancel anytime. And the price was really good. Stress dreams aside from my use of Google services and their collection of everything i do when i use it. Seriously i had one. I will write about that another time. For the month i am in the states i figured i would try it.

Other tech I brought with us is lots of US adapters. Luckily we use mainly apple products so i had a bunch of US power plugs from our devices when we moved. I kept a bunch of them for this exact situation.

Another must is my Bose noise cancelling headphones. Great for the plane or when working in a noisy office.

For WiFi and other connectivity both parents houses are covered.

I also brought my Sony Alpha 8000 (i think its an 8000) mirrorless camera. I do not use it as much as i should since i am lazy and use my iPhone. However on a trip like this i will want it for some days. I am still amazed at how awesome the pictures it takes are.

I traveled heavy with other tech. I was working for two weeks so i needed my MacBook. It’s associated charges and adapters. I also brought a 5tb he’d with a backup of my data on it just in case. I also had to bring a USB headset for all the phone calls i will be on for work.

For personal use i brought my iPad Pro 11”. That is what i am typing on right now. It is basically my goto device for personal use now a days. I also had to bring my iPad Mini. One of the girls uses it on the plane flights. The Amazon Kindle Fires they had broke. Both in the span of a month of each other. We got a handful of trips out of them. They lasted a year and a half. For the $100 i spent on both of them it wasn’t a bad investment. I am not sure if i will get new ones. We have been surviving the past two trips with my iPad mini and M’s iPad. For now there is no plans to replace the much lower end tablets since the iPads work fine for the kids limited use case.

I packed one of my Raspberry Pi’s for the trip. I am not sure what / if anything i will do with it. I may need it as a VPN host somewhere. That is another blog topic on its own that i hope to get to. Either way the Pi was so small that i figured why not pack it. I just had room for it with my chargers and other adapters.

The last big bit of tech i would note is M and my 20,000 mili-amp batteries. I bought one for the family when we traveled. I also got each of us small 5,000 milk-amp ones for day to day use. M found she wanted/needed the bigger one so i started not having it in my weekend bag. I then got her one so she could always have one and so could i. So far this 7 hour flight has 48 minutes left and i used it to charge both my Moto G7 and my iPhone, plus my iPad Pro. The battery still has about 50% of its charge left in it. That is why i carry it. Well worth the £20 for it.

From Cellular to Mobile

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One of the first things I need to get in England is a phone. More specifically a UK Sim card for my iPhone. It sounds pretty simple. You can get them pretty much anywhere. Seriously the recommendation was to buy one in a Tesco (a Grocery Store) Surprisingly for an American they’re super cheap compared to US plans. I think we pay around $130 for two iPhones and one iPad with about three or four gigs of data and unlimited minutes between them.In the UK you can get close to unlimited or unlimited minutes and three or four gigs of data per line for about 15 to 20 pounds a month. What I found is not all plans are created equal.

I’m probably a stickler for technical details more than most people however there were a few things that I’m concerned about. For one what is the service look like where we want to live and near my office? When I had AT&T in time square I basically could not use my phone for three years at work. That’s not really acceptable in 2018. Since we own our phones were looking for a pay as you go or a pay monthly without contract.

I’m going to try 3. The reviews have been decent. I’m concerned about coverage but I’ll have to be there to test it. The advantage they have over everyone else is for about the same price they offer complete roaming in Europe and the US for no additional charge. That means calls to the UK and data usage is like I was still in the UK even when traveling. I would need to continue the use of voice over IP solution when calling US phone numbers however that’s not different from when I would be in the UK as well. That set up seems like the most liberal roaming policy of everyone. It’s even better than the T-Mobile options I have in the states now.

One thing I learned that I heard rumors about previously was you by prepay some cards from the grocery store. That’s a little different from the US. While on our house hunting trip I bought a 3 & EE SIM card at a Tesco.  I wasn’t able to use 3 Sim card I bought.  I was able to use the EE card for my phone and i bought another one for my iPad. I didn’t really pay attention to signal strength in the neighborhood we were looking to get a house. I also wasn’t near the office very much. I was hoping to settle on a carrier during the trip and then keep the number when we moved. What I learned when I went top up the prepay card while I was there was to do a top up remotely you need a local address. Even though I had a local debit card it’s still tied to my US address until we move. At the time of this writing we don’t have a house sorted so I will either not use the number I got or once the house is sorted I can top up a card and be ready for when we arrive.

I know I can do most of this when we get there however especially for technology challenges like this I want to be prepared. This particular challenge won’t get resolved until were actually living there. I will likely post an update once I have figured out what we will do and then see how it goes.