5/4/7
Still trying to get your packages shipped today....
Streets are flooded everywhere and Fredericks is no exception. No one here to help as they cannot navigate in anything less than a pirogue today, but we are still attempting to call in help for at least one post office run.
Update: Alice was determined to get your packages out today & told me, "The mail must go through!". She told me to stick by the phone in case she couldn't make it & off she went. She said she made it to the post office just as they were getting ready to lock up, although she said the roundabout route she had to take added another 5 miles to the trek. Noticing flooded areas on the opposite side of a couple of the streets, she took another roundabout route back home.
Alice says that just as she was starting to load the bins on the cart in the post office parking lot, a southern gentleman by the name of Ron happened by & helped her get everything inside. Thanks to Ron & my ever tenacious wife, Alice, your packages shipped today... my hats off to both.
2/16/7
First, just an update on the container I mentioned last time. It was due to be finally delivered on the 15th of January...hmmm...& was finally delivered at 7:00 AM this morning! Better late then never, as they say, and it is just another of the hurry up and wait post-Katrina aftereffects along with the inflated 5.5 times the pre-Katrina price! I have no complaint as others were 7 times the price! You often hear that plumbers charge more than doctors, but with a recent drain unclog that was $45 3 months prior to the storm, we only had to
y t< ay $180 flat rate, only inflated by 4, pst-K, and it was done by the same company, and in fact, the same person.
Well... enough rambling & I'll get to the reason I am here. No, I am not retiring from my job in retirement that has been rumored. I'll be here till I'm 100, hopefully! Last September I took a loss on wiring harnesses for the whole month trying to save the jobs for both my harness makers. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to keep both busy at the time & I did have to let one go :-( Now that harnesses are in demand once again there are some minor delays even though I have been pitching in what I can. Feel free to ask if there will be a delay with your harness when ordering if it's something needed ASAP.
On another note, shipping will be delayed this week as the post office will not be open Monday due to the Presidents' Day holiday & our post office will not be open on Tueday... Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras! They will reopen on Ash Wednesday & I expect we will be swamped with incoming mail & outgoing packages, further adding to the delay.
1/12/7
It's been nearly a year since posting here... how time flies... as, thankfully, things have been going relatively smoothly with the shipping & any spare time we had was devoted to doing repairs that we couldn't find contractors for. The outside is mostly done with only a little landscaping left to be done this spring. Things are shaping up nicely now & I have a shipping container coming next week that will allow us to move some things out of thjob here in house to enable inside repairs... ceilings, walls & etc. Alice & I, along with all Louisianans & Gulf Coast residents, were especially thankful for the relaxed hurricane season this year. A truely needed break!
Alice & I are still feeding the feral cats in our neighborhood along with a few racoons, opossums & armadillos that even the cat people do not want to feed, saying that they take away from the cats :-( We feel that even the wildlife that have been displaced & starving have a right to life, so they share in our $30 a week habit of cat food. We have more or less adopted the 2 cats that are deathly afraid of storms as we allow them in the house & have given them names. The multicolored one was surely someone's pet & has settled back into that role, but the black one is still a friendly feral cat that prefers the outdoors. I was shocked to see how friendly he really was a few nights ago when he walked right up to one of the opossums & greeted him with a kiss like a long time buddy... and perhaps they have been buddies in the aftermath of the storm. We have one other regular that we named & although he has been coming to eat since day 3 post Katrina, he is still very much the feral cat & no one can approach him, so I doubt he was ever a pet.
I know after feeding people, pets & wildlife that one of the more rewarding experiences is seeing the pets, worst the wear for neglect, go from skin & bones to fat, healthy animals.
Well... it's Mardi Gras season once again & we have already started shipping the traditional Mardi Gras lagniappe with orders and, as always, I wanted to post the expiration date of the Moon Pies for those that choose to save them for later.... always seems to be at least one. Anyway, the expiration date this year is 4/30/07 & we hope you enjoy them along with the beads that the children usually end up with. I've been told that the cup & beads are favored by the little ones over the pies!
