Watching the path

I love getting things shipped to me. Well, I love it when I'm sitting at home all day, so I won't miss the delivery guy. Otherwise, the whole process of trying to schedule a delivery, missing them again, and finally having to trek out to 42nd Street and 12th Ave. to pick up my package is a bit of a pain in the ass.

But the best part of shipping things today is online tracking. It allows obsessive people like me to track the every move of their package. It's slightly more interesting than watching grass grow, and somewhat less interesting than watching paint dry. But what can I say -- my ski boots left FedEx Ground's Portland, OR shipping terminal at 4:26 a.m. and I want to know where they are now. And although they're probably on a semi going straight to the east coast, I'll keep checking twice a day in hopes of an update.

Since I'm getting multiple packages, I have a rare hat trick. My boots are coming FedEx, the ski bag is coming UPS, and the skis are coming DHL. So I get to use the tracking interfaces of all three major shipping websites at the same time.

My only thought is...what the hell did people do before the internet? Not only were they unable to shop online, but they couldn't know where in the U.S. their packages last crossed a scanner.