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Well today was my first day at UPS.  It was pretty boring honestly but I did expect it to be as such.  For the first 4 days we’ll be doing the training system what they call Cornerstone.  It’s just a mix of classroom and hand on training. 

I started around 10:45am.  We watched some videos about how packages travel inside UPS, hazard material handling procedures, and safety training.  That lasted till around 1:30pm.  We then were matched up with our training supervisors.  The supervisor gave me a short tour of the facility and talked about random things.  Then we got over to the area that I would be working and started doing some hands on work.  I did that till 3:30pm.  I went back up to the classroom and then we talked a bit longer and were taken to see how clocking out works.  So I clocked out and headed home.

The location I’m at is a major hub, 4th largest in the US I believe.  I’ll be working as a loader so my job will be to get into the back of a truck and load it to transfer to other hubs or distribution areas.  The basic task is pretty easy.  Boxes come down a chute into the back of the truck.  You double check the location (zip code first, then state finally city) to make sure it’s correct. You scan them in then stack them.  Do that for 3-5 hours a day and that’s your shift.  You’re expected to move roughly 300 boxes an hour.  You get assigned a certain geographic area which consists of usually one but maybe two trucks.  You have to memorize and know all the zip codes that that truck(s) covers.

For my area that I’ll be doing I have 51 zip codes to know.  The problem is that they aren’t sequential numbers.  I’m actually going to handle the Akron, Ohio area.  The zip codes all start with either 442xx or 443xx but they aren’t inclusive.  So I need to remember that 44201, 44211, 44314, 44398 are all valid zips but 44202, 44225, 44350, 44380 aren’t valid.  With time it’ll get easy to just know but starting out it’s a bit overwhelming. 

Besides the basic loading of your own truck there are other tasks expected of you to do from time to time.  The big duh is helping load other trucks when people get swamped.  Loads usually end up coming in batches.  You’ll get a few packages for a while then have maybe a hundred or more all dumped at one time.  So it’s expected that the people in your zone will help out. 

You’ll also work the recycler from time to time.  Packages are sorted in a central area then send down conveyer belts to each zone.  There’s a person called a pickoff that then sends the packages down the appropriate chutes to each of the trucks.  When they see bad packages that don’t belong in the zone they send it down a recycler chute.  You have to unload this chute every once in a while onto a cart and roll it over to a conveyer belt that sends the packages back to the sorters.  Hence getting recycled!

The other task is doing “steel.”  Steel is the slang for overweight or very large packages.  The conveyer system can only handle so much weight or fit certain sizes.  Anything that’s too big or heavy has to be manually moved around the facility.  From time to time a little vehicle with the steel will stop and unload your zones packages.  Then you have to slug your way through, figure out which truck they go to and get those monsters loaded into the trucks.  Which it turns out is a common thing here because Sauders Furniture ships everything UPS and all those shipments go to this hub.  When I was touring the facility just about every zone had stacks of Sauders boxes lying around.

So, that’s about it for today.  I’ll do a write up for each day this week about what I learned.

Trying to keep track of all the political polls can be a major pain.  I found this great site that compiles many of the polls into a nice easy to read table.  Worth a look-see when you want to know what some poll shows.  They have just about every major poll and it’s organized every which way you could want.

RealClearPolitics.com

Well I was called today by UPS to come in for a second interview.  I went in last friday for the first.  It wasn’t a real interview.  They just did a group tour and tried to make the job sound as hard and scary as possible to chase of the lazy bums.

Anyhoo, I came in and was hired.  I’m very happy to say the least!  It’s the day sort shift and I’ll be making $8.50 an hour.  Not to shabby.

That’s all for now.  Have a nice weekend everyone!

This isn’t a comparison of the magazines actually.  There’s no contest there since MaxPC is way better.  Ok, sure I might be a bit biased considering I’m a moderator at the MaxPC forums but not by much.  MaxPC is a real magazine with a profession staff.  CPU uses the big names from several large tech sites to write article for.  They just don’t match, period.

I just want to share these stats.

CPU’s forum stats:
Opening Date: ~ 11/11/2002
Registered Users: 388,024
Total Posts: 41,555

MaxPC’s forum stats:
Opening Date: 5/25/2004
Registered User: 2449
Total Posts: 48577

I’m sorry I just had to share these numbers.  CPU has over a quarter of a million “users” yet in two years they’ve only managed to make 40,000 posts.  MaxPC has a 10th of the users yet managed to match CPU in less than five months.

And by the way MaxPC moved to the new forums in May.  Before that we were running our forums at delphiforums.com since September of 1999.  We had over two millon posts and some 100,000+ members when we moved from the old forums.

The more important thing though is the post quality.  Take a look at them and look for yourself.  I’d say MaxPC has much more intelligent and mature posts overall.

This is really for my own use more than anything for the public… sorry

1) File Manager - A basic web based file manager that includes all your usual file and directory tools.  create, edit (text files like html, php, xml, css, etc), rename, delete, copy, move, upload, etc.

2) Page Counter - website stats system to track page hits on comments, monthly, daily, archives, etc.

3) Download Manager - provide functionality similar to places like fileplanet.  setup controlable downloads with restrictions based on members, number of concurent users, etc.

4) Live Chat / IM - some sort of live or semi-live text chat system to integrate into EE user system.  Not sure on this one.  Might require some java applet work????

5) ...

That’s what I have in the queue for right now.  The file manager is about 50% finished right now.  I hope to get my first beta out by end of next week.  That’s if everything goes good.

