Category: Just for Fun

2019 Baja 1000

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Racing through Mexico!

Given today’s headlines it might sound treacherous to drive to Mexico; but how much more so, to make it a thousand-mile road trip through the country. And let’s add a twist of only traveling on unpaved and primitive roads.

Well, Dennis our Technical Services Manager is doing just that this weekend. But because Dennis loves a good challenge, he’s making the trip in a Volkswagen bug.

Dennis is racing in the 2019 Baja 1000, a grueling 1000 mile non-stop road race on nearly impassible roads in a car that’s over 50 years old and has a fraction of the horsepower of any modern car.

There are two things you should know about Dennis. First, he can fix anything (which LetterStream really benefits from and I’m sure his race team does too) and second he has a heart the size of the entire Baja Peninsula. Dennis has joined up with another Dennis, Hollenbeck, and his team to race Class 11 car 1121 through a brutalizing 1000 miles of dust and boulders. But car 1121 isn’t just a race car, it is owned and operated as an extension and fundraising arm of Real Life Ministries an organization that serves the less fortunate ones in Mexico.

So not only does Dennis get the joys of fixing even more things this weekend, he also gets the greater joy of participating in a journey to uplift the downtrodden and help shed light on a ministry seeking to do the same thing.

Dennis, we’ll be watching and cheering as you pound the rocky terrain of Baja Mexico and seek to make the world a little better for those around you.

Check out the following related websites:

Real Life Ministries. https://reallifeministries.org/ “committed to serving the less fortunate, tending to the sick, and providing shelter for the homeless. 365 days a year, 24 hours a day.”

Class 11 Car 1121. http://www.teamh12one.com/ “We are about Running the Race as it describes in Hebrews 12:one , “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us … run with perseverance the race marked out for us”.”

Baja 1000. http://score-international.com/ November 22 – 23rd 2019. View the livestream of the event at http://score-international.com/livestream-52nd-annual-score-baja-1000

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Update: November 25, 2019: 

The Baja team fought a brutal battle, enduring one of the most difficult courses in the 52 years of the Baja 1000 history. And congrats to the team, for taking First Place in the group of Class 11 cars. How amazing, to punish the car and driver for over 36 hours of non-stop CARnage and still drive across the finish line. Great job team!

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LetterStream gives back with The 2019 Code Red Water Drive!

waterdrivepeople

A quick update on the water drive for Phoenix Rescue Mission.
Brown Community Management (https://www.brownmanagement.com/) invited us to participate with them again this year to help the Mission replenish their water supply of bottled water for needy and homeless individuals. And we gladly joined them again.
The Phoenix Rescue Mission is committed to reducing hunger and homelessness throughout Maricopa County. Their annual fall water drive replenishes their inventories as they work to prevent heat-related deaths in the valley. The water drive is called Code Red (https://phoenixrescue mission.org/codered) and we certainly encourage you to get your company involved in assisting in this event or finding others as a great way to give back.
We’d like to thank Brown Community Management for inviting us to participate. And a big thanks to OPACS (OPACS.com) who provided a box truck with a lift gate and a pallet of water to make this a record year for Brown and LetterStream in our contributions. But the biggest thanks goes to the LetterStream employees who grabbed a pallet, a case or just a bottle and dropped it off selflessly for the benefit of those less fortunate. Our LetterStream team donated 7,800 bottles of water.
Our next event is our annual Toys for Tots toy drive. If you are inclined, stop by and drop off an unwrapped toy if you are in the area. Or better yet, find a way to bring your organization together and share in the joys of giving through an event that you organize.

LetterStream Celebrates Sweet 16.

Fireworks Birthday Card (2)

A quick but heartfelt thank you to all our customers, employees (present and past), vendors and encouragers who have cheered us on in some way over the years.

We say a big Thank You! October 2019 is LetterStream’s sweet 16th birthday.

It has been fun to serve all those who enjoy our service these many years. And one fun fact… as nearly 25 new users discover and sign up for our services each day now (including LetterStream.com, OnlineCertifiedMail.com, and MailMyLetter.net), to send one letter or 10s of thousands, we signed up our 16,000th user this month too!

Thanks everyone!!

20% off Orange Paper and Postcards!

October Promotion

No tricks here, we are giving you a treat this Halloween season.
For the month of October, we will be offering 20% off all Orange 8 ½ X 11 paper and Orange Express Postcards.
You have a business to run and customers to keep happy, so we want to help you! For your festive holiday letters and notes look no further than LetterStream. For your fast mailing and printing needs, we’ll get the job done. Don’t wait until it’s too late and all the candy is gone, let us help you this Halloween season.

LetterStream Learns – Internal Training Brand

LetterStream Learns Brand

We had a fun day today.  Well, we probably have fun most days, but today we launched our new internal training brand; LSLearns.  LetterStream always wants to develop, and cultivate an internal culture of learning to go along with our already “fast and perfect mail” mantra and our “mad customer love” vision for customer service.

It is our belief that as employees grow and learn they start to discover their unique talents that can unlock a tremendous amount of capability.  David, our President, is often heard saying that inside everyone is a hidden super power that can manifest itself in the workplace in amazing ways.  LSLearns is an attempt to formalize our belief that people, when awakened in the right way, can do amazing things.

