Showing posts with label Dayhoff Media The Tentacle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dayhoff Media The Tentacle. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Migrating to Windows 8 by Kevin E. Dayhoff June 12, 2013 www.TheTentacle.com



My latest experience with Microsoft has left me with the technological equivalent of post-traumatic stress disorder. In the last six-months I have migrated light years from the Microsoft Windows XP operating system to Windows 8. It was not easy.

I’m told the twitching and the nightmares will stop with the passage of time and copious amounts of coffee. When I finally pulled the plug on my old laptop for the last time, I had this awful feeling in the pit of my stomach as if I had just taken a loved-one off of life support.

That feeling was quickly replaced by the sheer terror of dealing with an improved computer system in which I could no longer easily perform so many of the functions I had executed effortlessly in the previous, now obsolete, system.

The Microsoft Windows operating systems have been a major force in the modern-era of technology and personal computing. The roots of the software system date back to 1981, although the first version, Windows 1.0 was not available for consumer use until late in 1985.

One of the most popular and widely used systems in history has been the Windows XP system, which was introduced in August 2001, and dominated the market until Windows 7 (released in 2009,) overtook it in August 2012. Windows 8 was released in October 2012.


According to multiple media accounts … read more: http://www.thetentacle.com/ShowArticle.cfm?mydocid=5828
*****

+++++++++++++++
Kevin Dayhoff is an artist - and a columnist for:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/kevindayhoffTwitpic: http://twitpic.com/photos/kevindayhoff
Kevin Dayhoff's The New Bedford Herald: http://kbetrue.livejournal.com/ = www.newbedfordherald.net

Tumblr: Kevin Dayhoff Banana Stems www.kevindayhoff.tumblr.com/
Smurfs: http://babylonfluckjudd.blogspot.com/
Google profile: https://profiles.google.com/kevindayhoff/

E-mail: kevindayhoff(at)gmail.com
My http://www.explorecarroll.com/ columns appear in the copy of the Baltimore Sunday Sun that is distributed in Carroll County: https://subscribe.baltsun.com/Circulation/
+++++++++++++++

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Recent articles in www.thetentacle.com by Kevin Dayhoff

Recent articles in www.thetentacle.com by Kevin Dayhoff
The Tentacle

June 5, 2013
Craig Steps to the Bottom of The Mountain 
Kevin E. Dayhoff
Although the Maryland gubernatorial primary is over a year away, on Monday the 2014 contest began to take shape in earnest with Harford County Executive David Craig announcing his candidacy for the Maryland State House.

May 29, 2013
A Fallen Son of Carroll County 
Kevin E. Dayhoff
The weather was perfect for the 146th Memorial Day exercises at the Westminster Cemetery on Monday. The keynote address speaker for the community ritual of spring was Army Sgt. 1st Class Joseph T. Schultz, a North Carroll High School graduate.

May 23, 2013
A Renewed Purpose and Meaning for Pentecost 
Kevin E. Dayhoff
Many believe that the current decline in church attendance directly contributes to the erosion of our quality of life, the deterioration of our sense of community and lack of confidence in the future.

May 22, 2013
Pentecost Sunday 
Kevin E. Dayhoff
Last Sunday was Pentecost Sunday; the 50 day after Easter and the birthday of the church. Along with Easter and Christmas, Pentecost is one of the three most important holidays in the church. It’s time to renew the spirit of Pentecost in our daily lives. Here’s why.

May 15, 2013
The Spiritual Practice of Shredding Stuff 
Kevin E. Dayhoff
Last month my wife and I left our house in the wee-hours of the morning and joined other households in Carroll County for the shared experience of putting box after box of old documents in a large ravenous shredder-truck which devoured the paper voraciously.

May 8, 2013
Another Boot on Your Neck 
Kevin E. Dayhoff
On Monday the U.S. Senate voted 69-27 for the Marketplace Fairness Act, which allows states to collect sales taxes on certain online purchases.

May 1, 2013
Alvin Lee is coming home 
Kevin E. Dayhoff
It has been almost two-months since British guitarist Alvin Lee, the legendary rock-blues master and lead singer of the band “Ten Years After,” passed away March 6.

