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SNES preservation project on hold due to missing $10,000 package

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Re: SNES preservation project on hold due to missing $10,000 package

#121

Post by ryan-c »

tzs wrote: post #114
huehehue wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USPS is usually fantastic but, when they fail, they fail very bureaucratically. Ordered a gift with rush shipping on Dec. 20th. Arrives at the local post office Dec. 22nd, marked undeliverable as addressed the next day. I call them up and say, "Hey, I typed in 123 Sprig Street, but I meant 123 Spring Street. Can I just drive over and get the package?". "No." An employee told me all I could do was update my address wi…

I wonder what would have happened if you had have filled out and submitted a change of address form saying that you moved from "123 Sprig Street" to "123 Spring Street"?

They don't forward packages for change of address.

Re: SNES preservation project on hold due to missing $10,000 package

#122

Post by ryan-c »

byuu wrote: post #104
derekp7 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is for people that take out a loan, then decrease their monthly 401k contributions to cover the loan payments. Also, while your money is out on loan, it isn't gaining value from the market (on the other hand, it is at least gaining the percent interest that you are paying back in -- so from the fund's perspective, it isn't too bad).

Ouch, that's a good point. If you don't mind a question ... I was thinking about taking out a loan again once it was paid off in order to pay my house mortgage down to 78% so that I can knock off the $200/mo PMI. If I then contributed $200/mo toward the loan + 401K, do you think that would be better or worse than just leaving the 401K alone and paying the PMI? The PMI will probably take another 6+ years to fall off o…

My suggestion for you (which I would not give on /r/personalfinance) is that you actually try running the numbers on that - it should be fairly straightforward. Look up "amortization" if you need to.

Re: SNES preservation project on hold due to missing $10,000 package

#123

Post by eridius »

x1798DE wrote: post #112
eridius wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did you get that figure? The package was insured for 1000 Euros. It did not cost 1000 Euros to insure the package.

I was quoting ryanlol's quote. Seemed steep, honestly.

You're misinterpreting.

The value of the insurance is 1,000 Euros. Meaning USPS needs to pay out 1,000 Euros if they lose the package (that's what ryanlol was referring to). The price of the insurance (that the shipper paid) was not 1,000 Euros. Nobody said what it was, but it's going to be some small fraction of that.

Re: SNES preservation project on hold due to missing $10,000 package

#124

Post by dtparr »

huehehue wrote: post #103
mkarr wrote: post #5

As a hopeful note of optimism: I recently sent a large, expensive package (worth around $1500) cross-country via USPS. The package was sent out mid-December. According to the tracking it made it all the way to the destination Post Office. After that...nothing. It just never progressed. I filed both a mail search requests, and an insurance claim. I received nothing but radio silence on those as well. Fast forward to a…

USPS is usually fantastic but, when they fail, they fail very bureaucratically. Ordered a gift with rush shipping on Dec. 20th. Arrives at the local post office Dec. 22nd, marked undeliverable as addressed the next day. I call them up and say, "Hey, I typed in 123 Sprig Street, but I meant 123 Spring Street. Can I just drive over and get the package?". "No." An employee told me all I could do was update my address wi…

So, the USPS has a pretty strict set of rules for ensuring that mail is only delivered to the address it was mailed to, and it's all based on what's on the package.

One interesting bit: if you mail something to an address that is valid, defined overly simplistically as "zip matches city/state, street exists, street number exists within the valid numerical range for that street regardless of whether there's actually a box there", it doesn't matter what the name is on it, it will go to that address. Even if their own records show no one by that name has received mail there and that someone by that name lives across the street.

On one hand, it's frustrating from a common sense type issue like yours. On the other, it at least blocks one class of social engineering type issues and lets the shipper's intent be fully represented by the package itself (even if it's wrong).

Out of curiosity, was the actual "Sprig" street a real street name or not? I can't remember at what point the name comes into play with a bad address.

