use DateTime::Event::Random;
use strict;

my $dt;
if (exists (USPS)) {  # they could be bankrupt
  do {
     $dt = DateTime::Event::Random->datetime( after => DateTime->now )
+;
  } until $dt->day_of_week != 7;  # sunday
} else {
    print "Never, sorry\n";
}
[download]

# they could be bankrupt

<rant extended...> Surely someone there (or in Congress) recognizes that they're on the same course the railroads took in the '50s, et seq.:
• Reduced service -> customers find alternate solutions ->reduced service
• Abandonments
• Pricing favoring a customers with alternates, and discouraging customers with limited alternatives
• An assumption that technological advances (aka: www) provide inexpensive and efficient service to customers not targetted for service (ie, in the RR analogy, 'not on the main line').

Anyone else love what's happening as USPS?

There's a similar situation in the UK. Royal Mail is legally obliged to provide a service to every address in the kingdom. They take big losses from delivering to remote villages in the Scottish highlands and islands, which were once compensated for by profitable bulk mail deals (e.g. delivering electricity bills).

Of course, now all that profitable work goes to private companies, who have no obligation to deliver to remote addresses (they just dump those envelopes into a post box and leave Royal Mail to handle them), so Royal Mail haemorrhages cash. Yet people were surprised that the cost of stamps went up by 30% this year.

perl -E'sub Monkey::do{say$_,for@_,do{($monkey=[caller(0)]->[3])=~s{::}{ }and$monkey}}"Monkey say"->Monkey::do'

The funny thing is, I've found USPS service in my area to be better than ever. I can get a letter to anywhere in my region of the country in a day or two. Within the first three digits of my zip code, I can put something in the box in the afternoon and expect it to be there the next morning. For less than 50 cents, I can't complain.

But the fact is that even a quality service may become obsolete. Email means there's no need to send written letters anymore, unless you're sending a hardcopy as proof of something. That leaves USPS with bills, certain packages, and junk mail.

The US Constitution mandated that Congress establish post offices and roads because no one else could do it at the time. (And there was an argument over how far that power should go. At first the postal service couldn't even own land.) But now, with electronic communications and numerous private shipping companies, there's really no reason to have a USPS anymore. Shutting it down would hurt the people who work there, of course, but no one else.

Aaron B.
Available for small or large Perl jobs; see my home node.