April 24, 2013
The Presidents Club 
Kevin E. Dayhoff
Last Thursday, Time magazine editors Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy provided a sneak peek into the most exclusive club in the world, “The Presidents Club,” to a crowd that filled McDanielCollege’s Decker Lecture Hall in Westminster.

April 17, 2013
Tragedy Strikes at Heart of America 
Kevin E. Dayhoff
The cheers of joy and excitement quickly turned to screams of terror on Monday at 2:50 in the afternoonwhen an act of senseless horror shattered the 117th running of the Boston Marathon, arguable the world’s oldest and most prestigious endurance foot race.

April 10, 2013
March Job Creation Flatlines 
Kevin E. Dayhoff
Last Friday the Labor Department announced the unemployment numbers for March and it was not a pretty picture. The Obama Administration quickly mustered the mainstream media and the party faithful spinmeisters to parrot that the numbers were as a result of the sequestration that only took effect at the beginning of the month.

April 3, 2013
Marissa Mayer: The Changing Face of Leadership 
Kevin E. Dayhoff
In a recent ‘lean in’ story posted on the new website launched by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Google employee number 20, Marissa Mayer weighed on how she decided to accept the position of president and CEO of Yahoo!

March 27, 2013
Obamacare: The New Repetitive Stress Disorder 
Kevin E. Dayhoff
On January 1, 2014, the revolutionary change in how we will receive our healthcare in the future will become fully implemented. Last Saturday was the third anniversary of the law and even the mainstream media, which coordinated its passage, cannot avoid reporting on how it is already making all of us sick.

March 20, 2013
The Economic Roots of Democracy 
Kevin E. Dayhoff
On a recent trip to Europe, I found myself reading The Economist while standing on an ancient foundation that dated back to the Bronze Age. This gave me great pause when I considered that literally and figuratively, much of the economic basis of democracy that we enjoy today had its beginnings in ancient Greece.

March 13, 2013
President Obama: The sky is falling 
Kevin E. Dayhoff
Almost two weeks have gone by since the so-called “sequester” of the federal budget went into effect and all indications lead us to believe that the Zombie Apocalypse has not happened. Nor has it otherwise resulted in the end of the world as we know it.

March 6, 2013
How I learned to love the sequester 
Kevin E. Dayhoff
Last Friday, March 1, the much ballyhooed and overhyped “sequester” of the federal budget began. A key and critical provision of the Budget Control Act of 2011, sequestration was signed into law on August 2, 2011 by President Barack Obama.

February 27, 2013
The new Dali Museum in St. Pete 
Kevin E. Dayhoff
The new Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, has now been open for over two-years. The much-anticipated fantastical $36 million, 66,450 square foot museum doubled the capacity of the previous 1982 building that I had the opportunity to in February 2009.

February 20, 2013
A Look Back At The War With Spain 
Kevin E. Dayhoff
Early in the morning of last Friday, I found myself pondering a watershed moment in American history in the middle of a cemetery plot for the battleship U.S.S. Mainelocated in the Key West Cemetery, Key West, Florida.

February 13, 2013
A Visit to Ancient Olympia 
Kevin E. Dayhoff
A January tour of Greece included an opportunity to get away from the crowds, hectic tourist mainstays and urban landscape of Athens, to venture on the Peloponnesian Peninsula and visit many places, including Mycenae, Nafplion, Epidaurus, and one of the many highlights of the trip – ancient Olympia.

February 6, 2013
Commissioner John L Armacost – R.I.P. 
Kevin E. Dayhoff
Many were saddened recently to learn that the well-respected longstanding community leader and former Carroll County commissioner, John L. Armacost, died January 13.

January 30, 2013
Big fat Greek surprises 
Kevin E. Dayhoff
In spite of the profoundly dulled senses that come as a result of a day of international travel, Greece takes hold of you the very moment you arrive at the Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport.

January 23, 2013
Is Charter Right for Carroll County? 
Kevin E. Dayhoff
The decision last November by Frederick County voters to go to a Charter form of government has kept local political junkies preoccupied ever since the election results were announced.

January 16, 2013
Letters Reveal Divided Shriver Family 
Kevin E. Dayhoff
This Saturday the Historical Society of Carroll County will give a presentation on the letters and documents which shed additional light on the divided loyalties of the Shriver family of Carroll and Frederick counties during the Civil War.

