Zompist Bboard Again

Raphael wrote: ↑Wed Jul 19, 2023 12:13 pm According to the tracking information, it apparently took the package two days to travel a distance that's not that much longer than many people's daily commute. Boo!

An issue of logistics, probably. The package goes to a sorting center first, where it can lie in a queue for some tie, then from there to its destination.
What is the delivery time your courier service promised you?

Raphael wrote: ↑Wed Jul 19, 2023 10:20 pm Theoretically possible, but I think for linguistic reasons, international outsourcing of customer service might be less common in Germany than in the English-speaking countries. Then again, judging from their name, the person who signed the email is probably a Muslim, or a Muslim-descended secular person, so perhaps they have some kind of arrangement where they work on Sunday and get Friday off in turn.

It's totally legal in Germany to have people work on Sundays and Public Holidays if you pay them extra or if it's in their contract (they get another day off). That's how all those places in hospitality and tourism that are open on Sundays and Holidays work. My brother has a job like that; they have a schedule for who is on on specific Sundays and Holidays and gets which workdays days off in return. At his work, the team is relatively small, and the employees decide among themselves who has to work on, say, Christmas or Easter; only if nobody volunteers management gets involved.

hwhatting wrote: ↑Thu Jul 20, 2023 2:59 am An issue of logistics, probably. The package goes to a sorting center first, where it can lie in a queue for some tie, then from there to its destination.
What is the delivery time your courier service promised you?

It's DHL, so their standard policy of "usually 1 or 2 workdays, but we can't guarantee it won't take a while longer". The initial problem was apparently that when I handed it in on Monday, there were so many packages already at the station that the guy who did the last collection from that station on that day didn't have enough space in his van for all of them, so some spent the night at the station. Anyway, their tracking page says that it has arrived at its destination now. I'm just waiting for confirmation from the recipient.

What annoys me a bit is that after I had sent the package on its way, I learned that I could as well have handed in the contents at a local office of the recipient company. Which, in my case, is a very short walk from the place where I usually hand in my DHL packages.

It's totally legal in Germany to have people work on Sundays and Public Holidays if you pay them extra or if it's in their contract (they get another day off). That's how all those places in hospitality and tourism that are open on Sundays and Holidays work. My brother has a job like that; they have a schedule for who is on on specific Sundays and Holidays and gets which workdays days off in return. At his work, the team is relatively small, and the employees decide among themselves who has to work on, say, Christmas or Easter; only if nobody volunteers management gets involved.

Oh, I know that a lot of people work on weekends in Germany. I guess what weirded me out a bit was getting a professional email on a Sunday, probably because I mentally associate professional emails with regular office work, and I mentally associate that with regular office hours.

Raphael wrote: ↑Thu Jul 20, 2023 3:21 am What annoys me a bit is that after I had sent the package on its way, I learned that I could as well have handed in the contents at a local office of the recipient company. Which, in my case, is a very short walk from the place where I usually hand in my DHL packages.

Yes, that's annoying; would have saved you time and money.

I feel obligated to watch the next spiderverse movie because it's a two parter despite not liking the first half but dune bored me enough i don't feel obligated to watch the second part.

Over the course of the last few days, we had a bit of a minor family emergency. Nothing too dramatic, and it could have been worse. I'm a bit stressed, but mainly relieved.

Our cat brought home a young blackbird yesterday. Not being grateful at all for the food he wanted to provide us with, we freed it to his disappointment. As it was injured, my wife brought it to the vet, who treated it, and then to an animal shelter where it will be cared for until it can be set free again. Mixed emotions - pride wrt the hunting prowess of our cat, pity for the poor bird, relief that the bird lives, and positive surprise that there actually is a sensible system in place for such situations - the vet didn't charge us because the bird counts as a found animal, and it's great that animal shelters take in such cases. We donated 25 € to the shelter.

hwhatting wrote: ↑Wed Aug 09, 2023 4:59 am Our cat brought home a young blackbird yesterday. Not being grateful at all for the food he wanted to provide us with, we freed it to his disappointment. As it was injured, my wife brought it to the vet, who treated it, and then to an animal shelter where it will be cared for until it can be set free again. Mixed emotions - pride wrt the hunting prowess of our cat, pity for the poor bird, relief that the bird lives, and positive surprise that there actually is a sensible system in place for such situations - the vet didn't charge us because the bird counts as a found animal, and it's great that animal shelters take in such cases. We donated 25 € to the shelter.

I got to research the standard procedures for injured wild animals here when a bird bumped into our window recently, though thankfully, the bird had flown away before I got around to doing anything. It's interesting to hear that regular animal shelters will take them in - the information I found back then said that only a few specialized places do that.

