Running Bear’s June 2025 Coffee Shop

[Marlin39]

Part of the problem is Amazon combines deliveries if the mailboxes are within 50' of each other. That can create confusion when scanning multiple packages to different addresses for the same stop. Again, a little due diligence on the part of the driver goes a long way.

Why Amazon uses mailboxes is beyond me. We are forbidden by federal law to put anything into a mailbox. But still customers request "Put it in my mailbox" Amazon's standard delivery instruction is the front door unless the customer requests otherwise. But we can never put anything in the mailbox, even if the customer asks us to.

We don't have mailboxes at the houses. We have those multi-home central mail box cabinets, for every 18 homes, so I guess the GPS is what they depend on.

 

[bnsf971]

Amazon's GPS will in most cases pinpoint the house, not the mailbox within 50'.


That is an exceptionally promising idea!

Doesn’t do any good if the driver refuses to look. My neighbors and I all have our numbers on large signs plainly visible to anybody that will bother to look.
I’m currently having problems with Walmart delivering my stuff to my neighbor.

 

[chadbag]

I rolled out of bed around 7:15am. I was a little late to bed last night. Alarm was actually set to 7:35am. I’m aiming to get in the habit of bed at 10pm and up at 6:30am.

I was kind of slow this morning. Didn’t get out of my walk until around 8:10am. It was already 74F and sun beating down on you Mary a cloud in the sky. No breeze. By the time I got home there was a slight breeze that felt nice but it was 79F.

I’m in a class this week. Starts at 10am mountain. I need to get in and out of the shower. I’ll start the class on the iPad zoom and transfer to my office after I eat. It’s a class on “secure programming”.

 

[shortwrench]

View attachment 223468

Yeah, but at least tomorrow is Friday!

 

[insomniville]

Another day, another trip to the back patio. 90F and a somewhat more bearable 63% humidity. It's amazing how much a ten percent drop in humidity does to make high temps more comfortable!

It could be lower...

Yesterday went a little better than predicted. The cat came home and is fairly happy now that the anesthesia has worn off. On the downside it was $700 more than the already four-figure estimate because his teeth were in even worse shape than expected. Vet bills are expensive.

Hopefully he'll feel better; that will make it worth it.

My toys arrived yesterday, so today will be cobbling together my Timelapse camera. The hardware is easy; the software should be fairly simple, but might turn into a challenge. We'll see. If I get that done fast enough, I'll be on to layout idea #6; #5 is still on the table (no pun intended), but I had a brainwave yesterday.

I'm kinda regretting buying RailModeller Pro; the interface is very finicky, and it can't maintain accurate positions, which is a problem. Example: I enter 137 inches for the canvas size, and the next time I look it says 136.97". And that kind of crap happens throughout the application. I briefly tinkered with AnyRail running under WINE, but I don't have the patience for the learning curve at the moment. We'll see how frustrated I get with RM.

On the current topic of delivery driver antics: I see this kinda like I see all the outsourced call centers full of people who don't actually know the first thing about the product they're doing customer service for in the first place. Annoyingly and depressingly, customer service is no longer a priority for most big businesses, and nobody is willing to actually commit to spending the money to make it happen.

I find that fact highly ironic when considering that the US seems to be making a concerted effort to convert to a service-oriented economy these days...

Anyway, off to get my day started. Have a good day everyone!

 

[bnsf971]

Another day, another trip to the back patio. 90F and a somewhat more bearable 63% humidity. It's amazing how much a ten percent drop in humidity does to make high temps more comfortable!

It could be lower...

Yesterday went a little better than predicted. The cat came home and is fairly happy now that the anesthesia has worn off. On the downside it was $700 more than the already four-figure estimate because his teeth were in even worse shape than expected. Vet bills are expensive.

Hopefully he'll feel better; that will make it worth it.

My toys arrived yesterday, so today will be cobbling together my Timelapse camera. The hardware is easy; the software should be fairly simple, but might turn into a challenge. We'll see. If I get that done fast enough, I'll be on to layout idea #6; #5 is still on the table (no pun intended), but I had a brainwave yesterday.

