Twitter

Goodbye Twitter and More…

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It would be easy for me to say I’m leaving Twitter because of the new owner. The reality is that is just background noise and just nonsensical to me. I have talked about leaving social media for a while. I’ve deleted my Facebook account and recreated it at least once. A few years ago I wrote how I didn’t really post on Twitter. I previously used Twitter to get real time information during a few weather related incidents. And also during a bomb scare in Times Square. That at the time had some value to me and was why partly why I kept it. The other reason i kept Twitter around was I would automatically send blog post links to Twitter when I posted on WordPress. The intention was to radiate to friends when i posted.

In recent years I have not used Twitter for any real time searches for anything. I could do searches like that without an account anyway. I simply get no value out of the service. The shenanigans going with the platform now might have reminded me of that fact.

The final trigger was that when I looked at the analytics on my blog for all the referrals I get to my blog from Twitter I noticed that this year I got a whopping 13. That number throws out any notion that keeping Twitter is helping to direct friends and family to my blog posts. With that revelation on top of generally not getting any joy or value out of the service it made no sense to keep it.

It is not just Twitter that i have closed accounts for. I previously wrote about using Redding for several sub reddits that were useful to me. Compared to Twitter I did find value in Reddit. Then I read you could run or use a front end to Reddit that does not require you to logon to their website. That way i can read (its all i do) sub-reddits without an account anonymously. Having an account was just a way for Reddit to collect data on me. Now i use my own URL to query the groups i want to search Reddit with and the site has no analytics on me.

The same thing I do with Reddit i do a similar thing with YouTube. No Google account tracking for me thank you.

Both the Reddit & YouTube front ends i use are my own instances i have on a VPS. I have a new one for Twitter also however i do not know if i will use it as much as i do with the Reddit and YouTube ones.

To Keep or Cancel Twitter?

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In my part 1 of My Great Social Media Purge of 2019 i outlined my objectives with assessing my use case of each social media platform I use. I am starting off with Twitter.

I surprisingly find value in using Twitter. I only ever post to twitter to share links to my blog. My reasoning is my blog is public anyway. At this moment I do not believe there is a downside to the linkage of my blog to my twitter account. I may come to regret that however for now I am ok with that linkage. I do have lists of peoples twitter accounts that i follow. Mainly i look at FinTech companies twitter accounts. Some security journalists and a few tech industry people. I also will look at a few comedian’s or The Onion. Even that information starts to build a profile on me. The limited amount of value there I am ok with.

Other uses for Twitter have been in the past I found huge value in having a list to track emergency management accounts. When i was in a pure operations role that came in very handy when Hurricane Sandy hit. Or when a few other big snow storms hit NY. Some of that linkage i am not happy with however that linkage would exist if i followed some of these companies or twitter accounts via Twitter or if i used an RSS feed.

As I wrote this post I unfollowed a bunch of people and friends who never post. What is left i am happy enough with. I think i will have to revisit Twitter again in the future however for now i am ok to keep using it the way i do. I may limit my usage (again) to a secured VM).

Verdict, for now a Keep.

Going Sort of Cold Turkey on Social Media

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For a while now I’ve been focused on personal productivity. I consider myself pretty organized already.  I use personal kanban, organizing my thoughts in a database to track information.  I have been trying to journal.  Even with all that  I have also been serious about how to continue to improve on my productivity.  My dad always said work smarter not harder.

More recently over the past few months I have been reading a lot about mindfulness and ways to improve day-to-day happiness. It’s a fascinating topic.  It is surprising that I have noticed several general themes overlapping between what I’ve read about improving personal productivity and mindfulness.

The first thing universally accepted as a big time suck is reading and participating in social media. It also shockingly turns out to be something that generally doesn’t make people happy. Yet many of us still do it. In early 2017 I cut out my social media consumption almost completely. That of course coincided with my not logging into Facebook for months. When I started posting pictures on Facebook again I inevitably logged in to see if there were comments. That coincided with my return to blogging so I would login to also check on comments to those posts as well. I am at a point now where I know I shouldn’t be logging in and I feel like I’m about ready to just stop cold. I’ll keep writing and posting on my blog but reading Facebook feeds needs to go.

I use Twitter as well. Presently I’ve been using it keep tabs on some financial technology companies I am interested in. As much is that is using social media I find that I’m giving myself an exception by continuing to read that. It helps me stay on top of technical trends and that in turn helps me stay ahead in my career.

