Category Archives: Rants

USPS Quietly Improves Tracking

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Live USPS Tracking?

E-tailers and consumers know that USPS tracking is a joke. For several years, Delivery Confirmation (DC) was just what its name implies—a method of checking that a package had been delivered. Although USPS.com displays a “Track and Confirm” search field on their website, DC numbers have historically returned two points of information (acceptance and delivery), coupled with one very misleading statement:

Information, if available, is updated every evening. Please check again later.

  • Your item was accepted at 1:06 PM on May 23, 2008 in St. Louis, MO 63103.

Information was generally not updated until the package had been delivered. More tracking points have begun to show up in the past 5 years, but we were still told to maybe expect more information each evening. Lies.

I happened to check on an incoming Priority shipment last week and noticed a new statement: Continue reading →

Illinois Unemployment Insurance Rates Rise

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One of the first topics our tax agent covered a few years back was unemployment tax. Larry said, “Single-employee S-corporations must pay unemployment insurance, but you can never claim unemployment from your own dissolved company. I don’t believe this is fair, but there’s nothing we can do about it.” So we pay unemployment taxes.

As usual, NPR delivered several gloomy economic reports this week as the U.S. Unemployment Rate rose again to 9.8%. I listened to interviewees on both sides of the fence share their stories. Some Americans are earnestly seeking employment, yet remain unemployed. Others admit that 6+ months of unemployment checks are simply an incentive for them to sit at home until the free money stops coming.

Today my company received a letter from the State of Illinois’ Department of Employment Security. Inside was our Annual Contribution Rate Determination, aka, a declaration of how much Unemployment Tax/Insurance we must pay:

2011 Illinois Contribution Rate Determination: 3.8%!

This year’s rate has increased about 0.5% Continue reading →

Non-mobile Websites on the iPhone

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If you’re reading this, you probably already understand why one might wish to view a regular, non-mobile website on the iPhone. For example, eBay now forcefully redirects iPhone traffic to a limited functionality mobile site (http://mobileweb.ebay.com). Among other things, relisting auctions from the mobileweb.ebay site is impossible. Blasphemy!

The Workaround

Servers perform these frustrating redirects by reading the browser’s “user-agent” ID. So, if we spoof the iPhone browser’s user-agent ID, web servers will believe the iPhone is a regular desktop browser. But, the iPhone’s Safari browser doesn’t support user-agent spoofing. This leaves us with two choices:

1) Jailbreak the iPhone

or

2) Install a browser app that supports user-agent spoofing

I went with option (2) and downloaded a browser called JourneyLite.

1) Download the free JourneyLite app:

Success: www.ebay.com (Non-mobile!)


Continue reading →

USPS Cracks Down on Online-Generated Postage Dates

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Like other small business owners, I’ve learned to expect three things from the United States Postal Service:

  1. A 5-15 minute wait in line
  2. Useless tracking information, and a complete lack of help when packages do get lost (about 1 in every 500!)
  3. Incompetence of approximately half of all postal employees (figure worsens when handed international packages…) Continue reading →