January 15, 2013
Demonstrations in Athens 
Kevin E. Dayhoff
Athens, Greece, January 12 – Demonstrators once again took to the streets in central Athens Saturday afternoon, in another of a long series of strikes, demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience that have rocked Greece since a worldwide economic downturn officially got underway in December 2007.

January 9, 2013
Colonial cooking was hard labor 
Kevin E. Dayhoff
Cooking in pioneer and colonial Frederick and Carroll County was certainly not the romanticized picture of women wonderfully adorned in long dresses, hovering over large kettles of aromatic delights, cooking over an open fire with a loaf of bread or two strategically placed nearby.

January 2, 2013
Happy New Year – Past and Present 
Kevin E. Dayhoff
According to widespread superstition, evil spirits are frightened away by loud noise and this is why we have the tradition of using noisemakers to bring in the New Year.

December 26, 2012
Yes, Dear Readers, Fruitcake Has A History 
Kevin E. Dayhoff
The holidays are upon us and I can only be sure that many thoughts have turned to getting together with family and friends – and of course, the wonders of fruitcake.

+++++++++++++++
Kevin Dayhoff is an artist - and a columnist for:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/kevindayhoffTwitpic: http://twitpic.com/photos/kevindayhoff
Kevin Dayhoff's The New Bedford Herald: http://kbetrue.livejournal.com/ = www.newbedfordherald.net

Tumblr: Kevin Dayhoff Banana Stems www.kevindayhoff.tumblr.com/
Smurfs: http://babylonfluckjudd.blogspot.com/
Google profile: https://profiles.google.com/kevindayhoff/

E-mail: kevindayhoff(at)gmail.com
My http://www.explorecarroll.com/ columns appear in the copy of the Baltimore Sunday Sun that is distributed in Carroll County: https://subscribe.baltsun.com/Circulation/
+++++++++++++++

The Tentacle: Fighting the “Stuff Monster” - The Spiritual Practice of Shredding Stuff

The Spiritual Practice of Shredding Stuff by Kevin E. Dayhoff May 15, 2013

http://www.thetentacle.com/ShowArticle.cfm?mydocid=5780

http://kevindayhoffwestgov-net.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-spiritual-practice-of-shredding.html

Labels: Dayhoff Media Explore CarrollDayhoff Media The TentacleEnvironmentalismPaperlessSelf-employed

Last month my wife and I left our house in the wee-hours of the morning and joined other households in Carroll County for the shared experience of putting box after box of old documents in a large ravenous shredder-truck which devoured the paper voraciously.

It was quite a liberating experience. Of course, there was a certain irony in the ritualistic-feeding of the paper-eating monster truck sponsored by the Carroll County Office of Recycling.

The vast majority of my papers to be recycled are from the 40 or so years I served on local, county or state boards, committees or commissions – for many years, as an elected official – all of which were accompanied by bringing home boxes of papers, documents and records. It was only fitting and proper that I ‘give’ the papers back to the county.

The further irony is that many of those 40+-years were served on various committees and commissions which focused on the environment, municipal solid waste, agriculture, forestry, water and wastewater treatment – and recycling.

I, for one, am quite thankful for the shredding service. The recycling office reported that we were one of 316 other households that made the trek to the county maintenance facility.

The paper shredder in my office only allows me to feed it up to 16 pages at a time. At that rate, it would take me about two hours to shred one box full of papers. The county shredding service saved me days of mind-numbing work.

As I discussed in my column in TheTentacle.com on June 20 last year, “Fighting the ‘Stuff Monster,” goals are simply tools to focus one’s energy in positive directions. These goals can change as one’s priorities change and new ones are added, and others dropped.

One of the several priorities I have established in recent years is to greatly simplify my life and cut-out as much of the clutter as possible… Please read more here:http://www.thetentacle.com/ShowArticle.cfm?mydocid=5780

++++++++++

Eagle Archives: Standard, aka junk, mail goes back to 19th century http://tinyurl.com/oye7pyo

By Kevin E. Dayhoff, May 23, 2013 http://www.baltimoresun.com/explore/carroll/neighborhoods/westminster/ph-ce-eagle-archive-0519-20130519,0,823668.story

Labels: Dayhoff Media Explore CarrollDayhoff Media The TentacleEnvironmentalismPaperlessSelf-employed

http://kevindayhoff.blogspot.com/2013/05/eagle-archives-standard-aka-junk-mail_26.html

http://kevindayhoffwestgov-net.blogspot.com/2013/05/eagle-archives-standard-aka-junk-mail.html

The nation's first countywide free rural postal delivery service got off to a shaky and contested start Dec. 20, 1896, in Carroll County.