When I think about it I really do not get much out of looking at social media. There is a conversation here there with friends near and far that I cherish. Those are few and far between compared to all of the nonsense and polarizing news articles littering the cesspool of my newsfeed. The idea of Facebook and Twitter is great.  The in practice isn’t so much.  Besides not being productive I really am not much happier by engaging in it all. It is hard to understand why I keep doing it then.

I have been thinking about this all for a while now.  I am finally ready to action for myself.  What I’m going to  is simply stop. I am going to remove Facebook from my phone. I am not going to check my newsfeed. What I will keep doing is periodically checking some specific groups that are useful and that I contribute to. If I want to do that though I will need to do it from a computer.  I will also continue to review a few specific Twitter lists I’ve curated for keeping up on technology. I plan on keeping Twitter on my phone for now.  That’s it though. No trolling to see what others are doing. No commenting or replying to comments. And definitely no glancing at news articles or news headlines others garbage posts that litter my newsfeed.

What I hope to do instead is message friends more. I want to have direct conversations virtual or otherwise. At the time of this writing I hope to start this immediately.. By the time this gets published on my blog however it should be several weeks.  Hopefully by then I will have been successful.  I sure hope so.

In addition or along with this I have to address my news consumption. That’s the next habit I will write about Stay tuned, or not.

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

The W Sisters and the Assorted Stories From 19-August

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Having a 2 1/2 & almost 4 year old makes for great entertainment.  I like to say they are our entertainment budget.  I have been making a more active effort to journal the funny things they do and say.  Up till last week I didn’t take the time to clean up the writing to make it more “presentable” for public posting.  I am going to keep trying to do that because it is funny stuff (at least for me so I want to share) and it contrasts the geeky technical stuff I typically post.

This post is a collection of a few brief stories from 19-August 2016.  Some of this stuff wouldn’t be as amusing if it wasn’t for the fact they were from a 2 12 and almost 4 year old.  It amused me anyway.

While I was changing Amelia into pajamas Teagan was by my computer.  Both girls like to watch the photo slide show that plays as a scream saver. Teagan must’ve seen something that she wanted to show Amelia so Teagan called out to Amelia to come see. From across the apartment  on the changing table. Amelia replied “I’m busy right now”

A few minutes after finishing changing her when I put Amelia down on the floor she slapped my arm a couple of times. It was playful and didn’t hurt however I cautioned her that hands are not for hitting since we do not want her hitting even if playing around. Her response was crying out “I don’t want to hit the couch”. I assumed that was something she was told to try when she wants to hit someone.  I later confirmed with MC that was correct. I asked her then what she wanted to hit if not the couch. Instead and she told me her Dee Dee (Paddington Bear).  I gave her Paddington bear and she proceeded to lightly slap it two times and walked out of the room.

Later that day playing with he really big Legos that are bigger than the duplo Legos the girls were arguing. Teagan wanted to walk out of the room. As she was walking out Teagan asked me to keep an eye on Amelia. I said okay and glanced at Amelia for a second and continue cleaning in the kitchen.  I was trying to complete cleaning all the 30+ year old lego so the girls could play with them. Teagan then looked at me again as she was walking to her room and scolded me and said I need to look at  Amelia.  She continued to insist that i keep eyes on her the whole time.  For an almost 4 year old it was pretty persistent.2016-08_kids_selfie

The W Sisters and the Story of Watching Star Wars For The First Time

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Saturday I got a box of old toys from my mom that she had been storing for me.  Now that she gave me my lego’s earlier in the week she wanted to clean house and give me the rest of the toys she had of mine.  I was happy to take them.  Last night I started introducing some of them to the girls. There were some new matchbox cars as well as some small matchbox car sized fighter jets. Among the stuff was also my old metal star destroyer and the millennium falcon. I explained that the millennium falcon is the ship that Chewbacca flies in.  The girls are both into Chewbacca so that got some interest.

Yesterday morning the girls were talking about either the millennium falcon or Chewbacca when MC suggested I watch Star Wars with them.  We needed a distraction while she cleaned a bit around the house. I had wanted to introduce them to star wars the actual movies for a few weeks now. I had previously showed them the trailers of most of the movies and we read the little golden books a bunch of times.  That is how they started liking Chewbacca so much.

