…send it UPS.
So you may recall my whining about my fancy new beer machine being shipped without all the parts required to actually brew beer. This was rather disappointing, but I know that shit happens. So I e-mailed the company that makes it and got a prompt reply (as prompt as it gets, considering the company is in New Zealand – which is 18 hours ahead of me, time-wise) apologizing and stating that they’d get those parts out ASAP. That was pretty much all I heard for a week or so, so I e-mailed them again and asked, hey, have these parts shipped yet and/or is there any tracking number? ‘Cuz I was really hoping to brew a batch this weekend (actually I was really hoping to brew last weekend, but never mind).
Before I received a reply (this 18-hour time difference is really a hassle), I got a FedEx notice that I had a package arriving on Friday (yesterday) by 10:30 AM. It looked like they had paid for “Priority Overnight” shipping from California, which supposedly means your package is guaranteed to arrive anywhere in the US by 10:30 AM (as opposed to “standard” overnight, which they claim will get there by 8:00 PM). I thought this was mighty nice of the company (who eventually replied with a re-apology).
I watched the tracking intently yesterday as I waited for what was one of the longest weeks ever to end. The package was “in transit” from Indianapolis pretty much all day. When it wasn’t delivered by 10:30 AM, the “scheduled delivery” by 10:30 magically evaporated. But it was still scheduled for yesterday. Of course, it never arrived.
Today, the scheduled delivery is “Pending” with a note that “No scheduled delivery date available at this time.” Though I see that it got to Syracuse at 6:37 AM.
So, will they deliver this today? Who knows? The “Special handling section” says “Deliver Weekday,” so it may be they won’t bother to deliver it until Monday.
Obviously this isn’t the biggest deal in the world (let’s face it, everything else pales in comparison to the prospect of President Trump), but if my Kiwi friends paid to ship a 5 kg package across the United States to arrive by 10:30 AM, they really need to get a refund.
Oh well, at least it looks like things are shaping up for an early spring.
Trump Meets the Mean Boys
Gail Collins FEB. 26, 2016
Chris Christie has endorsed Donald Trump! Well, really, what did you expect? He’s a sworn enemy of Marco Rubio, and we have long since established that nobody likes Ted Cruz.
Rubio was the star of the latest Republican debate, having finally learned Trump’s key to success: Avoid being distracted by discussions of actual policy and concentrate on inflicting death by insult.
But Christie, who did exactly the same thing to Rubio in New Hampshire, claimed the senator was throwing “flailing punches in the last days of a losing campaign.” We will not linger on the irony.
On Friday, Rubio was in his new Trumpian glory, strutting around a platform and telling his audience that the developer had gone into a “meltdown” backstage during the debate. “First he had this little makeup thing applying, like, makeup around his mustache because he had one of those sweat mustaches,” Rubio gloated. “Then he asked for a full-length mirror … maybe to make sure his pants weren’t wet.”
Meanwhile Trump was reporting that Rubio had been putting on makeup “with a trowel.” This is perhaps the first instance of a presidential campaign running on dialogue more normally overheard in a junior high bathroom when the mean girls are doing their hair.
The debate itself more closely resembled a Quentin Tarantino movie, in which a group of men are stuck together for what seems like eternity, and try to break the monotony by yelling a lot.
(People, this is just an aside, but why do you think these debates now go on for two and a half hours? Do you think it’s some kind of test to make sure the final nominee is physically fit? It seems a little strange that in our Twitter-centric age — when, according to one recent study, the average attention span of an adult is shorter than that of a goldfish — we’re presuming the voting public wants longer programming.)
Ben Carson and John Kasich tried to take the high road, which meant that afterward, nobody was quoting anything they said except Carson’s explanation of his philosophy on Supreme Court nominations: “The fruit salad of their life is what I would look at.”
Ted Cruz was his lovable self — at one point, when Trump fell back on his mantra about not wanting to see people “die on the streets,” Cruz demanded to know if that meant the government had to “pay for everyone’s health care.”
But Rubio took control. He ran through stories about Trump’s worker-unfriendly business practices — like the Times story by Charles Bagli and Megan Twohey on the way his Mar-a-Lago Club ignores applications from Americans in favor of guest workers from places like Romania. And the illegal Polish workers who were once brought in to do a Trump demolition job. That case goes back more than 30 years, and since they were hired by a contractor, it’s perfectly possible Trump had no idea what was going on. This is true of so many of the things Trump takes credit for.
“Yes, you’ve hired a thousand people from another country,” Rubio overstated.
“You’ve had nothing but problems with your credit cards et cetera, so don’t tell me about that,” Trump rejoined. And so it went.
