I spend a lot of time talking about bad experiences because, honestly, there are plenty to go around. But every so often, someone actually gets it right. And today, or at least initially, that someone was Wagamama, until they then later didn't but no spoilers yet. I like Wagamama. One of my daughters likes Wagamama. The other one… not so much.

December always ends up full of nostalgia posts for me. I am not normally that nostalgic, but once a year feels acceptable. Maybe twice a year, since let’s face it, I do the same thing for T’s birthday. A’s birthday is on the twenty eighth, and the very next day is the anniversary of when we moved to England. Those two days back to back almost guarantee that I am going to get a little reflective whether I want to or not.

I am struggling to believe that I have a twelve year old. A turns twelve today, and I told her very clearly that I am not ready for that. I was fine with an eleven year old. Eleven felt manageable. So my suggestion was that she could just stay eleven for another year and we would all be good. She immediately said she would rather not repeat year six, so that was a hard no.

I’ve written before about my dad’s Omega Speedmaster Professional, now my Omega Speedmaster Professional, and how he passed it down to me. But before I forget, I want to write about a few of the stories he told me about that watch. They’ve always stuck with me. When I first got it, I thought he’d bought it in 1969. Turns out that wasn’t true.

When I was in middle school, I loved going to the library. I’d volunteer there, and they had computers. Lots of them. They were mostly Apple IIs, but there was one Apple IIGS, the “fancy” modern one. Looking back, it’s funny to think how high tech that seemed at the time. The library had games, and the two I remember most were The Oregon Trail and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

It’s time for another round of Please Take My Money, the ongoing saga of payment systems that either make it ridiculously easy to spend money or somehow turn it into a test of patience and willpower. Today’s contestant: Green King. When I think back, I don’t even remember Green King having an online payment system before COVID. Maybe they did, but it certainly wasn’t memorable.

This post is partially channeling my wife’s outrage, but as the household tech support department, I’m equally annoyed.Here’s the story. The .group top-level domain (TLD) launched in 2015. I know this because I looked it up after dealing with this nonsense. My wife has a personal domain name using .group. It’s short, simple, and sounded nice and professional when we registered it.

So instead of replacing all the Central line trains, they’re refurbishing them. There’s a whole drama behind that decision, but I’m not getting into it. Over the past year I think they’ve done, what, two of them? Maybe three? I’ve only ever seen photos. Until going to work two weeks ago. I got on the train to head into the office and immediately noticed it felt… new.

When the girls were really little—the still-talking-funny, wide-eyed-about-everything little—we kept screen time on a tight leash. No endless YouTube spirals, no algorithm babysitting. Just carefully chosen things that felt worth their attention. One of those things turned out to be the astronauts aboard the International Space Station. At first, I thought it would be a novelty, a quick peek at floating hair and zero-gravity toothpaste.

I don’t know why this topic grabs my attention the way it does. Maybe it’s because I’ve been quietly fascinated by how we pay for things ever since contactless cards appeared. Or maybe it goes back even further to this tech show I watched years ago. It was probably the early 2000s, maybe even before that, and they were covering a guy in Singapore who tried to spend an entire day using only a watch that was linked to the local payment system.

I know people who go to work and when it’s time to leave, they go home. They have a work life and a personal life, and they keep the two completely separate. I spend so much time at work that I’ve never understood how people do that. In New York, there was always a core group willing to go out at least once a week after work.

This is an update to my being bored at home alone post published on Tuesday. Spoiler: still bored at home. I’m writing this on Tuesday, editing it on Wednesday, and by the time it posts on Friday, everyone should be home again. With any luck, I’ll be wishing for quiet by then instead of complaining about how quiet it is now.

This week is school half term. M is taking the girls to the States to see her dad. Originally I was going to take off the week, but I only took one day off. Last time they were away and I took some time off, I was extremely bored. I don’t know what other people do when their families are away.

We’re is The Dude when I need him.

This morning I headed off to the office. The central line has had its fair share of issues for over a year - late, slow, and packed trains are the norm, even on weekends. So, when I arrived at the platform and a train with virtually empty cars pulled up, I hesitated. I couldn't help but wonder which universe I had stumbled into.

When we did some work on the house, we bought new appliances, including a washing machine and dryer. I was surprised to find that both came with Wi-Fi. I mentioned this to one of the workers who was building the closet to house them, and he asked, “Why does it matter?” He didn’t see a problem—after all, who cares if someone knows you’re running the washing machine?

I’ve been writing a lot about my tech setup lately because I’ve done quite a bit of work on it. I’ve been meaning to share my current private cloud backup setup for a while now. The backbone of my private cloud network is still Resilio Sync. While I rely on it a bit less these days, it remains a core part of my strategy.