2/23/6
From the Times-Picayune
N.O. main post office will reopen today
But it doesn't mean delivery will speed up...
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Six months after Hurricane Katrina shuttered its doors, the city's main post office on Loyola Avenue reopens today.
But like so much post-Katrina, the post office at 701 Loyola Ave. won't be exactly the same for some time. It will offer retail services and customers will have access to their post office boxes, U.S. Postal Service spokesman David Lewin said.
Delivery operations for ZIP codes 70112, 70113 and 70130 will be phased back into the building in the next few weeks, he said.
But the reopening won't have any effect on the mail delivery delays experienced by New Orleans area residents since the storm, Lewin said.
Those delays won't clear up until the processing and distribution center, which was housed in the same building and handled six million to eight million pieces of mail a day, reopens this spring. Still, Lewin called the reopening of the main post office a milestone.
"It's the beginning of re-establishing the downtown operation," he said. "This is going to make things a little bit more convenient for our downtown customers."
2/8/6
Last week we had tornadoes, heavy rain, thunder & at least 3 hours of constant lightning that they called "cloud to ground lightning".... hmmm... and I thought lightning was lightning :-()
Anyway, they are still talking about it even today.... pics in the paper that'll I'll post here:
Headline:
I think the saying goes... 3 steps forward, 1 step backwards :-(
The only Katrina stray animals left running the neighborhood streets now are cats & Alice & I are still feeding them along with a local animal organization. The night of tornadoes brought many of the strays to our front door & 2 were particularly freaked out by the storm... so much so that they were yowling at the top of their lungs while cowering under benches on either side of our front door...so we decided to coax those 2 inside. It took a bit to get them to move, but they eventually did a low crawl into the house & ran for cover under the sofa. I believe that they thought Katrina was coming back for them... in any event, they were pretty scared. The others seemed to be content to just get out of the heavy rain & were still too timid to approach, anyway.
Repairs here at the homestead are slow in coming... only 2 contractors have actually showed up & started work, but have not been back to complete anything yet, and we are still waiting our turn with the roofer... perhaps a good thing since my patch jobs were ripped up during last week's storm. We tried, but could not find a general contractor to handle all repairs, so we are dealing with individual contractors for each type of repair needed & it is just hurry up & wait with all of them. One promised to be here for sure 10 days ago & when I called 8 days ago he said he would be starting the next day for sure... still waiting :-( In the interim, we had another bit of bad luck when a run-away 2000 Ford Explorer crashed into the front of our home, so we now have to wait on a brick mason, as well :-(
Going into the tenth year of helping y'all with your game parts & we've run into another first... it seems USPS can damage packages just like UPS & Fed-X. Arcade Tony was the disappointed recipient of this package:
Our packages have all made it to their final destinations intact over the years through two major catastrophes & several air mishaps with the only other type of damage being to the boxes only when left out in the rain at the delivery point... contents surviving nicely... and a no loss record... but... you know how it goes when you're on a roll... yep... another damaged package!
I know you guessed it... yes... this was the replacement package for the first ever damaged package! The saga continues! Jeez... I hope this one was Tony's bad luck & not ours, because our streak needs to be broken before a semi cuts the house in half or a Cessna mistakes our backyard for a landing strip!
Oh... the good & bad news update from our homeowners insurance. Second time around they did not lose the claim & sent us a check a few weeks ago. The bad news... they must know contractors that work for a lot less than the ones I've found, because the spread between what they say it'll cost to make us whole again & what we're getting for bids is as big as the levee breach!
Mail & packages...
Incoming mail is pretty good despite the fact that our postman had to leave again to be with his ailing mother in Houston. Incoming priority, express & certified do not seem to help &, in fact, have proven to take longer than regular first class mail in most cases:-( Outgoing priority packages are running pretty consistent on 3 days now...thankfully!
The sun is coming up, so I'm heading off to bed for a couple hours before the new day begins, but I'll try to post any updates to this page as they occur.
Post Script:
As many of you already know, we started shipping Mardi Gras goodies a couple weeks ago & I wanted to post the expiration date on the pies/cakes in case there is someone that doesn't devour them immediately... do not consume after May 14, 2006!
