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It's not, but that's the point. UPS and FedEx pay taxes, are still profitable, and offer superior service when looking at the benchmarking statistics for delivery times, etc. There's no service that the USPS offers that couldn't be better managed by one of the big two.
That's definitely not true in rural area. There are tons of places that UPS and FedEx do not deliver to because it's not profitable. USPS delivers there (at a loss) because someone has to. IMO, that's the entire purpose of government services: to do the things that have to be done but aren't profitable.

Also a first class stamp to send a letter is $0.55 at USPS. Sending a letter starts at $2.00 at UPS (more at FedEx) $8 at FedEx (more at UPS) and goes up from there based on size and weight. That's probably not a huge deal for the average person, but if you're a business and your mail costs quadruple go up by 16x... That's a pretty huge impact.

I will say that either option has it pros and cons. But the lack of service is rural areas is a very compelling argument that mail need to be a government subsidized service.

Edit: I read that chart wrong. Updated UPS/FedEx mailing rate. It might still be wrong. I seem to be difficult to get general cost info (as opposed to pricing for a specific shipment)
 
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That's definitely not true in rural area. There are tons of places that UPS and FedEx do not deliver to because it's not profitable. USPS delivers there (at a loss) because someone has to. IMO, that's the entire purpose of government services: to do the things that have to be done but aren't profitable.
I think that would be part of the contractual agreement. If you want it, you take the good with the bad.

Also a first class stamp to send a letter is $0.55 at USPS. Sending a letter starts at $2.00 at UPS (more at FedEx) and goes up from there based on size and weight. That's probably not a huge deal for the average person, but if you're a business and your mail costs quadruple... That's a pretty huge impact.
This is absolutely true, but will likely just drive businesses to follow suit of what many already have - go mostly electronic for billing, communications, etc. I would also assume that if one of them took over privately, we would see the continuation of the use of stamps. The cost may go up, but I'd be surprised if it quadrupled.

Certainly pros and cons either direction, but I just don't think this is one that gets fixed by just throwing tax dollars at it, UNLESS they do an about face on the pension issue. That alone would facilitate their survival/viability.
 
Finally bought some cross-training sneakers. I was using my running sneakers for strength training and cycling and that's a no-no. I used to have some awesome cross-training sneakers that I bought a long time ago when I was working for a running store part-time. But then I got pregnant a few years later, had my daughter, and couldn't fit them anymore. Never put in the effort to buy another pair until now. We'll see if these Inov-8s are as good as the reviews say they are.
 
I just, literally on Friday, got a holiday card returned to me that was going approximately 15 miles away from here, and that I had sent out a good 5 or so weeks ago.

This is the third holiday card I got returned to me... The other two were at least in rather different parts of the country (VT and MD), but those came back weeks ago!

USPS is really struggling, I think!
 
Eh, not holding my breath. Just makes the overall footprint of the laptop larger. Additionally, it becomes cost prohibitive for manufacturers to make odd duck display dimensions when 4K and 8K resolutions, modeled around 16:9 aspect ratios, will continue to become the standard for the foreseeable future. Makes more sense for tablets than it does laptops, IMO.
 
I just, literally on Friday, got a holiday card returned to me that was going approximately 15 miles away from here, and that I had sent out a good 5 or so weeks ago.

This is the third holiday card I got returned to me... The other two were at least in rather different parts of the country (VT and MD), but those came back weeks ago!

USPS is really struggling, I think!
I got a christmas card back this weekend. I sent those things out like the second week of december.
 
Mom has mellowed out a lot. She's been watching the bird videos with the cats and now talks about this Korean ragdoll cat family that Cloud (the cat) is obsessed with.
Birds, eh?


k4S56sa.jpg
 
Finally bought some cross-training sneakers. I was using my running sneakers for strength training and cycling and that's a no-no. I used to have some awesome cross-training sneakers that I bought a long time ago when I was working for a running store part-time. But then I got pregnant a few years later, had my daughter, and couldn't fit them anymore. Never put in the effort to buy another pair until now. We'll see if these Inov-8s are as good as the reviews say they are.
I use inov-8s when I lift outside of my house (they used to be my in-house lifting shoe but I accidentally wore them outside lol)
I use (discontinued years ago) Topo Halsa for home lifting now.
 
