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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

#111

Post by scott_karana »

byuu wrote: post #84
scott_karana wrote: post #48

> I've already maxed out my 401K loans on the Japanese game set, and it will probably be 2-3 years before I finish dumping and scanning all of those games to sell them for money. I always feel a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when I read things like this. Is any labour of love worth your potential future? As much as I admire his dedication, it's not a choice I'd make... :( Maybe it's just because I'm a bit…

I'm only 33, and the 401K loan automatically takes money out of each paycheck until it's repaid. I believe it was a 72 month loan? Might've been shorter. So, pretty sure it won't be a problem before I retire. Of course, if an exigent circumstance comes up, and I can prove it (medical emergency, bankruptcy), it's possible to borrow the other half of the 401K. But if I'm short on the mortgage, it's not going to help me…

Ah, as a non-American I missed the distinction between 401k and 401k loan. Thanks for clearing that up, and keep fighting the good fight! <3

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

#112

Post by x1798DE »

eridius wrote: post #27
x1798DE wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. If it costs 1000 Euros to insure a 10,000 Euro package, doesn't that sorta indicate that the chances of something happening to the package are on the order of 1 in 10?

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.

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

#113

Post by xahrepap »

eco wrote: post #43
abandonliberty wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USPS is quite remarkable given their costs. Based on the volume of mail handled there are many horror stories, but their actual error rates are very good. It does sound like you're in a particularly bad location. If you want better you'll have to pay more. Shipping within the US is awesome. Living in any other country is very enlightening. https://about.usps.com/what-we-are-doing/service-performance...

I would hope a "particularly bad location" wouldn't encompass the entire Salt Lake metro area (+1M pop) but my experience has been the same throughout the many places I've lived in the valley. You'd think a bad location would be isolated to a particular post office. By the stats on this page I'm in one of the better locations though (SLC). I agree shipping in the US is awesome. I'm still amazed how well it works. USP…

I live at the north end if Utah county: zero problems. I'm not the least bit nervous about packages not making it.

However when I lived in South Jordan (southern salt lake county) they would put mail from someone a street over in our box or vise versa. Maybe once a month or more. I wonder how many things we lost or never got because of that.

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

#114

Post by tzs »

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…

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"?

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

#115

Post by eridius »

justin66 wrote: post #73
brink wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure it could be worse, but out of the 3 main providers we have in the US here, they're the most unreliable. I'm not trying to just rip on them, but from my experience, they don't think much of delivering packages a day or more late as it happens fairly consistently.

> I'm sure it could be worse, but out of the 3 main providers we have in the US here, they're the most unreliable Yeah, I don't know. Fedex Ground seems to be focusing their efforts on package delivery via t-shirt cannon or something, lately.

In my experience DHL is the absolute worst (I know others have said they're pulling back from the US, but they certainly still do a lot of deliveries here in San Francisco, especially Amazon deliveries).

One time DHL literally threw a package containing a hard drive over my gate to land on my concrete steps. Thankfully the shipper had put a ton of bubble wrap in there so the hard drive itself ended up without any damage, but I still count myself lucky. That was actually the third time they'd done that sort of thing, and after calling to complain (for the third time) they finally told me they were putting a note "don't throw packages over the gate" on my address. I'm shocked that's even something that they have to say.

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

#116

Post by nielsabel »

brokenmachine wrote: post #80
Larrikin wrote: post #61

>First, because I don't speak any German, and feel very uncomfortable traveling to a foreign country on my own. I know most Germans speak English, but that doesn't ease my concerns all that much. It's scary to me to travel alone, sorry. Found this odd. What is scary about traveling to a presumably a big city in one of the richest countries in the world?

Yeah, I'm Australian and can speak a tiny bit of German but hardly needed it when I went to Berlin. I reckon the German education system must be great because the average person over there seems to have very good English.

> I reckon the German education system must be great because the average person over there seems to have very good English.

Hahahaha … no!

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

#117

Post by eridius »

dtparr wrote: post #29
skykooler wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want to send something to another country and aren't willing to lose it? Buy a plane ticket. And how often do airlines lose luggage? More often than packages go missing.

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.

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

#118

Post by Semaphor »

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…

You might want to try asking on /r/personalfinance

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

#119

Post by nullc »

eco wrote: post #43
abandonliberty wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USPS is quite remarkable given their costs. Based on the volume of mail handled there are many horror stories, but their actual error rates are very good. It does sound like you're in a particularly bad location. If you want better you'll have to pay more. Shipping within the US is awesome. Living in any other country is very enlightening. https://about.usps.com/what-we-are-doing/service-performance...

I would hope a "particularly bad location" wouldn't encompass the entire Salt Lake metro area (+1M pop) but my experience has been the same throughout the many places I've lived in the valley. You'd think a bad location would be isolated to a particular post office. By the stats on this page I'm in one of the better locations though (SLC). I agree shipping in the US is awesome. I'm still amazed how well it works. USP…

> I do, however, often feel like USPS costs me more than UPS and FedEx just because I have to spend time each day throwing 95% of what I get from them in the recycle bin (and that's after I've opted out of everything I can).

I would pay to have the postal service eliminate all presorted/bulk rate messages.

I have multiple times lost important mail (or rescued it at the last moment from the trash) because it got mixed in with the floods of garbage that they deliver.

More than anything else I believe the deluge of crap makes the postal service uninteresting wherever it can be avoided, it's worse than the email spam situation because we have worse tools for dealing with it.

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

#120

Post by Fej »

byuu wrote: post #108
Fej wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey byuu, just wanted to say that I appreciate everything you've done for preserving gaming history. higan is still the finest emulator I've ever seen, and it's an amazing feat that it can run SFC games cycle-accurately. On a side note, has anyone gone to the Jersey City facility? Is that even possible?

Thanks for the kind words. And afraid not. I am willing to drive there, but only if I know it's possible to get my package that way. It's a ten hour drive.

I go to a university about ten minutes away. I highly doubt you'd want some random guy off HN to go looking for an extremely valuable package, but I figured I should offer.
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