12/12/5
This leads me to believe that Priority may be a waste of good game part money, especially when standard snail mail from Birmingham has arrived in 8 days.
Still getting a lot of email looking to check on their orders, so as best I can figure, Priority out-going is running from 2 days to 12 days :-( Some packages seem to forgo the scenic route that others take, and go directly to their destination, but it all appears to be at random making it impossible to predict.
I'm sure y'all have noticed that my email lacks the usual holiday spirit & animated decorations. Alice & I both have found it hard to get into the spirit of the holiday season this year in the aftermath of Katrina & her continuing curve balls that seem to arise daily. They just keep coming..... FEMA says sorry, the insurance company... after taking nearly 3 months to get to us... calls to let me know that they have lost all our paperwork including the typed statements, photos & videos I supplied, so we have to start again from scratch :-( They tell me that many of the people that they brought in as inspectors simply could not handle all the devastation they were exposed to & just left for home.... often times without turning in their case files, as happened with us :-( Our grandchildren are all scattered about other states & will not be able to come home for the holidays.... another bummer!
While I'm rambling... another surprise came in the mail today from our bank. I had changed banks to help those who inadvertantly sent NSF checks, to a bank that started out with only a $3 charge for them... later raised to $6... but I guess I neglected to cover myself :-( During our storm downtime & spotty mail, our account dried up at the bank & caused a lot of our checks to be NSF. Today's surprise... the statement finally arrived & we now know that every time we bounce a check it cost us $30 each!! Should have asked about that when I swapped over, but... who knew :-( Just when I thought I couldn't possibly get any more depressing news.... the phone just rang with more bad news. It was Beth Yeargin calling to let me know that Robert Yeargin, one of the great guys in the hobby, had passed. I was floored... you never expect to hear something like that. He will be sorely missed by Alice & I, and by all those in the hobby, I'm sure. Our hearts go out to his daughters, Faith, 6 & Hope, 4, as well as, to Beth.
11/28/5
11/25/5 I give thanks for that.
After the storm, so many people were helping strangers, Alice & I included, that a lack of caring was paid to pets, and after the first reports of death I enlisted my grandson Chris to aid me with feeding & caring for the hundreds of pets left behind...in our immediate neighborhood... locked in, caged up, chained, and unable to do much of anything to sustain life on their own. Other people that rode out the storm started giving us scraps of food, dog food, cat food for them, as well as, reporting to us any animals that were in need.
I give thanks to my grandson Chris, although, I wish he never had to see many of the things he saw at his youg age. I give thanks for those who donated pet food.
The City of Gretna & the Gretna police protected us, delivered food, water & ice to us daily and when they learned of our pet quest, bags & cans of pet foods.
I give thanks for that... especially to Chief Arthur Lawson for personally stopping by to check on us.
Duffy from Florida who gave me back communications four months earlier than expected.
I give thanks to him!
Once back online it seemed that all of you wanted to stock up on parts, which helped Alice & I to have a much needed cash flow. Don't think that it went unnoticed... some of you, 10 times what you would normally buy.
I give thanks to you for that.
Alice & I have been able to help others less fortunate here, with food, clothing, bedding, jobs & transportation to & from work.... well, it's mostly Alice while I hold down the fort here, but I help her whenever possible. Being pushed to the wall ourselves, we would not have been able to do this, but for many of you making contributions. Chris & Lisa Moore planted the seed that helped so many & were a huge boost to many, many people here. Other help came from John & Sue Anderson, Doug & Jen Werner & others who preferred to remain anonymous... and one who wanted to be referred to as "some guy in Texas".
I give thanks to all of them.
My wish?
I can only wish & pray that the fire department's searches of the rubble come up empty handed & that all of the 6,027 people still missing are found to be living in other parts of the country.
I will gladly give thanks for that!
11/24/5
Here's the story as printed in the Times-Picayune....
11/12/5
I made quite a few different calls today trying to find out when our main post office was going to reopen and after several responses of, "it's closed indefinitely", one brave person told me that the plan is to reopen in February if all goes well.