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Nerd discovers exactly which day was Ice Cube's 'Good Day'
CLUE 1:
“went to short dogs house,
they was watching Yo MTV
RAPS”
Yo MTV RAPS first aired:
Aug 6th 1988
CLUE 2:
Ice Cubes single “today was a good day” released on:
Feb 23 1993
CLUE 3:
”The Lakers beat the Super
Sonics”
Dates between Yo MTV Raps air date AUGUST 6 1988 and the release of the single FEBRUARY 23 1993 where the Lakers beat the Super Sonics:
Nov 11 1988 114-103
Nov 30 1988 110-106
Apr 4 1989 115-97
Apr 23 1989 121-117
Jan 17 1990 100-90
Feb 28 1990 112-107
Mar 25 1990 116-94
Apr 17 1990 102-101
Jan 18 1991 105-96
Mar 24 1991 113-96
Apr 21 1991 103-100
Jan 20 1992 116-110
CLUE 4:
Dates of those Laker wins over SuperSonics where it was a clear day with no Smog:
Nov 30 1988
Apr 4 1989
Jan 18 1991
Jan 20 1992
CLUE 5:
“Got a beep from Kim, and
she can fuck all night”
beepers weren’t adopted by mobile phone companies until the 1990s. Dates left where mobile beepers were availible to public:
Jan 18 1991
Jan 20 1992
CLUE 6:
Ice Cube starred in the film “Boyz in the hood” that released late Summer of 1991, but was being filmed mid-late 1990 early 1991 and Ice Cube was busy on set filming the movie Jan 18 1991 too busy to be lounging around the streets with no plans. Ladies and Gentlemen..
The ONLY day where:
Yo MTV Raps was on air
It was a clear and smogless day
Beepers were commercially sold
Lakers beat the SuperSonics
and Ice Cube had no events to attend was…
JANUARY 20 1992
National Good Day Day
 
A different nerd has corrections...

It should actually be November 30th, 1988. I think I found some errors in Donovan Strain’s calculations about when Ice Cube’s “Good Day” occurred, and explain my own findings below.

I feel somewhat silly making this my first-ever Tumblr post on an account I’ve had open, forgotten and unused, for over a year, but I was so happy two days ago when I found all the links to his original post. I thought it was awesome, hilarious, and I was all set to celebrate on January 20th next year. But then I caught a link tonight (well, last night, by now) to another blog post about it, and saw a comment left about the beeper information being incorrect (eliminating two ‘88/'89 dates for being too early). I thought, “Hey, they’re right: I was already in high school then and beepers weren’t widespread yet, but they were around!” So I started doing some additional research and found that to be the first of three mistakes which, I believe, eliminate Donovan Strain’s proposed Jan. 20, 1992 date from consideration, and I posit November 30th, 1988 as the actual “Good Day” day instead:

As mentioned above: pagers certainly weren’t yet as widespread in '88/'89 as they’d later become but, speaking as someone who was already in high school in those years, I can say that they were definitely were available – and I’d say that a South Central gangsta would’ve been a likely candidate to have one earlier than most. So we shouldn’t use that as the sole reason to eliminate '88/'89 from consideration But on top of that, consider these additional facts we know about Cube’s personal life from the VH1’s “Behind the Music: Ice Cube” episode…

Cube started dated Kimberly Woodruff (his still-current wife) in the summer of '88, before any of the those final four dates. He’s famous for having always been a loyal one-woman man, who always went home to Kim and his family rather than partying after shows, so we can assume he’s talking about the same Kim. But the lyric in question goes: “I got a beep from Kim, and she can fuck all night,” which comes after the mention that he’d been trying to fuck her since the twelfth grade. Now, I can see Cube spitting those lines about a day that happened while the two were just dating – but after she was already his fiancee and the mother of his child? I just don’t think so. Certainly not about a day in January '91, when Kim was eight months pregnant! And highly unlikely for January '92 either, when their firstborn was one year old and they’d be married later that same year. And the final nail in January 20, 1992 coffin is…

We know that in '88 and '89, Cube still lived at home with his mom – the lack of cash-flow he saw from NWA, forcing him to stay at home, was part of what led to him leaving the group. But Cube got into an argument with Priority Records five days after his first son’s birth in Feb. '91 over his not getting paid an advance on his solo album – an advance with which he planned to get a house for himself, Kim, and their child. The argument led to his smashing up the Priority offices with an aluminum baseball bat, which in return led to his getting his advance. Thus, even if we assume a month or two before he actually cashed a check from the label, a couple months to get moving on a house hunt, a month or two of actual house-hunting, a month to close escrow, and a couple weeks to get settled in, we can also safely say that by Jan. 20, 1992, Ice Cube was no longer living with his mom, dropping Kim off somewhere after he’d fucked her.

