What is mailstop?
Kinko
Hi,
Today, I saw an ad by Los Alamos National Laboratory:
Los Alamos National Laboratory. Mail Stop A117, Los alamos,
New Mexico 87545.
What is Mail Stop? Is that a kind of derivative of "P.O. Box"?.
Kinko
Gary Flynn
Kinko wrote:
> What is Mail Stop? Is that a kind of derivative of "P.O. Box"?.
A "mail stop" is an arbitrary location in a large office complex
where your mail is left. Only the US Government could create so
inefficient a system. This is exactly not a P.O. Box (which almost
ensures reliable delivery of your mail.) "Stop" is a noun
in the American vernacular that refers to a place where a delivery
person pauses regularly (for one purpose or another.)
Sending your mail to a "mail stop" is, generally, as reliable
as sending it to the Moon (but twice as slow.)
Only people who are married to mail stops mail mail to mail stops;
everyone else mails mail to a person.
Regards,
Gary Flynn
Washington, DC
Robert Lieblich
In the Navy we call them "codes," and one code is always writing to
0another. My code is "SEA-OOL3." "SEA" is very short for "Naval Sea
Systems Command." The organization was once known as the Bureau of
Ships, but research revealed that the average American could almost
understand what a Bureau of Ships did, so the name had to be changed.
People address correspondence within the Navy by code, so it would not
be uncommon for me to receive a memorandum from, say, SEA-0222,
addressed to me at SEA-00L3.
To complicate matters, the codes are supposed to be at least a loose
reflection of the organizational structure of the place. SEA-02 is the
contracting office (no, gang, it isn't shrinking; it handles contracts),
00L is the Office of Counsel, etc. After a while, people start talking
about other offices - and their occupants - by their codes. "See if 02
has a minute to talk." It gets pathological. Then, just when everyone
has the hang of things, codes get switched. One day everyone in 05 came
to work to discover they were in 03. My old friend 56X33 was now 03X33.
Between remembering all these codes and using them, we have created an
almost impenetrable barrier to the outside world. Worth it, wouldn't
you say?
Bob Lieblich <lieblich@erols,com>
alan auerbach F
Yes.
--
Al.
curtis cameron
Gary Flynn wrote:
>
> A "mail stop" is an arbitrary location in a large office complex
> where your mail is left. Only the US Government could create so
> inefficient a system. This is exactly not a P.O. Box (which almost
> ensures reliable delivery of your mail.) "Stop" is a noun
> in the American vernacular that refers to a place where a delivery
> person pauses regularly (for one purpose or another.)
Gary is obviously from Washington, DC, since he sees the world from
a government point of view.
Just about all large companies have mail stops. It keeps the workers
in the mail room from having to know exactly where each person's
desk is. The mail room staff will receive a letter marked for, for
example, Joe Smith at M/S 57. The don't know Joe, but they put the
letter in the box for M/S 57. Another person will carry all the mail
for M/S 57 to the general area where Joe is, and distribute all the
mail for that area to each person.
I don't think it has anything to do with the government - the US
Postal System does not use the numbers.
-Curtis Cameron
John Nurick
On Wed, 09 Apr 1997 20:17:25 -0400, Robert Lieblich
<lieb...@erols.com> wrote:
[snip]
>In the Navy we call them "codes," and one code is always writing to
>0another. My code is "SEA-OOL3." "SEA" is very short for "Naval Sea
>Systems Command." The organization was once known as the Bureau of
>Ships, but research revealed that the average American could almost
>understand what a Bureau of Ships did, so the name had to be changed.
Is it really just obscurantism, or is the change from "ship" a
desirable reflection of any or all of the following?
(1) novelties such as submarines and aircraft, not to mention
hydrofoils and ground effect vehicles
(2) the introduction of centralised fire control (100 years ago?)
which with hindsight can be seen as having begun the process of
integrating a warship's "guns" into a "weapon system"
(3) the recent arrival of computerised communications that are now
extending this process of integration so that a single "weapon system"
may now incorporate multiple vessels/aircraft/whatever
(4) the need to remind naval officers of the above.
Still, I hope this doesn't mean those grey floating things are now
"naval sea systems".
John
Brian J Goggin
On Thu, 10 Apr 1997 17:04:14 GMT, j.nu...@dial.pipex.com (John
Nurick) wrote:
[...]
>(2) the introduction of centralised fire control (100 years ago?)
>which with hindsight can be seen as having begun the process of
>integrating a warship's "guns" into a "weapon system"
Surely the firing of broadsides was an instance of centralised fire
control?
bjg
John Nurick
On Thu, 10 Apr 1997 21:12:29 GMT, b...@wordwrights.ie (Brian J Goggin)
wrote:
>Surely the firing of broadsides was an instance of centralised fire
>control?
Only in the sense that they didn't start shooting until the captain
told them to!
John
Brian J Goggin
If we can rely on Patrick O'Brian, I think it was a little more
sophisticated than that. The captain might ask the lieutenants to
direct the fire of their guns at (say) the rigging rather than the
hull; he might also ask for rolling fire instead of a broadside (eg if
the ship's timbers were weak).
bjg
Brian J Goggin
On Sat, 12 Apr 1997 05:41:51 GMT, j.nu...@dial.pipex.com (John
Nurick) wrote:
[...]
