post is delivered to wrong address for 19 years.

 

1. You have got some sort of weird crap going on with an unclosed something. I fixed a few of these when I was a sys admin here.

   Stan

   Posted by Yellow Dog       07/24/2008  at  06:59 PM  



2. It looks Ok to me.

   Personally, I don’t know how the mail manages to find anyone over there. England uses some really oddball adressing.

   “Hants” for example, is Hampshire. Peiper’s neighbors!

   Posted by Drew458       07/24/2008  at  10:07 PM  



3. And people here complain about the USPS....

   Posted by Macker       07/25/2008  at  08:58 AM  



4. This is a golden example of why I think that on no account should government be given authority over ANYTHING that can be accomplished by ANYONE else, however badly. There is no feedback loop.
   To define what I mean by that, let me give a couple of examples. If your copier or fax machine is processing a document, there are sensors to keep track of its position in the machine. If a sensor was “tripped” by the presence of a document and ________ seconds later did not “untrip” as the document cleared that section of the machine, the main logic will stop everything and signal a paper jam. And it will STAY STOPPED until the jam is cleared. This is a feedback loop, it lets the main logic know whether what it CLAIMS to be doing actually occurred, and halts operations if it did not.
   If I own a business, say a UPS franchise, and I consistently misdeliver (or fail to deliver at all) my customers packages, my customers end up going somewhere else. I make no money, my bills don’t get paid, and ultimately I go out of business. Once again, this is a feedback loop, which lets me know whether what I THINK is happening is *actually* happening, and halts operations when there is too great a disparity between *intended* actions and *actually resulting* actions.

   On the other hand, the USPS or the Royal Mail has no feedback loop. Government agencies, by definition, tend not to. If they fail to deliver their contracted service, or deliver it poorly, their “customers” often have no other place they are ALLOWED to go by said government to receive comparable services. More to the point, since said agency is funded by taxes, the “customer” most certainly does not have the option to refuse to spend his/her money with that organization. There may or may not be a means for the control to find out that its goals are not being achieved, but that warning of trouble is utterly incapable of shutting down the system to prevent further waste and/or damage, nor even of putting such a system to inconvenience. The system can continue to putt-putt away, throwing away money and abusing those it claims to help, because there is no effective way to challenge it.

   The net result is that private sector organizations tend to focus more and more over time on pleasing their customers, as that is how the employees remain employed. And government agencies tend to focus more and more over time on pleasing their own chain of command, as that is how the employees remain employed.

   The worst part to my mind is when government passes laws making private sector organizations into de facto government agencies. The insurance industry is a prime example of this. No, it is not funded by your taxes, as such. But if mass transit does not exist to get you to and from every place you might EVER need to go, then laws requiring you to buy auto insurance cripples the feedback loop of the entire industry. Complain about the price vs. the service all you like, it’s not as if you have the option to refuse to pay. Thus, it’s not as if your dissatisfaction with the product you spent your money on will ever have even the slightest impact on those whose paychecks depend on you spending said money. And because it’s an alleged “private sector” organization, you can’t even solve the problem by voting people out of office.

   Posted by GrumpyOldFart       07/26/2008  at  02:19 PM  

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