Stateside Archives

What does “Delivery Status not updated” mean with USPS tracking

Screen Shot 2016-03-16 at 12.02.59A few months ago I ordered something from… I can’t actually remember from where, but the sender used USPS (United States Postal Service). He provided a tracking number, which usually works great, and you can keep an eye on where in the world your package is. I always find this really interesting, especially when the item travels across the US via all those destinations you didn’t even know existed.

The big day came when the status update read “Out for delivery”, which usually means it’s on my postman’s van, and I can expect the doorbell to ring any moment now.

To my surprise, said event didn’t happen, and in the evening the status had changed to “Delivery status not updated”. No package, no tracking information. What gives?

I did some investigating, and there’s a relatively simple explanation for this. Let me share it with you. First of all, here’s a screen grab of the tracking history:

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Steel-cut Oats

  I’ve always liked oats for breakfast, and I was intrigued to find something in the US that I hadn’t come across before in my life: steel-cut oats. They’re marketed here along the lines of “the real Scottish oatmeal”, yet it’s not a term used by the Scottish as far as I know. So I …

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There’s Something Fishy about Christmas

This year I’ve learnt two new things about Christmas I didn’t know before. Actually it’s ONE thing I’ve learnt this year, the other I got wind of last year from my barber at Super Cuts before I started “doing my own hair” thanks to a $25 Wahl Clipper Set.   The Christmas Gherkin Allegedly there’s …

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Discovering the NOAA Weather Radio Service

We have something here in the US that most Europeans don’t know about: a nationwide weather radio service called NOAA Weather Radio. The service is broadcasting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and it has been around since 1953. Transmitting from over 1000 towers across the US, they have 7 frequencies just above the …

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US Banking in 2013

I have eight bank accounts across three countries. They’re a mixture of personal and business accounts. So I know a bit about banking. And after the last few months worth of experiences with US banks, I can tell you that banking in the US sucks. A lot. There’s really nothing more to say on that …

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6 Days to go

A couple of weeks ago we’ve received two additional large rubbish bins. Haringey Council had given us 3 bins ever since I’ve moved in here 12 years ago. Now we have five, the additional two being “green bins” for anything that can be recycled.

This appears to be pretty much everything apart from maybe plutonium and mercury. Everything else (ie plutonium and mercury) still needs to go I the black bins.

Be that as it may, the new bins couldn’t have come at a better time: for the last five weeks we have been producing on average 5 black bags of rubbish every day! You wouldn’t believe the amount of stuff we’re carrying out of a one bedroom flat. Lucky for us we’re nearly finished.


Those green bins seem to be collected on a different schedule than our black bins, so now the rubbish people come to us on Monday and on Thursday. At least that was the plan I guess when their arrival was announced with the accompanying little pamphlet. Reality is a slightly different matter: because the rubbish collections never seem to happen anymore.

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11 Days to go

I’ve never liked the winter. It’s not so much the cold that gets me but the disappearance of daylight. It has always put me in a bad mood, and learning to recognise this recurring pattern made me more aware of it – which in turn has made me even more miserable over the years.

Appropriately this phenomenon is called SAD and puts millions of people every year into varying degrees of depression by December. I feel it as a total lack of energy: all the things I can do in the summer are extra difficult and take twice as long in the winter, or in the period leading up to it. It’s like my body is going into survival or hibernation mode.

Fiddling with the clocks every now and again really does not alleviate this much.

Having said that, this year I have felt that the change from summer time to winter time was a godsend. I started getting up later and later ever since September, 9:30 or 10am wasn’t rare for me. In the summer I can rise at 5am or 6am without problems, but it becomes really hard in the winter.

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13 Days to go

Moving is always a pain. Moving cities is a bigger pain than just moving down the road. Moving countries however is another issue altogether. Believe me, I’ve done this before – and I’m about to do it again.

Moving cities involves packing boxes, loading boxes onto a van, unloading those boxes and carrying them upstairs, accompanied by too much furniture and a lot of stuff we’ve forgotten we’ve actually every owned.

It also involves painting and decorating, talking to people like estate agents, and worse of all it confronts you with having to make decisions that you’d rather not want to make.

Moving cities knows no boundaries – other than the space of the van or car you’re using to move. You can approach moving countries in a similar fashion if you ask an overpriced removal company to store and ship all the stuff for you.

I remember my mentally deranged flatmate did this, and I’ll never forget his face when 40 boxes came delivered some months after we had found a small house in Nunhead, South London. That little room was packed to the ceiling – and he looked as pale as the boxes. Classic!

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14 Days to go

Peter Casasola is my favourite dentist of all time. We had one final checkout with him today before we have to find us a new doctor in Miami Beach. Peter was my wife’s paediatric dentist in Harborne, Birmingham and she said I should check him out. That must have been in late 2004. I haven’t regretted it since.

Forming a relationship with any dentist is difficult: it’s based on a combination of trust, quality and affordability. Peter scores high on all fronts – especially compared to the other crooks I’ve been dealing with in my life.

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15 Days to go

The date of our flight is getting closer, yet so much remains to be sorted out. Finding temporary accommodation in Miami for example, before we can find a place to rent. Or getting one final visit in with our favourite trusted dentist in Birmingham.

Much more important things have been attended to today though: I bought a wireless keyboard for my iPad, complete with case that folds into a stand. Since there’s a lot of writing that needs to be done I thought this a worthwhile investment.

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