I'm back after a month of c---
October 6, 2011 at 4:38 am
(This post was last modified: October 6, 2011 at 4:47 am by Anymouse.)
Well, after over a month, I am back. We have been busy around Chez Tumbleweed.
My wife's two computers both gave up the ghost; her latest downloaded release of Linux apparently was something to do with "Linux-CE" (Christian Experience), and constantly quoted Bible verses at her. When she failed to repent, the processors overheated and went up in flames, simulating what the fires of Hell will be like for her or something.
A new computer is on the way for her.
Then we got entangled in a different problem: the United States Postal Service put our village post office on the proposed closure list. Beth and I have been burning up the wires gathering information to beat back their proposal. The public hearing was last night, and we absolutely humiliated the USPS representatives.
I also put in a package to the Isolated Mensan Special Interest Group editor for the "Isolated-M" newsletter of American Mensa. She is retiring for health reasons, and I am about as isolated as they come out here in Nebraska's Sandhills in the Panhandle. The current editor advanced my name to the Executive Director of American Mensa to be the new editor.
What a month. No good deed goes unpunished, though. To offset the expense of our postal service battle, the Nebraska State Lottery Commission called (as we were asleep and recovering from the meeting) to tell me they had held their draw for the lottery promotion survey, and we'd won the grand prize of $500. That helps recoup our money.
The letter below was sent to a retired postmistress who helped my wife and I organise our village for the Postal Service meeting.
Perhaps they weren't expecting all of the Panhandle of Nebraska's Mensa members (my wife and I, the Panhandle being part of Omaha's NWIM group four hundred miles away) to turn up and put the tough questions to them.
----- ----- -----
"I'm just an under-educated Romance editor with a high school diploma, good for rabble-rousing. My wife is the real brains of this outfit. She dropped out of high school so she could go to college and get two degrees in Computer Science and one in Business Administration.
"My wife and I just returned from the USPS meeting at the Broadwater Fire Hall this evening. I thank you for your call the other day with additional information we could use for ammunition at the meeting.
"Prior to the meeting, every person in Broadwater and on both rural routes received a postcard reminder of the meeting. My public service announcement on KNEB-AM Scottsbluff went out over the air this morning, and last week they interviewed me on the air concerning the legal aspects of the issue. They unfortunately did not provide a reporter for the meeting. Staffers for our national Representative and Senator were there, and our State Senator was there in person.
"The fire hall was packed standing room only. Persons were giving up seats for the elderly and disabled (and me on crutches). The Library Board provided refreshments and snacks.
"The meeting went surprisingly well. The villagers pretty much stayed away from emotional matters (Please don’t close my favourite post office), and stuck to pragmatic matters. My wife and I, burning up the mail and Internet for the past two weeks, addressed the questionable figures in the study docket and the lease (the latter which we obtained from the Kansas leaseholder only two days before the meeting.) We came to the issue late, only having just moved here. We gave it our best shot.
"The entire village board was present, as well as the village attorney. 150 people were confirmed at the meeting (not counting officials of the USPS and the State and Federal government), the village has a population of 128. (By comparison, Gering Neb., also facing a closure notice and with a population of 20,000, only had fifteen show up for their meeting.)
My wife Beth and I addressed the village board meeting last night (where we did throw out our emotional arguments). We also addressed to the board the problem of additional costs of mileage if the village clerk has to drive to the Oshkosh Post Office to retrieve the mail, an additional cost of over $7,000 to the taxpayers beyond her additional wages.
You mentioned you’ve never seen one of these docket reports. As I paid good money for them (it turns out that though you cannot remove it from the post office, you can purchase copies but you have to know to ask – I suggested to one of our rural carriers Saturday that I would photograph the report a la James Bond with a digital camera I’d brought in for the purpose), I made sure that the state senator and all the government staffers had their copies, and we distributed copies to the village board last night. They were annotated with the discrepancies in the report, and correlated with the costs in the lease.
I do not think the folk from Paxton were expecting such a turn-out, and I know they were unprepared to answer some of our legitimate questions concerning the figures in the study. They got to look foolish for those in front of the Congressional and Senatorial staffers, and our State Senator for the area.
Beth and I caught them out in a number of lies in front of the governmental officials, and exposed them. They mentioned they would escape from the post office lease through its escape clause. I held a copy of that lease, obtained from the landlord in Kansas two days before, and pointed out the lease specifically mentioned there is no such clause, they have to pay the whole amount. I asked if they had come prepared for the meeting, and I could provide them with a copy of their own lease for study.
Beth rounded on the financials; the report showed an ROI of seven million percent. After she gave the village a simple explanation of ROI, she inquired as to why this figure was included when they didn't own the post office. She also made an enquiry as to why the gun dealer's business with the post office, tens of thousands of dollars of postage and registration fees every year, were not included in the financial report.
They told her "well you know computers. We know those numbers are bad."
My wife used to be a software engineer for Digital Equipment Corp., now part of Hewlett-Packard. She once designed a ten million dollar project for DEC on the back of a cocktail napkin in a bar. She ate them for breakfast in front of the congress critters. I pointed out that if they knew the number was bad, the only reason it was in the report was to dazzle the village with brilliance. Instead they baffled themselves with bull.
The USPS people couldn't wait to get out of that meeting last night. Afterward, Beth and I made sure we spoke to every politician, and made sure they each had a copy of our annotated reports and leases, made at our expense.
Today the Master of our Post Office was ecstatic when we walked in. He couldn't believe the show we put on. The fire hall overflowing with postal patrons, the way the USPS officials were left gasping for answers in front of the politicians; he said of all the meetings he's been to in his career this was the most professional and thorough rebuttal of a closure study he'd ever seen.
(He also thanked us for saving his job.)
James.
"Be ye not lost amongst Precept of Order." - Book of Uterus, 1:5, "Principia Discordia, or How I Found Goddess and What I Did to Her When I Found Her."