Raphael wrote: ↑Wed Aug 09, 2023 6:25 am It's interesting to hear that regular animal shelters will take them in - the information I found back then said that only a few specialized places do that.

Maybe it's one of those specialised ones; I only know that they also function as shelter for the ususal cats & dogs.
Sad update: yesterday our cat brought another young blackbird and he managed to kill it before we could free it. He's grounded now for a couple of weeks - we assume that there is a nest somewhere in the neighbourhood and we want to give them the chance to learn to fly away before we let him out again.

It'll be a few more hours until I know whether someone close to me has gotten themselves into a difficult-to-impossible interpersonal situation, and if so, how good their chances are of resolving it somehow. So I'm feeling pretty tense right now.

Raphael wrote: ↑Mon Aug 14, 2023 6:49 am It'll be a few more hours until I know whether someone close to me has gotten themselves into a difficult-to-impossible interpersonal situation, and if so, how good their chances are of resolving it somehow. So I'm feeling pretty tense right now.

Update: Everything seems to have worked out fine. Phew.

hwhatting wrote: ↑Thu Aug 10, 2023 2:39 am He's grounded now for a couple of weeks

Who was I kidding. The evening of the next day, when my wife came home from work, he made cute kitty eyes at her and meowed miserably, and she let him out again. Well, at least he didn't bring any other birds so far...

Ah, the farmers are fertilizing their fields again. Since I do sometimes, you know, eat food. it would be hypocritical for me to seriously complain about it, but it's still a bit annoying.

Raphael wrote: ↑Wed Aug 16, 2023 9:12 amAh, the farmers are fertilizing their fields again. Since I do sometimes, you know, eat food. it would be hypocritical for me to seriously complain about it, but it's still a bit annoying.

Why not move to the city and avoid this problem entirely?

malloc wrote: ↑Wed Aug 16, 2023 10:12 am

Raphael wrote: ↑Wed Aug 16, 2023 9:12 amAh, the farmers are fertilizing their fields again. Since I do sometimes, you know, eat food. it would be hypocritical for me to seriously complain about it, but it's still a bit annoying.

Why not move to the city and avoid this problem entirely?

1) I already live a short walk from where the next major city officially starts. We have agricultural lands pretty close to, and in some cases even inside, the official city boundaries.

2) For a whole lot of reasons that I'm not interested in telling you about, I can't just move places any time I want to the way many other people can. And even if I could find myself a place to live somewhere else, I still wouldn't have the money for the move itself.

3) Having to explain point 2) to someone who always took pride in their very progressive politics is a bit galling.

Raphael wrote: ↑Wed Aug 16, 2023 10:23 am3) Having to explain point 2) to someone who always took pride in their very progressive politics is a bit galling.

Most people on this forum are upper-middle class white men, often working in the tech industry and such. I think it was quite reasonable of me to assume you could afford to move. Apologies if you are one of the rare exceptions here.

1) I already live a short walk from where the next major city officially starts. We have agricultural lands pretty close to, and in some cases even inside, the official city boundaries.

Genuinely surprising. I figured they would have zoning regulations or something against farms too close to urban residential areas for precisely this reason.

malloc wrote: ↑Wed Aug 16, 2023 10:48 am

1) I already live a short walk from where the next major city officially starts. We have agricultural lands pretty close to, and in some cases even inside, the official city boundaries.

Genuinely surprising. I figured they would have zoning regulations or something against farms too close to urban residential areas for precisely this reason.

Generally speaking, the dynamics of suburban sprawl, and of the formation of suburban "belts" in general, don't seem to have been as "thorough" in Germany than in the US. The immediate vicinity of a major city is usually less uniformly suburban, and more a suburbs/farms/forests checkerboard pattern.

And keep in mind that farms were usually there first, before people built residential neighborhoods nearby. So there usually isn't much political will to tell farmers to stop farming because of the nearby residential neighborhoods. Especially given that the country is already a net importer of food.

We moved to a very rural town a few weeks back. They spread the manure at about the same time.
It's not a very big problem. Cities don't always smell good either

Ares Land wrote: ↑Fri Aug 25, 2023 6:18 am We moved to a very rural town a few weeks back. They spread the manure at about the same time.
It's not a very big problem. Cities don't always smell good either

Glad to see you here again.

Raphael wrote: ↑Fri Aug 25, 2023 6:39 am

Ares Land wrote: ↑Fri Aug 25, 2023 6:18 am We moved to a very rural town a few weeks back. They spread the manure at about the same time.
It's not a very big problem. Cities don't always smell good either

Glad to see you here again.

Thanks
I'm still kind of busy with the move and new job, but I'll drop by occasionally.

malloc wrote: ↑Wed Aug 16, 2023 10:48 amMost people on this forum are upper-middle class white men, often working in the tech industry and such.

[citation needed]