According to multiple media accounts, including the Baltimore Sun, "One of the first pick-ups postal clerk Edwin Shriver had on the inaugural day of Carroll County's Rural Free Delivery service was a greased pig…"

"I'm sure he (the customer) did it as a joke," said Shriver. "But I slapped a 42-cent stamp on its rump and delivered it. That pig squealed the whole way."

A little over three years later, Charles Emory Smith, the 39th postmaster general of the United States and a journalist by trade, visited Westminster on April 30, 1900.

"Like" explorecarroll on Facebook

[…]http://www.baltimoresun.com/explore/carroll/neighborhoods/westminster/ph-ce-eagle-archive-0519-20130519,0,823668.story

If Smith were to come back today, he would find the current state of affairs of the Postal Service look more like that haze produced by the forest fire.
These days, the future beautiful vista at the post office is less than clear, if my last visit there is any indication.

After I opened my box, I let out a squeal much like that of that greased pig in December of 1896. I quickly realized that I had once again fallen prey to the modern scourge upon the postal system that has significantly impacted our lives today, junk mail, or as it is politely referred to by the postal system, "standard mail."

[…]http://www.baltimoresun.com/explore/carroll/neighborhoods/westminster/ph-ce-eagle-archive-0519-20130519,0,823668.story

Don't complain about the flood of unsolicited mail. "The Postal Service is hoping to deliver even more," according to an article in the New York Times last September.

"Faced with multibillion-dollar losses and significant declines in first-class mail, the post office is cutting deals with businesses and direct mail marketers to increase the number of sales pitches they send by standard mail…"

Now isn't that just special … Unbelievable… http://tinyurl.com/oye7pyo

Read the entire story here: http://www.baltimoresun.com/explore/carroll/neighborhoods/westminster/ph-ce-eagle-archive-0519-20130519,0,823668.story

See also:

Kevin Dayhoff - The Tentacle: Fighting the “Stuff Monster”

The Dayhoff Paper Reduction Act of June 20, 2012Fighting the “Stuff Monster” http://www.thetentacle.com/ShowArticle.cfm?mydocid=5178

Fighting the “Stuff Monster” http://www.thetentacle.com/ShowArticle.cfm?mydocid=5178

The mindless meanderings of a mad writer. Kevin E. Dayhoff June 20, 2012 http://kevindayhoff.blogspot.com/2012/08/kevin-dayhoff-tentacle-fighting-stuff.html The Tentacle http://www.thetentacle.com/author.cfm?MyAuthor=41 http://twitpic.com/hnwxx

There comes a time in a person’s life when one needs to get a fresh supply of trash bags, buy a new heavy-duty paper shredder, back the pick-up truck to the basement door, get out the large party-size coffee maker, and clear the clutter.

http://www.thetentacle.com/author.cfm?MyAuthor=41

For me, periodically fighting the “Stuff Monster” has been a survival tool – or I would have been the tragic-lead character in a serial reality horror show on hoarding a long time ago.

Yet, in my personal journey of a life-long struggle with the “Stuff Monster,” the deck has always been stacked against me.

For, you see, my situation has been exacerbated by the fact that I have been self-employed all my life. Many colleagues have been able to fight the “Stuff Monster” much more easily because all the filing cabinets full of papers and pallets of boxes in records storage, has been the responsibility of their respective employers.

Well, with me – since the late 1960s – I’ve been my own employer and keeping records, documents and stuff has always been my responsibility.

And, of course, for the last 35 or so years, in addition to art and farming, I have continuously served on any number of local, county or state boards, committees or commissions – and for many years, as an elected official – all of which was accompanied by my bringing home papers, documents and records by the wheelbarrow load.

[….]

http://www.thetentacle.com/author.cfm?MyAuthor=41

I am trying to go as paperless as possible.

