Sunday, May 19th

[Cornflake]

Good morning. It's 68 degrees and we'll probably reach the high 90s. I'm going to the botanical garden at 6:00 to start the day. This afternoon there's a choir concert and I'll go hear my wife and the others sing.

Enjoy your day.

Wordle 1,065 6/6*

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[kenlarsson]

Good morning. Slept in a bit this morning, today is going to be a physical recovery day. Claire's got a party with some of her girlfriends this afternoon. I will be going to ground. Have a great day.



Didn't see many birds on our Audubon outing yesterday but we did come across this Kestrel and its mate guarding its nest.

[dradtke]

Guthrie yesterday. Dylan today.

[Cosmic Wonder]

Morning. Going to see Annie at the Keller today. Wordle, grr.

Mike
Wordle 1,065 X/6

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[Marty]

Good morning.

51F-75F cloudy.

Breakfast at the Little Oven and a little grocery shopping. Going over to buddy Milo's place later to show off a Recording King 000 12 fret that I have for sale.

[paleo]

I was up early, whilst it was still cool, to get some work done, here at the cabin. I have some lawn with water on 2 sides, steep banks on the other sides, no way to get a lawn mower there. My solution is to "mow" it with my string trimmer.

30 minutes at full throttle, one full tank of gas, is just enough to get the job done, this will keep it looking presentable for a couple weeks.

Now for more coffee and maybe a little flintknapping.

[howard lee]

Breakfast here, while Her Grace watches the F1 from Italy.

We can call it a Dutch Baby again, since Lando Norris won last week, not Max Verstappen.
Of course, that may change back to German Pancake because Verstappen is in the lead right now.

Have a good Sunday, folks.

[epaul]

Exciting day planed. After choir, I'm going to Target... and buy a NEW MATTRESS PAD!

[millring]

Just barely salvaged Wordle. 6. I knew it was going to be trouble from the second guess.

Today I was going to fix my mower (see thread). I figured out where the problem is but have no idea so far how to fix it.

IceSha is up in Michigan at an agility trial. I'm off. I'm not Amazoning on Sundays anymore and the PO is being very judicious with the overtime. On the other hand, we're an aging and ailing, overworked office, so try as they might, there seems to be an abundance of overtime anyway as the regulars are so often calling in sick, and the subs we have don't like to work.

[Village Idiot]

It's another sunny warm day. I'll have to find someting to do out there.

[howard lee]

May 19, 2024 9:19:05 GMT -5 millring said:

[...]

IceSha is up in Michigan at an agility trial. I'm off. I'm not Amazoning on Sundays anymore and the PO is being very judicious with the overtime. On the other hand, we're an aging and ailing, overworked office, so try as they might, there seems to be an abundance of overtime anyway as the regulars are so often calling in sick, and the subs we have don't like to work.

RE the USPS: I don't know if the daily is the place to post this or if it requires a thread of its own (which might focus TOO much attention on it... anyway, recently I ordered a new set of bridge pins for the Hooper (this time with abalone dots because a 28-style shouldn't have plain black ones, traditionally; I also have no idea if these are the original pins) from Custom Inlay in Leitchfield, KY. It took the package eight days to reach me. Granted, it arrived in the Metro area here in four days, but then bounced around between three different local zip codes before it landed at my local branch. On a related note, it would take about 87 hours to make the trip by bicycle—I checked.

Sadly, I mismeasured the first time, and the pins were too thin just below the skirt, and too loose in the bridge. It amazes me how much of a difference an extra .005" can make. So I sent these back for an exchange, this time measuring with a micrometer carefully. I put the pins in the mail Friday morning. Just checked the tracking number, and 24 hours later they were already in Louisville and en route to Leitchfield, expected delivery tomorrow, after three days in the mail.

It is baffling to me. The mailing label from Custom Inlay (sent USPS Advantage—does that explain it?) was clearly printed and addressed correctly. This has happened to me in the past. Can one conclude that there are more jaded, disinterested, perhaps incompetent postal employees here in New York than there are elsewhere? I remember posting something to myself from Indiana when I was visiting LJ, and the clerk was like my best friend. Not so, here...

Seniors want to know. Anyone? Bueller? 😃

[david]

Great home-cooked eats yesterday: Steak and lobster. AND there is a fully cooked leftover lobster tail that I will have fun finding a recipe for today.

My apple tree is infested with mites? Youngest son says ladybugs will take care of them, so it is off on a ladybug hunt this p.m.

