Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Postcard stamped in 1920 delivered 100 years later

fox17online.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 141 posts

Re: Postcard stamped in 1920 delivered 100 years later

#81

Post by benryon »

js2 wrote: post #68

Years ago for my sister's 30th birthday, I did a fun project involving the USPS. I wanted to send her the message "Happy Belated Thirtieth Birthday!", which is 30 characters, via postcards, one character per postcard. I found 30 post offices in unique places throughout the U.S. (For example, I found a town that had the same name as her given name in Illinois. I found another with my name, etc.) I used Zazzle to print…

This story is so darn timely amidst the news of the post office lately. I had zero doubt postmasters would do this, postal workers seem to be the easiest folks to get along with. It'd be cool to do something for all 50 states (territories, too), but at this point, I doubt it'd work anymore.

Re: Postcard stamped in 1920 delivered 100 years later

#82

Post by js2 »

btilly wrote: post #77
js2 wrote: post #68

Years ago for my sister's 30th birthday, I did a fun project involving the USPS. I wanted to send her the message "Happy Belated Thirtieth Birthday!", which is 30 characters, via postcards, one character per postcard. I found 30 post offices in unique places throughout the U.S. (For example, I found a town that had the same name as her given name in Illinois. I found another with my name, etc.) I used Zazzle to print…

My mother did something like that, but as a prank on my brother who was at the time in a military hospital. (This during the Vietnam days.) What she did was got an atlas and identified every town whose name was at all romantic. (Things like Loving, New Mexico.) The postcards that she had come back appeared to be from random girls with as different as she could make the handwriting to be. It was all timed to show up o…

During my research I learned there's a Bridal Veil, Oregon which is a ghost town except for a post office, which folks like to use to send their wedding invitations.

https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/why-brides-grooms-are-f...

Re: Postcard stamped in 1920 delivered 100 years later

#83

Post by hal9000-tng »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #17
fiftyacorn wrote: post #11

Is this a distraction story from USPS?

I like the scepticism! But the fact that the story was posted by the recipient of the post card, to a Facebook Group, and then only hit the news after going viral means it probably wasn't done by a PR company. Having done some of this "black hat PR" myself I can tell you that we don't typically cover our tracks that well. We almost always plant bullshit by going to the news outlets themselves, or paying a blogger to…

ah, completely unrelated!

Re: Postcard stamped in 1920 delivered 100 years later

#84

Post by dstick »

golem14 wrote: post #23
ghaff wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems almost certainly the case. It seems unlikely that any USPS sorting facility or post office where this could have fallen behind something would still be in use 100 years later (at least without extensive renovations/changes).

Remember the USPS is rumored to have recently dismantled hundreds of sorting machines. Entirely possible that some old mail was jammed in there somehow. Also, cf. "Going Postal" by Terry Pratchett.

GNU Terry

Re: Postcard stamped in 1920 delivered 100 years later

#85

Post by corytheboyd »

sethammons wrote: post #19
philwelch wrote: post #3

This is why it’s so important to measure p99 latency rather than maximum latency.

true, percentiles are important for telling you how your system is doing and how typical users experience it. However, I contend that you should also measure max latency, just that is is less important for understanding typical usage. But seeing your max go crazy can signal that there is something else in the stack that needs work. Silly example that I hit: max was consistently 2hr on something that p99'd at like 1mi…

I agree with this, don't exclude extremes because a blog post or comment said it was bad, they can still be useful sometimes.

For general purpose web development response times, I like to refer to p99 and p95 for general healthiness. P50 doesn't do much more than make me feel better. Max has its uses, it can be a good timeout gauge as the commenter above me pointed out. If the RATE at which max values occur changes, you may have something worth investigating.

Re: Postcard stamped in 1920 delivered 100 years later

#86

Post by ghaff »

_whiteCaps_ wrote: post #80
codezero wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never knew they did twice daily deliver, time to google up some more info!

http://500years.royalmailgroup.com/gallery/delivery-frequenc... In the UK it was up to 12 times / day in cities!

To some degree, I'm sure it was a plot device but 19th century English novels often depended on rapid/same-day communications via letter at least in the environs of London.

Re: Postcard stamped in 1920 delivered 100 years later

#88

Post by swyx »

btilly wrote: post #77
js2 wrote: post #68

Years ago for my sister's 30th birthday, I did a fun project involving the USPS. I wanted to send her the message "Happy Belated Thirtieth Birthday!", which is 30 characters, via postcards, one character per postcard. I found 30 post offices in unique places throughout the U.S. (For example, I found a town that had the same name as her given name in Illinois. I found another with my name, etc.) I used Zazzle to print…

My mother did something like that, but as a prank on my brother who was at the time in a military hospital. (This during the Vietnam days.) What she did was got an atlas and identified every town whose name was at all romantic. (Things like Loving, New Mexico.) The postcards that she had come back appeared to be from random girls with as different as she could make the handwriting to be. It was all timed to show up o…

aw how lovely, best wingman is your mom

Re: Postcard stamped in 1920 delivered 100 years later

#89

Post by tialaramex »

kube-system wrote: post #58
toby- wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can it not have multiple postmarks? The stamp at the top (which says 1920) and the modern barcode underneath?

The barcode is not a postmark, it's a machine readable version of the address

Nerdy nitpick: It might not be quite an "address". In the UK at least the machine readable information (either added during sorting or printed deliberately for a discount rate by bulk senders) indicates a delivery point a place to which this post will be in fact delivered, distinct from an address.

For example my address says Flat 7 of 60 My Street, and a friend lives at Flat 10 of 74 My Street. But my delivery point is a letter box in the front door of my home, whereas his delivery point is just a locked box at street level. Timed locks allow the postman to enter my building despite not having a key, so as to deliver post to my front door, whereas his building doesn't do this.

The company (almost everything in the UK is privatised because Tory ideology says this is a good idea even if it clearly isn't) delivering post owns very detailed maps of where all these delivery points are, because of course it needs its employees to visit all those points to deliver post, whereas it needn't care where in some sense an "address" is other than where the post is to be delivered.

Re: Postcard stamped in 1920 delivered 100 years later

#90

Post by TuringNYC »

cpeterso wrote: post #32
TuringNYC wrote: post #8

Like many office buildings in NYC, my employer's building had a system of air-pressured mail tubes. I understand (now) that they are kept in some cases as decoration, historical artifact, or due to the building being designated a historical monument (not sure if internals are covered (?). We didn't understand that as first, and several colleagues and I put postcards and some expense reports into them. I can see the p…

Do you know where the mail tubes sent your postcards and expense reports? Did they end up in some basement or were they lost in the tubes forever?

Not sure, but I was told that traditionally they had air pressure pushing them along. But that without air, they get stuck not far from where you dropped them. We were on the 17th floor IIRC, so i imagine they are stuck somewhere close below.
Post reply on HN