As a purest we started off watching A New Hope. We watched about half of the movie. We stopped when they found out the princess was in the Death Star with Han & Luke. That was over an hour for them and it was plenty. I was glad that neither of them got too scared.  There were some scenes that Teagan got a little bit scared but handled it a lot better than she did with finding Nemo last year.  The asked a bunch of questions like they do with any video or book however I think they liked it.  Teagan did continue to mention Star Destroyers periodically throughout the day so that is a good sign.

Next up is to finish the movie and then hopefully move on through the first trilogy.  After that I need to figure out how to introduce them to Doctor Who without scaring them.

The Time I Had To Nuke The Site From Orbit

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Back in mid July I noticed something odd with my Mac Mini.  It turned out that At some point in the past few months my chrome browser on my Mac Mini at home was compromised. I’m not sure if it was malware or a configuration hack on the browser.

The problem may have existed for some time. I do not normally use chrome on my home Mac. What I noticed that was odd behavior  after I launched chrome to log into my Google account. Whenever I use my Google account I always login via chrome. Call me paranoid but I do not want Google possibly tracking activities via my login on Safari that I use as my daily browser. When I attempted to log in I noticed that after clicking on login from Google.com  I got some fake message about my Google account being compromised. The funny thing was I never actually gave it my login credentials and the screen that was displayed didn’t look at all like standard page on any Google site I have been on.

My first reaction was to clear all the settings on the browser like it was a brand-new set up. I then tried again however the problem persisted. That was concerning to me.

My next step was to completely delete the Chrome browser from my Mac and download a fresh copy from Google.com using a different browser. That worked and once I installed the new version everything seemed okay. The lingering question I had was how contained was the problem I had? I some confidence but not enough that  issue was purely within chrome.   I had no definitive evidence to back myself up. 

To be safe in the immortal words of Riply from the movie Aliens  “nuked the site from orbit”. I created a carbon copy cloner image of my OS drive and then deregistered any application I needed to associated with this computer and wiped it. That was the only way to be sure that there was no ongoing compromise to my system.

The rebuild process was slightly challenging and took more time than I’d hoped. As I was trying to reformat the drive in recovery mode the computer kept crashing. I am not sure why.  That forced me to start to do a network boot and download the original operating system that came with this Mac bypassing the step on my local hard drive that was crashing. The machine is from 2012 so that meant at least three OS upgrades to get me to the latest. By the time I completed the original OS install I was able to download El Capitan on my MacBook Pro and create a boot USB key. The USB key worked so I was able to save a significant amount of time and jump right to El Capitan.  I was handful I did not need to complete several more upgrades. The parallel efforts paid off of trying to create the sub key boot disk from my laptop paid off.

Once I had my base install done I was able to patch the system and install the standard applications that I typically use. Because I use Bittorrent Sync for replicating my data restoring most of the system was as simple as reseeding my data on this machine. It took several days for the data to replicate however when it was done everything was fine.

Weeks later there are still some applications I haven’t finished setting up yet. Of course that means I don’t use them that often so it’s a minor inconvenience. The main applications I use already set up and working perfectly fine.

For me the moral of this story is my data replication set up works. I also confirmed what I already knew that no matter how diligent I am I can still be compromised. I think the problem is existed for a while however have no way to prove it. Recently I have started compartmentalizing some of my web browser to prevent such exploits. That I hope will mitigate risk for the future however nothing is 100% safe. That Compartmentalizing effort in and of itself is a blog entry I’m working on.

The W Sisters and the Story of The Bedtime Sing a Long

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Last night after putting the girls down for bed I could hear on the baby monitor Amelia leading Teagan in singing “if you’re happy and you know it clap your hands”. Teagan sang along for a while until she started singing some other song on her own. Amelia wanted none of that and went back to singing if you happy and you know it. After a while Teagan responded back to Amelia with something like “stop singing that song”.

Sometimes bedtime routine Canby extremely frustrating if they’re jumping on the bed or running around.  Other times it’s very hard to keep a straight face if I have to walk in there to have them stop doing something. Tonight at least I didn’t have to go in there and talk to them about their singing.I did have to go in half a dozen times for other stuff though. The challenge of them sharing a room is on supervise bedtime.

Continuing to Instill a Coffee Ritual in Toddlers But Not Really Because That Would Be Bad

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As far back as Teagan being able to hold her head up and able to be held by me upright we have been making coffee together. At first it was just me holding her and her watching me. Then it was Teagan pressing the button on the Nespresso machine for me. Next evolved into her helping me put the cartridge in the machine and press the button to make the espresso.

