About Roger
After stumbling around the wilderness of sports and city halls for seven years, Belleville's born-and-bred Roger Schlueter finally found his niche in Lifestyle in 1981. Helping start both the paper's medical and entertainment sections, he has dabbled in everything from food to religion for the past quarter-century. As the Answer Man since 1987, he has become the paper's go-to guy for arcane and unanswerable questions. He has even taken his show on the road, becoming a legend in his own mind as a popular emcee at area trivia nights.
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closeQ. I have a delicious dinner coming my way as I think I am right. Please set the record straight: When a person changes his or her address, I say you go to the post office, fill out a form and the post office notifies all your regular mail senders. My friend says, no, you have to send a change notice to each business to change your address. Who is right, Answer Man?
-- JoJo
A. You'd better sit right down and write your friend an invitation to dinner -- and hope that she doesn't choose Tony's in St. Louis. Expecting the U.S. Postal Service to notify all of your magazines and banks and utilities and credit card companies, etc., etc., of your move certainly would not get its stamp of approval.
"That's a little too much," a spokesman in the main Belleville office told me. "It would be like changing your phone number and expecting us to call everybody in your phone book."
Here's what really happens:
When you fill out a change-of-address form at the post office, the postal service sends out two confirmation notifications -- one to your old address and one to your new one. This is to inform you that the post office has processed your form (or alert you that someone may be up to some funny business if it wasn't you who submitted the form).
"They're for security purposes," the spokesman told me. "We do not include first names or last names on those. Usually it's 'postal customer.' Those are the two notifications that we do."
Then, for one year, the post office will take mail addressed to your old home and forward it to your new place. Finally, from the 13th to the 18th month after you move, the post office returns all incorrectly addressed mail to the senders, telling them to make a note of your new address. But if you want to ensure those senders make a timely, accurate change of address, you have to do it yourself, one by one.
To make life a little easier, you can fill out the postal service's change-of-address form at www.usps.gov, where those moving can find an offer for $300 in coupons to boot.
Q. I dropped a CD in the car, and my husband reached between the seat to pick it up. When I put it in the player, it rejected it with "ERR" displayed. What can we do?
-- Caryl Jane Yancey, of Fairview Heights
A. There's three ways you might be able to get the music back in your life, according to the folks at Vintage Vinyl in St. Louis.
First, try to find some place with a machine that can buff out small scratches in such disks. For example, when I rent a movie from Family Video and it turns out to be unplayable, they put it in this handy-dandy machine, let it whirr around for a minute and it often solves the problem. However, Vintage Vinyl says they stopped stocking the machines because they didn't find them to be all that effective.
It also might be a case of your disk picking up excessive dirt or dust in the fall, so either buy a CD-cleaning kit at an electronics or music store or take a soft, lint-free cloth and lightly dust the CD, moving from the center to the edge. Do not make circular motions around the disc.
Other than that, you might cross your fingers and try it in another player. Once in a while, I find that CDs which skip or won't play in my portable CD will play in my more expensive home units. If that's the case, you might want to see if you or someone can make you a pristine copy on a computer for your car. Hope this helps.
Q. Could you tell me how to get in touch with the Lions Club in my area?
-- CJD, of Albers
A. You have your choice of two, and I'm not lyin': In Breese, Marty Gorman is your mane man at 526-7164. In New Baden, Ted Vosholler takes great pride in his organization at 588-4767.
Q. A few weeks ago, someone called into your Sound-Off section to say that Patriot Waste had been sold to Waste Management, but that some employees had started a new company called Four Seasons Waste. How can I reach them?
-- Skip, of Belleville
A. Sounds like you don't want to waste a moment calling 416-4077.
Q. I know this question is probably not on anyone's mind except mine, but why do clocks and watches always have the time 10:10 or 1:50 on them while on advertising pages or being displayed?
-- Lonnie Moore, of Sparta
A. To put a smile on customers' faces, clock stores and manufacturers figured they'd put a smile on the faces of their products -- or, at least, the closest thing to it.
So, the reason for the placement is reportedly mostly psychological with just a smidgen of hard-sell thrown in. Hands in the 10-2 position are uplifted like the corners of your mouth in a smile as opposed to a 9-3 emotionless stare or an 8-4 or 9-5 frown. (And, we know what Dolly Parton says about those 9-5 frowns.) It's supposed to put a happy face on the product and make you feel more like buying.
Moreover, by having the hands at 10-2, it generally leaves the upper part of the watch clear to show off the manufacturer's name on the face.
Send your questions to Roger Schlueter, Belleville News-Democrat, 120 S. Illinois St., P.O. Box 427, Belleville, IL 62222-0427 or rschlueter@bnd.com
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