So what does that leave us? We return our focus to the Nov. 30, 88 and April 4, 89 dates – which, you’ll recall, were eliminated solely on the basis of a false assumption about beeper availability. You’re now talking about dates in the wake of the release of “Straight Outta Compton,” when it was blowing up. We know Cube still lived at home with his mom during those years but you’re still dealing with touring, press, MTV, etc., all of which makes it tough to nail down one of those two dates as being calm enough for Cube to have such an uneventful day. However, there’s still one more heretofore unexplored clue left: after putting Kim’s ass to sleep, Ice Cube had a Fatburger at 2 a.m. Now, it’s nearly impossible to know now what the operating schedule was for an unknown Fatburger over twenty years ago, one thing is true for the vast majority of Fatburgers across the L.A. metro area: they close at midnight or earlier Sunday-Thursday, but stay open a couple hours later on Friday and Saturday nights. And what does a calendar tell us? That April 4, 1989 was a Tuesday. (For the record, Jan. 20, 1992 was a Monday, and so is eliminated by the Fatburger timing in addition to the reasons above; Jan. 18, 1991 was indeed a Friday, but I believe it to be eliminated most conclusively by Kim’s pregnancy.)

November 30, 1988, though… Nov. 30, '88 was a Friday (*EDIT*: actually, it wasn’t; oops! See my follow-up post for an explanation – and why it doesn’t matter!). The day when Cube could grab a Fatburger at 2 a.m. The day earliest in his relationship with Kim – when referring to her as someone he’d been trying to fuck since the twelfth grade would be the most relevant; when getting paged and then dropping her off elsewhere would still make sense; before her accepting his marraige proposal and giving birth to his son would make his speaking flippantly about their sex life like that even more awkward and uncomfortable…

November 30, 1988 was the REAL date of Ice Cube’s good day.

(P.S. We will conveniently overlook the fact that in '88, Cube was still driving an old Jeep – because it might not have been a pimpmobile with hydraulics, but it least it was a drop-top of sorts!)

(P.P.S. I’ve seen another Tumblr tonight which went with Murk Avenue’s beeper assumption, and the ignoring of Cube’s family timeline, but used the fact that according to Wikipedia, “By around 1992-93, MTV aired Yo! MTV Raps only once a week, for two hours, on Fridays after midnight” to also say that it couldn’t have been January 20, 1992, but drew the conclusion that this meant it was Friday, January 18, 1991. However, as outlined above, I highly doubt Kim was paging him for weed, booze, and sex while 8 months pregnant with his son! Besides, Cube wouldn’t have been at Short Dog’s place watching the show between midnight and 2 a.m. before going to Fatburger – that’s when he fucking Kim. No, this was in 1988 when he went to Short Dog’s and watched it in the late afternoon, which also fits with the timeline within the song itself.)



Shit… all that time and effort spent correcting the date of Ice Cube’s Good Day, and I made a basic mistake, too – Nov. 30, 1988 was actually a Wednesday, not a Friday. What can I say? Mea culpa… I think I was looking at the 1989 calendar while checking April 4, and then accidentally clicked forward instead of back. I guess that’s what I get for putting in all of that time and effort between the hours of 2am-5am!

However, if there are actually any correlations between Fatburger schedules today and what they were 20 years ago, there are Fatburgers in L.A. (more mid-city, not South Central), Hollywood, and the Valley that are open until 3-4am,even on weeknights. They’d be a bit out of the way for Cube to drive, drunk and high, for a burger… but not outside the realm of possibility, I guess.

Therefore, I stand by November 30th, 1988 as the correct day for Ice Cube’s Good Day! The ‘88/'89 dates definitely aren’t ruled out by the pager issue – hell, I even forgot to account for the fact that in N.W.A.’s 1988 “Fuck the Police,” Cube himself even rapped: “Fuckin with me 'cause I’m a teenager / With a little bit of gold and a pager” – so you certainly can’t say it was too early for him to have one! But the timeline of Cube’s & Kim’s family life rule out the '91/'92 dates, so we’re still left to decide between Nov. 30, 1988 and April 4, 1989.

The original edition of “Straight Outta Compton” was released on August 8th, 1988, so Cube would’ve been long done with the recording by November 30th, when it was in the 30-40 range of the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop albums. However, the album didn’t break onto the Billboard Top LP charts until into 1989. So November 30th falls until a bit of a lull period between when the album was done and when it truly exploded into the national consciousness; by April 4, 1989, Cube would have likely been too busy to enjoy such an uneventful day. Also by that time, the discrepancy in the financial situation of increasing album sales not correlating to an increase in his personal income would likely have started becoming apparent to Cube – the issue which would lead to his leaving N.W.A. later that same year – making it more unlikely would Cube could or would enjoy such a relaxed day in the Spring of 1989 as tensions began to brew.

