Technology | At Home with Tech

December 24, 2022

What to do When your Holiday Gift doesn’t Show up

Packages don’t always arrive on time. Here’s how I try to handle that inevitability.

“Your package is on the way, but running late. We’re sorry for the delay. Now expected December 27 to December 29.”

That’s the email I recently received from Amazon. Yes, the package in question was a holiday gift for our son, and now it wasn’t.

You might think I was upset to receive that disappointing update. I was not.

Expect the Unexpected
I’ve always been something of a last-minute shopper. Try as I may, wrapping up gift purchases comes down to the wire every year. But I’ve always gotten it done. That said, this year was particularly difficult. (More on this in another post.)

As you might expect, online shopping has made the gifting equation easier for me, until it didn’t, when the pandemic and supply-chain issues delayed almost every delivery.

I was retrained to expect disruption.

And when online shopping returned mostly to normal, I wasn’t so quick to assume that ‘promised’ delivery times would always hold up.

So, did I expect some shipping delays and ultimately buy more gifts for our son than needed during my 2022 last-minute shopping sprint? Yes, I did.

And yes, there was a back-up gift ready to go to the front of the line.

Do You have a Back-up Plan?
So no, it was not disappointment I experienced when Amazon shared the bad news with me. I actually felt relief and a bit of joy. I think I even smiled. I was happy that I had successfully hedged against this possibility.

And I knew that I could easily return the package. Or perhaps I’ll keep it as a back-up gift for next year. (How’s that for early planning?)

It’s Not about the Gift
I know that the holidays shouldn’t always be about gift giving. Instead, it’s an opportunity to be with family and friends. It’s a time to connect and sometimes reconnect.

And it’s a time to celebrate who and what you have in your life.

You just don’t know what tomorrow will bring.

And if a gift shows up late, so what? As long as everyone you care about shows up, that’s all that really matters.

Happy holidays, and here’s to smiling at every late package arrival.

December 11, 2022

The Double-Edged Sword of Repeat Deliveries

Amazon’s Subscribe & Save program is a great time saver, but over time it may be more than you need. Here’s why…

Amazon’s Subscribe & Save program originally made me feel like I had been transported to a Star Trek-like future where people could focus on higher-level cognitive challenges as opposed to pondering if they were about to run out of toilet paper.

It was a magical leap forward in shopping design, where you could automatically receive your supplies without worrying that you’d forget to reorder. Plus, you’d get an ongoing discount on these Subscribe & Save orders. How great is that?!

It was set-it-and-forget-it, and your stuff showed up.

What could possibly go wrong?

Too Many Vitamins!
This morning, I woke up, walked downstairs to the kitchen and opened up the cupboard to take some vitamins, including my daily Omega 3 supplement. I grabbed the plastic bottle, unscrewed the top and took out the very last capsule.

I smiled, because I knew I was ready for this moment. There would be another Subscribe & Save bottle in the back of the cupboard ready to go. I peered behind some other vitamin bottles, and I squinted to be sure what I saw. I didn’t see a replacement bottle. I saw three.

Three?

Clearly my family and I weren’t consuming as many Omega 3’s as my subscription was providing. You might say it’s an easy arithmetic equation to figure out. It is, but somehow it had gotten way off balance.

And I hadn’t been paying attention, because it was set-it-and-forget-it.

Inevitable Imbalance
I sat down at my desk with my cup of Joe and finally allowed myself to fully face the other recent clues of imbalance in my shopping utopia from the future.

I had collected in my basement an extra year’s supply of AC/furnace air filters.
My paper towel subscription for the premium Bounty brand had been inexplicably cancelled and replaced by the less luxurious Brawny.
My toothpaste subscription was also cancelled, and I needed to actively replace it, which I didn’t. (I was supposed to “forget it,” right?) Then, I ran out of toothpaste.

The Best Price?
Amazon clearly states that prices go up and down. If you’re looking for the best pricing over time, I’m not sure that repeat deliveries will get you that, even with the subscription discount.

You’ve got to keep track. And that doesn’t align well with the set-and-forget mentality.

The Easy Fix
Yes, the odds are running out of supplies are certainly lower with repeat-delivery subscriptions, although it can happen if your subscriptions get cancelled, and you don’t choose an alternate item (guilty).

