What I Use: Mexico, September to November 2025 ⭐

This is a What I Use for the ages: Lots of travel, lots of new technology, lots of changes all around.
? Travel logistics
As I write this, we’re heading into the last four or five days in Mexico City for this trip, and for all of 2025. This is our third trip to Mexico City this year. We were here from mid-January to early May, a bit over 15 weeks, and by far the longest consecutive period we’ve been outside the U.S. We were here for a month, basically July, though that was supposed to be a two-month-long trip that was cut short when our daughter unexpectedly graduated from college. And now we’ve been here for roughly two months.

But not exactly.

In early September, my wife and I flew to Berlin, Germany for IFA, a five or six day trip. Between then and our mid-September flight to Mexico City, my wife somehow managed to put together the purchase of our condo in Macungie, Pennsylvania, as I discussed in From the Editor’s Desk: Good Decisions, Less Good Decisions ⭐. And after being in Mexico City for about two days, we flew to Maui, Hawaii for the Snapdragon Summit 2025, probably for five or six days. Since then, we’ve pretty much stayed in Mexico City, though we did go away for a long weekend to Oaxaca, which is only an hour by air. But we had 2 to 2.5 hour delays on both flights, which was terrific.

I’m not pedantic enough to take a completely accurate count, but by the time 2025 comes to a close, we will have spent more time outside the U.S. than in our home country. I guess it’s about 7 months. Most of that was spent in Mexico, and most of that was spent in Mexico City.

There’s no perfect schedule for us. But we like being home in Pennsylvania for the holidays, meaning Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s, during which we see our kids, our families, and our friends. And we like being in Mexico during the winter, of course, and so we’ll be back in Mexico by mid-January. We haven’t booked that trip, but I imagine it will be similar to this year’s first trip. Minimizing the flights is definitely a goal.

Anyway. We’re looking forward to getting back to Pennsylvania.
? Pre-trip
I mostly have duplicates of everything I need, from computers and other tech to clothes and whatever else, in both homes, which makes traveling back and forth a lot easier. But I brought 6 polo shirts with me to Mexico to replace the ones I had there, and I always travel with two long sleeve shirts and one or two short sleeve shirts because I can’t buy the shirts I like anymore and I’ve never found suitable replacements. I need to work on that but I hate shopping, especially for clothes.

From a tech front, there were a few developments. The biggest being that I brought the first NAS here. This was entertaining but curiously didn’t trigger any additional security checks in Philadelphia or Mexico City, despite it being in my carry-on luggage and that bag getting scanned in both locations.

I also came to Mexico with a Google Pixelsnap...