My paperless initiative is in part, because technology has advanced to the point that I can now handle many office and administrative functions more efficiently - without paper.

However, my reasons for going as paperless as possible are in part, as a matter of practicality. Above and beyond the fact that we travel a lot and are simply not at home to get hardcopy paper-mail at our post office box; at my advanced age, handling mountains of paper day-in and day-out has not gotten any easier.

Curiously, after almost 40-years of office administration, if you hand me a piece of paper, in several hours, I have no clue as to where it is. However, I always seem to be able to find electronic paperwork… Caroline will tell you that I have come to like reading online so much that I scan-in letters and writing-newspaper-research materials just so that I can read it on the computer…

Moreover, a large part of my decision to go paperless is a product of my environmental activism, which in part springs forth from faith beliefs…

Whatever - - I am a geek and although a few electrons may be inconvenienced; paperless is far more efficient…

That said, LOL – the initiative sure has had some interesting moments – and a few profound failures; however, it has been for the most part, quite successful…

Fighting the “Stuff Monster”

Kevin E. Dayhoff June 20, 2012 The Tentacle http://www.thetentacle.com/author.cfm?MyAuthor=41 The mindless meanderings of a mad writer. Click here for a larger image: http://twitpic.com/hnwxx
+++++++++++++++
Kevin Dayhoff is an artist - and a columnist for:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/kevindayhoffTwitpic: http://twitpic.com/photos/kevindayhoff
Kevin Dayhoff's The New Bedford Herald: http://kbetrue.livejournal.com/ = www.newbedfordherald.net

Tumblr: Kevin Dayhoff Banana Stems www.kevindayhoff.tumblr.com/
Smurfs: http://babylonfluckjudd.blogspot.com/
Google profile: https://profiles.google.com/kevindayhoff/

E-mail: kevindayhoff(at)gmail.com
My http://www.explorecarroll.com/ columns appear in the copy of the Baltimore Sunday Sun that is distributed in Carroll County: https://subscribe.baltsun.com/Circulation/
+++++++++++++++

Monday, May 27, 2013

The Spiritual Practice of Shredding Stuff by Kevin E. Dayhoff May 15, 2013

The Spiritual Practice of Shredding Stuff by Kevin E. Dayhoff May 15, 2013

Last month my wife and I left our house in the wee-hours of the morning and joined other households in Carroll County for the shared experience of putting box after box of old documents in a large ravenous shredder-truck which devoured the paper voraciously.

It was quite a liberating experience. Of course, there was a certain irony in the ritualistic-feeding of the paper-eating monster truck sponsored by the Carroll County Office of Recycling.

The vast majority of my papers to be recycled are from the 40 or so years I served on local, county or state boards, committees or commissions – for many years, as an elected official – all of which were accompanied by bringing home boxes of papers, documents and records. It was only fitting and proper that I ‘give’ the papers back to the county.

The further irony is that many of those 40+-years were served on various committees and commissions which focused on the environment, municipal solid waste, agriculture, forestry, water and wastewater treatment – and recycling.

I, for one, am quite thankful for the shredding service. The recycling office reported that we were one of 316 other households that made the trek to the county maintenance facility.

The paper shredder in my office only allows me to feed it up to 16 pages at a time. At that rate, it would take me about two hours to shred one box full of papers. The county shredding service saved me days of mind-numbing work.

As I discussed in my column in TheTentacle.com on June 20 last year, “Fighting the ‘Stuff Monster,” goals are simply tools to focus one’s energy in positive directions. These goals can change as one’s priorities change and new ones are added, and others dropped.

One of the several priorities I have established in recent years is to greatly simplify my life and cut-out as much of the clutter as possible… Please read more here: http://www.thetentacle.com/ShowArticle.cfm?mydocid=5780

++++++++++

Eagle Archives: Standard, aka junk, mail goes back to 19th century http://tinyurl.com/oye7pyo





The nation's first countywide free rural postal delivery service got off to a shaky and contested start Dec. 20, 1896, in Carroll County.

According to multiple media accounts, including the Baltimore Sun, "One of the first pick-ups postal clerk Edwin Shriver had on the inaugural day of Carroll County's Rural Free Delivery service was a greased pig…"

"I'm sure he (the customer) did it as a joke," said Shriver. "But I slapped a 42-cent stamp on its rump and delivered it. That pig squealed the whole way."

