Groundhog day?

I read in sci.electronics.design that Arie de Muynck wrote (in ) about 'Groundhog day?', on Sun, 19 Dec 2004:

2.5 hours backwards in time! I bet that cost a lot!

Was it, perhaps, an extremely long package? (;-)

--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only. 
The good news is that nothing is compulsory.
The bad news is that everything is prohibited.
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk

This is the status of an item I ordered in the USA, destination Netherlands. Is this a normal list of events or is it groundhog day?

Dec 18, 2004 4:05 PM Departed FedEx location MEMPHIS, TN 7:29 AM Departed FedEx location MEMPHIS, TN 6:55 AM In transit MEMPHIS, TN 3:58 AM Departed FedEx location MEMPHIS, TN Dec 17, 2004 1:19 PM Arrived at FedEx location MEMPHIS, TN 7:00 AM Departed FedEx location OAKLAND, CA 12:19 AM In transit OAKLAND, CA Dec 16, 2004 11:43 PM In transit OAKLAND, CA Dec 17, 2004 1:30 AM Arrived at FedEx location MEMPHIS, TN Dec 16, 2004 8:37 PM Departed FedEx location OAKLAND, CA 4:11 PM Picked up EMERYVILLE, CA Dec 15, 2004 6:28 PM Package data transmitted

--
Regards,
Arie de Muynck

It must have been a large toroidal package. With a negative mass. DeAquino has finally succeeded! :) Or else it's a gordian knot, about the size of the moon. Did you ship the DeLorean car from "Back To The Future"?!! :)

Seriously, could the discrepancies be from the different time zones? CA is GMT -08:00, TN is what, GMT -5:00? That's a few hours difference. There are no "half-hour" timezones in the continental US that I can think of. There could be "daylight savings time" (-1hr) however.

(For our useless trivia knowlege, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada is -3:30GMT.) Isn't St. Johns only one of two places in the world with :30 differences?

Anyways it looks like most of the line items in that shipment are in reverse order, along with the list itself being in reverse... which is typically normal. :) Sheesh, do they expect all of us to be Win32 assembly programmers or what? :)

Maybe the tracking software isn't NZ-compliant? The Y2K bug would be dwarfed in comparison if all out-of-country packages started dissappearing backwards in time. :) Then again, the US president (arguably) makes the US move backwards and somehow gets praise for it... anything must be possible! ;)

Have a happy holiday - no matter which side of the pond you are on.

-M

destination. Weird, but supposed to be highly

[snip]

Most of the time, but I had a recent package that went...

Shanghai Subic Bay, Philippines Anchorage Phoenix

...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | | | E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat | |

| 1962 | I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

There are a bunch of them. The whole province of NF is 30 minutes off, as is all of India. So if you're outsourcing from St. John's to India you have a certain advantage (not that I want to think about the interaction of Newfie and Indian accents).

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

Only if Adelaide, South Australia, is the other one.

of the destination. Weird, but supposed to be highly

I heard many years ago stories of people fed-exing packages to other floors in their building because of the reliable service and because they were fed-exing a lot of packages anyway, and all of those packages went through Memphis. Since then, I believe they have short-circuited the process in a few appropriate ways - packages bound for the city of origin are intercepted before loading on the flight, and some short trips (I am aware of Los Angeles to San Diego, for instance) go by truck.

Isnt MEMPHIS, TN their main Hub? Every thing goes thru there regardless of the destination. Weird, but supposed to be highly efficient.

Cheers

Anchorage is basically directly on the shortest route from the West Coast of north America to north Asia (north along the coast and south between Japan and Russia/Japan/China). The airport there has a huge and somewhat bizarre duty free shop that is open in the middle of the night, offering stuff that mostly appeals to Asian travelers (during refueling stops). It may end up like Gander Newfoundland, which used to be a major refueling stop for trans-Atlantic flights, but is now bypassed by most commercial airliners (bizjets have to stop there).

Fedex leases space in Subic Bay (the former US Navy base) as their main Asian hub, but they'll probably be trying to negotiate something in China at some point soon. Shanghai to the Philippines and back north is a lot of backtracking.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

Memphis is their main hub. If the tracking info shows Memphis, that is the likely explanation.

But do not expect every package to go through Memphis - I have a client in Toronto and I ship from the metropolitan area of Philadelphia, and many but not all packages that I ship to Toronto go through Memphis. Many go on a more directly northward path without any hopping to Memphis.

But I do expect most Fedex express packages go to Memphis to change planes in a hub-spoking sort of way.

- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)

Some fair amount of air travel across the Pacific makes a stop in Alaska.

Try stretching a string over a globe from Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing, Soeul or other major cities of Japan, China or Korea to anywhere in the "contiguous 48" states of the USA. Chances are Anchorage Alaska is not really far out of the way. I believe the major package shipment companies should have a secondary hub there if they don't already.

- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)

I regularly use FedEx as a courier to various parts of Phoenix. Ultra reliable!

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Some years ago I was clearing out some paperwork from my mother's house, and came across a letter from an aunt talking about travelling from the UK to Washington DC during WWII (the family was seconded there from London).

The route was: overnight train to Prestwick, then plane to somewhere in Greenland. The passengers spent the night there, then flew to Gander. I think they also spent a night at Gander, before flying on to Washington.

How things change - 3 full days travelling to get from London to Washington (although the way things are going....;-)

Regards Ian

"Arie de Muynck" ...

Netherlands.

The package has re-appeared from the timewarped vortex and has arrived in Amsterdam.

Regards, Arie de Muynck