Personal

The stuff about me and my life. The “diary” side of blogging.

Why ‘UPS’ is pronounced ‘Oops!’

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I am so not happy with UPS right now. Not that I’ve ever been a big fan of theirs — historically, I’ve always had more trouble receiving packages shipped through them than getting packages shipped through FedEx — but it just keeps getting worse.

I pre-ordered my copy of Tiger a few weeks ago through Amazon, and chose their el-cheapo free shipping rate. A little slower, but it saves me a few bucks. The downside, though, is that it meant the box was shipped via UPS instead of the normal postal service (I’ve never quite figured out when Amazon decides to ship via the postal service and when they go with UPS, I’ve gotten packages both ways and haven’t seen the pattern yet).

Because I didn’t know that UPS was going to be involved, the shipping address was my apartment. While this works fine for postal packages, UPS invariably tries to deliver to my residence during work hours. It’s just a given. So, when I got the notice from Amazon that the box was on its way via UPS, I figured that I probably wouldn’t be home for the first delivery attempt…wasn’t thrilled, but that’s just the way it goes.

The day the box was supposed to arrive, I arranged with the building’s resident manager to sign for the package, and left a note on the door of the building authorizing UPS to leave the box with the manager. Of course, that didn’t work. I got home to find a UPS Infonotice waiting for me — apparently they need my signature. A little frustrating, but it was worth a shot.

So I call UPS to have the box re-routed to my work address so that it would be delivered today. While on the phone, the customer service rep I talked to was puzzled that my note was ignored, assuring me that that should have been enough. Apparently the driver disagreed, though, so whatever, and at 5:33pm we get things set up to have the box delivered to me at work today.

This morning, I checked in on the tracking notice on UPS’s site, and saw the following:

May 6, 2005 5:33 P.M.: A DELIVERY CHANGE REQUEST FOR THIS PACKAGE WILL BE PROCESSED;THE RECEIVER REQUESTED THE PACKAGE BE DELIVERED TO AN ALTERNATE ADDRESS
May 6, 2005 9:10 P.M.: AS REQUESTED BY THE CUSTOMER, THE RECEIVER WILL PICKUP AT A UPS FACILITY WITHIN 5 BUSINESS DAYS;AS REQUESTED, THE RECEIVER WILL PICKUP AT A UPS FACILITY AT THEIR CONVENIENCE. THIS MUST BE WITHIN 5 BUSINESS DAYS

Um…no, I don’t think so. My only call to UPS was at about 5:30 that afternoon as noted in the log. I don’t know who or where this 9:10pm call was from, but it wasn’t me. So, I call UPS and talk to one of their customer service reps, a very cheery-sounding woman who assures me that no, that’s incorrect, and my package is on the truck and set to be delivered to me at work. “You’re sure?” I ask, as that’s not what the website says, and yes, she’s sure. Okay, must be a glitch somewhere.

On lunch, I decide to see what the site says. It hasn’t changed, so I call UPS’s Infonotice phone system, where I hear a recorded message telling me that the package is sitting at the UPS facility waiting for me to pick it up. Not good — the reason I don’t want to go that route is the facility is somewhere over in the Beacon Hill/South Seattle area, which I can’t get to easily — and besides, that’s not what I asked for, and had been told this morning that this wasn’t going to happen.

I hit ‘0’ a few times until I finally get shunted over to a customer service rep. They, of course, can do absolutely nothing for me except re-route the package again to my work address, to be delivered tomorrow (apparently there’s absolutely no possible way to get the package to my workplace today). There’s nothing in the system that tells them anything about the 9:10pm call — they don’t even mark which customer service person made the change, as the system is set up so that people can call in from their cell phones, and there may not have been a customer service rep. I, of course, didn’t think to get the full name of the lady I talked to this morning (who apparently told me what I wanted to hear, and not what was actually going on), so there’s no way to figure out what went wrong there.

All in all, an incredibly frustrating experience. A mysterious 9:10pm call on Friday to hold the package for pickup that I didn’t make, and some twit this morning who didn’t tell me what was actually happening.

I’d originally planned to have the weekend to upgrade, doing a full drive wipe and install from scratch and then reinstalling all my apps for as clean a system as possible. With the first delay, I was now planning on upgrading tonight after work. Now, I’m pushed back again until tomorrow. Grrrr.

