{"id":4908,"date":"2023-02-20T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-20T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/?p=4908"},"modified":"2023-02-20T10:09:55","modified_gmt":"2023-02-20T16:09:55","slug":"a-tale-of-two-mailboxes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/a-tale-of-two-mailboxes\/","title":{"rendered":"A tale of two mailboxes \ud83d\udcea"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

At the start of winter in 2020, my mailbox got hit by the snow plow. I kept it going for the winter by pounding in a safety fence post<\/a> and then zip-tying the wooden mailbox post to the metal fence post. You can also see that the curb and part of the street here has been repaired from past years’ snow-plow shenanigans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Refactoring<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I used these images as an analogy for refactoring software with our engineering team at work. I explained that sometimes the fix-ups require somewhat ugly, but temporary scaffolding. However, the software keeps working and this is what the client sees:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mailbox Fortress<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Shortly after sharing my mailbox analogy, a coworker suggested my replacement be this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But I think this is going in the wrong direction. My dad has a similar mailbox fortress. Also being in Minnesota, his mailbox has suffered the wrath of the plow:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mailbox 2.0<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For my replacement mailbox, I wanted to do something different. I explained the snow-plow situation to someone at the hardware store.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Resilience<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The hardware store employee suggested using fence-post foam where the mailbox post goes into the ground. This would add some flexibility, which should create additional resilience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

re\u00b7sil\u00b7ience<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>noun<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\nOxford Dictionary<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

    I don’t mean to get philosophical, but we kind of need to. Resilience is a quality that ensures our survival as a species. However, so many things we do lack resilience: the way we build cities, our hard-line political stances, and permanent status-quo. Adapt, or die – that will be the mantra when we realize our top-down systems are not<\/em> resilient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Post & Mailbox<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    Enough philosophy… I bought a bag of post foam<\/a>, and a mailbox<\/a>. Also a cedar mailbox post that has a metal rod<\/a> that goes into the ground. Normally you’d just drive the metal rod into the ground, but I dug the hole so there was a little space around the rod. I pounded it in a little to make sure it stayed level, then filled the hole with foam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Side note on the post foam – a little goes a long way! I probably only needed to pour 1\/10th of the bag. It was rather comical seeing the foam rocket out of the hole like a middle-school volcano science project \ud83c\udf0b\ud83d\ude31<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The post is definitely flexible. At first it seemed alarmingly flexible, but it only wiggles when you force it to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    The mailbox has a pretty cool mechanical feature as well. There’s a “you’ve got mail”<\/a> indicator that we can see from the front door to know if the mail has arrived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Every winter is another test. So far, so good \ud83e\udd1e<\/p>\n

    Send to Kindle<\/span><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    At the start of winter in 2020, my mailbox got hit by the snow plow. I kept it going for the winter by pounding in a safety fence post and then zip-tying the wooden mailbox post to the metal fence post. You can also see that the curb and part of the street here has… Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Snow-plow resistent mailbox \ud83d\udcea","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-casual"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4908"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4927,"href":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4908\/revisions\/4927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}