Things That I Have Seen and Heard This Past Week and a lesson of Persistence

While the title is accurate, some of the things have been on Media. Not, stepping on anyone's toes, those things were just my interpretation of what I observed or heard in person and observed. 

"Don't be a trendy Wendy"

"Smiley face fan in your hand"

"We got enough rain to wet the dust"

"Saw a lady on TV with a rolled up Yoga mat big enough to carpet a hallway"

And of course, the late John Madden was also a prankster. He would sit in the press box and toss peanuts out the window to the seats below and all the time watching on his monitor, the reaction of the fans that the peanuts fell upon. 

One of his famous quotes was: "The road to easy street goes through the sewer." RIP John!!

On the business side of things: 

DART (Dallas Area Rapid Transit) begins a realignment of bus and train schedules, routes on Monday, January 24. The old route numbers will no longer the served. The new route numbers will need to be relearned as habit. It's going to be a mess. DART is doing their part the first week by offering totally free rides all week. 

I have been paying attention to the hoodies that have been over hung on old bus stop signs with the notice of discontinued service under the old numbers and with the new numbers posted. The problem for me was that unless the bus stopped at one of those signs, you could not see the new numbers always. 

Going on the DART site was some help and some of the old routes had new schedules printed, but not all had the new schedules out on the buses. Sometimes, I had to take new schedule just to look at the map. Hopefully, I will be able to learn what routes I have been riding long before more good weather comes our way. Day before yesterday, I rode my regular bus toward Downtown Garland, getting off several miles before and walking the mile down to the main thoroughfare south of where I was. I needed to walk more anyway to aid my rehabilitation in my one leg. As it turned out, I got a couple of unusual shots and the amazing thing is that I had oftentimes wondered what bus went down the particular street before getting off for the walk mentioned above, and low and behold, I ended up on that bus by mistake. It took me to Parker Road from Far East Dallas to far East Plano and the Parker Road Rail station. That would have been fine had not had the rail service been suspended due to an accident at the tracks. I rode the 350 from Parker Road back to the Addison transit center then back to my rail station via the bus and then after the stop hit the last 8 minutes or so on home. What a day!! LOL .

This spring should be interesting. Since 1983 pretty much more or less, the trees here have buds on them by the first of March. Oh! I'm hoping this year continues the trend more than ever. 1983 was the first time I had a re recurrence of a nerve problem in my leg. Initially, I had fallen down an elevator shaft right out of college. Had not had a problem until after my 5th surgery 18 month's ago. Slowly I am making progress and have even walked short distances without my cane. Still, at my age, I get around as well as most 50 years younger. I'm lucky and blessed in that department.

The past three years I have experienced a delivery problem with FedEx. No one could figure it out as to what had gone wrong. FedEx started an investigation. I have spoke with tons of Customer Service people and executives. Experience many hours of frustration with the IVR ( really its artificial intelligence that can't get its act together.) Since I do not drive (although I could) since my car was totaled a year ago June, I have ordered my prescriptions from my drugstore to be delivered. It got so bad, the drug chain even started having my Rx's filled at their fulfillment center in Chandler, Arizona and shipped to me from there. The problems actually got worse still. The store manager ended up delivering my prescriptions to me personally. 

I got an email that my Rx's were due for refill. I did as instructed by their website and placed my order. I know the routine. So after a couple of hours I go back online to see if the refills had been moved as they usually do. Instead, the order wasn't even showing up. I waited for another day and checked it again. Nothing but I had received an email thanking me for placing the order. Good, I am thinking. Then, I went back on line the third time only to find a message that it takes two hours before the transaction shows up some times and to check back later.. Now, I am into the fourth time checking. The message was still there after a thank you email for filling with them. Now, I know something is wrong so I called the store. After going through the artificial operator and "just so you know" message I was finally transferred to the pharmacy. After 40 seconds of the worse music ever, the phone was answered and then hung up. That was repeated three times. Finally, I got the pharmacy and  she hung up saying she could not help me (she was the original cause of the problem in the first place). I called the store manager, going through the mess once again including the "just so you know" and bad music and the like of such things. I got the new store manager. I had met her once before and she remembered me likewise.She finally got me a tracking number for the order. I checked my bank and the payment had been processed. To be fair, I have eliminated two bouts of conversations much like the ones above  to save time. 

Moving on now to entering the tracking number with FedEx to see the status. It was already showing that the shipping label had already been transmitted to FedEx at the 4 o'clock hour that day. Meanwhile, a day later, nothing. The package had not been picked up by FedEx. Then, when I fill out the online form on FedEx's site to receive SMS text on status, An old email address that I have not used for sometime kept appearing. I had changed that email out several years ago.That meant, that the messages were going elsewhere. Then that problem escalated. 

The final straw was to call a number FedEx had provided last year if the situation became more critical. It had, I did. and got a real live human being who was very nice.Very helpful. She solved the age old problem of more than three years, now, in less than 4 minutes. As of this writing, the package is out for delivery using one of FedEx's 4 different branches----FedEx Ground. Ironically, I knew that FedEx had these 4 cats as I have watched the past 3 years as the Union Pacific Railroad Trains travel through Truckee,California with miles of containers after containers double and single stacked and sometimes close out the super long trains with pigs (shipping semi trailers on a flat bed rail car tandem) where I see the FedEx Greens, Orange, Ground semi's on pigs day after day after day. 