You can understand why Rubio felt that getting personal was the only way to go. Trump has been breezing through the campaign without making any discernible effort to come up with coherent policies, or even to keep his stories straight. (He’s amended his old explanation for his failure to release his tax returns. The problem apparently is no longer the complexity of the project, but a government audit that mysteriously precludes him from revealing any of the information.)
Trump, who spent the last month contradicting himself about health care plans, announced during the debate that he wanted to cancel Obamacare and then let insurance companies compete across state borders, which he kept calling “lines.” And that was pretty much it. The obsession with “lines” suggested either an absent-minded actor or a cocaine addict.
“That’s going to solve the problem,” he asserted.
The most optimistic analysis of Trump as a presidential candidate is that he just doesn’t believe in positions, except the ones you adopt for strategic purposes when you’re making a deal. So you obviously can’t explain how you’re going to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants, because it’s going to be the first bid in some future monster negotiation session.
Or maybe he just doesn’t have the discipline to sit down and work this stuff out.
The great moment of debate night, as far as I’m concerned, came after the actual debate was over, and Trump suggested in a CNN postgame interview, that the I.R.S. might audit him a lot “because of the fact that I’m a strong Christian … and maybe there’s a bias.”
Then in a CNN post-postgame interview Trump took it all back. (“I don’t think it applies.”) As only he can.
Thanks. I have been missing Gail because I don’t link or click NY Times anymore. I have been following Charles P. Pierce in Esquire a lot instead.
Perhaps this explains why someone might act like and ostrich ( though I believe real ostriches do not stick their heads in the sand):
Kahan conducted some ingenious experiments about the impact of political passion on people’s ability to think clearly. His conclusion, in Mooney’s words: partisanship “can even undermine our very basic reasoning skills…. [People] who are otherwise very good at math may totally flunk a problem that they would otherwise probably be able to solve, simply because giving the right answer goes against their political beliefs.”
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/02/the-most-depressing-discovery-about-the-brain-ever/
Thought-provoking article:
THE Single American Woman
Thanks for the reminder, pj. I ordered some socks on line 4 weeks ago. Cheap and so bizarre even Poppy Bush would probably never wear them but they were 90% cotton. At least, they are supposed to be but even after numerous inquiries I have never received them. Don’t buy anything from Choxi. I could have paid a little more from Groupon and probably would have had them in a few days. I prefer USPS for shipping, btw, although they take a lot of flack from the anti-gubment folks, mostly unfair. FedEx I avoid like the plague and often refuse to order something if that is how it will be shipped.
You know, the local drivers all seem to be great. At least the ones I’ve met. I know they really have them humping and I’m sure they don’t get paid enough. I get a lot of automatic dog food deliveries that come with 2-day shipping, and they always come on time. But I think there’s something lacking in FedEx’s system sometimes. The fact that the delivery date is currently still “pending” just seems dumb to me. And if I want to brew today, I’ll have to break out the propane.
I think the USPS does a good job with packages these days. Even the tracking has improved. Makes a lot of sense for them to do the “last mile” stuff. The best part is when I get a USPS delivery that won’t fit in the mailbox, they deliver it and the rest of my mail to my door, so I don’t have to walk out to the mailbox (which is a long walk on a cold day).
In Brooklyn, I always avoided Fedex. They delivered to the wrong house or left packages in obvious places that made their disappearance likely. UPS was great.
Things are very different on the on this island. I don’t even lock the car and I leave the key in the coffee holder. Well, I admit that I lock it occasionally because old habits die hard.
Of course the last mile USPS stuff is ridiculous. I get a notice that my package was delivered and that means I have to go to the post iffice to pick it up. Said post office is great about shipping. I’ll not bore you with the mail tale again.
I am sure their are personal horror stories about all three. My personal USPS story is when the FBI was occasionally ‘delivering’ the mail sporadically during the Patty Hearst kidnapping. If you lived in a multi-unit building, they would just dump it all without sorting, often outdoors on the street.
My USPS delivery experience is that if they try to deliver something that you are not there to receive, they give you a notice and you can have them deliver another day, or you can go pick it up, just like FedEx /UPS. They don’t automatically try to re-deliver unless you ask them to. In most of my experience, the post office locations for pick up are more numerous and convenient. In SF my local PO was about a mile away, UPS was alll the way across town meaning a one hour round trip by car. FedEx was equally distant. Both had some deliveries you had to personally sign for so you just couldn’t just leave a signature on the sticky note. I spent many a day trying to hunt down the truck to accomplish that without driving to their single depot in a major American city, usually in a warehouse or industrial park setting. Where I live now those two just leave their shipments on your steps, often in clear view. There is a little more of a criminal element who will be willing to pick up your package for you, often following the trucks around to provide this ‘service’. To top it off, once the parcels are dropped, they don’t even leave a notice. And, as NiXXon once said, “xmas comes once a year’ and the bad guys clean up during that season.