I'm kinda regretting buying RailModeller Pro; the interface is very finicky, and it can't maintain accurate positions, which is a problem. Example: I enter 137 inches for the canvas size, and the next time I look it says 136.97". And that kind of crap happens throughout the application. I briefly tinkered with AnyRail running under WINE, but I don't have the patience for the learning curve at the moment. We'll see how frustrated I get with RM.

On the current topic of delivery driver antics: I see this kinda like I see all the outsourced call centers full of people who don't actually know the first thing about the product they're doing customer service for in the first place. Annoyingly and depressingly, customer service is no longer a priority for most big businesses, and nobody is willing to actually commit to spending the money to make it happen.

I find that fact highly ironic when considering that the US seems to be making a concerted effort to convert to a service-oriented economy these days...

Anyway, off to get my day started. Have a good day everyone!

Think of the profit of a service-focused business that offers “none” as a level of customer service.

 

[Bruette]

If they are all equally bad, then nothing will change until someone comes along to set a new standard.

Which might be impossible considering the enormous distribution network it will take to compete.

 

[chadbag]

Example: I enter 137 inches for the canvas size, and the next time I look it says 136.97"

This is for one of two reasons. They either are using something like mm underneath and that is the closest inch equivalent (3479.038mm vs 3479.8mm. The first being a rounding error from a whole number) or they’re using some sort of floating point number that doesn’t have an even number in it. 136.97 is as close to 137.0 it can get without going over. The next increment with the way the data is stored might be 137.08 or something. (Note I made that number up. The mm one I actually calculated )

 

[NorthBrit]

We get our next door neighbors packages all the time. If I see the driver on camera I will ask them to look at the address. Their response was "the system said to deliver here".

My neighbor put a big number sign right by the sidewalk to try and encourage proper delivery.

(Sorry Louis,) but Amazon drivers here need glasses. Dawn's items (she uses Amazon) are forever being delivered to the same wrong address.

 

[insomniville]

This is for one of two reasons. They either are using something like mm underneath and that is the closest inch equivalent (3479.038mm bs 3479.8mm. The first being a rounding error from a whole number) or they’re using some sort of floating point number that doesn’t have an even number in it. 136.97 is as close to 137.0 it can get without going over. The next increment with the way the data is stored might be 137.08 or something. (Note I made that number up. The mm one I actually calculated )

I came to the same initial conclusion, but it doesn't bear out all that well. I actually wrote a test program yesterday to verify my assumptions, and on an M2 Mac with gcc, even a regular ol' float has more than enough precision to accurately represent the value to two places. Even doing mm/inch conversions (or inch/even smaller units) repeatedly didn't affect that. And that was with -O0, so no compile-time optimizations. I tested to an additional six decimal places on the math, btw.

Sue me, I was curious.

It's doing something somewhere with math or something odd, or perhaps it's written in some other language that doesn't handle floats as well, dunno. Either way, it's unacceptable for a CAD package to have so little in the way of precision IMO. If I enter a value, I expect it to stay entered, exactly.

 

[bnsf971]

(Sorry Louis,) but Amazon drivers here need glasses. Dawn's items (she uses Amazon) are forever being delivered to the same wrong address.

What I have been told by someone in one of the companies, when a driver makes a delivery, he drops a pin in their map. All subsequent drivers deliver to that pin, right or wrong. And it’s almost impossible to correct.

 

[Bruette]

when a driver makes a delivery, he drops a pin in their map.

Amazon used to do that. Only select drivers were allowed to alter the delivery location. Now only Amazon support can permanently alter the location, and they seldom do it unless the customer requests it. Even then it is a roll of the dice. Amazon support is no better than their drivers. Amazon times everybody, doing everything. Now it's all hurry up and get it done. Right or wrong but get it marked as complete!

When we are unable to reach the location as with a locked gate at the end of a driveway. Support temporarily alters the location.
"Deliver it anywhere, just deliver it!"

I heard a reminder over the PA in one of Amazon's same day delivery stations. "Remember, you have 11 seconds to pack, label and mark shipped, each package." Hurry up and F'up!

 

[Boris]

It does make you wonder about the propaganda we hear about weapons systems on any side. But I believe we have the best right now

Unfortunately, most of what we hear about our Military capability and the capability of our potential enemies is BS. I will go further and include just about any subject. Specifically, our weather reports during the recent spell of hot weather. Take everything with a grain of salt.