 I have long believed that persistence pays off. Never give up the fight. You will find on this blog's right hand column several noted people who wrote about that very thing from Douglas onward. I learned that at 14 with a very large paper route that took in the entire town. My Dad would help me on Sundays or if the weather was bad, but other than that,
I was on my own. For a 14 year old kid, the money I made at that age was well into the three figures monthly. If someone wanted their paper put between the storm door and the front door you didn't have a problem collecting at the end of the month. If you failed to listen to your customers instructions, it was persistence in motion to collect. That paper bill was due like any other bill. It taught me a lot at an early age and had a reinforcement of that principal earlier with my grandfather who made me pay him the 5-cents for a Hershey Bar at his store. 

 

                                                                                             

  Air traffic for Drones!!

     If Texas Does Succeed From the Union. I vote for this as the new       

New scene on a new traffic signal control box between the sidewalk and curb that cuts down on the glare from the sun on a signal box that looks like a new dime.

Just an Observation Mind You

A little bit of observation on how things have changed. 

In years past, while making my rounds I would see a UPS guy here and a Fed Ex guy there. Sometimes they would be in their trucks with the door open. Other times, they would be walking up to a business or house with 'a' package. 

Now, in comparison, I see individuals walking up to businesses or houses with 'a' package, which I must assume is a contract carrier for Amazon or one of the other online retailers. Sometimes, the trucks are rental. Sometimes, they are just plain white, while at other times, they are  just individual autos. 

In contrast to that, I now see the UPS guy or the Fed Ex guy walking up to a home or a business and they have armloads of packages. Not 'the' single package as in times past. Their work load has increased for sure. 

Now, when you take into account that this Black Friday brought in the insane amount of multi- billions of dollars in a single day no one should be surprised that Sears, Toys R Us are either out of business or on the threshold of being out of business with many more to follow, or so it seems.

In yet another interesting observation concerning millennial. There has been numerous articles that they are lazy, eat their meals in restaurants, hate cereal because you have to wash the bowl, and now---they don't sleep with or find a need to make a proper bed with a top sheet. So much in fact, that the mills are now considering selling a fitted sheet and two pillowcases as a set and charging YOU for that top sheet now, if you so want to request one.

My out-of-the-way parking spot at Kroger's has now been taken over by "order on line and pick up here". Yep, most of the orders being picked up when I was there were none other than the M's or the Z's.

I have been eager to support change most of my life. To go forward, one must accept change. But, now, the habits of the M's and the "Zs" have so disturbed the peace and dignity of old age that I  would support loading them all on 747s and sending them to Alaska---let them come home for Christmas.

The Intermodal Way

Realizing that some have yet to figure out what inter modal is, much less how it works, the idea of economics is greater than meets the eye. There is another side to inter modal that some main stream journalist have yet to figure out, too. Sure, articles have appeared about the tank car problem shipping oil via the rail. The accident-grabbing articles of print and visual media on the subject are beginning to pile up in the search engines. Yet, not a single one that I can find have made mention of the flammable and dangerous gas materials that ship over ground transport and end up on  the rail.  In other words, no one has paid any attention to the fact that danger as great or greater than the tank car problem moves over the rails every hour of ever day with hazardous material placards on the end and sides of the trucks anchored down on inter modal rail cars.

The danger is real. The risk is not as bad as one might think but there is risk and danger none-the-less. The US Department of Transportation Haz-Mat List and Codes are easy enough to look up on the web site. In fact there is a HazMat Code List.pdf file on the site also.

The First Cherry 

For the sake of argument, let's say that a trucking company's rates are $1.50 per mile. The rail road sends its cars down the rail for $1.00 per mile. If the trucks can go the distance on what we once called Piggy-Back shipments, then the trucking firm profits $0.50 per mile or they have reduced their cost by the same amount. It makes no difference except in accounting methods. There is also something else to consider. By using inter modal or flatbed piggy backing trailers, you have meet your competitions  rate-per-mile for most of the distance. So the advantage can work for the majors as well as the smaller businesses. It also enables companies like Target and Walmart to bring their goods to their stores at a lower price. In short. Inter modal shipments-which can include piggy-backing- are here to stay on the landscape of commerce.

Today, I found five major trucking firms, including freight forwarding Moguls like FedEx and UPS along with Roadway, J.B. Hunt, KLLM and two frozen food plants with  reefers on the same inter modal train makeup. It must be remembered that shipping containers can ship via rail and truck both and inter modal trains are stacking  containers two high per car. That is the beauty of inter modal cars and it also reduces cost even more.

The Second Cherry

On several of the FedEx Pigs, the HazMat Code Placards flashed red for flammable and also for Danger on materials with gas.  Learning to look for these placards when you are sitting at a crossing instead of listening to your favorite tune and zoning out as the train rolls by could save your life. In being aware of your surroundings also includes things like this, especially in the world that we live in today.

The Third Cherry 

The last cherry to roll up was something like a stroke of luck of being in the right place at the right time  Had I been on the back side of the train, with the No Trespassing signs posted, I would not have been able to get the shots that I got. Instead, by the luck of fate I was on the public street side of the tracks and had an interesting perspective of light and angles. Here are a couple of shots to support this article.

Pigs from both FedEx and UPS with the red placard on the end of the FedEx trailer. This is the prize finding a UPS and a FedEx end-on-end on the same train make up with the HazMat placard as a bonus.

The shipping contaner for JB Hunt can take another container of the same length on top unless it is marked for no stackers.