Delivery is Weird

So I'm not just talking about regular mail, I'm talking shipping and receiving from companies and just getting deliveries. The way things arrive and the order in which they arrive is just strange sometimes.

My most recent computer order is one example, I ordered a computer (with a larger hard drive so it had to be "built"), a spare battery and spare charger. The computer has already been assembled and shipped, the battery didn't ship until a day later than the computer (I assumed it would have shipped the day before the computer) and the charger hasn't shipped yet. Maybe, this is all a plan from Apple, they know how fast everything will get here so why have someone rush to ship the battery when they had something else to do, the computer system could be smart enough to do that. It just seems strange. Although, I find it strange it's cheaper to do the final assembly in China and ship them here one at a time via FedEx.

I've been on vacation and mailed postcards on the same day (from the same mailbox) to people in the same city and they arrive weeks later. Where was the other one? Stuck in someone else's magazine? Did it travel a different route?

I'm currently subscribing to the TicoTimes, it's a weekly English paper that covers Costa Rica. It's published on Friday and sometimes I get it the following Wednesday (5 days later). I'm not sure when they actually mail it, I'm sure on Thursday or Friday. But sometimes I get it days later, I think the record is 12 days (I think I got it 4 days later, on Tuesday once). Why such the time difference? It looks like they ship it from Costa Rica, I wonder if it makes more sense to ship all the US customers in one package (shipped faster) and have them re-mailed from the US. I know they ship to a few US newstands to sell them so the re-shipping wouldn't be too hard.

And I find it really strange when I order something from Amazon (in stock) and in the same order I get a used book from one of their used-partners and I get the used book days before the new one...

Most of the time when I order from places like CDW, I get the item the next day even when I don't pay for fast shipping (I almost always choose the cheapest).

And my absolute favorite is when I pay big buck$ for overnight shipping and I don't get it for 3 or 4 days. Their reasoning, we didn't get it shipped the first day, but when we did ship it, it went out overnight. I love that Amazon clearly marks when you'll get it with one-day shipping if you order it in the next "3 hours and 5 minutes" or something like that. When my oven broke a few months ago the GE site, clearly stated that when I ordered it by a certain time it would ship that day, I could of paid less ($10-$15) from a few other sites, but I couldn't be certain when it would actually ship; so with that little piece of knowledge, GE got my money instead and they got a premium...

Technorati Tags: FedEx, shopping, Receiving, Shipping, UPS

A Fine Frenzy - Detroit at The Shelter - March 2008

Alison Sudol was excellent last night. A very small venue at The Shelter, the cancert was sold out but I'd guess there were only about 300 people there, lots of room. No one was back farther than about the equivalent of about 10 rows (no seats, general admission standing only with just a few tables). I've seen A Fine Frenzy before and it was a smaller venue so it was great having the small crowd and as a bonus it was a non-smoking show.

She's has such a lovely voice and writes her own songs. She's got this voice that's kind of a Sarah McLachlan / Tori Amos voice and she's just incredible. She so beautiful and has this sunning red head, and while it might not be naturally that red, she's got that anemic porcelain look that so many red heads do, I'm assuming she's actually a redhead. My camera in my phone takes pretty crappy pictures, but I tried to take a few.

She's so into when she plays, and every so often she looks at the audience, I feel likes she's forgotten us and that her manager told her she has to make eye contact every so often and that's why she looks up. I always think of 'gracious' when thinking about her personality, that's just how I feel when she's talking to us and that's how I feel when she talks to you personally. I did get to get to say 'hi" and get her autograph on a promo poster after the concert. She's just so nice, even with just a 30-second conversation...

It was a busy night as we had a fund raiser at work at six and the concert doors opened at 6 too (they're about 25 minutes apart). So we planned to skip the opening act and just see her and depending on the time possibly go back to the auction. When I finally called the concert hall. They said she was going on in 15 minutes!!!!!

So I had to find Kelly and Mark get out of there. We made good time, even with having to go a longer route, found free parking right around the corner and when we walked in the music was playing but she hadn't uttered a word yet!! So it was a great night.

We never got back to the auction, even though it was only 9:30 when we left, it was just a little too late to head back. So I have no idea what or if I won anything. I probably had my name on about $400 worth of things, but I'm assuming I got over bid on more than a few of them (there was still 30 minutes left of bidding when we took off). I had some train tickets to Chicago, baskets of games, chocolate, theatre tickets, plus I bid on one of my donated items and a few more things. One of the items I donated was for my Cat in the Hat basorket which had books/stuff and included a visit from me as the Cat in the Hat (for birthday parties, classroom visits and bachelorette parties), I drove the bidding up to $75 before I left, but if no one bought it I've purchased myself. While I love doing it, it's not worth it to spend a hot summer day outside in the outfit if it's only giving the school that much money so we'll see how that went. I also donated a basket of coffee and chocolate covered coffee beans that I picked up the stuff the last time I was in Costa Rica; I'm wondering what that sold for, it's was only at $17 the last time I looked...

Technorati Tags: A Fine Frenzy, Alison Sudol, concert, AFF

Blocking E-Mail Spam

I'm a huge fan of SpamArrest, a mail program that uses challenge/response CAPTCHAs to only allow mail from humans, instead of from spammers. It works great but the price has gone up from $60 for two years to $90, so I'm checking for other options. It's only an additional $30 but if the price jump is $30 (or worse, 50%) every 2 years, it's gonna get kinda pricey in the next few renewal cycles. The price jump is kind of large after a few years especially since I know many of their costs should have gone down (disk space, servers and bandwidth); the software is already written and has had minimal user changes over the last two years.

Honestly, I'm sure it saves me more way than $45 a year worth of time. But can something save me more time, I know in the past MailBlocks saved me more time. So I'm looking for suggestions for some other Challenge/Responce mail system.

There is one thing I really dislike about SpamArrest, while I can use any mail client to read my mail, to check and approve spam I have to go to their web site and that takes a lot of time (and this is a feature I miss from the now deceased MailBlocks). The reason I have to check it is for mailings from new companies that I deal with and for people who don't pay attention to the e-mail that gets mail back to them immediately to ask them to confirm they are human (I even have info about me and a picture of me in the e-mail so they know it's really me).

In the meantime, I'm using my free gMail account. I want to see how well that works, they give me all sorts of space for free and it's pretty fast and it works well on cellphones (their client, their web interface and should work with phone clients). They've got a fancy web interface and plain web interface so it works pretty well everywhere. Although, with my client I can't see the spam folder there either. Google lets you create additional addresses for the same account and have decent filters. Plus, they will let you use your own domain if you'd like to; so if it really works out, I'll attach my GaryLaPointe.com domain to it and use it for my mail (as long as that supports IMAP). And if it works as well for me, it's free! There's some weird mapping between GMail and the Mac Mail.app (I think by default you get duplicates of the mailboxes) but there's some work arounds, or maybe the new Mail.app in Panther fixes it...

Also, I figure after trying it for a few months, SpamArrest might send me a promo to lure me back. If that's the case I'll know I've done due diligence to try another option and I'll have possibly saved a few bucks in the mean time.

Actually, I have one other minor complaint about SpamArrest, the interface could be faster. There's something about the web interface that slows things down. I notice when I travel, it's unbearably slow and I'm not sure why. But it's a huge minus when I travel...

I do get some referral dollar$ from SpamArrest (maybe $8.75 a year?), so I figure if I'm sending clients to them, so are others (therefore, they're likely growing).

Technorati Tags: gMail, Google, spam, SpamArrest