But unless your estimated consumption metrics are perfect, you’re likely to over order.

Subscribe & Save will save you shopping time, but over the months, your supplies may start to pile up.

It’s not like I was entirely unaware of this, and it’s easy to fix by going online and adjusting the frequency of the repeat deliveries. But it’s the kind of thing you tell yourself you’ll do tomorrow.

And then tomorrow never comes.

Until you realize you’ve got an extra year’s worth of Omega 3 tablets piling up in your cabinet.

So today, I reviewed all of my subscriptions and made the necessary adjustments.

It’s Time to Wake Up
Amazon would tell me that I regularly receive reminder emails to check and adjust my Subscribe & Save items. And I do.

So why didn’t I just follow their ongoing recommendations to perform a little subscription maintenance?

Because I wanted to set-it-and-forget-it.

Autopilot-mode is nice. But you really shouldn’t disconnect for too long. Otherwise you may wake up one day and realize you’re surprised by what you see.

December 4, 2022

How to Create a Music Bubble for an Aging Parent in Rehab

Adding the sounds of Alexa and a comforting music playlist to a foreign environment can be a great gift to help maintain a sense of normal while away from home.

If you injure yourself and have to spend a chunk of time away from home in a rehabilitation facility, the experience can be disorienting. All of your daily patterns are disrupted and your tether to the normal is severed. Mentally, this can be hard for anyone, but I think it’s especially difficult for an older person.

Recently my father fell at home. Fortunately, he didn’t really hurt himself, but the fall weakened his legs, and he couldn’t move about with his walker.

So, my 89-year-old dad went to rehab to help him get stronger.

It’s been a slow process.

Dealing with the Unwanted Noise
I visit my father, smuggle in a diet coke and try to cheer him up. I talk with him and attempt to help as best I can.

I can’t pretend to really know what it’s like to be away from home like this.

That said, I feel one of the biggest disruptors is all of the uncontrollable background noise. Much of it comes from TVs that drone on nearby.

Sound Bubbles
At home, my father loved to play music on his voice-controlled smart speaker I bought him a few years back. In fact, he blanketed himself through much of the day with familiar old-time tunes.

He could easily control the soundtrack by simply talking with Alexa. (Okay, sometimes he might yell at Alexa.)

He had always enjoyed listening to music while I was growing up. His 8-track tapes and Sony record player system later gave way to his collection of CDs. Technology was his tool to help maintain his own sound bubble in our New York City apartment.

Music has always been a fundamental part of his daily experience.

Even though my father is now hard of hearing, he hears his music just fine. It has continued to permeate through his whole body thanks to Alexa.

Adding a Voice-Controlled Smart Speaker
I sat next to my father as he rested in his rehab-center bed, and suddenly it came to me. Why couldn’t I recreate his music bubble for him in this place?

It had Wi-Fi for its guests to use. So that critical piece was in place.

When I asked the nurse about installing a Wi-Fi music speaker, she replied that guests are allowed to have radios. So an Alexa device would be okay too.

So, I ordered a small Amazon Echo Dot for $25 along with an extension cord for easier installation.

And I headed back to see my dad.

Alexa!
The set up through the Alexa app on my iPhone was a snap. I quickly got a Frank Sinatra playlist up and running on his new Echo Dot positioned on the table next to his bed.

I was a little concerned how the music would blend with all of the other unwanted audio encroaching on his space. But I’ve got to say the resulting mix was okay. The music became the main track, and everything else turned into more a background buzz.

My father’s sound bubble was back!

The Healing Nature of Music
Alexa has been back with my father for over a week, and the reunion has been great.

He hasn’t talked so much about it with me, but everyone who’s been working with him is delighted with its impact.

His physical therapist told me that my father is happier and more like himself when the Echo Dot is playing his favorite jazz from the 1940s.

And all of the nurses I’ve met on the floor agree that using the Echo Dot as a Wi-Fi music player is a great idea.

Replace the Soundtrack
I feel like I’ve made some kind of massive discovery. (Of course, I haven’t.)

But if you’ve got an aging parent away from home, adding in a small smart speaker to the unfamiliar environment can be a really smart value add. (This is especially true if it’s difficult to reach a radio.)

Thanks to these relatively inexpensive voice-controlled devices, curated music bubbles are super simple to create.

I highly recommend it.

Category: Technology

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