FedEx SmartPost: not so smart

"SmartPost", huh? If you read their site, it really looks good. Here's the promise:

We pick up, sort, line haul, track and deliver your packages to the post offices closest to your customers. The USPS makes the final delivery to the residence. As a result, you reduce transit time, minimize handling, and maximize postal discounts.

To me it feels more like: "see how I sit for 3 days at a time in each sortation center". Maybe their promise is to the shippers, and "timely" goes out the window. Honestly, USPS would've done a better job.

Take a look at this: a package was sent to me from Texas on 1/31. Today is 2/8 and the thing spent more time sitting in "sortation centers" than anything else.

Status: Sortation Center Arrival
Est. in Home 02/11/2008

Date                    Time            Description                     Location
February 6, 2008  12:25 PM  Sortation Center Arrival  KENT, WA
February 6, 2008  4:17 AM  Sortation Center Departure  LOS ANGELES, CA
February 2, 2008  6:00 AM  Sortation Center Arrival  LOS ANGELES, CA
February 1, 2008  9:13 AM  Sortation Center Departure  DALLAS, TX
January 31, 2008  6:28 PM  Sortation Center Arrival  DALLAS, TX
January 31, 2008  5:15 PM  Pickup  CARROLLTON, TX

Kent is only 20 miles from where I live. The package's been sitting there since Wednesday and hasn't moved an inch since.

Doesn't look so smart to me.

Moving notes from Yahoo! Mail to Gmail

Now that I'm moving from Yahoo! Mail to Gmail, one thing I will miss is the ability to store simple notes to myself. I have many of them in my Yahoo! Mail account.

I wanted something similar in Gmail. Of course the most obvious place for that would be Google Docs, but I think it's overkill. Creating blog posts and keeping them private would also work, but I don't need the visual polution here. Gmail is the app that's open most of the time, so I wanted to do it there.

So here's what I did: In Gmail I created a label called "NOTE" and created a filter that labels every message I receive with subject starting with "NOTE:" and archives them immediately (so they "skip" the Inbox). Then I simply sent each of my Yahoo! Mail notes to my Gmail account adding that "NOTE:" prefix to the subject.

Not a perfect solution, but a quick one. Good enough for me (at least for the time being).

Cloverfield may not suck, but J. J. Abrams does

Yes, folks: it's Godzilla + Blair Witch Project (and both those movies are better than Cloverfield in my opinion). It's not bad, but I feel cheated, because at the end you know absolutely nothing about the big monster or the little monsters.

Teaches me to wait a week or two before going to see a movie.

J. J. Abrams likes to go on and on about his mystery box.

Hey J. J., the only reason people buy mystery boxes is to open them and actually find out what's inside. You never got me to waste my time on Lost, but you do owe me $9 for Cloverfield.

This guy is a pirate

This guy is a pirate:

"South Bay Man Found With 50,000 Pirated DVDs"

Not kids ripping CDs to have their music in their iPods.

Incidentally, the DMCA was not used in order to catch or prosecute this one.

Google reader is cool: Digg and Mixx are out!

I see less reason to use sites like Digg and Mixx now that I think I found a good way to organize my RSS subscriptions using Google Reader. I don't think it's perfect, but I'm really comfortable using it now.

I wonder if it's just me or if that's a general feeling. I still subscribe to Techmeme and Slashdot, so I think my decision has more to do with quality of content than style.