An amazing world

Friday, March 25, 2005

It’s absolutely amazing. I ordered this Powerbook on Wednesday afternoon (March 22, 2005). I issued a PO to Wade Oehler in Irving, Texas for a 15”, 1.67Ghz, Superdrive Powerbook and asked him to add the three year extended warranty, an extra power supply (to leave on my desk) and the iWork software program.

Once the PO got to Irving he put the order process into place. I have no idea what that means at all. I only know that I got an order confirmation email before the end of the workday.

I received a shipping confirmation email the next morning that had tracking numbers for both Apple and for FedEx. So I checked the status. I was surprised to find that the order had shipped already. The original order confirmation said that I should receive the shipment on or before April 4, 2005. That’s 12 days from the order date. I figured that gave them plenty of time to ship the unit since I had not requested any faster shipping method.

But the shipping information on the FedEx site said that the unit had shipped on the evening of the 23rd. I thought; “Hey, this thing should be hear by Monday!” Wait a minute, it arrived at the FedEx ramp at 8:16PM on the 23rd. Then it got moved to some other shipping point and arrived there at 10:36, after the cut off time. But it’s only 3:00pm now. Double check – where is it being shipped from? I assumed Cuppertino, CA or Irving Tx. But it might have been some other warehouse too. It says: “Shanghai, CN.” Hmm… CN, Connecticut is CT, what’s CN. Oh! Shanghai, China! Well that explains the possible April delivery date.

This morning, Friday, March 25, 2005, I checked the status again, fully expecting to find that it was on some FedEx receiving dock in the states waiting to be air shipped to a local delivery depot. But FedEx was way ahead of that. The package left Shanghai at 10:40 the previous evening. I guess the cutoff time must have something to do with overnight delivery times because it left Shanghai 4 minutes after the cutoff message. To make a long story a bit shorter, by 8:43 on Friday morning, it was on a Lansing, Mi, USA delivery truck.

Too bad our offices are closed today for the Easter holiday. But Lake Odessa is a small town and I routinely see the FedEx truck driving around. So I got in my pickup and took a drive. 10 minutes later I saw the FedEx truck on the main drag. I identified myself to the driver and upon displaying proper ID and affixing my signature to his pick-up register, I had the Powerbook in hand.

Yes. It’s amazing, I’m typing this on a brand new Apple Powerbook on Friday at about noon. Wednesday, two days ago, it was in a warehouse in Shanghai, China. What an amazing world we live in.