 

[RhB Michael]

Afternoon all. More of the same, except even hotter today.

I showered early today so I could be at the barber shop by 0900 for a haircut. I only had one in front of me so the wait was short.

It was already miserable by 1000 when I got out of there. Stopped and bought some Bitburger and Hofbräu beer on the way home and am now running trains.

The parts I ordered for the guitar setup I spoke of earlier this week were supposed to arrive today, but due to the continued ineptness of the USPS they sent my package (from Memphis) to Dallas instead of St. Louis. Idiots one and all.

Have a great railroad day folks.

 

[Boris]

How close is that to where I-81 crosses over the road and yard? The Feds building that may have been a factor, but I remember that spot used to have standing water in it "a lot".

I-81 crosses "Alone" Yard at the West End. Day Tower was at the East end, actually in Lemoyne, just West of the 11-15 OH Bridge, if I remember correctly.

 

[Boris]

If Joe sees this he can probably offer a better answer, but I remember that area being prone to flooding. I think they used wood poles there because the steel would rust off at the base, and the concrete footing could/would get washed out. It was easier and cheaper to install a wood pole when needed, rather than the major project that replacing a steel version would entail.
And I really wish I had wasted more film in that area when I was a teenager.

Normally, wooden cat poles were used as a quick replacement for steel poles destroyed by a wreck. The area of the photo appears to be in between the N831 automatic signal and CP Day, formerly Day Tower, until destroyed in a wreck either PC or early Conrail. My last train ride into Enola was before 1984, so much has changed since then.

 

[logandsawman]

Amazon's GPS will in most cases pinpoint the house, not the mailbox within 50'.


That is an exceptionally promising idea!

My pet peeve is FedEx.

The driver/drivers routinely deliver the neighbors package to our address. Saves them a mile on a dead end gravel road, or just incompetent?

Our address is 20660. We have that in two places along the main road, and a sign with my name.

The neighbor is 20060.

If they leave their package here, I have to complete the delivery. There is no way to send the package back, plus would add a couple days and probably screw up the neighbor.

(EXPLETIVE HERE)

 

[logandsawman]

Unfortunately, most of what we hear about our Military capability and the capability of our potential enemies is BS. I will go further and include just about any subject. Specifically, our weather reports during the recent spell of hot weather. Take everything with a grain of salt.

The older I get, the more I see, the less I trust. Especially the "news".

 

[Boris]

In my opinion General Electric had a chance at building successful replacement to the famed GG1, but they simply got lazy. They did have a potential machine, it just needed to be redesigned on the inside a little and made rugged and reliable. I'm talking about the New Haven EP5 class.

The nucleus of the E-60, was the E-44. The problem with the E-60 was not GE, but Amtrak, or the DOT. The motor was built to run at 125 MPH, but had 70 MPH trucks. It was top heavy. There was no frame. (That would have increased weight further). There was a lot of unproven technology, and Amtrak was looking for a one size fits all locomotive. They lasted from 1974 through 2004, in Amtrak service, and NJT service. In typical Government fashion, they had New York Airbrake 26 brake, which failed all too often. NYABCO complained they were not included in specs, WABCO brake system was recommended. It was not an off the shelf locomotive, and Amtrak added every sort of option, then complained about cost.
On the whole, the motor lasted 30 years.

Incidentally, the Alstom Acela replacements have been on the property six years, and are still not in service. Every french designed / built locomotive I have encountered was junk or needed extensive modification to make it work. However, knowing Amtrak procurement I realize that they cant be blamed for everything. No American rail supplier really wants to deal with Amtrak.

 

[RhB Michael]

My pet peeve is FedEx.

The driver/drivers routinely deliver the neighbors package to our address. Saves them a mile on a dead end gravel road, or just incompetent?

Our address is 20660. We have that in two places along the main road, and a sign with my name.

The neighbor is 20060.

If they leave their package here, I have to complete the delivery. There is no way to send the package back, plus would add a couple days and probably screw up the neighbor.

(EXPLETIVE HERE)

I'd start billing FedEx for Last Mile delivery charges. Have an attourney send the letter. That should get the local dispatch manager's attention.