What a Piece of Work is Man

[kirisutogomen]

What an incredible species I belong to.

I didn't order any sort of special delivery options. Nonetheless, UPS scanned it in at 2:00 pm yesterday in Kowloon Bay, Hong Kong, whence it went to Chek Lap Kok airport, from which it departed at 4:20 pm, bound for South Korea, where it arrived at 8:36 pm. It left Incheon at 9:52 pm, arrived in Anchorage, Alaska, stayed there for two hours and eight minutes, and went on to Kentucky. It arrived in Louisville at 1:20 am this morning, cleared customs at 2:27 am, and left the airport there at 4:11 am. It arrived in East Boston at 6:16 am, and was on its way to Ashland by 6:33 am. It got in the delivery truck at 8:19 am, and the delivery was attempted at 9:28 am. (Sadly, it failed --nobody home).

So, naturally, at 2:26 pm UPS delivered it to the wrong house.

Comments

Dude, UPS will make you crazy.

[twe.livejournal.com]

When I ordered my Mac Book Pro, I wound up talking to a guy from Apple for some reason, and i remember him saying that they couldn't give precise shipping estimates because they came from China. Sure, "Made in China" who knows how long the shipment will take. I knew that. But no, when I got my Fe Ex tracking info, I see Origin: Shanghai, CN and I spent several minutes trying to remember which state was "CN" before I realized that it was, in fact, being fed-exed from China.

(What was did you order anyway?)

[izmirian.livejournal.com]

I think it might help if we all had barcodes on our houses. Apparently those big numbers on the side of the house are insufficient.

[kirisutogomen.livejournal.com]

Actually, they got the number right. The delivered it to the correct number on the wrong street. So presumably the system broke down as soon as it encountered non-numeric characters.

I vaguely recall that when the USPS started with the 9-digit zip codes they were mooting the idea of adding two more digits on the end to create a number that would unqiuely specify a building. If that's what it takes to prevent people from getting "Doris Road" confused with "Clara Road," I'm in favor.

[dcltdw]

I thought zip+4 does specify a building. In fact, I thought it could specify a floor of a building (ala downtown skyrises).

[unclenomer.livejournal.com]

It can specify a building, but doesn't necessarily. According to the USPS:

"the sixth and seventh digits (the first two after the hyphen) identify an area known as a sector; the eighth and ninth digits identify a smaller area known as a segment. Together, the final four digits identify geographic units such as a side of a street between intersections, both sides of a street between intersections, a building, a floor or group of floors in a building, a firm within a building, a span of boxes on a rural route, or a group of post office boxes to which a single USPS employee makes delivery."

[unclenomer.livejournal.com]

We get that with our regular mail fairly often. We get mail for the right street number, but the wrong street. The kids love it when its someone's lego catalogs.

[ricedog.livejournal.com]

So presumably the system broke down as soon as it encountered non-numeric characters.

Or perhaps as soon as it encountered a human.

[kirisutogomen.livejournal.com]

Oh, and wouldn't RFID chips for our houses be the way, rather than old-fashioned barcodes? They're so 20th century.