Brian Baker

As with many of my blog posts I am pretty biased in my opinions. I consider myself pretty good at making an argument, but the subjects that I choose to write about are usually pretty much one-sided. In this case, I wanted to take the opportunity to argue for the case of saving the postal system.

I will start by letting you know that I am personally involved because I actually work for the Post Office and I have worked in the transportation industry for many years. My current schedule is extremely limited and I am not complaining about that. In fact, I have tried to embrace the hiring process and I understand the way it works. I am currently a casual employee and I intend to be one for quite some time.

Since the economy has been a bust questions have been raised about the fact that the postal system is a money loser and has been for quite a while. Many solutions have been developed and all seem to involve some sort of cutback. While I am currently a postal employee, I am also a business owner, and a transportation sales rep. My unique combination of careers has given me reason to look at the problems with the postal industry with a unique perspective.

As a postal employee it would personally benefit my wallet if we could just maintain the status quo and keep things as they are. I realize that the postal system is losing money and something does need to be done to control these costs, but one of the reasons that I even applied for a job within USPS was the fact that they provided long term security with health benefits and a pension. These days those few things are getting very difficult to count on. When I was younger, that is just the way that I thought things worked. I thought that every job came with basic long term security, but as I entered the job market I quickly learned that there were very few choices that provided these basic needs. Therefore, one day long ago I put in an application at the Post Office. As it turns out many of the careers that offer long term security are those that are provided by the local or federal government. This has been the case since I was younger and should remain this way for many years to come.

As a business owner, I take full advantage of the services that the postal system offers. They give me the opportunity to market to my customers and invoice them as well. It is true that this can all be done electronically now, but some of the most successful marketing that I have done was the result of a piece of literature that was mailed directly to my prospect. Also, my success rate of getting invoices paid in a timely matter are partially the result of the ability of physically mailing the invoice to my customers. I admit that I rarely send a personal note in the mail anymore except for the holiday cards and birthday cards, but my business uses the mail nearly everyday.

As a transportation sales rep, I can truely appreciate the postal system for their economical rates and full service coverage. I can assure you that there is no public transportation company in the world that can compete with the USPS in terms of price and coverage. In fact, there are several transportation companies that tender their customers shipments to the USPS just because it is not cost effective to do it themselves. By eliminating our current postal system this would greatly raise the costs for delivering our mail and packages. True, we are currently paying the same or more via our taxes but we are also providing jobs, a great service, and long term security for many people at a time when these few things are so hard to come by.

The newly remastered Beatles tunes have recently hit the stores. Between that and the marketing hype over at iTunes I have been inspired to listen to some of their music. As I listened to my CD I realized that much of their music is still very relevant today. I started thinking about how much the music and media industry have changed.
Primarily, I was thinking about explicit lyrics and where the overall morals of the whole media industry has gone.

I listened to more than two hours of Beatles songs and I don’t recall hearing any swear words in their music. The beat resembles the new music of today and there was even a little hidden sub context that could be found in some of their songs, but it was all done without being blatantly obvious. I can’t help but to think that it was my generation that was the one to embrace all of the language and violence that is acceptable in most media outlets today. The last Beatles album “Let it be” was released in 1970 and for some reason I can remember everything going downhill from there. Nowadays, if I turn on the radio or the TV it doesn’t take too long before I hear or see something that I would have never seen or heard in 1970. I also recall that many of the leniencies that we see today required a great amount of debate to get them approved for public consumption. Needless to say, they all seem to have gotten approved.

Somehow, I feel responsible for the music that I hear on the radio today, I was among the “early adapters”. I approved of it all and screamed “freedom of speech” like everybody else, until now.

Do they really NEED to throw in the extra cus words into the lyrics today? Couldn’t they just eliminate the explicit scenes from the TV shows and still make them good? Sometimes it makes me cringe when I hear or see things in the media. Unfortunately, I keep listening and I keep watching, but man do I wish that they could keep me and my family entertained without doing it quite so much.

It has been a while since I posted anything on any of my several blogs. I have been more than a little busy trying to keep up with the doldrums of everyday life. However, the upcoming release of the new Apple iPad has awaken my blogging spirits to the point where I feel the urge to chime in with my own two cents. If you weren’t already aware, I am a huge fan of my first generation iPod Touch. This little device has become my favorite toy that seems to keep me entertained for hours on end. Not only is it a great gaming device but it has worked it’s way into my everyday activities as well. It has become my favorite web surfing tool and my blogging tool of choice as well. Don’t ask me why, but I prefer writing a full out blog post on my iPod Touch even more so than I do with my computer. The first word that comes to mind is “convenient”.

I truly look forward to the release of the new iPad and I can almost guarantee that it will get just as much use in my household as does my little iPod Touch. There is, however, one thing that absolutely boggles my mind and that would be the overpriced charge that all of these publishers are charging for ebooks online. I am normally an avid reader and I tend to have a good paperback with me or close by at all times. I often go trolling garage sales on Saturday mornings looking for little fictional treasures, of which, I can usually find a couple without too much effort and without too much cost.

The future is here and all of this seems to be changing before my eyes. All of a sudden for some very strange reason people seem to be very inclined to drop more money on an e-version of a book than they would on a paperback edition. Now, I am not a book publisher, nor do I ever have the desire to be one, but for some reason the math just doesn’t work out for me. You would think that with the onset of providing books electronically that this would actually lower the cost of a new book, not make it more expensive. There are no book manufacturing costs, no trees being killed, and distribution costs seem to be at a minimum. These three things alone would make one think that the price of a good book would drop exponentially. Am I wrong for assuming so? This issue would not bother me so bad if I had not become so addicted to buying $1 games for my iPod. I am still amazed that games that once cost $20, $30, $40 or more can now be purchased for such a reasonable fee. Excuse me if I am wrong but doesn’t it probably take just as much effort to create a quality video game as it does to write a good book? Yet for some reason the price of books seem to be on the rise? Also, once I finish with the book, then what? As far as I can tell I can’t hand that book off to anyone else to read. This all seems great for the publisher but it seems that it is me the consumer that is getting hosed on this deal. Then again, the publishers wouldn’t be doing it this way if the consumers weren’t ready to pay their price. This all just makes me think that other readers out there just have more money to pluck down than I do. Oh well, I guess that I can’t win them all, but I am eagerly awaiting the opportunity to get a copy of the latest and greatest ebook from the library or maybe even half price e-paperbacks.