09:52 – I’m building chemistry kits today. When I got up at 0645, I had four in stock. I’ve shipped two of those so far this morning. I’ll build another dozen today and hope those’ll hold us for at least a couple days. Then I need to get to work on more forensic kits.
Yesterday, when I handed that replacement kit to Danny, our mailman, I mentioned that the first one had disappeared somewhere between Winston-Salem and the Greensboro sorting facility. He was extremely apologetic, but I told him that I wasn’t at all upset. Losing one out of 500 packages is an acceptable loss rate as far as I’m concerned.
What is strange is that in the last couple of weeks the USPS has apparently changed its definition of “days”. Until a couple of weeks ago, if I shipped a package Priority Mail 2-Day, it’d show the delivery date as two days after the mailing date. Now, although the label still says “Priority Mail 2-Day”, the delivery date is shown as three days after the shipping date. I haven’t shipped any packages lately that show Priority Mail 3-Day, but I assume that they’d in fact take four days. I’m not sure what’s going on.
Shipping time are elastic during the holidays. I wouldn’t worry about the change unless it continues after the first of the year.
Rick in Portland
USPS is delivering packages seven days per week in the Land of Sugar. I have had a delivery from them on Sunday at 10 pm and I saw their truck running last Sunday night.
Worse snail-mail experience ever encountered is/was when I got to New Orlean(2-06) after Hurricane Katrina… Still here “encountering”, ha…. Bob
What I cannot understand is how these packages can be under a tracking system but still get totally lost. I noted that a couple years ago, I shipped a USB memory stick in a standard JetPak padded mailer in a way the guy at the post office window suggested, considering it was very important to the recipient. The client had lost the original stick because they were a small law firm and had no onsite IT department or any real system for backing up and protecting that stick. The way I sent it, I was to get a signed receipt that the package was delivered. IIRC, I mailed it on a Friday, and it should have been delivered on Monday. Never arrived. The online tracking said: “Out for delivery.” Last time I looked (a few months ago), it still says that.
Fortunately, the client had meanwhile found the original memory stick. Somebody left it in a shared laptop, took it home, removed the USB stick, stuck it in his pocket, and promptly forgot about it. When a memo about the lost memory went around to the whole office, the guy remembered having stuck it in his pocket, and it was eventually retrieved. THEY then made a copy of it.
I’m not new to the post office losing things, and I suppose I have to admit that my percentage of lost items is still close to Robert’s; however, it is the super-important stuff in my case that always gets lost—never a birthday card or something similarly inconsequential.
There was a period when I lived in Boston, where somebody was throwing something incendiary in mailboxes and burning all the contents. I once had a bunch of checks paying bills that never reached their destination, and learned later that our local post office was hit by the mailbox fires. I assume that caused it.
When my kids were at university, we were in Berlin. During that period, I was frequently sending them checks from Berlin. Amazingly, those were delivered the very next day, until all the crap regarding 9-11 took hold. Now, mail from Germany takes more than a week, and nearly all of it has been opened. My family tells me the mail they receive from me is never opened, but it often takes more than two weeks for them to receive it. I have to mail birthday cards ridiculously early for them to arrive in time.
Ugh. As I mentioned, I bought a new Whirlpool microwave to replace the Panasonic. I was going to get a round tumaking that change this weekend. The Panasonic still worked, if I slammed the door once or twice. Yesterday, while I was closing it to try and heat my lunch, something cracked loudly just as I was closing the door, and it has since started up on every single closing, no matter how softly I close it. Sheesh! I still think something is broken in there, related to the interlock.
So now I have 4 microwaves in the house, 2 of which are stone cold dead, and 2 which now work, one in the original box and never opened. I cannot put microwaves out in the trash, but must take it to the once yearly ‘danger dropoff’ or whatever they call it. Since the line for that is never less than 1/2 hour long and is only open for 4 hours, I am going to have to be more creative about disposal.
Are there any hardware hackers around Tiny Town? Microwaves are a treasure trove of components, and if you know any hackers/tinkerers, they might take the microwaves away for you.
I am more likely to find those in Indy. There is not much of anybody left here who is not related to farming. And farmers have no time for tinkering anymore. They do not even have time to talk anymore, except in the winters. Farming today is a hard business.
There is a recycling place open fulltime in Bloomington. Next time I am down there visiting my son, I should take them with.
I never thought of myself as an Al Stewart fan, as his songs were always too long for me, but after looking up the song that quote about the ‘stack of Marshalls’ came from, I can honestly say I love that song. And talk about long—about 15 minutes. Live performance recorded just a couple weeks after he wrote it (and thus had trouble remembering all the lyrics) at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mu4_rnZtwRs
ISTR you said the new mayor loaded up the city payroll with garbage collectors. It seems to me his lawn needs an artistic display of stuff that has been polished of fingerprints and wiped down with bleach.
The one law school class Martha Stewart should have attended.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
Chuck, I can make the studio version of “Class of ’58” available if you wish. The CD version on “A Beach Full of Shells” is the “short” version the label insisted on. The “long” version was released as a CD to his fans on the Al Stewart Mailing List for a short time. It was produced and arranged for a full band by Laurence Juber, who also played lead electric guitar. The guitar work and arrangement varies styles as it goes to match the evolution of rock.
His last several CDs have had some really, really good songs on them.
IIRC, “Class of ’58” is his second-longest song, after “Love Chronicles”, which is 18:04 long.