The power of the postman

Problem: Marketing department has 16 DVD’s of training video and interactive content in California. Wants to get it to a customer in Maryland, quickly.

Plot twist: Company’s IT engineers chew up 32 hours of company’s Internet connection to download huge chunk of those 16 DVD’s. However, process of burning the content to DVD’s locally fails undetected.

Result: All that effort provides zip, zilch, zero, nada – with less than 36 hours to required show time.

Suggestion of old fart on engineering staff (whose resemblence to this blog’s author is purely coincidental): Overnight the DVD’s from CA to MD.

Result: Fully functional DVD’s in customer’s hands barely in time for training seminar.

Moral to this story: Never underestimate the bandwidth of the US Postal Service.

New Motto: Sure we’re slow, but it beats the crap out of a failed download.