Month: December 2002

My first day off in what feels like weeks is today. I was up at the crack of dawn out of habit and I’m still going. On any other day (without work) I’d still be in bed, sleeping like a baby right now. How things change.

I’ve also got a cold in my eye, or so my optometrist says. I’m doing better than I was yesterday when it came to how my eye was (it was blood shot — it’s been like that for days), but I have to stick with medication for a time…

I had a thought that I have had with US Mail for a while. I don’t know if I ever talked about it (ranted, excuse me) in my journal before but I thought this was actually a good idea…. It’d help out Big Brother, unfortunately, as well as help out the US Postal service.

First thing you do is get rid of stamps as they are right now. Each household is given an account with the US mail and charged for mail they send and mail they receive. Lets say you only receive junk mail (not even bills) and never send anything — your bill would be basically a few cents on the dollar. If you do heavy sending and receiving, of course your bill will be higher.

Each message that you need to send isn’t given a regular postage stamp, it’s given a barcode so that the item can be tracked, charged to yur account, etc. The Postal Service sends you new barcodes with each billing statement….

Some would complain that some people use the US Mail and don’t live in a home or an apartment or a fixed place. This is very true. If you DO need to buy individual stamps, they would be able to be purchased at a much higher cost than what you have right now….

Then there are those who would complain about this – how much tracking ability should the Government have over mail? I don’t think much is necessary but I also believe that it’s important to be able to track malicious mail – Anthrax, mail bombs, etc…. One barcode can tell you where a stamp was purchased (if not charged to an account), when (time, date)… You can piece together much more evidence from that….

It’s an ambitious idea but I do believe it’s a worthy idea too. The US Postal Service is suffering in it’s current design and it’s time for an overhaul of equipment used and methods used of dealing with the Mail.