Daily Archives: August 23, 2021
It’s A Mechazilla Monday . . .
Jan and I sat outside with our coffee again this morning, really enjoying the cool weather we’ve had this summer. In fact it was only 75° when we went out.
I know that places further out west are having heat problems, but our summer here has been much cooler than usual. And actually we haven’t had a 100° day so far this summer.
Unlike our first summer here in 1979 where we had 13 straight days of 100+° temps, and a lot other 100’s scattered through the summer, here we are 3/4 of the way through August, and our predicted high temps for the next 6 days are 93, 93, 90, 88, 90, and 88.
Not your usual late August temps here in south Texas, believe me.
I spent most of today at work going round and round with the U.S. Post Office trying to convince them that we are who we say we are.
I mentioned recently that I was setting up a new computer for our shipping department. Besides the usual stuff, the two main programs we use for shipping out packages are UPS Worldship and USPS Click N Ship Business Pro.
Now UPS Worldship is very simple to move over. Just go to their website, give them our UPS number, and download a new copy of Worldship, Then I just export the UPS data on the old computer, import it into the new computer. And I’m done.
But Click N Ship was another story. To download a new copy of the program, I needed to log into our US Post Office account, but I couldn’t because I didn’t know the password.
And I don’t know the password because the account was set up by my late predecessor and it wasn’t on any of the several lists I had. And when I tried to do a password reset, I also didn’t know what his pet was named, or what his favorite holiday was.
Now the website said that if I couldn’t log in or do a reset, I was supposed to just create a new account. But if I did this I was afraid it would erase all our data.
So I was on the phone for a while trying to convince them that we were really who we said, and finally, after she quizzed me about our account info, she sent me a temporary password to reset the account. And she said I was right about not creating a new account under the same name as our old one, and that it would have overwritten all our addresses and other data.
Wrapping up, Elon Musk and SpaceX just keep coming up with wild, outlandish ideas that are laughed at . . . until they work.
His latest idea, to reduce the weight of his Super Heavy Boosters by eliminating landing legs, and speed up the turn-around time to to relaunch, is to catch the booster in mid-air from the tower and then stack a new Starship on top of it.
Doing this, he hopes to have a ONE HOUR turn-around to relaunch the booster with a new loaded and ready to go Starship on top.
And Mechazilla as it’s called, is already under construction down in Boca Chica, TX.
And even more outlandish, Musk hopes to use Mechazilla and this one hour turn-around to offer point-to-point passenger service between major cities around the world.
Knowing Musk, don’t bet against him.
Thought For The Day:
“No country was ever saved by good men, because good men will not go to the length that may be necessary.” – Horace Walpole