[billhammond]

After yogurt at home this morning, I motored over to Culver's for coffee, soup and custard. Their Blue Spoon coffee is even tastier than Speedway's! Their vegetable beef soup is a little slim on the beef, but that's OK. And the Flavor of the Day, Chocolate-Covered Strawberry, didn't suck!

[billhammond]

I'm toggling between PGA golf and Indy 500 qualifying, the latter topping 240 mph at times.

The contrast is surreal.

[Moderators]

May 19, 2024 14:36:07 GMT -5 t-bob said:

We are experiencing an epidemic of social loneliness, and therefore numbness, around our climate grief and other traumas perpetuated by the global systems of oppression.  We grieve and rage wisely, in a circle of belonging, we feel safer. We grieve collectively within our communities, we come to insights and understanding; we build our power & collective action can blossom...... A collaboration with a community.

Bob, we have asked for your cooperation time and again and again. Simply copy and paste an attribution for someone else's published words on the Web. Once more, this posting is unattributed, and it's from Tricycle, The Buddhist Review website:

tricycle.org/article/climate-grief-communal-power/

It's the last paragraph of the article.

All the members of this board like being here. You don't want to be the reason we get taken down someday. And unlike this time, the Moderators are not going to do a Google search every time you post something that was written by someone else. You seem to be willfully oppositional for some reason unbeknownst to us. It is NOT a "collaboration." You are using that as a flimsy excuse for appropriation and plagiarism. That's how we see it, and that's how the hosts of Tap-a-Talk will see it before they start sending the Moderators warnings.

This is not your first infraction. We have been generous and forgiving, but enough is enough. You are an adult. So please, get with the program finally or expect a suspension.

[t-bob]

May 19, 2024 15:21:54 GMT -5 Moderators said:

May 19, 2024 14:36:07 GMT -5 t-bob said:

We are experiencing an epidemic of social loneliness, and therefore numbness, around our climate grief and other traumas perpetuated by the global systems of oppression.  We grieve and rage wisely, in a circle of belonging, we feel safer. We grieve collectively within our communities, we come to insights and understanding; we build our power & collective action can blossom...... A collaboration with a community.

Bob, we have asked for your cooperation time and again and again. Simply copy and paste an attribution for someone else's published words on the Web. Once more, this posting is unattributed, and it's from Tricycle, The Buddhist Review website:

tricycle.org/article/climate-grief-communal-power/

It's the last paragraph of the article.

All the members of this board like being here. You don't want to be the reason we get taken down someday. And unlike this time, the Moderators are not going to do a Google search every time you post something that was written by someone else. You seem to be willfully oppositional for some reason unbeknownst to us. It is NOT a "collaboration." You are using that as a flimsy excuse for appropriation and plagiarism. That's how we see it, and that's how the hosts of Tap-a-Talk will see it before they start sending the Moderators warnings.

This is not your first infraction. We have been generous and forgiving, but enough is enough. You are an adult. So please, get with the program finally or expect a suspension.

Dead - deleted

[Cornflake]

Our church choir's concert this afternoon was great. Sometimes I forget how good they are. There are about 35 voices, including several people who are doing graduate work in music at ASU. The large sanctuary provides just the right amount of reverberation. Their program ranged from Thomas Tallis to pieces based on poems by e. e. cummings and W. S. Merwin. When I closed my eyes I could have been in Ely Cathedral.

[TKennedy]

The Wolves - Wow!

[millring]

May 19, 2024 9:35:33 GMT -5 howard lee said:

May 19, 2024 9:19:05 GMT -5 millring said:

[...]

IceSha is up in Michigan at an agility trial. I'm off. I'm not Amazoning on Sundays anymore and the PO is being very judicious with the overtime. On the other hand, we're an aging and ailing, overworked office, so try as they might, there seems to be an abundance of overtime anyway as the regulars are so often calling in sick, and the subs we have don't like to work.

RE the USPS: I don't know if the daily is the place to post this or if it requires a thread of its own (which might focus TOO much attention on it... anyway, recently I ordered a new set of bridge pins for the Hooper (this time with abalone dots because a 28-style shouldn't have plain black ones, traditionally; I also have no idea if these are the original pins) from Custom Inlay in Leitchfield, KY. It took the package eight days to reach me. Granted, it arrived in the Metro area here in four days, but then bounced around between three different local zip codes before it landed at my local branch. On a related note, it would take about 87 hours to make the trip by bicycle—I checked.

Sadly, I mismeasured the first time, and the pins were too thin just below the skirt, and too loose in the bridge. It amazes me how much of a difference an extra .005" can make. So I sent these back for an exchange, this time measuring with a micrometer carefully. I put the pins in the mail Friday morning. Just checked the tracking number, and 24 hours later they were already in Louisville and en route to Leitchfield, expected delivery tomorrow, after three days in the mail.

