09:32 – It’s the usual Saturday around here. I’m doing laundry and Barbara is doing household chores. Later, we’ll do kit stuff.
The chemistry kit Bill Grigg ordered on Thursday, 5 July arrived at his home yesterday. He wasn’t there to answer the door when the mailman showed up, so the kit is sitting at his local post office awaiting pickup. I’m very relieved that it made it there. I’ll be even more relieved once Bill picks it up and verifies that a grizzly bear didn’t step on it. Also, I have to admit that the Canada Post updates are making me a bit nervous. It sounds like they’re really anxious to have him pick it up. I hope they don’t send it back to me.
Shipment Activity Location Date & Time
——————————————————————————–
Attempted Delivery – CANADA 07/13/12 6:19pm
Item being held, addressee being notified
Attempted Delivery – CANADA 07/13/12 4:34pm
Item being held, addressee being notified
Attempted Delivery – CANADA 07/13/12 3:50pm
Item being held, addressee being notified
Addressee not CANADA 07/13/12 9:06am
available – Addressee advised to pick up the item
Grizzly bear or moose.
Laundry day here, plus dump runs and driving Mrs. OFD to the airport for her week in Portland, Oregon, while OFD himself busts his ass at work on upgrading an entire cluster of RH nodes, rebuilds, network stuff, firmware galore, etc., etc. On top of the regular daily putting out of fires. And by himself, mostly, while also covering everyone else’s apparently infinite vay-cay and personal time, and while the rest of our team in upstate NY, with a third of the hw and sw we maintain, hiring project managers, interns and more sys admins. Amazing. And the icing on this cake is that I ALSO now support some of THEIR machines as well. What a country!
I’ve gotten that notice four times now! Wish they had tried as hard when they were at the front door! Had they sent an email stating that they would attempt a delivery on Friday, I would have waited on mowing the lawn! Heck, if they had sent an email, I would have gladly picked it up!
What gets me is they MUST have heard the lawn mower (the vast lands and holdings of my empire aren’t that vast!). The location I’m to pick up the package is less than 5 minutes from me (in a drug store), and it’s very close to where I buy groceries, so getting the package won’t be a burden to me, but the protocol is that they have to return it to an “actual” post office, then transfer it to a drugstore outlet, so I can’t even attempt to pickup the kit until 2PM PST today. The mailma… mail carrier had to drive PAST the drugstore to get to the post office, which is almost literally across the street, and which also has service wickets for the public. And, I have observed this, they are one and the same driver! I could understand this if the outlet was contracted out to the employees of the store, which is standard for many of these types of retail locations, but it’s not. It’s an actual B’God post office, with actual B’God surly CP employees!
This is a continual issue with the post office, and a complaint I hear from other people who buy online. Mostly this would be a non-issue for the average home schooling family, but I’m “below” average being a single dad. Another issue with the post office is they have a tendency to knock quietly, not use door bells, and they wait one, maybe two heartbeats, before running for their truck. I think the next time I order something to arrive via mail that’s somewhat large, I will have it sent to be picked up. If that’s even an option with the mail? I’ve never thought about it until just now!
Fedex, UPS and Purolator have all given me stickers to apply to my mailbox or door, that they can scan for instructions to leave the package in the carport. I have had one package that couldn’t be delivered as the rule with Fedex on items over a certain amount is they must get a signature. That was an early morning attempt, and I picked it up at the Fedex office that afternoon.
Now I wonder where those books from Amazon that I thought the notice was for? One of them would be handy to have with the kit!
OFD agreed and added: “Grizzly bear or moose”.
You’re both wrong, it’s angry beavers, and occasionally a flying squirrel named Rocky as holiday relief (and who is stilled pissed at losing top billing to that stupid moose!)
I wonder why WordPress keeps booting me out of being logged in? I even use LastPass to auto-login, but it just doesn’t hold with WordPress sites!
WordPress is really obnoxious. The other day, I was logged in, typed a comment, clicked “Post Comment”, and WordPress told me I had to log in. Apparently, it had logged me out while I was typing the comment.
Maybe Canada Post will learn from the USPS. Up until a couple years ago, it was common to encounter surly and unhelpful USPS employees. Now, it’s really the exception. I think they must circulate memos to remind employees to be friendly and helpful. Every day, when our mailman or his locum tenens delivers and picks up a box or boxes, he thanks me for using USPS. Same thing when I use a post office counter. I think the USPS has finally realized that they’re under the gun, and they’re going to have to start keeping their customers happy.
The other day, I had a question, which I asked our USPS guy. He said he didn’t know the answer but that he’d find out and let me know the following day, if that was soon enough. I told him it was, and sure enough the next day he had the answer for me. A few years ago, I wouldn’t have even bothered to ask.
I sure hope its easier on you than the old boards were! There MUST be some benefit somewhere, to someone, but I haven’t seen any evidence of any from this side of the internet!
My observation is the regular walking route mail carriers are fine. Very friendly and helpful, if they can be. It’s the ones behind the counter that seem surly, though perhaps that’s just a perception problem with me. I have to admit I don’t like lining up for a wicket very much.
OK, which cpu for my 2 servers ?
1. Intel i5-3570K $230
http://www.amazon.com/Intel-3570K-Processor-cores-BX80637I53570K/dp/B007SZ0E1K/
2. Intel i7-3770K $339
http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Core-3770K-Processor-1155/dp/B007SZ0EOW/
I am using the Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H motherboard ($185) with 16 GB of ram ($97):
http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-CrossFireX-NVIDIA-Motherboard-GA-Z77X-UD5H/dp/B007R21JK4/
Thanks !