>OK, I exaggerated for the sake of brevity. You didn't really want me
>to post my monograph on Nelson's and Fisher's conceptions of fire
>control, did you?
>
Oh go on, do. I'm sure everybody is interested in naval gunnery,
especially that of the Napoleonic era. Don't know about Fisher,
though. What about Jutland?
bjg
John Nurick
On Fri, 11 Apr 1997 12:05:30 GMT, b...@wordwrights.ie (Brian J Goggin)
wrote:
>>>Surely the firing of broadsides was an instance of centralised fire
>>>control?
>>Only in the sense that they didn't start shooting until the captain
>>told them to!
>If we can rely on Patrick O'Brian, I think it was a little more
>sophisticated than that. The captain might ask the lieutenants to
>direct the fire of their guns at (say) the rigging rather than the
>hull; he might also ask for rolling fire instead of a broadside (eg if
>the ship's timbers were weak).
OK, I exaggerated for the sake of brevity. You didn't really want me
to post my monograph on Nelson's and Fisher's conceptions of fire
control, did you?
John
Robert Lieblich
barbara@.bookpro.com wrote:
>
> Robert Lieblich <lieb...@erols.com> wrote:
>
> >In the Navy we call them "codes," and one code is always writing to
> >0another. My code is "SEA-OOL3." "SEA" is very short for "Naval Sea
> >Systems Command." The organization was once known as the Bureau of
> >Ships, but research revealed that the average American could almost
> >understand what a Bureau of Ships did, so the name had to be changed.
>
> <snip>
>
> Same with the other "Commands," I believe.
Right you are. And things continue to slide downhill. The old Naval
Electronic Systems Command (NAVELEX) is now the Space and Naval Warfare
Systems Command (SPAWAR - pronounced with a long "a"). Those of us not
with SPAWAR have pointed out that their new name purports to embrace
everything the Navy does and everything it will do in the future - when
the Enterprise is a spaceship and not an aircraft carrier, SPAWAR will
run it, too.
> My father worked as a
> civilian at the Bureau of Yards and Docks, which became the Naval
> Facilities Engineering Command. One of his duties involved quality
> control in the paint colors used by the U.S. Navy (he didn't get to
> choose them, alas).
>
> The old names may not have been more precise (or less, for that
> matter), but at least they sounded like they involved physical objects
> and human beings.
And, tangling threads, if you run NAVSEA through a spell checker, it
comes back "nausea."
Bob Lieblich <lieb...@erols.com>
Daniel P. B. Smith
In article <334cec2c...@news.rt66.com>, Kinko <ta...@rt66.com> wrote:
>Today, I saw an ad by Los Alamos National Laboratory:
>
> Los Alamos National Laboratory. Mail Stop A117, Los alamos,
> New Mexico 87545.
>
No, it's an internal location within a single large company. It is a
typical practice of large U.S. companies and other organizations.
Because so many large companies have them, and are needed to get
mail delivered reliably within the company, when you are filling
out a form for a business address there will usually be a space
for "mail stop" or "MS" even though it has no OFFICIAL meaning
to the Post Office.
Wang Laboratories, when I worked there a few years ago, was probably
typical. As far as the U. S. Postal Service is concerned, the six thousand
people in the main Wang Towers were all at a single address, "One
Industrial Avenue, Lowell, Massachusetts 01851." All mail was delivered
to a mail room. It was then sorted and distributed by Wang. If you
simply sent mail to
"Dan Smith
Wang Laboratories Inc.
One Industrial Ave.
Lowell, Massachusetts 01851"
it probably wouldn't get to me. Even if someone took the time to look
up my mail stop, there would be at least a 66% chance it would go to
one of the two other people named Dan Smith that worked in the Towers.
If you sent it to
"Dan Smith
MS 019-370
Wang Laboratories Inc.
One Industrial Ave.
Lowell, MA 01851"
the postal service would not know or care what 019-370 meant. Every
company designs their own mail stop system; they have different
combinations of letters, numbers, and digits. Within the company,
the mail is sorted, and people come wheeling things like supermarket
carts with file folders in them through the building. 019 meant
Tower I of the big main complex, which was also building #19 to the
facilities people. -3 meant third floor. 019-370 was a specific
set of perhaps fifty mailboxes.
One ironic feature of the system was that all faxes came into a fax
room, where they would then be put into the company mail system which
could easily take a day to deliver them. There is a story, told as
true, that a large company in a big New York skyscraper wondered why
its FedEx bills were so high, and found that people WITHIN THE SAME
BUILDING were FedExing mail to each other because they had found
that FedEx, flying the mail from New York to wherever their big hub
is--Memphis??? and back, could get it from one place to another in
the building faster than the company mail system could.
I know very little about how internal company mail systems are
run or organized; it's one of those things that you take for granted
when you work there. There is a proverbial phrase about people
starting at a company and "working their way up from the mail room..."
--
Daniel P. B. Smith
dpbs...@world.std.com
John Nurick
On Sat, 12 Apr 1997 09:45:33 GMT, b...@wordwrights.ie (Brian J Goggin)
wrote:
> What about Jutland?
My point precisely.
John