Christmas Shipping

Christmas is just around the corner and if you still have shopping to do, time is running out. Today I received an e-mail from a company from which I planned to get Christmas gifts. The e-mail said that orders need to be made soon if one hopes to receive the gifts before Christmas. Fortunately I had my orders ready and got them in before the deadline. My kids will receive their gifts before that important day in a few weeks.

There are a number of online retailers urging shoppers to get their orders in before it is too late. FedEx has listed the following dates that are important if you want to get gifts delivered on or before December 22nd:

• December 15 for FedEx Ground
• December 20 for 2-day delivery
• December 21 for 1-day delivery

They also go on to list that they will be doing modified home and ground delivery on the 23rd and 24th of December. All delivery services will be closed on December 25th, which is a good thing as I would hate to be forced to work that day myself.

UPS has a similar schedule where they say that December 20th is the last day to utilize 2-day delivery for packages that will arrive on the 24th. They then go on to say that 3-day deliveries sent on the 20th, won't be delivered until Friday the 27th. 

The Unites States Postal Service is also listing dates on their website. They include different schedules for Alaska and Hawaii, which is important. While some of the dates remain the same (i.e. First Class and Priority Mail service) Ground Advantage requires 2 extra days and Priority Mail Express Service 1 extra day. Otherwise the dates look similar to FedEx and UPS.

I want my Christmas gifts to arrive as close to the special day as possible and so some might think I have waited way too long before getting them shipped. Normally I would have to agree with one exception. This year, I have decided to get something that is perishable and so I don't want them to arrive too early. It would also be a huge disappointment for them to arrive late. Hopefully I timed it correctly this year and everything works out. Hopefully you also find the information above helpful this Holiday season if you still have gifts to send.

Delivery Drivers Contributing to Porch Pirates

I don't know about you but it seems that the delivery drivers in my area are helping contribute to Porch Pirates. This morning I ordered something from Amazon and it arrived this evening. I didn't think anything about it until I decided to check my e-mail before heading off to bed. I saw that my package had arrived thanks to an e-mail. I have a doorbell but it never rang. I was in the next room and never heard a knock. Someone looking for a chance to steal a nice large package of mostly air could have plenty of opportunity while I am at home watching a movie.

The Amazon driver is not alone. It is rare that a delivery driver from FedEx, UPS, or DHL ever rings my doorbell. I have sort of gotten into the habit of opening the front door and looking on the porch every time I walk by. It is actually starting to annoy me. Fortunately I have never had a delivery stolen but I hear about them on the news all the time.

I guess one way to ensure I am notified about deliveries is to turn on the motion detector for my Ring doorbell. Right now it is off because I was getting too many false alarms. I have a bird that likes to nest near my front door and when he flies in or out I get a notification. Ring already sends me too many messages no matter how I change my settings on my phone and so I have motion detection turned off.

Ultimately I will keep things as they are simply because I have not had any deliveries taken. The moment that changes, I may have to turn on my doorbell's motion detector and live with all of the false alarms. On the plus side, I can go out and shoot the nesting bird with a Nerf dart and help keep him from pooping all over my front steps. That usually discourages him from sticking around.

Getting My PlayStation 5

Yesterday I received my PlayStation 5 at 10:10am thanks to next-day service from UPS. I have to say that it was a bitter-sweet moment. I am happy to have the latest generation video game console but I also see all of the problems people are going through to try and get one. I had a neighbor text me asking if I had a way of working magic so he could help his boss get one. I had to respond that I couldn't help my sons get any. I even tried.

My oldest son found out that Walmart would be making stock available throughout the day at specific times. In an effort to help him get one, I logged onto the Walmart site at 3 different times. On multiple occasions I got a PS5 in the shopping cart only to have them all sold out before I could finish paying for the device. I found the experience disappointing.

Today my youngest son wanted to log into my PS5 and remote play it. I have several new games loaded on my PS5 and told him to give one of them a try. He has been eagerly anticipating the new Spider-Man and really wanted to give it a go. Unfortunately his wife has made him promise he won't play it until he finishes his first semester of grad school. He did get a kick out playing with the new user interface (UI) all the way in Ohio while the physical machine is located with me in Utah.

For those that have yet to purchase the PlayStation 5, all I can say is that Sony is working hard to make more stock available as quickly as possible. While I work for the company I don't have any insight into how many units are being produced nor which stores have stock available right now. The only reason I have my console is that the company set aside enough units so that the employees could get them on day 1 if they wished. I sincerely appreciate that they did that for us.

My Poor Wife, Part II

Yesterday I started the story about how great my wife is but how she has had to deal with technical issues at home while I am gone. The first issue was about pulling video from our camera and putting it on the computer so my youngest son can edit it for a school project. She was able to get that problem solved only to wake up yesterday and have another computer glitch to solve.

One of the companies I was involved with over the past couple of years is in the process of being sold. They have a demo server running in my basement. This allows them to do sales presentations and testing without having to have an expensive machine in a co-location facility (where most web-based businesses keep their production servers). Yesterday was supposed to be another demo for the purchasing company and it was scheduled for 6:00 am PDT. That sounds early for me, but they are on the East coast and we had to include someone from India. 6:00 am turns out to be an optimal time for such calls.

At about 10 minutes before the meeting was supposed to start, I got a call from the person doing the demo, who said he couldn't get to the server. I was just turning on my computer and so I began looking into the problem. The first thing I did was call my wife to see if the server was still running. It wasn't. There was a power flicker the previous night and it shut down all of the computers in the house. Having the server on an uninterruptable power supply (UPS) would have alleviated the problem, but the one I have needs the battery replaced. I guess I had better add that to my list of things to do.

The demo server has been running so long without any problems, I could not remember the process to restart everything. The first thing I had my wife do, was to turn the machine on. While it was booting, I had her go through my office looking for my notebook associated with that computer. She then looked through my notes until she found the right page with the restart instructions. It was one line of cryptic code that was nearly impossible to read. Fortunately it was enough to jog my memory and we had everything running a minute later.

I logged into the conference call and WebEx demo, which was the sign to the presenter that the machine was back up and he could safely move into the live-demo portion of the meeting. Everything went well and my wife saved the day once again. Now I just hope nothing else goes wrong.