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Thursday, February 02, 2023

Slow: Busy First Day At Spoutible And Envelope Navigating USPS [UPDATEd]

While there were some influential (the word influencer grates) folks invited to try out Spoutible.com early, the pre-registered folks, like me, got our first look yesterday.  At 10am Alaska time.  The previous post covers what Spoutible is/hopes to be.  It appears to have been wildly successful in terms of lots of people signing up, but it's also been a massive traffic jam as the servers had trouble keeping up with everyone clamoring through the front door.  It took forever (30 seconds to over five minutes) for the site to respond to the cursor.  Here's this morning's Tweet from the driver behind Spoutible.

Clearly the 100,000 (my mind also remembers 200,000) folks who preregistered were eager to sign in right after the gates opened.  And that seems to have made it so sluggish that I've decided to wait a few days before trying to use it again.  Boozy had said Tuesday that they had built the platform with anticipation of lots of users.  Was he wrong?  Or were there more sinister players involved in making the debut hard to navigate?  I'm not accusing, just thinking out loud.  

The rest of the world can join next Wednesday as Bouzy launches this safer, less toxic version of Twitter.  And I will say, I saw no hate and lots of joy there.  Though I didn't see that much because of how slow it was.  

[UPDATE Feb 2, 2023 10pm:  I did go back and now Spoutible is running at a good pace.  They've fixed things, for now.]

And here's my other visual today (Feb 2):


We* mailed an 8X10-ish envelope at the midtown post office of January 14, 2023.  I made the envelope using old calendars pages.  It's going to Chile.  

As you can see, it purportedly left the midtown post office about five hours after we gave it to the clerk.  Then it took three days to get to the Anchorage distribution center.  (Not sure what that is - Airport Post office?  Something else?) THREE DAYS!  I've gotten mail from Los Angeles in three days.  

Four days later it was reported "in transit to next facility."  I took this to mean it was on it's way to Seattle.  But clearly I was wrong.  Why did this take four days?  It's got got a scannable code on it.  It's not some holiday mailing rush.

Nine days later it left Anchorage!  It took 15 days, just over two weeks to get from the midtown post office until it finally (it seems) departed from Anchorage.  It went first class and registered.  

I've had problems sending things to Chile in the past, but generally on the other end.  Just want this on the record here.  Not quite sure who to try to contact at the post office.  I'd leave a note for my mail carrier, but we're spending time with our daughter and her family.  


*I was sending it, but my wife actually took it to the post office.

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