If you lived in an apartment complex for a long time, say, nearly ten years, you get used to how certain things get done. The mail carriers, for example, never deliver the packages to the door. Most people aren’t home during the day and packages left at the door tend to walk. Unlike the apartment complex I previously lived at for a brief period of time (six months), the leasing office doesn’t sign for packages. The mail carriers puts the package inside the lock box or return to the post office, leaving behind a lock box key or pick up slip in the mailbox. This month a new mail carrier who didn’t get the memo.

I’m in the process of rebuilding my FreeNAS file server by replacing parts round robin style. I started off with a NZXT Source 210 case that can hold eight hard drives, moving everything out of the old Dell Inspiron 570 that I inherited from my late father in 2012. This case had a single 120mm fan and mountings for six more 120mm fans. I subsequently ordered a pair of DeepCool 120mm fans for the front mountings to blow air over the existing four hard drives. Despite being in a roomier case with larger fans, the file server was unstable unless I laid the case on its side and took off the side panel for the heat to escape.

Earlier this month I ordered a CompTIA Security+ certification book and a bar of orange hand soap from Amazon. I got a text notification that the package got delivered but it didn’t say which carrier delivered it. After coming home from work that day, I found no lock box key or pickup notice in the mailbox. No package at my apartment door, which was more likely with Amazon and meant that the package had walked. I waited a few days to see if the tracking information was incorrect. Still no package. I notified Amazon early Saturday morning and the replacement package from Las Vegas arrived 12 hours later.

I ordered another pair of 120mm fans from NewEgg. Like the Amazon package the week before, I got a text notification that the package got delivered. Not exactly. The package got sent from the east coast via UPS and transferred to the post office for local delivery. (NewEgg normally ships my orders from their west coast location.) The website tracking showed no movement from the post office. For the next several days, I waited for a lock box key or a pickup notice inside my mailbox. Still no package.

I contacted UPS, who told me that the package was no longer their responsibility after handing off to the post office, and NewEgg, who told me to wait a few more days for the post office to get its act together. A week after UPS handed off the package to the post office, I filed a claimed with NewEgg and requested a refund for the “lost” package. On the day I got the refund from NewEgg, I got a text notification that the post office delivered my package.

Still no lock box key or pick up notice in my mailbox. No package at my door. I noticed a NewEgg box sitting at the door down the hallway. This door typically gets Amazon boxes. I checked the address label on the box—and it was my package. Correct apartment number on the package, but left at the wrong apartment door. Now I had to go through the trouble of returning the refund to NewEgg, as I was keeping the package now that I got it.

Stepping inside my apartment, I noticed a pickup notice stuck to the backside bottom of my door. When I first moved into my apartment, the door had a half-inch gap at the bottom for envelopes and insects to come through. The electric company had an energy efficiency campaign a year later that got the leasing office to install weather-stripping on all the apartment doors. Somehow the mail carrier shoved the pickup notice through the weather-stripping. I came to the conclusion that the mail carrier was new to the job, and filed a complaint with the postmaster general.

As for the file server, I put the new fans into the top mounts to blow hot air out. Five fans didn’t improve things by much. The hard drive at the very bottom of the case was consistently overheating to make the file server unresponsive. This hard drive was also seven-years-old and overdue for replacement, which was the last thing on my to-do list. I moved the fan from the second top mounting to the bottom mounting to blow in cooler air. The hard drive stopped overheating. The CPU temperature ticked up a few degrees from the new flow of hot air. Another fan from NewEgg for the second top mounting should do the trick.

Not sure if the new mail carrier got the memo on delivering packages.