Coping with complexity

After breakfast I drove to St German's to celebrate Mass with half a dozen regulars, returned home and continued editing together the audio pieces I recorded late last night. The less mistakes I make the easier the editing becomes, though occasionally the sound quality is poorer than usual, and I've yet to work out why, so editing takes longer. I took a break to collect this week's veggie bag and help Clare cook lunch, then continued work after going for an early afternoon walk. By supper time I had completed both weeks' videos and uploaded them ready for posting on the right date. Apart from that small task, my fortnight's holiday is care free!

Clare received a call from the holiday cottage owner to brief her about the facilities and check when we'll arrive. She was expecting to receive a key safe code to access the keys we need, but it seems the owner prefers to welcome visitors personally, hand over the keys and show them around, which is very pleasing.

Sister in law Ann is coming to join us for six days in the middle of our first week. It was meant to have been seven days, but for some inexplicable reason the seventh day return fare was four times the outbound fare, despite cross-checking by the station booking clerk. Perhaps it's due to a surge in ticket demand on the return day, who knows? 

She also had a frustrating and distressing experience acquiring a new Oppo phone from BT with whom she has a contract. Although it's meant to be an Android phone, it didn't prove possible to transfer all the data from her defunct Nokia to the Oppo, so she sent it back, opted to go SIM free and got a new Samsung phone from Argos instead. Why BT are pushing Chinese phones on to their customers when government is openly concerned about security risks relating to Chinese electronic hardware, heaven only knows. BT sent her a new SIM card to fit in the Android, which took a week to arrive, but instead of taking up to three hours to attach to the network, as she was assured it would, it took twelve.

I wondered why this was the case, until I thought about it. If BT had sold her one of their Samsung phones their network would have immediate access to the hardware database of their batch of phones, so checking the hardware identity would state there and take up to three hours. The hardware identity of a phone from Argos would be on a different database section, and the automated system would have to trawl through the bigger database to find it. Given that such phones are made in their tens if not hundreds of millions, this is going to take that much longer. The systems on which we rely for everyday communication are far vaster and more complex than we tend to think. This much I learned from working with Cardiff Business Safe.

After supper we watched 'The Repair Shop' again in which the stories behind the items skilfully restored were all of historical interest as well as personal value to the contributors. More marvellous craftsmanship to wonder at. A lovely show. Then a tough BBC Wales documentary on the impact of the Foot and Mouth epidemic on Wales 20 years ago. Especially interesting was the presence of Professor Neil Ferguson, who as a young research student was developing innovative statistical modelling tools to monitor outbreaks of contagious disease, recently applied to understanding the covid pandemic spread, bringing his name to public attention again. Mistakes were made in managing the foot and mouth outbreak, perhaps because it spread more rapidly than people realised, so that rapid containment was impossible. Learning comes sometimes, not from due diligence but from bitter experience.