While calling I learned that since the PO was closed yesterday in observance of Veterans Day, that the Harvey, La post office was going to be open from 8:30AM to 11:00AM, so I tried to do some good by getting your packages out today, but my daughter arrived just as they were locking the doors :-(
Well... it took seventy-four days, but our insurance claim adjustors were here bright & early this morning, measuring, clicking off pics & asking a caboodle of questions... it was our turn! Unlike the rep I spoke to on the phone that gave me the impression that we were basically on our own with all the expenses incurred after disallowing this & that & deducting the special "hurricane deductable" on our policy, this team seemed very friendly & affable, telling me that we should be reimbursed for a good part of our damages. Of course, they said they would have to let me know in about 10 days... hmmm... where have I heard that before :-() Here is the tip I'm offering to anyone who owns property in a hurricane zone... read your policy carefully & look for clauses that change things when the damage has been done by a hurricane, such as the deductible being more than 10 times the norm for damages incurred from other sources & caps... limits... on specific damages.
11/9/5
Things right here in our immediate neighborhood like the cars & trucks parked on the streets at night with people sleeping in them... more often than not, in a sitting up position... people knocking at our door asking if we have a room to let... something I never thought would happen in my wildest dreams. The open overhead door on a local company the next street over that allows you to see the numerous cots set up for their employees & families.
Trying to find a restaurant or store of any kind open after 5PM... or open, at all! The McDonald's at one corner of our street has finally been readied to reopen, but has not due to lack of employees, the same reason that the other businesses around it have not reopened. The barber shop at the opposite end of our street has been repaired, reroofed, cleaned up & reopened... the rumor is that his brother is in construction upstate, as others are still waiting in line for a roofer, Alice & I among them. I've yet to see anyone there for a haircut, though, and he has painted up signs proclaiming "open for business" propped up all around the place.
Alice just interupted me saying that she would like to have a pizza tonight. Some sort of special that she just saw advertised on TV. I learned a long time ago that the only correct answer to that is, "sure!" :-) She calls & the pizzeria... open till 9PM, big surprise... says no specials as advertised & only a limited number of pizzas can be made in medium or large only, and in any combination of cheese, onions, green peppers, pepperoni or sausage. She passes & tries the other open pizzeria. She settles for a pepperoni, black olive & green pepper pizza for about twice the normal price & it'll be delivered in about hour & a half! Hey... Chris & Lisa... that offer of a good Chicago pizza still open :-) Just kidding... but while I'm here let me thank you both publicly along with others who contributed to helping us & our neighbors in a time of need. THANK YOU!
So many people were laid off this week that I would think that some of these lesser jobs at places that cannot open may be filled. Who knows... with 330,000 people on umemployment here those jobs still remained unfilled. It's just hard to fathom all the repercussions in the aftermath of something as horrendous as Katrina/Rita. The workers coming back have no place to live... hotels that are up & running have more autos parked in front of them than at a used auto sales lot, suggesting that most of the rooms are multi-occupied. It's still a mess... that's for sure!
Halloween? Why was so much trick or treat candy shipped out with your orders? Not a single child came to the door on Halloween nor did I see any in the neighborhood when riding my bike that evening. Seems many of the children are enrolled in schools away from here... from Texas to Maine and all points in-between.
That's just a few things to give you an idea how things are different around here. As for the post office, we have not been able to pick up mail at the PO for quite some time, since they are delivering it now, but it only comes twice a week, so your mail in is slow... 7 to 10 days... so if you are in a hurry for your parts the only thing I can suggest is that you mail payment in via priority mail which is taking 4 to 6 days in coming. If you need the parts quickly your best bet is to buy direct from Happ or other online arcade part sources.
