Short, Steal a 7?, Get what you pay for
YouTube has been pushing something called “Shorts” for a little while. They are videos that are 15-60 seconds long, meant to compete in a TikTok/Instagram world where people’s attention spans are measured in seconds. I haven’t made any as pretty much everything I do is long format, which previously was the only way to do significant monetization on the YouTube platform. Well with Shorts I guess you are able to monetize better and ideally give people a doorway to longer format content. Last night while I was crashed on the sofa I did my first short which promoted the live stream I finally plan to do tonight. This live stream has been postponed for a week due to my covid crash.
I was then able to take the URL for the Short and embed it into an Instagram/FB story, just to see if I could.
Back when I was in upstate NY with my family Amazon Prime day occurred. I grabbed an Apple Watch 7 during the event for what seemed like a good price. It was supposed to arrive in a few days, it didn’t. Instead I got delay email after delay email. It only arrived a couple days ago and that was a saga in it’s own. I received a notification on Monday evening that the package had arrived around 7:30PM. Odd, I was home and didn’t recall hearing/seeing anything. I looked by the front door, the normal drop spot, nothing there. I expanded my search to in front of the garage door and even walked down to the mail box to look in there, there was no box to be found.
So when I looked at the details of the delivery notice I immediately became suspicious. Normally it indicates where the package was left, ie. front door and is often accompanied by a picture. The watch delivery said it was left at a “safe place”. WTF? So now my spidey sense was tingling. I pulled up my Ring camera history for the day and verified that no Amazon delivery occurred. I started building a scenario in my head where the driver has simply stolen the package, the package I have been waiting weeks for. Apple Watch’s are a pretty good snag right? I was not happy.
I got on Amazon chat and told the rep I was concerned the driver stole my package as it says it was left at a “safe place” when in reality nobody was even at the house. After several minutes he came back and said my package was actually back at the depot. When I asked why it would say it was delivered if this was the case he didn’t have a good explanation but assured me they had it. I expressed my concern about the driver posting inaccurate delivery information and how I had heard that driver package theft happens. The watch did arrive the next day and to compensate for the aggravation Amazon threw a $20 gift card balance on my account which was nice.
I really like the new watch. I had a series 3 previously. The 7 has a much bigger face and some features I appreciated. It has expanded health monitoring capabilities. For example it can read your blood oxygen level or do an ECG. With my cardiac testing of 2022 it’s nice to be able to have an ongoing record of some of these vital stats. It also has a better screen that is visible all the time. That was always an annoyance on my 3, it only woke up when it sensed you flipped your wrist to look at it. Sometimes it just would not do so, requiring me to flick my wrist repeatedly until the screen would come up. The screen on the 7 is also big enough(45mm) that I can do basic QWERTY typing on it instead of relying on gestures. It’s a worthwhile upgrade for geeks.
On the way home I stopped and picked up a new Ryobi weed whacker that I bought online from Home Depot. I mentioned how the cheap whacker I bought at Walmart a couple years ago was not running well. I was never a fan of the thing and bought it out of convenience. The Ryobi equipment is higher quality and presumably should be less problematic. Weed whacking is unfun enough without having to fight with the whacker on a regular basis. The older I have become the more value I place on the idea of getting what you pay for, across multiple scenarios.
This weekend I hope to keep crawling upward in how my overall wellness level feels. I already am planning on putting the new whacker on it’s maiden run as well as working on getting a number of things as I feel they should be. Sunday I hope to help Alison get some of the tech aspects of her new house up and rolling. If the stars align next week it will be the start of me once again feeling normal where I am the weed whacker, clearing out whatever issues pop up in my path.