Random Thoughts....

[CraigB]

I'm up for it. At least it's not this ice shit I'm getting today. Guess salting the parking lot at the grocery store would have been too much to ask.

 

[93Flareside]

I'm up for it. At least it's not this ice shit I'm getting today. Guess salting the parking lot at the grocery store would have been too much to ask.

Between grocery stores and gas stations, I swear they compete for who can remove snow the worst. Both have grey slushy snow with big puddles.

 

[DanRoM]

We have a rare case of actual snowfall around here in the past two days. Snow that doesn't melt within a few hours. So I took this picture on Sunday evening a few minutes before midnight. You know, when it's supposed to be dark outside. I realize that modern smartphone cameras do some magic with "night mode", but still...

It's astounding how much reflection of the city lights there is between the snow covering the ground and the cloud cover.

 

[RdKetchup]

We have a rare case of actual snowfall around here in the past two days. Snow that doesn't melt within a few hours. So I took this picture on Sunday evening a few minutes before midnight. You know, when it's supposed to be dark outside. I realize that modern smartphone cameras do some magic with "night mode", but still...

View attachment 3560195

It's astounding how much reflection of the city lights there is between the snow covering the ground and the cloud cover.

Back when I was a kid, there was a major blackout one night, I think the whole province went dark.

I lived near Quebec City back then, and on the south shore there is an oil refinery, with a chimney burning some byproducts.

That flame reflected on the clouds, casting an orange glow throughout the region, and from my home it looked like there was a major fire somewhere.

That refinery was 9 km away.

Edit: NASA even wrote about that event: https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/sun_darkness.html

 

[93Flareside]

We have a rare case of actual snowfall around here in the past two days. Snow that doesn't melt within a few hours. So I took this picture on Sunday evening a few minutes before midnight. You know, when it's supposed to be dark outside. I realize that modern smartphone cameras do some magic with "night mode", but still...

View attachment 3560195

It's astounding how much reflection of the city lights there is between the snow covering the ground and the cloud cover.

Oh yeah, especially when it’s snowing everything is much brighter. I especially enjoy the quiet nights where it’s 10-midnight and there’s no clouds with the moon, it’s beauty.

 

[RdKetchup]

You know what mail and parcel tracking apps should implement? A counter (or even better, a graph) that shows how many times you refresh to see the progress of your package.

That would totally not show how obsessed I am with my latest purchases...

 

[NecroJoe]

You know what mail and parcel tracking apps should implement? A counter (or even better, a graph) that shows how many times you refresh to see the progress of your package.

That would totally not show how obsessed I am with my latest purchases...

I want all of the parcel tracking pages to allow you to assign a short key word to the tracking update emails. I was tracking 8 packages at once, and every time I got an email about an updatate, i'd have to go search the tracking number in my email to figure out what order it was from. Some of them used to let you put in a recipient's name of the emails, and I would just put in the item description there, but it's not on some of them anymore.

I'd also love a thing where it could just automatically send you an update every 2 hours. ha!

 

[93Flareside]

You know what mail and parcel tracking apps should implement? A counter (or even better, a graph) that shows how many times you refresh to see the progress of your package.

That would totally not show how obsessed I am with my latest purchases...

You'd be jelly of the tracking apps some companies have in the EU. Apparently, you see how many stops away the driver is from you. @leviathan

 

[Blind_Io]

Amazon does that in the US, but they are also building the biggest mobile private surveillance network in history (and you know those vans are going to map WiFi and throw it all in with Sidewalk).

 

[93Flareside]

Fuckin' Skynet.

 

[eizbaer]

Apparently, you see how many stops away the driver is from you. @leviathan

Yeah DPD also show you the current/recent position of the driver on a map and an estimate time of when they think he’ll arrive. This starts with a two hour window in the morning, then goes down to a 15 minute window (I think) the closer they get - for me it has still always been wrong so far

 

[NecroJoe]

You'd be jelly of the tracking apps some companies have in the EU. Apparently, you see how many stops away the driver is from you. @leviathan

I've started using the "Shop" app, but it's not always up-to-date with the most current statuses, and I haven't bothered to log-in from my desktop, and it's just more annoying to have to manually enter tracking info in the phone...

 

[Eye-Q]

Yeah DPD also show you the current/recent position of the driver on a map and an estimate time of when they think he’ll arrive.

DPD has been done that for quite a while (I think at least two years), but last week was the first time for me to see DHL doing that as well.

 

[leviathan]

You'd be jelly of the tracking apps some companies have in the EU. Apparently, you see how many stops away the driver is from you. @leviathan

Yeah. It's a neat feature, although sometimes infuriating - my house appears to be the end stop for delivery routes around the neighborhood, so I get to see my package drive in circles around me for hours before it's usually delivered some time in the afternoon.

 

[Matt2000]

DPD have the same thing for collections, I have a package that should be collected within the hour and the driver is 3 stops away.

Edit: Collected and on its way to Germsmany.

 

[DanRoM]

The DHL app also tends to just say "sorry, live tracking is not available at the moment" when the delivery can comes nearer.

 

[eizbaer]

DPD has been done that for quite a while (I think at least two years), but last week was the first time for me to see DHL doing that as well.

Oh, I did not know they were able to do that... it's a neat feature, but I sometimes wonder about the implications. We were fine when nobody was doing it, everybody is doing shop/box deliveries as an alternative or even re-routes your packages there automatically...

It's something I wonder about with the old-school tracking also. Some people will complain based on something that's posted in the tracking (rerouted or whatever), just because they think it should've gone smoother. If the tracking wasn't so granular as to show this, they never would've known and possibly never would've complained.

The DHL app also tends to just say "sorry, live tracking is not available at the moment" when the delivery can comes nearer.

... so the actual tracking sort of drops out at a certain point? Maybe that's to keep people from harassing the delivery drivers and chasing them down. Would also be a very good indicator as to why the DPD tracking seems quite laggy and updates only infrequently.
Also I'm not sure whether they're rolling out the feature to the entire fleet in one go, so maybe that's why with some it works with others it doesn't - except of course if it does indeed drop out along the route.

 

[calvinhobbes]

I’m still amused by the fact that I can turn on the lights at home via airplane WiFi. Hi honey!

 

[DanRoM]

I’m still amused by the fact that I can turn on the lights at home via airplane WiFi. Hi honey!

You could use that to morse a message to her. Suggestions:

.. / .-.. --- ...- . / -.-- --- ..- / .... --- -. . -.--

or

.... .- ...- . / -.. .. -. -. . .-. / .-. . .- -.. -.-- / .- - / ---.. .--. -- --..-- / .--. .-.. . .- ... .

 

[NecroJoe]

The DHL app also tends to just say "sorry, live tracking is not available at the moment" when the delivery can comes nearer.

They rarely do the "last mile" delivery here, so they usually have to hand it off to USPS here.

Years ago, they would declare that as "delivered". The trouble with that is, you'd call when you didn't have the package, and they would say that they won't consider a package missing until it's been 2 weeks. Well, if you waited 2 weeks and 1 day, they would automatically "archive" your shipment data, and only "area managers" had access to your tracking information after it went to the archive....and even though I shipped thousands of packages through DHL over a span of a couple of years, I don't know if I ever once heard back from a "manager" about a claim.