Some skeptics may say, “Ah, this is just an attempt to squeeze more productivity out of people”.  We might respond; “Sure! Sort of.” After all, what’s wrong with more productivity? But “squeeze” probably doesn’t capture the essence of our training efforts, instead we might use the word “foster”. By creating training, learning and growing opportunities we allow our employees to decide how much effort to put into their own career development plan, and hopefully inspire them along the way to be excellent at whatever it is they are doing.

Leader of Leaders and Learner of Learners, Kay Coleman, helped us launch the day, and our new brand, by leading us through some activities to engage our minds in different ways.  Kay has been an active learner, teacher and facilitator for most of her life, was Program Director with iLeadAZ – a program developed to lead school principals to greater success, and now provides consulting services to companies (like ours!).  Thanks Kay, for coming along side us with our passion for learning!

Delivering Mail, The Old Fashioned Way

Gunflint Mail Run
Delivering Mail – Whatever it takes

LetterStream is delighted to be a sponsor in this years Gunflint Mail Run (www.gunflintmail.com). The Gunflint Mail Run is a sled dog race taking place in Cook County Minnesota this weekend, celebrating the old way of delivering mail and supplies.

As a printing and mailing company, we’re glad for the more modern ways of getting mail from place to place, but it sure is fun to look back at yesteryear and see how things used to be.  Take a moment to check out the Gunflint Mail Run website, they have some beautiful pictures of dog sled teams working through the snow as well as some history of dog sledding in Minnesota.

You can also participate in their fund raising efforts and bid on some $75 LetterStream coupons, which might not be bid up as high as warm winter cabins, crampons and various other cold-weather items. The coupons can be used for USPS First-class mail, postcards, Certified Mail, FedEx overnight letters or any other services that LetterStream offers.

 

Porridge Papers – Paper Made By Craftsmen

This is a great video about the making of paper. Not only does it capture the art and craft of paper-making, it is a well-produced video that portrays the essence of community and determination.

The story of one man (and his family and community) determined to create great paper the old-fashioned way, from the excess paper of envelopes.

So grab a cup of coffee, find a quite place, and take in this inspiring video…

This awesome short film was curated by Windstream… We couldn’t help but love that name. 😉

It’s part of a series of videos produced for the Tumblr blog Locally Crafted. In addition, the film was directed by Kevin Osgood, brother-in-law to one of our very own LetterStream employees.

Nicely done Kevin!

 

The History Of Paper

On Paper by Nicholas Basbanes

Paper… it’s a powerful thing. Almost every important document ever composed was written on paper. Great empires were built on principles written on paper; music, plays, poetry, laws, business agreements, commerce, novels, treaties, blueprints, the list goes on and on.

A good book on the subject is “On Paper” by Nicholas A. Basbanes published by Random House. Basbanes details the 2,000-year history of paper, including how it is made and how it is used. His book has a rating of 4.6 out of 5.0 stars on Amazon.com and promises to be a good read.

We caught an entertaining interview with Basbanes on the Diane Rehm Show the other day which launched us into our search for his book. It would be nice and appropriate to say we bought the paperback, but there are other ways to read a good book these days. 😉

Unlike so many other landmark breakthroughs … we know today with some degree of certainty when paper was first made and where it emerged.

So there you go. You were wondering what you were going to do with all that time that LetterStream saves you…

And now you can get your paper fix without licking all those envelopes.

 

What’s The Longest City Name In The U.S.?

Update: January 2018 – We were informed that there is a new longest town name in America. The official name is “Village of Grosse Pointe Shores, A Michigan City” making the name 48 characters long including spaces! We might suggest that this new super-long city name be truncated to “Grosse Pointe Shores” as both the City itself and the USPS seem to use this shorter version. Funny thing, entering the complete official name in the USPS Zip Code lookup tool causes the USPS tool to fail. 🙂 For those in a city planning capacity, we might recommend that you work to keep your new city names to less than 22 characters.

Update: June 2019 – We were also informed of a city in Missouri called “Bellefontaine Neighbors” which would be the next longest city name after the one mentioned above.

Original Post…

That’s an interesting question, but why should we care?

Well, you got me there; as there isn’t a big reason to care. However I discovered this information years ago, and when you’re in the mailing business it’s sometimes handy to know these little oddities.

For instance, this might come in handy if you are building a CITY field in a database, or maybe testing some new addressing software. You might also want to know this if you are using MS Word to create a mail merge onto a small postcard.

You see, if you know the longest city name in the U.S., you can put your addressing software to the test and impress your colleagues at lunch. 😉

Some might say the longest U.S. city name is Truth or Consequences located in New Mexico, however, the longest, at 22 characters including spaces, is Rancho Santa Margarita in California. And with a population of around 50,000, it counts as a bona fide city.

rancho santa margarita

If you are creating your own mailings, you might want to scribble this down somewhere so you can make sure your database and mail merge programs can handle it.

On the other hand, if you use LetterStream, you can trust that we’ve already figured this one out, as well as many other peculiarities relating to mail.