A little over three years later, Charles Emory Smith, the 39th postmaster general of the United States and a journalist by trade, visited Westminster on April 30, 1900.



If Smith were to come back today, he would find the current state of affairs of the Postal Service look more like that haze produced by the forest fire.
These days, the future beautiful vista at the post office is less than clear, if my last visit there is any indication.

After I opened my box, I let out a squeal much like that of that greased pig in December of 1896. I quickly realized that I had once again fallen prey to the modern scourge upon the postal system that has significantly impacted our lives today, junk mail, or as it is politely referred to by the postal system, "standard mail."


Don't complain about the flood of unsolicited mail. "The Postal Service is hoping to deliver even more," according to an article in the New York Times last September.

"Faced with multibillion-dollar losses and significant declines in first-class mail, the post office is cutting deals with businesses and direct mail marketers to increase the number of sales pitches they send by standard mail…"

Now isn't that just special … Unbelievable… http://tinyurl.com/oye7pyo


See also:

Kevin Dayhoff - The Tentacle: Fighting the “Stuff Monster”




There comes a time in a person’s life when one needs to get a fresh supply of trash bags, buy a new heavy-duty paper shredder, back the pick-up truck to the basement door, get out the large party-size coffee maker, and clear the clutter.


For me, periodically fighting the “Stuff Monster” has been a survival tool – or I would have been the tragic-lead character in a serial reality horror show on hoarding a long time ago.

Yet, in my personal journey of a life-long struggle with the “Stuff Monster,” the deck has always been stacked against me.

For, you see, my situation has been exacerbated by the fact that I have been self-employed all my life. Many colleagues have been able to fight the “Stuff Monster” much more easily because all the filing cabinets full of papers and pallets of boxes in records storage, has been the responsibility of their respective employers.

Well, with me – since the late 1960s – I’ve been my own employer and keeping records, documents and stuff has always been my responsibility.

And, of course, for the last 35 or so years, in addition to art and farming, I have continuously served on any number of local, county or state boards, committees or commissions – and for many years, as an elected official – all of which was accompanied by my bringing home papers, documents and records by the wheelbarrow load.

[….]


I am trying to go as paperless as possible.

My paperless initiative is in part, because technology has advanced to the point that I can now handle many office and administrative functions more efficiently - without paper.

However, my reasons for going as paperless as possible are in part, as a matter of practicality. Above and beyond the fact that we travel a lot and are simply not at home to get hardcopy paper-mail at our post office box; at my advanced age, handling mountains of paper day-in and day-out has not gotten any easier.

Curiously, after almost 40-years of office administration, if you hand me a piece of paper, in several hours, I have no clue as to where it is. However, I always seem to be able to find electronic paperwork… Caroline will tell you that I have come to like reading online so much that I scan-in letters and writing-newspaper-research materials just so that I can read it on the computer…

Moreover, a large part of my decision to go paperless is a product of my environmental activism, which in part springs forth from faith beliefs…

Whatever - - I am a geek and although a few electrons may be inconvenienced; paperless is far more efficient…

That said, LOL – the initiative sure has had some interesting moments – and a few profound failures; however, it has been for the most part, quite successful…



Kevin E. Dayhoff June 20, 2012 The Tentacle http://www.thetentacle.com/author.cfm?MyAuthor=41 The mindless meanderings of a mad writer. Click here for a larger image: http://twitpic.com/hnwxx
+++++++++++++++
Kevin Dayhoff is an artist - and a columnist for:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/kevindayhoffTwitpic: http://twitpic.com/photos/kevindayhoff
Kevin Dayhoff's The New Bedford Herald: http://kbetrue.livejournal.com/ = www.newbedfordherald.net

Tumblr: Kevin Dayhoff Banana Stems www.kevindayhoff.tumblr.com/
Smurfs: http://babylonfluckjudd.blogspot.com/
Google profile: https://profiles.google.com/kevindayhoff/

E-mail: kevindayhoff(at)gmail.com
My http://www.explorecarroll.com/ columns appear in the copy of the Baltimore Sunday Sun that is distributed in Carroll County: https://subscribe.baltsun.com/Circulation/
+++++++++++++++

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Eagle Archives: Standard, aka junk, mail goes back to 19th century http://tinyurl.com/oye7pyo

Eagle Archives: Standard, aka junk, mail goes back to 19th century http://tinyurl.com/oye7pyo



The nation's first countywide free rural postal delivery service got off to a shaky and contested start Dec. 20, 1896, in Carroll County.