Nowadays Teagan and Amelia both can put the cartridge in by themselves. The only help the need is closing the container. It’s pretty cute to see both of them bring over their chairs to stand up tall enough by the counter help make my coffee.

I’ve blogged about it before since it is something so simple yet something that makes me smile every time I think about the coffee ritual we do together.

I don’t use the espresso maker very often anymore. Maybe once or twice a week I’ll have a shot or two of decaf after work. I rarely make it on the weekends. Instead I have moved on to a French press cup of coffee. I will use the Nespresso machine when I want to make an Americano. The price of the pods are significantly more than the price of coffee for the French press.

After I have lost my weight a few years ago I do not make cappuccino’s as often as I used to. Because of that the lore of the espresso machine is diminished. I still like Americano probably more than the French press however the cost just makes it prohibitive in the French press is not that bad.

I do however have used for the milk frother. That is because Teagan always asks me to make her coffee. What she really means is that I froth her up some milk. Since I used to take spoonfuls of my cappuccino milk that wasn’t touched by coffee and feed it to her as a baby I find it cute she likes to do that. She’s been asking me rather consistently in recent weeks to make it for her. Usually she asks when I get home from work and it’s late. I tell her to remind me on the weekends when I’m up to make her and Amelia breakfast. Then when she asks the three of us will make a batch of milk together and the girls will share.

I find it adorable that they sit on their chairs with the mug of frothed milk and eat it like yogurt or ice cream.

That Time I Spent Way Too Much Time Reasearhing and Buying a Divers Watch

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In June I read an article that was comparing to classic style diving watches. One from Seiko and one from Citizen. I have been thinking about getting relatively inexpensive watch to use when I’m at the beach or doing outdoor stuff. I don’t always want to be out using my Omega’s. I have almost done damage to my X-33 a few times. Especially in water, the pool or the ocean.

I liked the classic look of both the Seiko & Citizen in the review. I read the article thoroughly and had recalled that I have seen many people have the Seiko as part of their “EDC” everyday carry. Seperatly I have been reading a blog where people submit what they carry on them every day. It’s interesting to see what other people consider essential for their day to day lives. I’ve gotten a few ideas of accessories to get from that blog. I kept seeing the Seiko diver watch and to some smaller extent the citizen one and was curious. They are in the general style of the Rolex Submariner so it catches my eye.

After reading the article I did some more research on the Seiko SKX007. There was a newer model available (SKX009K) however the older SKX007K was more reasonably priced and exceedingly popular. I decided if I wanted an everyday watch that I could take to the beach this diver watch would fit the bill perfectly.

The challenge I had was finding the specific  Seiko SKX007K or even the newer 009K to see in person. I went to the only Seiko boutique in New York and they didn’t have it. Macy’s had some similar models but they weren’t what I was looking for exactly and they were more money. I found out later that the reason I couldn’t find the exact model number is the 007K & 009K are manufactured for everywhere in the world except North America. I ended up finding someone selling the SKX007K on Amazon Marketplace and bought it there. Even before my trek to the store I knew I could get it on Amazon but I really wanted to see it in person if i could first. I also bought a tool to change the watchband out. I bought a 22mm NATO strap and intend to use NATO straps with this watch like I am doing with my other ones.

In my teens and 20s I had cheap Casio digital watches and never understood why anyone would want a nice mechanical watch. Now here I am with the budding watch collection.

I have owned the Seiko SKX007K for a few weeks now. Overall it was a great purchase especially for the money.  Not quite a negitive however something I need to get more used to is that it is pretty heavy even with a nylon NATO strap and not a metal one. Compared to both my Speedmaster and the titanium X-33 I am not used to that extra weight on my wrist. It has done its job though while at the beach and as a general watch I can beat up.  I wore it basically all vacation since we were at the beach most days and I was happy with it the entire time.  I didn’t go diving however timing when we put sun tan lotion on the girls was easy enough with the bezel.  I am happy with it as a solid beat up watch.  Right now it is not likely i would wear it to work often though.

Beyond wearing the new Seiko at the beach, I am also wearing it when I get home from work so I can wind it since it is an automatic movement. I need to buy a watch winding device however I haven’t yet so wearing it for couple of hours when I get home helps me not have to manually wind it.

I am debating expanding my collection further. Next up for me would be something a little bit nicer.