No, November 30th, 1988 is the perfect time for such a good day to have occurred – a time when he had a rising album and knew he was on his way to stardom, but before he began to suffer the problems inherent with said stardom.

(And one final point: yes, I realize that it was all just a daydream, that the song’s not a true story and there never was any single “perfect day” as described… but c'mon, where’s the fun with that? It’s much more amusing to conveniently forget that fact and play this game of “what if?” now, isn’t it? ;-) )
 
FlashForge Adventurer 3 Lite.
I just pulled the trigger on a Prusa i3 Mk3S+...but they are behind on production, so it'll be 4 weeks before I get it. It had everything I wanted except an enclosure for printing with ABS. The reviews are nearly unanimously glowing. I'm excited to get back into this. My Solidoodle was so frustrating that every time I thought about printing something, the though of using that printer made me forget about it.
 
Yeah, you can't go wrong, that's pretty much the FDM benchmark printer. I haven't even printed anything in ABS yet even though I have the ability to. Just not needed unless you're wanting to do vapor smoothing on a part or need something more durable/heat resistant. I think if I do get a second 3D Printer at any point, it will be a large format resin printer, but I will wait a few years until the price comes down like they have on the FDM style printers.

The latest FlashForge firmware and software update added something like 10-15 degrees to the top end of the extrusion temps, which should REALLY help with stuff like my PETG prints that were borderline when maxed out.
 
I use inov-8s when I lift outside of my house (they used to be my in-house lifting shoe but I accidentally wore them outside lol)
I use (discontinued years ago) Topo Halsa for home lifting now.
lol I know what you mean. We have a 'no shoes' rule in our house, so some of us have shoes that have never been worn outside. I really like the inov-8s! I need to replace my running shoes, but at least I'm no longer killing my arches with trying to balance on running shoes.
 
I just pulled the trigger on a Prusa i3 Mk3S+...but they are behind on production, so it'll be 4 weeks before I get it. It had everything I wanted except an enclosure for printing with ABS. The reviews are nearly unanimously glowing. I'm excited to get back into this. My Solidoodle was so frustrating that every time I thought about printing something, the though of using that printer made me forget about it.
^Nice. I've got the Formlabs Form 2. Like Supe says they're ridiculously priced, hell even the resins aren't cheap but the print quality is amazing. I bought pretty much all types of resins Formlabs had in their line a few years ago, but haven't even opened 75% of them. It sucks too because they have a supposed shelf life. After we moved it's taken me close to two years now to set the machines back up. I'm going to rig up an ultrasonic brass cleaner as a "paint shaker" to see if it brings the resin back to life. From what I'm reading they just seem to separate into different molecular layers similar to paint. Good luck on getting yours setup. Sounds like there needs to be a 3D printing thread started.
 
^Nice. I've got the Formlabs Form 2. Like Supe says they're ridiculously priced, hell even the resins aren't cheap but the print quality is amazing. I bought pretty much all types of resins Formlabs had in their line a few years ago, but haven't even opened 75% of them. It sucks too because they have a supposed shelf life. After we moved it's taken me close to two years now to set the machines back up. I'm going to rig up an ultrasonic brass cleaner as a "paint shaker" to see if it brings the resin back to life. From what I'm reading they just seem to separate into different molecular layers similar to paint. Good luck on getting yours setup. Sounds like there needs to be a 3D printing thread started.
Yeah, I thought about entering the resin printing world since I do already have an FDM printer (albeit, a frustrating one). But even when my first printer was shiny and new, I'd go months without printing sometimes. Having resin with a shelf life would irritate me. I've also heard that you need to be careful handling the resin since it's not very good for you. And the whole process just seems "messy" to me.

I'd definitely be into resin printers if I was regularly prototyping things. But I mostly use my printer when I run into some sort of problem that I can fix with an over-designed 3D printed part. Or I just found some neat tchotchke on Thingiverse.
 
That's what I like about the FDM printers. If you don't need a lot of detail on your part, they are vastly superior. Resin prints are super fragile even when cured, which is why most prop shops and cosplay types will print the object in resin, then take a silicone mold and cast in urethane resin so it won't shatter if dropped. Just the other day I had a left over curtain rod section that I wanted to use for a squirt bottle hanger in the garbage closet. 5 minutes in Fusion and < 1 print hour later, I had a PLA print that was just a smidge undersized but held up perfectly to being forced on the end of the curtain rod, drilled for mounting screws, etc.
 
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