I spend a lot of time working on automating various little tasks in my life. Research workflows and various parts thereof, administration of personal and work computers, generation of examples for my students, ... the list goes on. In doing so, I've learned a thing or two (especially about odd gotchas and corner cases in the world of software [development]) and written some code to help with the more tedious, error-prone parts of the job. And that's what I'd like to share here: the work, the thoughts and the experience.