I will have to make the disclaimer that I was not always a ‘civilian’ in shipping and delivery matters and USPS was almost always preferable for service and pricing. Their tracking has improved a great deal as well. I have shipped hundred of parcels via the USPS with very few problems. I have had many more problems with the others, yuge percentage wise. But, you know, ‘gubment employees’ and union so they have to be bad and inefficient. Probably a little racism involved since like the rails and the military in the past, the post office was one place where minorities could get an opportunity. They now are a major employer of vets. The privateers will not relent until they kill the beast.
Well, I guarantee you can’t send a letter from NY to LA in two days for 49¢ via UPS or FedEx.
I love the stamps. Forever et al. Working the Ingrid Bergman these days.
Normally I use USPS or UPS, but trying to get a cellular provider to mail a new iphone to one of our kids via UPS was a freaking nightmare. Three of them disappeared once they arrived at the destination’s hub. PJ, the tracking info was similar to yours, btw. Finally had to send kid in to the company to physically pick it up. UPS has a serious problem at that hub.
Well, I’m more or a receiver than a shipper (so to speak), so I’m at the mercy of whatever the sender wants to use. Though if I have a choice between UPS and FedEx, I go with UPS.
Still no delivery date on a package that was absolutely positively supposed to be here before 10:30 AM three days ago.
Another great Kennedy down.
Aw, George died? That’s a shame. But I guess he had a good long life.
Mrs Art and I went out to caucus for Bernie last night and evidently Colorado felt the Bern
The whole town from both parties met in the local high-school which was already full of students out for a basketball game. I would guess a few thousand showed up, each precinct getting their own class room to meet in. Considering most people were parking on unpaved uneven dirt, it was a shame for all the old folks with walkers.The lines snaked outside for a block and if it had snowed or rained, a lot of people would have left.
I haven’t done this since I caucaused for big “Mo” Udall in New Mexico in the seventies.
In the end we were pretty happy that we got to speak about policy and that the eccentric looking couple who came to our door with the Bernie aprons on last weekend turned out to be neighbors a couple of blocks over.
Nice that you get a vote while it still matters. By the time NY gets to vote on April 9th, it’ll already be a done deal (hell, if you listen to the “experts” it’s already over).
Yep, I wish California and NY and PA and IL and NJ and some large real states set up a real Super Tuesday right after the calendar page turns in January. This method is just corporate welfare for media outlets and the hospitality industry in dumbfuckistan states. WTFistan states need to be frontloaded render reduce the others to the level of importance they deserve. If nothing else have regional primaries or clustered primaries that rotate on the calendar every election cycle. But, well, you know, states’ rights and all that. If I left out your state, I did not mean any slight.
And by all means, dump the caucuses. Totally undemocratic and corruptable.
I don’t know any way to say this. It is still sinking in.
A real tragedy. He will be missed.
His presence, though seldom noted at the debates, was always a brief and respite from the other loud, nasty jerks. Now that he’ll not be closing his eyes, I guess that will be my role tonight.
Maybe Rombnie can stand in his stead tonight.
Ha. Reminds me of my dad when mom dragged him out to the mall.
I can’t stand Gov. Snotball, but I have to admit I thought this was funny.
He is very facile with that trumpian talk, as if it comes naturally to him. But I admit, it was funny.
I made it through 36 minutes of the debate. I have never ever seen a performance like it from camdidates for president. Actually I don’t think I’ve ever seen any candidates, for any office, behave like that. But I’ve probably just been lucky ’til now. Within minutes the Donald refuted the idea that small hands equalled a small penis. He said he had no problem. “guanranteed.” He also has no brains, dignity or actual information. He riles up his audience and directs them to hurt protestors. He mocks the press and has his audience face the press and mock them. I know it is comical to watch but is seems to scare me more every day.
I thought it was about the best ‘debate’ ever. It just didn’t stop. I may have to watch it again today. repugs have to be in code ‘Deep Blue’ this mourning. If it wasn’t end times in Amurkuh, they would have been pronounced deceased and desist. ‘Little Mario’, ‘Lying Ted’, Trümp U(nit), Unfortunalely, it looks like a long schlong. When it is all said and dong they will all jump on the Trümpf train and Romney will be on his knees. It would be funny if it wasn’t serious.
Yes, finally, at long last, they have no sense of decency or shame.
Achtongue, y’all!
The wall vid is fun! And Trümp U(nit) – funnier! Although Drumpf is more accurate.
.
Thanks! I have seen Drumpf here and there. I borrowed Trumpf from former Bay Arean music bidnessperson and friend of Danny Goldberg Howie Klein who I think was working a Mein Kampf reference to Donald’s bedside reading material. I added the umlaut. I had also been working Der Dönald as well. Der Drümpf feels good.