Saturday, December 21, 2019

Little bits of wonder





Yesterday while I was reviewing video and writing I decided I needed a new camera for making the videos. So after a very brief review of possibilities I ordered one from the place where everyone orders everything, pretty much.

For some reason the camera was eligible for free one-day shipping. That wasn't a deal breaker for me, but it is kinda cool.

As I write this I don't know that the thing will arrive today. I'm way out here in the sticks, and the company's vaunted drone service can't reach this far.

However, the tracking info tells me this. I clicked on the order button at 6:59 a.m. Then this happened.


If I bring my cognition, experience, and imagination together I can make up a story about my ordering experience which is probably very close to the reality of what happened.

It looks to me like the company has a big warehouse/shipping center in Aurora, Colorado. For those playing along at home and not living in this AO, Aurora is basically Denver, which is about 2.5 hours away by motorized over-the-road conveyance. Except the traffic in and around Aurora is a nightmare, so you have to add an hour for the 10 urban miles. Traffic details aside, I must now throw in an Ah-Ha! That's why the free one day shipping! The camera was in stock and nearby! During the 13 hours and 18 minutes between my mouse click and the "Package has shipped" notification, my electronic request worked its way through the warehouse system where workers fetched it from a shelf, packaged it up, stuck on a label, and tossed it in a shipping bin. Six hours later it was out the door in a USPS truck and heading for Kimball, where it arrived four hours later, which was 24 hours and 19 minutes after my mouse click. At the moment it's "out for delivery" on the local mail truck, and when the blonde-haired mailgirl reaches my shack as she executes her route the thing will be delivered.

It's not magic, but it is a little bit of wonder. Very importantly, at least in my mind, it's a little bit of wonder because America.

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Duluth Trading Post. Dad always gave us kids gift cards to Duluth for Christmas. Well, always means he always did it since the first time he discovered them on the old-fashioned interwebz 20 plus years ago.

This year Mom wanted to carry on the tradition in memory of Dad, who left us on August 29. Little tear there. So she ordered them on December 11, and had them shipped to her house at the ranch so she could include them in the Christmas cards she intended to mail. Duluth's confirmation email said the order had been received and a follow-up email would be sent when the cards shipped. Expected delivery was 5-7 business days.

So as of this morning the cards had not arrived and no shipping email had been received. Mom felt really bad because it looked like her plan had fallen through. Also, she didn't know what to do. She'd spent $*** on the gift cards. Would she be able to get her money back? Would she have to wait for months and months for the gift cards to maybe show up? She didn't feel like she could call customer service because she has such a hard time hearing on the phone, and she was pretty sure she couldn't figure out how to email the right people and get a resolution. So for Mom, it looked like an insurmountable problem.

I called Duluth customer service this morning and was easily able to resolve the situation. As it turns out, at least according to Sue at Duluth and I have no reason to doubt what she said, they only have one person doing all the gift cards! Yikes! Anyway, their records showed that the cards had been mailed Priority Mail on December 12. They should have arrived by now, but they have not. So to fix the problem, they just emailed Mom the card numbers and pin numbers. It was then easy for me to format emails for Mom to send to each of us kids, with the specific card info included. As long as we each have the info, we can use it online or even in a Duluth store -- wherever such stores may be.

Once again, not magic, but indeed a little bit of wonder. Duluth is not the other, BIG online place. They don't have the ability to do the free next day delivery thing. That's okay. It's just different than the other place. And the difference turns out to be good in this case because it's much easier to deal with customer service at a smaller place than the big place. Sue was so very nice on the phone and resolved the whole thing in moments. So yes, a little bit of wonder because America.

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Ever put fuel in your mechanized over-the-road conveyance?



Once again, again, it's not magic, but it is a little bit of wonder because America.

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Here's a bit of ride along video from today.

From town to ranch, no commentary (until the very end), total waste of your time.



Chicken report.



Checkin' cows. Ever eat food in a restaurant or purchase food from a grocery store? It's not (you guessed it) magic, but it is a little bit of wonder. Way out here in the sticks I steward the land we own, which allows us to raise cattle which produce beef for human consumption. We even produce eggs for human consumption, and even though we don't sell the eggs we share them with others. But we can only do that because of everyone else in the country. We buy our food at the store too. And we buy stuff from the BIG place and many small places. We put fuel in the mechanized over-the-road conveyances. We heat and light the house. We can do this because people buy our stuff, just as we buy their stuff. There are roads and railroads and airplanes and middlemen and law enforcement and fire and rescue and the military and many, many government agencies and we all work together and stuff works. None of it perfect. Some of it is awful. Some of it is so very fantastically good that it's impossible to wrap our meager minds around. Everywhere we look we find not magic, but countless little bits of wonder because America.



My new camera arrived!



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Thanksgiving is a month behind us, and Christmas arrives in less than four days time. We are all so very blessed. Despite living an imperfect life filled with seemingly endless hard challenges and even outright misery, the list of my blessings is so massive it takes my breath away. I can't even come close to enumerating the list of things I have to be thankful for.

