As we enter the last month of the year, I look back on a few things I learned and experienced.
The news is broken – Regardless of political leaning, one thing I came to realize is how broken the news industry has become as the mainstream media seems to have lost its way. Too many of the stories that are written by reporters are not news, but speculation, much like what we get from opinion writers. Whenever I see a headline using the words could, might, possibly and the like, I skip the story, because it’s not reporting on what actually happened; it’s about what could happen based on the writer’s speculation or unnamed sources. Why obsess over what might happen? If it happens, then we can deal with it.
Sending and receiving packages – When I studied the famous Harvard Business School case of Fedex’s creation, I was in awe of how they built a new overnight delivery service using ingenuity and technology. Yet today Fedex has one of the worst websites of any major company, reflective of the company itself. The site’s appearance and user interface is abysmal it’s often unable to fulfill basic needs, such as rescheduling a delivery or tracking a package is. More times than not it says try again later. The site seems to be a reflection of how unreliable its service has become. In recent weeks, I received four shipments from around the country with email alerts of when each was due to be delivered. One delivery with a signature required came three days after it was due, but told me I needed to be home for each of the days before it arrived. Another I paid $5.55 to delay its arrival day by 3 days, yet after paying, it told me delivery would be made on the original day.
I send and receive lots of shipments associated with my wine art (www.wine-maps.com) and I’ve found the most reliable shipper to be the USPS followed by UPS.
I love Chase – When Amex treated me unfairly after experiencing a problem with a charge on my Platinum card that I had for 15 years, I decided to look for a replacement and selected the Chase reserve Sapphire card. Amex was and perhaps still premium for service, but it’s not taken everywhere, making it difficult to put all my business charges on a single card. Sapphire solved that problem and I’ve never looked back. What surprised me, however, was how good their online portal and apps are, making it so easy to check my accounts, pay bills, deposit checks and check charges. For the app alone, I moved all my banking to Chase.
This year I spent more time using its benefits accrued from earned points. We used Chase Travel to book a European trip and had our choice of using points, converting them into dollars or using them as airline’s points. Often so often there are bonus specials with the points worth 20% to 50% more. This month they were offering a 50% bonus using points to purchase Apple products, essentially a 33% discount. (Apparently not everyone had this option. When I mentioned it to a few friends, one didn’t have the offer, while another did.)
Remarkably for the past ten years a week does not pass without another offer from AMEX trying to get me back.
Everyone is charging their devices – It seems all of us are constantly looking for chargers, cords and outlets to keep so many of our products charged. That now encompasses items from watches to iPads, to phones to computers and to cars. We are living in fear of running out of juice. Ironically, my challenge remains my iPhone. Apple continues to minimize the importance of battery size over battery life. My least concern? My electric car that’s charged at home overnight and rarely drops below 50%.
Everyone is trying to scam us or worse – With X, formerly Twitter, becoming a cesspool, I moved to Threads, a competitor started by Meta, and now I’ve moved on to Bluesky, to get away from the company that still hasn’t found out to stop infecting our kids with suicidal messages on Instagram.
My purpose of being on a network like Bluesky is to keep up with current events and connections with a few good journalists. A quick perusal once a day brings up takes on some of the important events of the day. But I also encounter dozens of requests from others to follow them on this rapidly growing site. So many of them are scams. The dozens of requests come from members with a profile photo of a hot young woman, and a propensity to immediately begin a chat. The conversations are all the same: Where are you from, what do you like to do, can we be friends, and let’s take this conversation off Bluesky and use Telegraph. They are all trying to entice you into an online relationship where they can sell you crypto, extract personal information, or begin an online romantic relationship to steal your savings.
The gadget revolution has peaked – As one that used to write about the best of technology each year, we’ve reached the point where there justvery few exciting new products to cover. Innovation has leveled off and we are no longer awed by new things. Consider how these products came out 10 to 20 years ago and haven’t changed much after all this time: iPhones, eBook readers, video doorbell cameras, WiFi routers, etc.
Travel is getting harder – Sure, I’m getting older and it takes a bit more effort to get around, but the world of travel is much more challenging. As one who never checked a bag, I now check on the return trips. It’s just a pain to lug your bags on and off your flights. Flights are less frequent, more likely to be filled to capacity and more likely to strand you overnight. There are fewer ways to find affordable business class, whose prices have skyrocketed over this past year.
The good news – But none of the above should matter very much in the long run, as long as we have our friends, family, health and keep happy.