Cut down on your junk mail with this tip from reader Jake:
USPS Christmas Shipping Deadlines
By 12.1.06
Keep these dates on hand so your sweaters and socks arrive to their intended recipients on time this holiday season.
UPS Takes 3 Weeks To Deliver 70lb Smoker, Broken
By 11.6.06
David ordered a 70 lb smoker from Amazon. For some reason, it shipped back and forth between Washington and Nevada 3 times, over 3 weeks, a total of 4500 miles. When it finally, arrived, it was in pieces.
Atlas Shrugged Junk Mail
By 10.3.06
God bless our obsessive-compulsive readership. Without you guys, we wouldn’t have entertaining MP3s of foul-mouthed CSRs cursing your mother, let alone an answer to the question “how much junk mail does our average reader get in 9 months?”
Ant-Like FedEx Airplanes Swarm Around Thunderstorms
By 5.15.06
We’re fascinated by this catchy video of FedEx airplane route variations, in which the planes weave ant-like through the small patches of clear skies as a massive Thunderstorm approaches Memphis. If you ever wondered why your delivery took so damn long, here’s your answer: like my aged mother, Fed Ex pilots don’t like driving in the rain.
Thanks for Nothin’, George Washington
By 5.13.06
The amusing result of when a student calls the GW University mail center to commend them on delivering his package one month after they received it into their system.
US Post Office To Issue Forever Stamps
By 5.4.06
We have a sweet old gummy granny who occasionally sends us cute little letters wrought in exquisite lilac penmanship, filling us in on her knitting adventures or about the music box she just found at the church sale. Each one of these letters usually arrives emblazoned with a five cent stamp from 1967, followed by a nearly endless postage ellipsis of thirty-four penny stamps, each one clearly issued in a separate year. The supposed value of the postage our grandmother’s withered tongue affixed to the envelope? Thirty nine cents. Actual inflationary value? Probably a million dollars.
Track Nearly Any Package on Google Maps
By 3.6.06
Track your packages on Google Maps using this phat, free tracking tool, which handles UPS, FedEx, USPS, and Airborne/DHL.
Postal Workers Busted Stealing Netflix DVDs
By 1.9.06
Colorado police have charged two postal workers for plucking out Netflix DVDs from the mail.
According to court records, between January and March of 2005, 503 Netflix DVD movies destined for Lyons, Colorado were reported missing or stolen. Netflix told investigators the loss represents 23.33 percent of all DVD movies mailed to that postal area.
Any Netflix subscriber has probably had a movie or two go missing over the course of their subscription. We wonder if disc theft is far more widespread than Netflix would like to acknowledge.
