One one hand, I'd like to thank and praise the United States Post Office; and on the other hand, I'd like to register a complaint.
I received another e-mail from W5JAY, Jay Bromley, who is the Awards Manager for QRP-ARCI. He informed me that my Worked All 50 States certificate had gone out in the mail on Saturday. It arrived today! Two days from Fort Smith, Arkansas to South Plainfield, NJ via "plain ol' vanilla" First Class mail! I think that's phenomenal and I think the USPS deserves a hearty round of applause!
On the other hand, Jay prominently and conspicuously marked the envelope "Please Do Not Bend" right in plain sight. So what did my letter carrier do? Yep, he bent it over in order to stuff it into my mailbox. Luckily, I am home this afternoon; and I retrieved the mail within about 5 minutes of when I had heard it deposited into my mail box - so no big deal. Jay had the forethought to put a piece of cardboard in there as a stiffener, so there are no creases or permanent marks of any kind.
So the question remains - doesn't anyone read? Yes, folks do; as you're reading this blog right now. But do markings like "Do No Bend", "Fragile", or "Please Handle With Care" make packages invisible - or worse - a target? Yes, I know in the "scheme of things" this is totally minor and probably not worth the time I am wasting to write about it; but it is a pet peeve.
Changing the topic to something more radio related and definitely more interesting, the Topeka Capitol-Journal has this article today:
http://www.cjonline.com/news/local/2009-09-20/earth_approaching_sunspot_records
The article ties sunspot numbers to the "Global Warming" craze; and at the risk of being called a "Conservative whackaloon" again, I won't go into that here. But it is interesting how folks are beginning to realize that the sun's cycle is tied into so many things, and not just our fascination with radio propagation.
73 de Larry W2LJ
It reminds me of a story - probably apocryphal - that I heard back in the early days of computers, before the Internet, when if you bought software it came through the post on those big 5 1/4in floppy disks.
ReplyDeleteA guy orders some software. A few days later he hears a thump on the doormat, goes down and sees a card backed envelope that has been folded in half to put through the letter box. He straightens it out, and sees the envelope has a bright red sticker saying "Floppy Disks Do Not Bend". Under which the postman has scrawled "Oh Yes They Do".