As for out going packages... they were very timely when we first started shipping, but since more people have returned, the PO still working with the same handicaps of few employees, three branches with the local hub being transferred to Baton Rouge, already under a lot of pressure, it has slowed the delivery time to anywhere between 3 days & 12 days. About 20% of the packages are running a 10-12 day delivery time with no rhyme or reason that I can figure. It doesn't seem to be certain areas as 2 sent to the same city will have 8 or 9 day differences in shipping time. The PO here tells me that the big problem is having trucks & drivers to transport mail to Baton Rouge... since the usual hub PO was in New Orleans... and the result is that once I send a package it may not leave this PO until the next day... or even the second day... and then the overworked Baton Rouge PO is slow in processing this sea of packages. From Baton Rouge they ship to the Sunbelt hub in Atlanta, Ga for rerouting to you.
Under the circumstances, and experiencing much worse service in coming from the other 2 major carriers, I give the USPS high marks for their service in these trying times.
I have no control over the mail & whereas they always use to match my predictions of delivery to the day exactly, they are now making me have an average of 50/50 in my predictions :-( If you still opt to order parts from Alice & I be prepared for the worse case delivery time while hoping for the same delivery time you've been accustom to over the past nine years.
Thanks for all your support...
10/24/5
The Times-Picayune is back in town... yea... we have a newspaper again! It's about the size of the Metro section alone, pre-Katrina, but a newspaper nonetheless. Here's a couple pics I scanned in from the paper that might not be in the outside world.
Unbelievable! This is one of the 3 dump sites in Orleans Parish alone that to date has amassed nearly 200,000 cubic yards of storm debris! Ironically, in the lower right hand corner sits a faded State Farm sign.
Nearly a half million refrigerators, freezers & other appliances inhabit the graveyard with 2500 being added daily! Freon & oil must be drained from the toxic smelling refrigerators... the spoiled food properly discarded... pressure washed & then compacted for metal recycling & hauled away. Talk about your hazardous jobs... I'd have to pass on this one!
It looks like the Times-Picayune hasn't lost it's sense of humor as they depicted in today's paper a new Halloween costume derived from the above pic of refrigerators.
10/13/5
Yes... it's a mess all right... still wondering why he asked, though.
He says, "Well, there is obviously nothing I can do with this, so what say we walk down to your place & see if I can take care of your problem." Oh yeah! I had my bicycle, but I took him literally & walked it since he must have had 50 pounds worth of gear hanging from his tool belt.
He takes a look at my entry boxes first & asks what all the wiring is, so I had to tell him I had a bootlegged line jumping out all my terminals temporarily, so that I could use phone jacks in the house, but not to worry because I'd undo it all right away. He says let me go get my truck & I'll see if I can get you going. I'm hoping that's not the last time I see him :-()
Quite a while passes before he returns & I had long since undone my deeds. He says sorry for taking so long, but I've been trying to call my wife & kids in Florida & finally got thru to them. I've been here 2 weeks helping out & it's just as hard for us to get a line out as it is for anyone else.
He has to get it approved before he can do the work, so I crossed my fingers. While on the phone to his supervisor he tells me they have a work order scheduled for me on Jan 17th, 2006 & I said, I know :-( Several more minutes of conversation ensued between him & his supervisor & I thought it was all over until I overheard him say that he would take care of it, anyway. I don't know what they were discussing, but those words I did hear & they sounded pretty good to me.
"I'm going to go ahead & repair all your lines" he said. Yea!!!! He proceeded to get all my lines back up & working better than pre-Katrina... no static, like I had been experiencing. ADSL back up & running great... solid 3mbds. My day had been made!
He says there will probably be someone else out here or calling about this, so just go ahead & tell them that Duffy from Florida took care of it for you.
Thank You Duffy from Florida & Ms Marie!!!!
As far as conducting business goes, we are pretty much back to normal with everything current & fully stocked anew this past week... leaving only the mail as the weak link at this time. It may take a day or two longer than it use to, due to the shortened postal hours & lack of reopened post offices, but they have come through in these difficult times nonetheless. Our outstanding mail that had been stored during the storms has all been delivered except for one, and all packages that were caught up in the shipping process during the storms have been delivered.
We are shipping new orders out daily & all our incoming stock has been arriving right on schedule.
Alice & I can't say it enough... thanks for your concerns & prayers.