I’m moving to New York and that’s final!  This weekend was amazing on so many levels.  Above all I’m ecstatic that I was able to spend some quality time with my girlfriend and as a result of this visit I really feel so much closer to her.  But all of that is for another entry or two because this one is just about my time in NYC.  This is going to be a long post so sorry to bore the living daylights out of everyone but I want to make sure to cover everything in detail.

I flew into LaGuardia around 6pm on Thursday night.  It’s actually pretty cool because while we were taxing around I saw Donald Trumps plane out on the tarmac and there was a limo and a police escort parked by it.  Later while we were unloading it took off.  I didn’t see anyone but it could have been Trump flying out.

I managed to find my girlfriend and it was just pure bliss to see her in person again.  It felt so good to just give her a big hug and kiss.  We waited forever at the baggage claim for my suitcase but it did finally show up.  My girlfriend lives in queens very close to the airport so we just grabbed the M60 bus and headed to her place.  It’s a very nice area that she lives in.  It’s diverse and full of life, sort of a mixture of Greek and Middle Eastern people.  There are just tons of wonderful shops everywhere.

Her apartment is pretty darn small.  It’s really a one bedroom apartment but two people live there.  She does have the actual bedroom which is nice.  The roommate has a bed in another room but there are no doors and you have to walk through the roommates “room” to get to the bedroom.  Still it’s on a nice street that is pretty quiet and the apartment is cozy.  I could see myself living in a place like that.  The one thing I really don’t like is that there is no shower, just a bath.  Ugg!  I’d at least install one of those hand held sprayer thingies so you can wash your hair easier.

I didn’t sleep very well that first night.  I’m just used to my own bed so it was a bit hard to get comfy.  We got up Friday and headed into town.  She showed me where she worked and we went to the Ed Sullivan Theater to try to get tickets to see David Letterman.  They weren’t taping though so that was a bust.  We stopped at a coffee shop and I got a coffee and a morning harvest muffin (it has all sorts of stuff in it like nuts, raisins, carrot shreds, etc).  We walked over to Central Park and just relaxed.  We sat there talking and people watching for a while.  It was a fun time because I could just sit back and soak up the city.

We headed over and saw Times Square and then took the Staten Island Ferry to see the Statue of Liberty.  That was neat because you could look back and see the whole city from the water and it was a very powerful image in my mind to see the city like that.  It is just so large.  We took the subway back to queens and I rested for a bit while she went and took part in a study she signed up for that paid 25 bucks.  She needed the money so I didn’t complain.  We then went to the east village for dinner and ate at this Italian place on 1st Avenue called Three of Cups. A bit salty but still good food! 

There was talk of rain for Saturday evening so we went to see the city from the Empire State Building that night.  NYC was beautiful and it was romantic to be up there with my girlfriend.  After that we headed back home and crawled into bed but ended up spending the entire night talking.  I can’t remember if we actually decided to go to sleep or I just passed out but last I remember was looking at the clock around 5am.  We woke up and got breakfast at a local place then goofed off rest of the Saturday morning.  Just hung around the apartment and talked about things.  It was our chance to have some quality time and play catch-up for the last month and a half being apart.

Later that afternoon we finally went out to finish seeing the places I wanted to go see.  We stopped at ground zero first.  It’s kind of weird.  The whole area down there is just a ghost town now.  It’s eerily quiet compared to the hustle and bustle everywhere else but it was in a way a relief to visit the site.  It’s just been such a powerful event that has become a part of our lives and to be able to visit the site and pay my respects helped in some ways to just make me feel better.

We headed to SOHO and just roamed around for hours.  We checked out a few stores including Urban Outfitters.  That’s a killer store and we ended up spending about an hour just roaming around looking at everything.  By then it was dinner time so we went into this bistro to eat.  The place was empty but the service was dead.  We sat there for who knows how long and no one even came to give us menus.  We walking out in disgust but ended up finding someplace better.  A BBQ place called Tennessee Mountain.  It was again good food and well worth it.  Besides it was my birthday so I was happy to be a bit gluttonous and eat a big ol’ plate of BBQ pork dumped ontop of biscuits instead of some crappy bistro sandwich.

We took the subway back to queens and walked to Astoria Park.  She loves to go running there so we walked along the water and looked at the city before calling it a night and going back to the apartment.  Watched a little local news on the TV then crawled into bed and just talked for a while before going to bed.

I got up Sunday and just felt so damn depressed.  I hated the fact that I had to leave.  I knew by then that I wanted to live in NYC and all I could think of was how much I wanted to just stay.  Forget flying back home I would just stay and start living in NYC right then and there!  I couldn’t though so I got packed up and left the apartment.  Took the bus back to the airport and got my ticket.  I sat outside of the security check for the longest time with my girlfriend just wishing I didn’t have to say goodbye.  I finally had to go through and waved goodbye for the last time as I headed to my gate. 

Funny thing happen while I was there.  I saw a movie star get off the plane I was going to get on!  The plane had already unloaded but about 10 minutes after everyone else was gone Giovanni Ribisi walked thru the door.  He’s currently in “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow” and was in “Lost in Translation”, “Gone in Sixty Seconds” and “Boiler Room.”  Plus he played the goofy brother of Phoebe on Friends.

So that was my visit to New York City.  I’m going to try very hard to go again soon.  Now that I have the touristy crap out of the way I can just go to spend more time with my girlfriend and not be so overwhelmed with running around the city.  Spend the whole day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art or go have a picnic in Central Park or whatever to just do something relaxing and fun for the weekend.