How Many Letters Does a Postman Deliver a Day?
Marla just entered a contest where she had to guess how many letters a given letter carrier (postman, actually post-woman?) was going to deliver that day. In googling, I didn't find an answer to that question. So here's my guess, based on the most authoritative sources I can find.
So it's pieces of mail per carrier per day. The number of pieces of mail delivered per day by the United States Postal Service is about 509 million, according to the USPS. Now we need to know the number of letter carriers in the US. This number is about 315,950, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Dividing, we get that the average letter carrier delivers about 1,611 pieces of mail per day in the United States. You're welcome.
Social Media Talk at Joomla Users' Group
Here's a link to the outline of the talk I gave on August 10, 2015 at the Atlanta Joomla Users' Group about Joomla and Social Media. It seemed well received.
I'm on the Internet At...
This blog laminack.com
My Twitter Feed: @iblamm
Which is powered by my Delicious Bookmarks
My Web Design Company: OpenFace Systems
My underutilized Facebook Page
Websites I've Stumbled Upon
I'm putting together the Website Owners' Guidebook
Google Plus's Brent+ posts
Every now and then I comment on Reddit
Me on GitHub
Electric Car Names
Chevrolet has followed up on it's all-electric Chevy Volt with a new model, the Chevy Bolt. I think they're on to something. There's a lot of possibilities here:
- The small electric Pony Car: The Chevy Colt
- For the 20th anniversary model: The Chevy Re-Volt
- The convertable electric car: the Chevy Molt
- For the person who buys a Chevy Electric when they could've had a Tesla: The Chevy Dolt
- The model that will have the huge recall for shocking drivers: The Chevy Jolt
Yep, we're on to something!
A New Virtue Name
The other day I was eating lunch at the Arby's off North Druid Road near Emory. There was a young lady behind the counter with a name I'd never heard before. Her name was Tenacity. I was going to dismiss it as eccentricity, but then I realized it belongs to a group of female names that we used to call Virtue Names. Names like Faith, Hope, Charity, Joy, Patience, Prudence, etc. Tenacity fits in well with these Puritain-era monikers.
Wrong Color
I was in Home Depot today and saw their referral program advertised: RedBeacon.com. Is this a riff on K-Mart's old Blue Light Special? But the color's all wrong. Home Depot's color is orange, not red. What's the deal?
Antipodes
Remember when we were kids and started to dig a hole in the ground? We were told we'd dig straight through to China. Actually, for those living near Atlanta, the opposite side of the globe from us is about a thousand miles out into the Indian Ocean from Perth, Australia. In other words, the area where they're looking for Malayasia Air flight 370. Today's word for today is Antipodes, which means the opposite side of the earth. "The search for flight 370 is taking place in the antipodes of where I'm sitting. "
Tracking
The iPod attached to my car stereo lists around 4,000 tracks. Some podcasts, some American Songbook, but mostly Classical. The other day instdead of listening by album or playlist, I selected track. It was fascinating to hear all the Adagio movements together. I'm now going through the Allegros and their children: Allegro con brio, Allegro con carne, and now Allegro non troppo (not the Italian animated movie of the '70s). In between, I heard three versions of All of Me by Billie Holliday, Louis Armstrong and Willie Nelson. I can highly recommend it for the novelty. Give it a try.
Downton Abbey, Great and Wooster
There's a few threads of connection between Downton Abbey and other British fiction. Yes, Marla and I enjoy Downton, despite John Green calling it "crack cocaine for old people"
. But on to the threads:
Downton's set in the Yorkshire Dales, and occasionally the signposts point to, or the characters refer to the nearby village of Thirsk. Thirsk is a real village, where the real Alf Wight went to practice as a vet. He wrote about those experiences in what eventually became All Creatures Great and Small under the pen name James Herriot. He fictionalized the name of the village as Darrowby. I wonder if in a few seasons of Downton Sigfried Farnan will be tending the Earl of Grantham's horses? Or that Tristan would care for the pigs?
Downton is filmed at Highclere Castle, where another period piece was filmed, this time a comedy: Jeeves and Wooster, based on the stories by P. G. Wodehouse. Yes, House fans, Hugh Laurie is hilarious. I can imagine the feckless Bertie Wooster coming to call on Lady Mary. Perhaps Violet, the Dowager Countess, is one of Bertie's great-aunts. If I had time and video editing talent, it'd be fun to intercut scenes from Jeeves and Wooster with Downton. I do imagine that Jeeves and Mr. Carson would get along famously, though.
A video series similar to Downton was Upstairs, Downstairs, set circa 1930. The premise is similar: the comings and goings of the aristocrat family contrasted with those of the servants. I'd like to recommend it, but I really don't think it holds a candle to Downton. Upon reflection, the main reason is the title character, Downton Abbey itself. Upstairs, Downstairs was filmed in what was obviously a BBC studio, and as such, can never really capture the texture and richness of the landed gentry the way the actual locations of Downton can.
The Turkeys Eat What?!?
At Panera the other day, I saw this poster:
I know what corn-fed beef is, it's when you feed the cow with corn. So what's vegetarian-fed turkey? Is it when you feed the turkeys with vegetarians? Maybe we could stretch it to mean that the vegetarians give the turkeys their food, but I don't know! What a horrible fate for a deceased vegetarian, to be fed to turkeys! Also, I don't think I'd want a sandwich made of such.
This is not a Jukebox
At the Waffle House the other day, I saw this against the wall. Although it claims to be a jukebox, I have my doubts. Jukeboxes in my childhood had records that actually spun as reward for an inserted quarter. Then came jukeboxes that appeared to have CDs inside, and now no pretense of rotating media remain. This thing has a touch screen and slots for dollar bills! no quarters allowed. It even has an app so you can control it from your smartphone. This appears to me to be an iPod Touch, enlarged a thousand times.
For perspective, from today's Writers Almanac:
It was on this day in 1889 the jukebox made its debut at the Palais Royale Saloon in San Francisco. It was called a "nickel-in-the-slot player" and was built by the Pacific Phonograph Co. and installed by entrepreneur Louis Glass and his business associate William S. Arnold.
The jukebox consisted of an Edison Class M Electric Phonograph inside a free-standing oak cabinet to which were attached four stethoscope-like tubes. Each tube could be activated by depositing a coin so that four people could listen to a single recording at one time — the sound equivalent of the peep-show nickelodeon. Towels were supplied so that Palais Royale patrons could wipe off the listening tubes between uses. Despite competition from player pianos, this primitive jukebox was a big hit across the country. In its first six months of service, the nickel-in-the-slot earned more than $1,000.
Site Rework
I finally got tired of fighting WordPress, so I converted my site to Joomla. It's Joomla 3.2.x, The Wright template from JoomlaShack, fonts are Bakserville over Garamond. All in all, the process was fairly painless thanks to JConverter which I got for $19. Hope you (and Google) enjoy it. Thanks for your support.
One in a Million, or One of Twenty Million?
I got an interesting email the other day from LinkedIn.com. It said that my profile was one of the top 10% most viewed profiles in 2012. Really? I had no idea, and wasn't even trying. It made me feel special. But then it went on to say that LinkedIn now has over 200 million subscribers. So the top 10% would be... 20 million, right? So I'm one of the top 20 million most viewed profiles. Suddenly, I don't feel quite so special. I'm just one of 20 million.