Shipping

This story starts about forty seconds ago as of 11 a.m., pacific standard time, on the third of January in the year of our lord two thousand and nine.

I got an e-mail from Valve confirming my online order. Included in this was the address that the things are being shipped from, and the one that things are being shipped to. Now the way that this is going to work is that Valve will hand it off to USPS, they'll take it to be processed, it will go onto a truck, and over to my place, where they'll find that I'm not home, put a note on my door, and a few days later when I finally remember to I'll go down to the post office to claim my package.

That works fine when I'm ordering something long range, but when I look at the address that Valve is shipping from I actually know where that is. It's about an hour from here. I have a car, it wouldn't be hard, but "I'll just swing by and pick it up" isn't one of the shipping options. It's a sign of bad bureaucracy, but there's nobody to yell at because we've automated our bureaucracy. It may be another symptom of my atrophying nerdity, but I'm becoming more and more appreciative of deals where there's someone to talk to, or yell at, as the situation warrants.