Re: SNES preservation project on hold due to missing $10,000 package

#125

Post by wingerlang »

ryanlol wrote: post #8

>Obviously, it should have been insured for the full value. But please understand that hindsight is 20/20. The sender chose the insurance amount, and had no reason to suspect the package would be lost , and that we would be given no help on the matter. It's not unreasonable to believe a mail carrier would try to avoid the need to pay out 1000 Euros worth of insurance by not losing said package . That's some really hi…

> It's essentially impossible for the carriers to prevent this from happening given their volumes.

On the contrary, there are probably billions of items shipped every day that does not get lost. Even if the 'lost' packages are 1%, it would still be reasonable to expect that you are in the 99%.

I have no idea, but I would expect the total amount of loss is less than 1% (?).

Re: SNES preservation project on hold due to missing $10,000 package

#126

Post by slavik81 »

rickyc091 wrote: post #94
filmgirlcw wrote: post #64

Would physically visiting the facility in Jersey City help at all? I don't know how far byuu lives from there, but perhaps he could send a surrogate in his place to try to get information face to face. That might be grasping at straws (theoretically they should have location information available over the phone), but it might be worth a thought.

Seeing as I've had a fair share of packages being "lost" by USPS I can shed some light on this matter. You typically get the round about from USPS. You can visit the post office where it's suppose to be, the workers and customers waiting in line will get annoyed at you. USPS will end up telling you that they'll take down your info and give you a call. When you receive the call, it's a courtesy call to give you a case…

If you are shipping to Canada, the only decent option is USPS. Everyone else charges outrageous brokerage fees for handling customs.

Re: SNES preservation project on hold due to missing $10,000 package

#127

Post by mynewtb »

bane wrote: post #92

I'm very sorry to hear about this. Shipping stuff internationally can be hair raising when it goes wrong. I used to regularly ship about $500k worth of computer equipment all over the place and it one time got caught up in German customs. A colleague of mine in Germany had to drive from Munich to Frankfurt and back many times over the course of several weeks to get it sorted out. IIR the problem was some minor form h…

An Atom with 1TB disk is just about 10 bucks at ovh/kimsufi. Alternatively there would be many people able and willing to mirror such collection on their own servers.

Re: SNES preservation project on hold due to missing $10,000 package

#128

Post by satysin »

userbinator wrote: post #14

Why didn't you send the dumping hardware to the PAL donor? This makes me think of another idea to avoid shipping the cartridges themselves around: an interface that allows eventually accessing them over TCP/IP. It could be exposed as a block device or a custom protocol, it doesn't matter as long as you can essentially send an address and get some bytes back, allowing to read the entire address space.

Getting the dump from the cartridge was just one part of the process though. byuu was also taking 600dpi scans/photos of the PCB, scanning in all artwork and where possible manuals as well. It wasn't just as simple as popping the cart into a reader and clicking "dump ROM". It was a real labour of love and for consistency and quality required byuu be the person who does the work.

Re: SNES preservation project on hold due to missing $10,000 package

#129

Post by orf »

mynewtb wrote: post #127
bane wrote: post #92

I'm very sorry to hear about this. Shipping stuff internationally can be hair raising when it goes wrong. I used to regularly ship about $500k worth of computer equipment all over the place and it one time got caught up in German customs. A colleague of mine in Germany had to drive from Munich to Frankfurt and back many times over the course of several weeks to get it sorted out. IIR the problem was some minor form h…

An Atom with 1TB disk is just about 10 bucks at ovh/kimsufi. Alternatively there would be many people able and willing to mirror such collection on their own servers.

The bandwidth is the issue I'm guessing. Servers from Hetzner (in Germany) come with 10TB of traffic included

Re: SNES preservation project on hold due to missing $10,000 package

#130

Post by masklinn »

eridius wrote: post #117
dtparr wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume he's referring to carrying it on, where you can maintain physical proximity to it, rather than checking it.

I'm pretty skeptical that you can take a package containing 100 SNES games as carry-on.

There's no way that happens, especially if they're boxed. The boxes are something like 180mm * 105mm * 30mm or 567000mm^3, a carry-on is 220mm * 350mm * 560mm or 43120000mm^3, if you just tape up and wrap all the boxes into a carry-on-sized package you're barely fitting 76 boxes volume-wise, and I'm not sure you can actually lay them out such that they'd fit in the prescribed dimensions.
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