According to multiple media accounts, including the Baltimore Sun, "One of the first pick-ups postal clerk Edwin Shriver had on the inaugural day of Carroll County's Rural Free Delivery service was a greased pig…"

"I'm sure he (the customer) did it as a joke," said Shriver. "But I slapped a 42-cent stamp on its rump and delivered it. That pig squealed the whole way."

A little over three years later, Charles Emory Smith, the 39th postmaster general of the United States and a journalist by trade, visited Westminster on April 30, 1900.



If Smith were to come back today, he would find the current state of affairs of the Postal Service look more like that haze produced by the forest fire.
These days, the future beautiful vista at the post office is less than clear, if my last visit there is any indication.

After I opened my box, I let out a squeal much like that of that greased pig in December of 1896. I quickly realized that I had once again fallen prey to the modern scourge upon the postal system that has significantly impacted our lives today, junk mail, or as it is politely referred to by the postal system, "standard mail."


Don't complain about the flood of unsolicited mail. "The Postal Service is hoping to deliver even more," according to an article in the New York Times last September.

"Faced with multibillion-dollar losses and significant declines in first-class mail, the post office is cutting deals with businesses and direct mail marketers to increase the number of sales pitches they send by standard mail…"

Now isn't that just special … Unbelievable… http://tinyurl.com/oye7pyo


See also:

Kevin Dayhoff - The Tentacle: Fighting the “Stuff Monster”




There comes a time in a person’s life when one needs to get a fresh supply of trash bags, buy a new heavy-duty paper shredder, back the pick-up truck to the basement door, get out the large party-size coffee maker, and clear the clutter.


For me, periodically fighting the “Stuff Monster” has been a survival tool – or I would have been the tragic-lead character in a serial reality horror show on hoarding a long time ago.

Yet, in my personal journey of a life-long struggle with the “Stuff Monster,” the deck has always been stacked against me.

For, you see, my situation has been exacerbated by the fact that I have been self-employed all my life. Many colleagues have been able to fight the “Stuff Monster” much more easily because all the filing cabinets full of papers and pallets of boxes in records storage, has been the responsibility of their respective employers.

Well, with me – since the late 1960s – I’ve been my own employer and keeping records, documents and stuff has always been my responsibility.

And, of course, for the last 35 or so years, in addition to art and farming, I have continuously served on any number of local, county or state boards, committees or commissions – and for many years, as an elected official – all of which was accompanied by my bringing home papers, documents and records by the wheelbarrow load.

[….]


I am trying to go as paperless as possible.

My paperless initiative is in part, because technology has advanced to the point that I can now handle many office and administrative functions more efficiently - without paper.

However, my reasons for going as paperless as possible are in part, as a matter of practicality. Above and beyond the fact that we travel a lot and are simply not at home to get hardcopy paper-mail at our post office box; at my advanced age, handling mountains of paper day-in and day-out has not gotten any easier.

Curiously, after almost 40-years of office administration, if you hand me a piece of paper, in several hours, I have no clue as to where it is. However, I always seem to be able to find electronic paperwork… Caroline will tell you that I have come to like reading online so much that I scan-in letters and writing-newspaper-research materials just so that I can read it on the computer…

Moreover, a large part of my decision to go paperless is a product of my environmental activism, which in part springs forth from faith beliefs…

Whatever - - I am a geek and although a few electrons may be inconvenienced; paperless is far more efficient…

That said, LOL – the initiative sure has had some interesting moments – and a few profound failures; however, it has been for the most part, quite successful…



Kevin E. Dayhoff June 20, 2012 The Tentacle http://www.thetentacle.com/author.cfm?MyAuthor=41 The mindless meanderings of a mad writer. Click here for a larger image: http://twitpic.com/hnwxx
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Kevin Dayhoff is an artist - and a columnist for:

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