As the title says…there’s a reason UPS is pronounced ‘Oops!’

iTunes “Peace, Love and Grease (Hot Tracks)” by BT from the album Roadkill 2.19 (1997, 6:48).

Jonesing for Tiger

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My copy of Tiger was supposed to show up today, and I was going to have the whole weekend to Nuke and Pave and play with my new toy.

UPS, in their infinite wisdom, tried to deliver my package at 2:30 in the afternoon, while I’m at work.

I don’t get Tiger until Monday (when it’s being delivered to me at work so this doesn’t happen again)! :(

Anybody in Seattle feel like letting me borrow their Tiger install disc until Monday when mine gets here? ;)

iTunes “Here I Am (Come and Take Me)” by Green, Al from the album The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005, 4:13).

The problem with time travel…

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Yes, the problem. Because there is only one. ;)

I don’t even remember how we got on the subject, but something in a conversation with Prairie last night got me rambling on about the biggest problem I have with time travel stories. As fun as they are, there’s always been one thing that bugged me about them — though, admittedly, it’s most likely because in the majority of instances, worrying about it would essentially negate the possibility of the story working at all.

Essentially, it’s that while what makes the story fun is the ability to travel temporally, nobody ever seems to take into account the need to travel spatially as well.

The Earth rotates at a little over 1000 miles per hour. It also orbits the sun at around 67,000 miles per hour. Our solar system is moving through the galaxy at approximately 447,387 miles per hour. Our galaxy is moving at roughly 1.34 million miles an hour through the universe. So, assuming that those are all the variables we have to work with (that is, assuming that time is a constant within our universe, and that there is nothing “outside” our universe to measure its relative speed), we travel (very) roughly 6,679,393,200 miles per second relative to our universe.

So, were I to invent a time machine and move myself one second back in time, I’d end up popping back into the normal time stream somewhere more than six and a half billion miles away from where I started! Needless to say, I’d be incalculably lucky to end up arriving anywhere that would allow me to survive — most likely, I’d just end up floating out in the vacuum of space somewhere.

Any feasible time machine, then, would somehow have to ensure that the traveler was able to move temporally while remaining stationary spatially relative to their starting point, and not to the universe as a whole.

Tricky.

Not that that keeps me from enjoying time travel stories anyway, of course. But there’s always this niggling little voice in the back of my head…

05/05/05 5:55:55

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From Jonas:

  • :55 seconds — once a minute.
  • 55:55 — once an hour
  • 5:55:55 — twice a day, once a day (depends on cultural approach towards 24/12h clocks).
  • 5th @ 5:55:55 — once a month
  • 5th of May @ 5:55:55 — once a year
  • 5th of May, 05 @ 5:55:55 — once every 100 years
  • 5th of May, 005 @ 5:55:55 — once every 1000 years
  • Thursday (5th day of week), 5th of May, 005 @ 5:55:55 — once every 2000 years

(And yes, I’m back-dating this post slightly just so it fits. Silly, sure, but why not?)

Happy Birthday Royce!

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Today Royce, whom I’ve known since fourth grade, turns 32. All these years and I’m still two days older! ;)

Happy birthday!

(The best birthday card I ever found was one I gave to Royce a long time ago. On the front was a picture of a man’s hand holding a hamster. On the inside, the card read, “Have a happy birthday or the hamster goes squish.”)

iTunes “Come Fly With Me” by Sheep on Drugs from the album One for the Money (1997, 3:02).

For Mom: One year of hair!

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After having had long hair for ages, a few years ago I cut it short, and for the past couple years I was regularly shaving my head. While I liked the way it looked, my mom always lamented the loss of my “beautiful curls.”

Last year on my birthday, after having found some old shots of me with long hair, I finally decided to start letting it grow out again. I shaved my head one last time on my birthday, and have just let it grow since then. This, then, marks one year of not cutting my hair…and here’s the result:

[One year of hair!][1]

[1]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/djwudi/12264104/ “One year of hair!”

It’s a bit bunched up from having been in a ponytail holder, but you get the idea. Long (and getting longer), red, curly hair. The curls are back, mom! :)

Of course, most of the time I keep it held back in a ponytail, so here’s how that looks (along with a birthday present to myself — my new favorite t-shirt, custom-made because I just don’t wear [white t-shirts][2] all that often):

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p align=”center”>One year of hair!

iTunes “I Don’t Think They Know” by Mesh from the album Cyberl@b (1998, 4:40).