It is baffling to me. The mailing label from Custom Inlay (sent USPS Advantage—does that explain it?) was clearly printed and addressed correctly. This has happened to me in the past. Can one conclude that there are more jaded, disinterested, perhaps incompetent postal employees here in New York than there are elsewhere? I remember posting something to myself from Indiana when I was visiting LJ, and the clerk was like my best friend. Not so, here...

Seniors want to know. Anyone? Bueller? 😃

Now that I've seen the inner workings of the Post Office I'm amazed that there aren't more miss-deliveries and lost articles than there are.

1. Delivery is quite often dependent upon a non-professional work force. On any given day fully 1/3 of our 18 rural routes will be run by subs -- not by the career regular carriers. In our case, more than half of those subs have less than half a year's experience and will probably quit inside of a year.

2. USPS is generalized, not specialized. We do mail and packages. And packages are our priority (revenue-wise) but they are an afterthought to our infrastructure. There is nothing about the USPS equipment that is specifically for package handling. We were set up to handle mail. We handle packages on the floor or wherever we can find a place to work on them. There are no worktables, conveyor belts, fork lifts -- everything is handled by hand 100-200 parcels per route per day. More during peak. Any box small and light enough to be thrown will literally be thrown 20-40 feet across the office into the rolling 3'X3'X4' hampers of the various routes.

3. We get what we pay for. Amazon gets delivery at under cost but it gluts the entire system. Its 90% or more of our daily deliveries. Articles for which customers have paid a premium price for special delivery -- other than express -- are simply grouped with the Amazon and vie for our attention in a sea of parcels.

[howard lee]

May 20, 2024 5:03:15 GMT -5 millring said:

May 19, 2024 9:35:33 GMT -5 howard lee said:

RE the USPS: I don't know if the daily is the place to post this or if it requires a thread of its own (which might focus TOO much attention on it... anyway, recently I ordered a new set of bridge pins for the Hooper (this time with abalone dots because a 28-style shouldn't have plain black ones, traditionally; I also have no idea if these are the original pins) from Custom Inlay in Leitchfield, KY. It took the package eight days to reach me. Granted, it arrived in the Metro area here in four days, but then bounced around between three different local zip codes before it landed at my local branch. On a related note, it would take about 87 hours to make the trip by bicycle—I checked.

Sadly, I mismeasured the first time, and the pins were too thin just below the skirt, and too loose in the bridge. It amazes me how much of a difference an extra .005" can make. So I sent these back for an exchange, this time measuring with a micrometer carefully. I put the pins in the mail Friday morning. Just checked the tracking number, and 24 hours later they were already in Louisville and en route to Leitchfield, expected delivery tomorrow, after three days in the mail.

It is baffling to me. The mailing label from Custom Inlay (sent USPS Advantage—does that explain it?) was clearly printed and addressed correctly. This has happened to me in the past. Can one conclude that there are more jaded, disinterested, perhaps incompetent postal employees here in New York than there are elsewhere? I remember posting something to myself from Indiana when I was visiting LJ, and the clerk was like my best friend. Not so, here...

Seniors want to know. Anyone? Bueller? 😃

Now that I've seen the inner workings of the Post Office I'm amazed that there aren't more miss-deliveries and lost articles than there are.

1. Delivery is quite often dependent upon a non-professional work force. On any given day fully 1/3 of our 18 rural routes will be run by subs -- not by the career regular carriers. In our case, more than half of those subs have less than half a year's experience and will probably quit inside of a year.

2. USPS is generalized, not specialized. We do mail and packages. And packages are our priority (revenue-wise) but they are an afterthought to our infrastructure. There is nothing about the USPS equipment that is specifically for package handling. We were set up to handle mail. We handle packages on the floor or wherever we can find a place to work on them. There are no worktables, conveyor belts, fork lifts -- everything is handled by hand 100-200 parcels per route per day. More during peak. Any box small and light enough to be thrown will literally be thrown 20-40 feet across the office into the rolling 3'X3'X4' hampers of the various routes.

3. We get what we pay for. Amazon gets delivery at under cost but it gluts the entire system. Its 90% or more of our daily deliveries. Articles for which customers have paid a premium price for special delivery -- other than express -- are simply grouped with the Amazon and vie for our attention in a sea of parcels.

Thanks, John. The package in question here was a small paddded flat envelope. Does something like that go through any sort of machinery, or are such small flats also handled manually?