[MR] Its all in the zip codes

[Rick Steeves]

Welcome to the joy of zip codes. ( for those who are wondering, it's at http://www.corwyn.net/SCAZips.htm )

As part of the zip determination process (for those who think, "Hey, didn't Corporate have all that" I laugh in your general direction :)  ), groups submitted the zip codes for their borders. 

The problem being that I would bet most of those lists were not complete. They were doing the best they could, but it's HARD to determine all the zips inside a given area, there being roughly 4000 of them in the kingdom, many associated with little TINY towns that are somewhat hard to find on a map. :)

I cheated, and bought the USPS database for the states that are our Kingdom. So at the least the total list of zips is complete (with creep of about 5 / year). Zips groups did not claim were generally listed as Crown Lands (so at the least you live in our Kingdom.)

Getting that initial list from all the groups, _with all the conflicts worked out_, was a fair amount of work. Owned by no groups is radically better than owned by two (or 3 even), let me tell you. That information has been available on line for a year. And the zips from the groups are what the _groups_ said they were. 

And unless you care about receiving pollings (and even if you don't, you can always write the Crown anyway), it doesn't really matter anyway. So, FYI, I'm not generally tolerant of changes, and it's going to take you some work.

So what good is it? It's now trivial for seneschals to send their zip codes off to Corporate for pollings. Oh, and Corporate's happy. yippee. 

Corwyn
Seneschal




Rick Steeves
ricks at duke.edu                  http://www.corwyn.net