Trucking

I listen to too much radio. Not just radio, but news and talk radio. Music channels on XM and Sirius are commercial free, I think they make up for it on news and talk channels.

There’s one commercial that starts out with a child screaming the dog keeps jumping on her. The mom says, “People stare at us like we can’t control our dog.” Take a pill, not you, the dog. Now there’s Valium for dogs. Calm your dog for those special occasions or feed your dog a pill every day to keep him calm.

Willie gets wild, but usually there’s a reason and he’s got a few issues, but I’m not going to put him on drugs because he barks and goes nuts when he sees other dogs or when I leave the truck, but it’s temporary. It lasts a few minutes it’s over.

Willie’s not perfect, but I’m not going to give him drugs because I’m too lazy to train or discipline him. He’s not around other people enough that he goes a little nuts around people wanting attention, but still not worth drugging him over. And especially for the price these people want for a small bottle of “calming” formula. I’ll save you the trip to their website, on sale for $99.

From when Saturday Night Live was funny:

Pronounced Cool, Cuil.com is a new search engine started by some ex-Google employees. Cuil indexes three times more of the web than google and search results are presented differently than what everyone is used to. Google needs some competition. What about Yahoo and MSN Live? Google needs some competition. The reason google dominates the search engine war is the frequency and the amount of updates it goes after compared to Yahoo and MSN. Google sends tons more web indexing robots all over the internet than Yahoo or MSN and is the main reason it dominates because their search results are the most relevant and timely The buyout of Yahoo by Microsoft might help make Yahoo and MSN more competitive by allowing them to combine forces and resources.

For now Cuil indexes 120 billion pages which is three times more than google has indexed. Google’s response is that the web it doesn’t index is either irrelevant or spam. The Google ex-employees were the ones that developed TeraGoogle which is a system developed to index a large number of documents and the other major employee that moved to Cuil worked on web ranking and spam detection. A search engine with more information and the ability to rank it and weed out spam sites, that could be real competition for google.

At the moment, they are having the normal start up problems and I’m sure they are busy tweaking their algorithms, because some of the search results being reported, let’s just say, need a little tweaking in order to be competitive.

I may not completely switch but I’m trying it out and it does need some adjusting to get what I think are more relevant results. You get a lot more information about a site without actually going to it. Definitely worth checking out. Cuil.com

I’ve been home a couple of days, had the truck worked on, that’s always fun! I had them check a status message that keeps coming up on the dash. Basically it’s like the Check Engine light. It could be important or not. They wanted $4250 to fix it. At first I thought they said $42.50 because it’s such a minor deal. But apparently not. A couple of valves they replaced in Feb ‘07 need to be replaced again. Nope, don’t think so. It’s running fine. Maybe a small loss of power, but I’m hauling very light loads, I only notice it going up a hill, I don’t run up a hill as fast as usual. I think I’ll wait and/or get a second opinion on this one. The fog/driving lights fixed and a belt replaced that was getting worn. Minor stuff this time.

Twitter is what updates the top of the right sidebar “Where Are We”. Twitter has become so popular lately they’ve been having trouble handling all the traffic. Kind of a cool idea, I don’t update a lot because I don’t want to bother people just to say I’m having a cup of coffee. The video explains it very well and it’s kind of cute and entertaining. If you already have Twitter or decide to sign up, I’m AdvTrucking if you want to follow me.

Things might be picking up or I got lucky. Probably lucky. I did that load for Graebel Van Lines into Brooklyn. I had to drive all day to pick it up and then all night to deliver it. Bohemian had 5 trucks on the east coast, Graebel gives me a load immediately going west. I figure if I hadn’t have done one, I wouldn’t have gotten the load I’m on now.

Driving south on I-5 in Oregon, through a construction zone, I’m driving around a curve and a deer is in the left lane. He must have jumped over the barrier in the middle trying to get across. He stands there for a second, then moves into my lane. I didn’t have anywhere to go, I swerved a little bit and hit him with the left fender instead of the center of my radiator. I see his head and neck hit the top of my fender right above the headlight and he goes under the tires on the left side.

After the initial crunch and crash, I hear a scraping sound and it doesn’t sound good. Luckily there’s a small shoulder before the shoulder gets closed from construction. I’m on the side of the road trying to bend my fender away from my front tire. The headlight is fine, but the driving / fog light on the left side is smashed and the fender is bent and cracked.

Thankfully, It’s drivable, headlights work, nothing major bent and no fluids are leaking. Pretty lucky from a pretty big deer, I’ve seen a lot worse damage done to a truck. I’ve always wanted one of these and it’s always been on my list of things to get for the truck. It’s on my Christmas list if anyone’s interested Click on the picture for the site. These are built for Moose and really big deer in Canada. Almost every Canadian truck has one of these bumpers. I’m sure they are a little intimidating if you’re the car in front of a truck that’s tailgating, oh well. They do work. In the fall, Ohio and Pennsylvania are dangerous driving at night from all of the deer jumping on the road.

I’m in San Jose now getting unloaded and if there’s nothing going south, I’ll be going home empty. It’s been way too long.

Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less has a national ad campaign, here’s their 30 second spot.

If you haven’t signed the petition yet, immediately go to American Solutions and to contribute to keep this commercial going go here.

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If you zoom out you’ll notice this is Brooklyn. This is where I delivered today. I’ve said before I’m not going into NYC ever again. Oh well. I get in just fine, found the place, actually drove right by it because it’s literally a hole in the wall and went around the block. Had to drop the trailer and let the crew unload while I parked a mile away and tried to sleep.

This is from google maps, street view. Just imagine a big 53′ foot trailer dropped where the white car is.

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I had to drop the trailer because the tractor was blocking the intersection right in front. The problem I have is getting out of New York. Manhatten is the worst, I really, really don’t go into Manhatten anymore. Brooklyn is almost truck friendly, in a New York City kind of way.

One major problem with driving a semi around New York City is the low bridges. The problem is overpasses are not properly marked. I couldn’t find a quick example in google map street view and usually I’m a little too busy to be taking pictures. Maybe next time. Anyway, a bridge marked 12′ 2″ is usually a problem. Not always in NYC, it has something to do with the lack of snow removal or so I’ve heard. I know places that are definitely marked 12′2″ and they’re on the expressway and they’re safe because I’ve followed other trucks. That’s just one of the many challenges that face big trucks in New York City.

I’m sure I would get better if I did it more, but I really don’t want to do it more to find out. Between the traffic, the construction and the traffic through the construction, I don’t know why people would live there on purpose. I’d like to go back and take a car around, it’s definitely an interesting place.

Once you’re in, you would never have to leave. It’s incredible how each neighborhood had absolutely everything you would ever need within a few blocks. Every few blocks is like a different country. It’s no wonder almost every movie made has been in made or sometimes made to look like New York City.

And thirty years of “We need an energy policy” from both sides.

Now they say it will be 10 years before we see oil from offshore or from Alaska and it won’t make any difference. Not so much. If the market / speculators / OPEC saw that we were serious about using our own resources the fear that’s built into the market would diminish to next to nothing. There are some that don’t think it would take that long. Maybe for the offshore rigs because there’s more involved and we don’t have the equipment and ships ready to go, a massive offshore project would take awhile. But for ANWR? Probably a lot quicker. The pipeline is already there, the infrastructure and support systems are already there or close by.

Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less at American Solutions and American Energy Now.