DHL lying this time

Posted on July 2, 2019 by james

It feels as though courier companies are now in the business of removing parcels from the sender’s location after which point no-one (other than the recipient) really cares what happens to the delivery.

I had a DHL delivery scheduled “before the end of today”. By 11:57am it had been logged as “Delivery attempted; recipient not home”. This despite the fact that between the time it was logged as being with the delivery courier and when I was found to be “not home” there were no fewer than two and as many as five people at the property, including the builder who is working outside at the front of the house, and because there was a lot of going in and out the front door was actually open all day.

I reckon courier companies actually over-commit on what they can deliver each day and if they get behind schedule they just abandon some deliveries, marking them as “recipient not home”. In fact I’d further suggest that this may well be corporate policy given that it seems to happen on a regular basis. But then I guess that’s what you get when they make it a scramble to the bottom of the barrel to see who can deliver most cheaply regardless of the consequences. Collecting parcels from businesses who want to send them is usually easy, and if you don’t then you don’t get paid. Delivering them to the recipient is more tricky, so if it looks like it might become unprofitable, well, that’s the recipient’s loss…

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Swimming, 1st July 2019

Posted on July 1, 2019 by james

Well, an utter disaster today!

For a number of reasons, I think. My head wasn’t really in the right place today for a start. Too many other things going on and I wasn’t properly focused as a result. Also a work call dragged on over lunchtime meaning I was absolutely starving by the time I got to eat and probably didn’t have enough time after I did eat to allow my body to restore its reserves of energy.

As a result I felt as though I was constantly swimming tired and whilst I could still make the times, it was a real struggle to do so repeatedly 🙁

Hopefully tomorrow will be better…

USRPT distance this year: 162,200m
Total distance this year: 166,350m

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Swimming, 28th June 2019

Posted on July 1, 2019 by james

I felt a little better than yesterday when I hit the pool today and it showed in my swimming. The same set, but this time no fighting and whilst it was hard, I didn’t feel at any point that I couldn’t complete the full set. Bodes well for next week, I hope.

Just shy of 165km for the first half of the year. I wonder what the second half holds…

USRPT distance this year: 160,450m
Total distance this year: 164,800m

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Swimming, 27th June 2019

Posted on June 27, 2019 by james

Lovely day to be in the pool today as it has suddenly become very warm without giving us a chance to get used to the heat, but I’ve not slept very well in days now and I am feeling a little ragged 🙁

Nonetheless, not wanting to give myself excuses not to swim, I set off with the new set:

  • 400m f/c warm-up
  • 24 x 50m f/c, target time 49s, turnaround 75s
  • 200m swim down

This session was always a struggle. I managed to get to halfway without a failure, at which point continuing really became a matter of willpower. I set myself a target of making the next four, which to my slight surprise I did. Then the next four, at which point things went really crazy and every one was less than 48s despite trying to slow them down a bit to give myself a chance of making it to the end. Reps twenty-one and twenty-two started to get quite tough and by twenty-three there was almost nothing left in the tank. Just enough to get me to the end of the set though, at which point my legs were giving out and there was no power left in my arms. Can’t ever be unhappy about completing the set though 🙂

USRPT distance this year: 158,650m
Total distance this year: 163,000m

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Swimming, 25th June 2019

Posted on June 25, 2019 by james

Another trip to the pool with my son 🙂

Given yesterday’s debacle I decided to stick with the same set again. It wasn’t long though before I felt I was struggling. I just didn’t seem to have the energy to push off the wall as hard as I could and I’m sure I was breathing harder between reps than usual.

At halfway it started to feel quite tough, but I managed to push on to sixteen reps, then twenty, and after twenty-one there was no way I was going to allow myself to fail. So happily I completed the entire set, even if my legs did feel like jelly at the end.

I think next time the target time has to come down to 49s. I think I only had one rep over 49s today, so I really ought to be able to improve on that when I’m feeling more energetic.

USRPT distance this year: 156,850m
Total distance this year: 161,200m

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Building an observatory. Construction #77

Posted on June 25, 2019 by james

I took a detour on the way home from swimming to pick up some trunking and a few other electrical bits from Screwfix. Despite the twenty minute plus journey I was still sweating profusely after swimming which was a bit embarrassing whilst standing at the counter waiting for them to collect all the stuff for me 🙁

Yesterday evening therefore I started running the trunking around the scope room for three sets of sockets. If there’s time in the evenings this week I’ll try to get more done in the warm room as well. I do at least now have a full plan of where I want all the sockets to be, so hopefully it shouldn’t take too much time to get the trunking in place.

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Swimming, 24th June 2019

Posted on June 25, 2019 by james

I felt horrible today. Very tired, having not slept well over the weekend, and lacking in energy. As a result I decided I’d repeat the same set I was swimming last week rather than drop the target time another half second.

And horrible it was. By halfway through the set I was really struggling. I lost track of my failed reps in the end, but at least managed to drag myself to the end of the set, painful as it was 🙁

Hopefully tomorrow will be better…

USRPT distance this year: 155,050m
Total distance this year: 159,400m

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Building an observatory. Construction #76

Posted on June 25, 2019 by james

Whilst I was fossicking around in the workshop this week I came across about 15m of armoured cable that looked entirely suitable for running the power from the beer shack (which will have power connected from the house) to the observatory.

I therefore spent some time this weekend digging a trench between the two so I could bury the cable. Fortunately Amazon were able to supply some warning tape to lay close to the top of the trench at short notice.

Whilst doing that it made sense to run networking between the two buildings as well (the observatory can be connected into a switch in the beer shack, once I get that far), so I found some old 43mm waste water pipe and a couple of elbows to use as ducting and ran it from the warm room floor down into the trench and then back up the outside wall of the beer shack, into the roof void pulling the network cables through as I assembled each piece to avoid needing a drawstring. From there I can drop the cables down to a switch wherever might be convenient.

With the ducting and cabling in place, I had to make some additional holes in the warm room floor to accommodate it, but I’d always planned to do that and made those sections of the floor removable to allow for it so that worked out quite easily. Whilst doing this it occurred to me that I could fairly easily physically separate the network and power cables in the warm room if I ran the network cables close to the floor, so I’ll do that when it comes to it.

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Swimming, 21st June 2019

Posted on June 25, 2019 by james

Solstice swimming 🙂

Another trip to the pool with my son. I wasn’t feeling quite so sharp today, but to my surprise I actually managed the best I’ve done this week, with only one rep below 49s (target time is 49.5s), so I left feeling pretty pleased.

USRPT distance this year: 153,400m
Total distance this year: 157,750m

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Swimming, 20th June 2019

Posted on June 25, 2019 by james

Same set today, but swimming with my son for a change.

Everything went pretty well today. Completed the set without any major difficulties.

USRPT distance this year: 151,600m
Total distance this year: 155,950m

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