Hey Wil, after a long and tough week (we had to take our beloved cat on her last vet visit for the shot of compassionate love), plus feeling jetlagged after a two-week set of gigs overseas, I decided to make minestrone last night. Full of veggie goodness and more than enough to last for several meals. Soup is good for what ails ye! Spacewriter

Deb@UPS, While we have had many problems shipping with UPS (including a badly-misrouted order to a client worth thousands of dollars), I have to say that our local UPS delivery people delivering packages to US are very good. On the other hand, due to consistent problems over the years with UPS delivery of our own business product to our clients, I'm always somewhat hesitant to do business with companies that only use UPS. The reason? Misdeliveries, lost packages, and the experience of having our thoughtfully provided Christmas gifts to a military family tossed on a streetcorner and then lied about by the delivery person. Way to support the troops, UPS. Wil, sorry to hijack your thread of comments, but as you and UPS can see, your experience is hardly a new one. I do hope that you got or get some satisfaction from these people. SW

Wil, Keep tweeting about their screwup using the hashtag #UPS. They have people watching Twitter for this stuff, and eventually somebody will notice and do something, if for nothing else than to get you to stop illustrating how lousy their service is. I've done this with a couple of companies and it's amazing how quickly they expedite service when their name keeps getting tweeted with a "bad service" message. That being said, I try to avoid UPS like the plague. They once claimed they delivered a package to a relative who lived on a military base; what they really did was leave it on the sidewalk of a busy intersection, and thieves made off with it in no time. Then, when UPS tried to claim they never said they delivered it, we had the name of the person who told us, and a fax copy of the "signature". The delivery guy had forged it. We eventually got the base commander involved, but of course, by then, the holiday gifts were long gone to people who had no sense of ethics. anyway, keep tweetin' about their lousy service. And, I hope they come through for you. Four days to get a package less than 600 miles is pretty vile and useless. CC Petersen, aka Spacewriter

Spacewriter here, Wil. I'm an author, too, and I cannot for the life of me figure out why the AG thinks this is an issue. I think they need to get with the times, here.

Wil, no worries here! I follow you because I've been reading you stuff almost since the RFB days and you signed a copy of your book for me in a 'way cool manner in Boston AND because we count the BadAstronomer as a mutual friend. (Don't tell Phil that I said he's way cool -- it'll swell his head... ;) ) ccpetersen @spacewriter

That is just... frickin'... amazing!