Irony is the Shackles of Youth

Back in October, I received an email from Expedia about a trip to Paris, France. It was obviously an error so I sent a polite email letting the person who sent it to me know they had entered the wrong email address.

This week I received a confirmation from Thalys for Wifi service on the train. Obviously these people are not only going to Paris, they are taking a train to other European cities. And still inputting the wrong email address into websites.

The email included not only my email address as the login, but also this person's password question and answer. Technically, I could rest their password with this information.

Man, they are so lucky I am an honest soul.

I was commenting on a post made by alice_montrose, when I decided to make this post. She was talking about how her post office has a rate specifically for printed material that's used mostly by companies, but can be used by individuals. The USPS has a similar thing called Media Mail. This use to be called "library rate." In fact, if you order from some sites (like Lulu, you'll find that as a shipping option still. A lot of companies use it to ship things individuals can use it as well.

What is Media Mail? It's a cheaper (if slightly slower) way of shipping. The prices vary depending on weight, but I can guarantee it's cheaper than standard. They don't really advertise it much at the post office, which is why most people don't know about it. I mention it not only because you can use it to ship books (which I do a lot of), but also if you are shipping recordings, manuscripts, CDs, DVDs, printed educational material, test materials, etc. Full list (along with some of prices) can be found here. Of particular note, if you are trying to get published and sending a lot of manuscripts, packages under 1lb only cost a $1.30 to ship Media Mail.

So there's my public service announcement of the day.