Maybe it’s my brain / pedantic nature, but I found the process of returning a faulty item to Amazon to be quite frustrating. The TL;DR is that everything went swimmingly, but:
- The email they sent didn’t have the QR code in it,
- The help page on the Amazon website gives incorrect instructions on how to navigate the Royal Mail website (to find a location to drop off the parcel).
So I was left in a state of uncertainty about what to do and where to go. Fortunately the QR code on the website for the return was present. That, and with support from my neighbourhood WhatsApp group, I was encouraged to just go up to the village Post Office and feign ignorance. Although no feigning was necessary in this case.
In and out in less than 5 minutes.
Don’t know what I was worried about. 🤷
I put together a brief biography and introductory blurb for the talk I’m giving in September, and continued to plot the ‘story’.
I found a real-world use case (in my world, at least) that I could use to learn about n8n. I’ve been champing at the bit to do something with n8n for a long time, but I haven’t wanted to fork out the subscription without a client need.
I managed to get a very simple workflow up-and-running. It solves a small but persistent niggle, so that’s good.
Attempts to get something more complicated running have proven frustrating. I can’t seem to connect a google sheet, and SubStack refuses requests from ‘bots’, so I need to use a work-around - further complicating the process. On hold for the time being.
I listened to a couple of episodes of "Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford" (podcast). In particular, the episode, "Steel and Kindness: Clash of the Skyscrapers” (from 13 Sep 2024), was really interesting. It’s about Paul Starrett and the building of the Empire State Building. But more than that, it's about fairness, and how paying people a decent wage and providing autonomy can lead to faster, better results - assuming you have the governance in place. Definitely worth a listen for any systems thinkers and/or strategy-minded folks.
I watched series 2 of Annika (BBC iPlayer). I know it’s not to everyone’s taste, but I like Annika’s breaking-of-the-fourth-wall monologues (and their literary references/analogies to the plot).
On the creative writing front, I completed two poems - "Beyond the Sea", and "Where do we go from here". It was good to spend some time looking over my drafts, tweaking and finishing a couple of poems, having not made much progress for a couple of weeks.
Finally, the weekend saw the return of the International Balloon Fiesta to the end of our road (it’s a long road). Went on Sunday afternoon and the weather was perfect for a mass ascent, so got to stand just a few feet away from 80-ish hot air balloons taking to the skies of Bristol. The walk there and back has done my legs in, though.