Update 2: As of Saturday morning July 17 the mysterious “PCC Blog” seems to have vanished- but never fear! We saved a copy of it!

It’s probably not what you expect to find on what the US Postal Service refers to as its “award winning” web site, but there it is- an article entitled “Residential Water Heaters Buying Guide”:

Whether you are building a house from scratch, remodeling a home or simply trying to replace the broken water heater, knowing as much as you possibly can about residential water heaters is important. Many people are not aware that there are actually two main types of water heaters for the home. There are electric and gas water heaters.

… and so forth. I came across this item, along with “Studies on Diabetes I Found Interesting” and my favorite, “shop til you drop at the post office” while visiting the USPS’s PCC Insider web site. The May 19 Special Edition has a link labeled “PCC blog. Click here”. Click on the link and you are presented with the advice on water heaters!

The articles aren’t actually on USPS.com- the link takes you to 2pccblog.com, which is not registered to the USPS. A casual user (or PCC member) wouldn’t know that, however, since the link doesn’t even use the standard USPS.com “exit” page which warns you when a link takes you away from the USPS site. Ironically, the PCC Insider page with the link to the water heater blog also features a picture from the National Postal Forum that just happens to include Bob Bernstock, the guy who awarded a $4.5 million no bid contract to some former cronies to “to help modernize the Postal Service’s Web site”.

Update: It looks like the water heater blog is pretty important! We’ve found links to it from other USPS PCC sites, the 2009 Comprehensive Statement on Postal Operations, and in a press release on National PCC Day 2008, which heralded the site as “the first official postal blog”. The press release is dated September 17, just a week after the domain 2blogpcc.com was created by a Garth Williams of Portland Oregon, who is still listed as the registered owner. The first entry in the blog’s archives is dated September 26, 2008, and is entitled “how can the postal service better meet your needs” (capitalization as in the original). The post begins:

I am recovering from Mid-Terms{which BTW we, as students, did not do very well on. More about that later.}… I will be studying and re-working items for my return to school after “Spring Break” which is this week. HoHummm…

While resting my mind from Graphic Design I found the following:

Idchicks193 In a remarkable speech over the weekend, Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt recommended that Americans start storing canned tuna and powdered milk under their beds as the prospect of a deadly bird flu outbreak approaches the United States. {see link} : You gotta be kidding me… “Under our Beds”?

One of the press releases describing the site promises “links to local PCC locations, to the Postal Service’s Rapid Information Bulletin Board (RIBBS) and to the National PCC site.” Sure enough, there is a blog entry at 2blogpcc.com headlined “business service network links usps and customers”. Here’s how it begins:

Pcsnowman ~Does anything sit on your computer? If so what is it and why is it there? I sit at this machine much too often and I needed something fun smiling back at me. That’s my PCsnowman over there. I collect snowmen… :-} He is a little beanbag guy that I can place in many positions. {don’t ask which ones} Wish he could talk or sing!

Curiouser and curiouser…

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 15th, 2010 at 8:10 am and is filed under Bernstock, postal, web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.