My holiday wish for all of you kind readers is that you have the opportunity to cherish the season and bask in the glow of little bits of wonder because America.

Be well and enjoy the blessings of liberty.




23 comments:

  1. I drive the same roads every day, so the only variable is the AM talk radio. I get a big kick out of listening to WHY I put of Chicago. They have traffic and weather on the eights. " It's 3 days from downtown to O'Hare ", and I haven't seen another car for five minutes!
    An interesting video on your oil well!
    Do you h ave a plow for the Chevy, who do the driveway?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Out in the sticks has the best traffic by far!

      No plow on the Chevy, using the Bobcat and it works great so far.

      Thanks for stopping by and commenting Scott!

      Delete
    2. Oil wells are kind of interesting, aren't they?

      Delete
  2. Why did spell check change WBBM out of Chicago to WHY I put?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm guessing Google didn't approve of your comment. They're that way.

      Delete
  3. What a great post! Every day when my eyes open, I give thanks for what we have.

    I try and avoid the Denver area like the plague. I just don't care for Big Cities after spending 35 years in SoCal.

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    1. Thanks drjim!

      Being grateful for what I have always makes me feel better.

      Driving in and around Denver always gives me a creepy-crawly feeling. Traffic there seems much worse than socal. I like to visit LA and San Diego from time to time to visit family but I'd hate to live there!

      Thanks for stopping by and commenting!

      Delete
  4. Duluth has a store in Brighton, CO at Hwy 7 and I-25.

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    Replies
    1. That's cool, thanks for the info. I've never seen one of their stores in person. Might have to tool on down there.

      Thanks for stopping by and commenting!

      Delete
  5. Appreciated the tutorial on the oil extraction, along with everything else.

    Commerce is amazing, and confirmation that a free market really does work. If the Govt was running the largest retail operation in the world, which does not have a single store, everything would cost twice as much, be out of stock, and deliveries screwed up six ways from Sunday.

    I've never seen any Duluth products, but love their TV ads. Seem to be my kinda folks.
    JB

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    Replies
    1. Glad you enjoyed my ramblings John.

      I agree on commerce, it's amazing. And interestingly, the success of the Big company may be the only thing keeping the USPS going.

      Duluth has great ads. Their stuff is nothing spectacular and it's overpriced, but the commercials are akin to the sizzle at the steak house. For a particularly tortured analogy.🤮

      Thanks for stopping by and commenting!

      Delete
  6. Sucker rods are normally 30 feet long. And out here those are known as pump jacks. The 'real' term is walking beams... LOL And yes, country living is the best!

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    Replies
    1. Sounds right on the sucker rod. Pipe stem is longer but I don't know how long for sure. Circa 40'. Mostly we just call 'em pumps around here, occasionally pump jacks. I've had dozens of visitors tell me they're properly nodding donkeys though. I wonder what the term is in the Dutch East Indies?

      Thanks for stopping by and commenting!

      Delete
    2. Called my cousin, who spent some time out there, it's called a knikken ezel pomp (translates as nodding donkey)... So you were right!

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    3. That's cool! Thanks!

      Vrolijk Kerstfeest!

      Delete
  7. I greatly enjoy your videos and often learn new stuff from them. Other than a lack of mountains, the area around where you live and the ranch doesn't look greatly different from around the part of the world where I live. I think that you being able to post videos and all is one of the blessings of Liberty.

    Thanks for the post.
    Paul L. Quandt

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    Replies
    1. Thanks very much Paul. There are a lot of similarities between here and there. When you get over on the east side of the Cascades it's even more so. In that sense the east side of the Cascades is a bit like the front range of the Rockies.

      Good point on my ability to post -- in an interesting and perhaps ironic way I post these things on Blooger and the ewwtoobe and you can bet that every word, image, and video is completely at odds with the corpse values of those organizations.

      Thanks for stopping by and commenting!

      Delete
  8. Shaun, you're like the National Geographic (sans politics) for me. Didn't know you were an oil baron in addition to being a rancher. 😉

    Love the videos, can't wait for you to deploy the new camera!

    May the blessings of the Season be yours the year round!

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Sarge, that's awfully kind of you. Heh -- oil baron. For some values (microscopic) of oil baron!

      I'll be getting some new camera vids up soon. There's a bit of a learning curve...

      Vrolijk Kerstfeest!

      Delete
  9. Evert, Merry Christmas to you and yr mom.
    Wick lives in Aurora from what I've found.
    still searching for Scott...

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    Replies
    1. Thanks man, Merry Christmas to you and yours too.

      That's interesting re Wick. Guess it's not that big a world anymore.

      Thanks for stopping by and commenting!

      Delete
  10. Yr pump video reminded me of the time we went night rappelling off the huge oil tank at ?Cranebrook CG base.

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    1. That was fun on roller skates! Gotta do more shit like that before I get too old. Rappelling at night drunk on $2 worth of smashed and dented cans of beer sold in net bags. How is that not still a thing?

      Delete