PostScript:
Ms Marie, "repairman finder", and her 16 year old daughter were the only other people on our street during Katrina & for some time after, so I imagine that the bond that developed will last a lifetime & this probably won't be the last time she bails us out.
We will not be shipping Friday the 24th of February as Alice will be undergoing surgery that day. Shipping will resume on Monday the 27th.
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By Michelle Hunter
East Jefferson bureau
Many of you have been asking me to update this status page & although not much has been going on, at least a half dozen requests have said to just give them a dose of my usual ramblings if I had the time.... sooo....
It's been quite some time since our last incoming mail delivery, so I was surprised to see the postman this afternoon. The mail was postmarked from 11/18 thru 12/5, so there is still no rhyme nor reason to the enroute time needed to get mail here :-( The winner today was Mike's payment from Birmingham, AL, which he sent Priority mail on November 18th.
It was bound to happen someday... we have our first cap kit snafu. About 2 weeks ago Janice ran out of labels for the K4900 & K7000 cap kits, which she was waiting on me to supply. She had 10 kits already made and waiting on the labels, while I was dragging my feet. When I finally gave her 100 of each label she affixed K7000 labels to the pre-made kits... evidently, without verifying them, because they turned out to be K4900 kits. That leaves us with 10 k4900 cap kits labeled as K7000. One of the shipped ones has been found along with 6 of them still on the rack here, but that leaves 3 unaccounted for :-( If you have purchased a K7000 cap kit in the last two weeks you can quickly determine if it is correct by the presence of the 2200uf cap... the largest one in the K7000 kit. If you do not find the 2200uf cap you most likely have one of the 3 unaccounted for kits. LMK & I'll correct the error immediately.
Since Thanksgiving is a time to give thanks I thought I'd do a little rambling of thanks myself. First, I'm grateful that Katrina was as kind as she was to our family. She was a very bad girl that came through with mean intentions, stacking up damages beyond comprehension, destroying dreams, hopes, wills, homes, boats, cars, places of employment, and worst of all, the loss of love ones. At first, rating on a scale from 1 to 10... 10 being the worst, I had guessed her wrath on us at a 4, but since Alice & I have been helping our neighbors since the storm, seeing the plight of others, I've grown to appreciate how lucky we were & have changed my thoughts on that scale. I now believe I should have made a 1 the worse case scenario & placed us at a "lucky" 7 on that scale.
The Times-Picayune finally did a story on the mail situation today... front page material. The only points that were not mentioned , as far as I can see, are these....
I haven't put many pics of the aftermath up here as most of them are just too depressing & they were shown by the media for many weeks before we even had our power restored, but I thought that this map pic from the Times-Picayune this morning might give a better propective of why this city is still so crippled. This shows the large areas still without basic electricity & there are many pockets without electricity in the "good" zones. One of the 2 buildings on our street that were without power came back this week, and in the surrounding area many streets still have at least one unpowered building. 
About the only thing that has changed around here is that more people are coming back which is taxing the already long lines, shortages of goods, housing & especially the handicapped postal service. Some time has passed now & it seems that the plight of Louisiana is already becoming an event of the past that slips people's minds, other then residents. I'm spending a lot of time on answering email about why I haven't received someones payment, or why they don't have the package yet, and once I remind them of Katrina's wrath, I get... "totally forgot about that"...
which I can understand since we try to forget about it being right here in the middle of it, but there is always something that crops up & slaps you in the face as a painful reminder.
Bob & Alice
Finally got the tree remains & debris removed this weekend... 4 trailer loads! I thought it was a little crazy that we are paying a small fortune to get the trees cut up to throw away when people up north are paying a small fortune to get them cut up to keep for winter fuel:-() I guess the trees are really the losers in either case :-(
Things are going along a lot smoother now thanks to one of my neighbors. Ms Marie from down the street came knocking on my door & told me there was a telephone repairman down the street that she had told about my phones being out & he told her to send me over there. When I got there & told him that Ms Marie had sent me he said take a look at this mess.... huh, I was thinking.