I remember my mom complaining about the surly PO employees when I was a kid, but my experience today is the same as RBT’s. Very friendly; 90% of the time they know the answers instantly; local delivery carrier is extremely nice and accommodates everything I ask. The big problem is what goes on behind the scenes—like my flash drive that was ‘out for delivery’ and months later is still ‘out for delivery’; it was mailed with both tracking and delivery confirmation, but delivery never happened, and tracking obviously did not work well, as no one can find it.
Have to suspect it was stolen. Not very valuable in the overall scheme of life, but it was a 16gb flash drive, which I think anyone would like to have in this day and age.
Just to add to the USPS problems I have previously listed here, back when my son was first attending Indiana University, my relatives sent him cash gifts in greeting cards, which he never received. Once I sent him a couple thousand dollar check for tuition and dorm payment. He never received it. Local PO there admitted that there were dozens of parents like me contacting them about stuff not being delivered. They had called in a postal inspector from Chicago, and even did an entrapment mailing, but—just like the missing flash drive—I was never informed of anything being found, including the thief. No question in my mind PO employees were complicit in the thefts.
I had to pay $35 fee to stop the check. Did a bank transfer for even more than that to insure that there would be no repeat of the thefts. This is why I hate the check system America uses, and love the direct transfer method Germany employs. Just since I have been back, 2 incidents have occurred where I mailed a check for payment of some item, and the recipient claimed it never arrived. Stop check fees are now up to $50 per check at the Tiny Town banks.
Because, although it probably takes a minute or two for the banksters to make their computerized adjustments to the accounts and balances thereof, they are gonna not only recoup that minute’s cost out of their clerk’s time, they are gonna profit mightily on it. Five bucks might be reasonable. Well, hey, why not multiple that by a factor of ten? Next year they’ll multiple THAT by ten. Our banksters here hit us for $35 for an NSF check. OK. But…they’ve lately been hitting us twice, thrice and sometimes four times for that same check, over the course of a week or two. Real cute.
I wonder if they realize how much they’re hated and held in contempt out here, all these banksters, financial speculators, Wall Street whiz kidz, et. al. If the feces ever do hit the fan in this country, their ass is grass. Unfortunately the rage is likely to be taken out on tellers and clerks and local assistant managers, while the real bastards sky up and skate away, per usual.
What a country!
I’d say the main issue is whether it’s worth paying $100+ more per processor to get hyperthreading. For a server, my gut reaction is that I’d save the money and go with the 3570K.
Science kit has been picked up and unpacked. I hate foam peanuts! 😀
Everything arrived perfectly. I haven’t opened the bags containing the actual chemicals, but it is obvious that nothing leaked into the vermiculite.
I would have to say that both the USPS and CP exceeded expectations. The package arrived promptly, with no additional fees, or hassles from Customs. I would say that shipping to Canada is a winnah!
I wonder if Bob and I are now going to get three emails confirming the pickup?
That’s great!
Now to figure out how to let Canadian homeschoolers know we can ship kits to Canada.
I will put the word out with the crowd around here. Did you not keep any of the inquiries from the people you previously had to turn down?
I will forward the information to the Self Design High that my son Tomas is enrolled with. They do distance education, and have the ability to form workshops in your local area if you can get six people to commit. The chemistry could be a likely candidate for a workgroup.
That’s great, thanks.
I probably do have some or all of the queries. I’ll see what I can figure out.
“Now to figure out how to let Canadian homeschoolers know we can ship kits to Canada.”
I’d want to have half a dozen successful deliveries before I’d count on them.
The cheaper CPU has 4 cores. How often is your server going to have more than 4 processes running at a time? From what little I can recall about hyperthreading benchmarks, I think it depends very much on what you’re doing as to whether it’s a help or a hinderance. My inclination would be to agree with Bob and save the $100. Also, why are you using a Crossfire motherboard usually intended for gaming systems with two video cards? Is it the best way to get the number of slots you need for the server?
Thanks for the cpu advice! BTW, these are file and print servers and will be running Windows 7 Pro. One is running a 1 GB Act! database and the other is a source code file server.
I just found out that Windows 7 Pro allows 20 user connections (previous windows pro versions allowed only 10 user connections) so I am upgrading to that. The Act! database server is currently running Windows 2003 Server and the source code server is Windows XP Pro. I am upgrading both to WD 2 TB Caviar Black hard drives. IO wish that I could go SSD on both but the Act! server is using 300 GB and the source code server is using 700 GB.
I like the UD5 motherboards from Gigabyte for their I/O throughput. The UD3 and UD4 motherboards would probably be fine but I do not like compromising my I/O at all for servers.
Thanks for the cpu advice! BTW, these are file and print servers and will be running Windows 7 Pro. One is running a 1 GB Act! database and the other is a source code file server.
I Googled Act! and learned that it actually uses Microsoft SQL Server under the covers. FYI, that makes the machine a database server, rather than a file server. Database servers use more CPU cycles than file servers.
However, I believe the correct choice for both machines would be the lower-priced processor. Even running the minimal version of SQL Server called for by Act! isn’t much of a load and won’t do a lot of parallel processing. Performance problems might respond better to more memory (SQL Server loves memory, but that version probably only uses up to 4GB) than faster cycles.