Life on the Road – Trucking News Blog

Well isn’t that a fine howdy-do first thing in the morning. Judy B. Dice* seems to have awakened on the wrong side of the bed perhaps. Greg Marino** seems friendly enough. A whole lot of other folks seem to want me as their friend.

I finished my coffee and strawberry cream oatmeal and decided today was the day this truck-less trucker was going to delve deeper into the “mysterious” world of Twitter and Facebook. I have avoided both for, well, since they pretty much became popular with “everyone else.”

Since I’m currently “laid-up” or “laid-off” or whatever, I have to time to go out and make some new friends and learn some new technology. I’ve been remiss about keeping up my role as a first adopter or is it adapter? Whichever, I’m sorry, money is tight right now and switching up to an HTC Incredible is just not possible. Will that stand in the way of my getting new friends or followers? Heck if I know.

I also feel just terrible that I haven’t been “micro-blogging.” I didn’t even know Tweeting was micro whatever until this morning. On the other hand, I don’t see too many other writers posting to a blog EVERY day. I see Evan Lockridge, the golden voice of trucking XM/Sirius satellite on Facebook trying to explain why lightning in Birmingham is making his show sound like amateur radio. By the way, not being in the truck, I sure miss Howard Stern. Yea, yea, I know I can listen to it off the net, but I’m busy right now reading about all this social networking stuff.

So, I spent about an hour or so on Twitter. I really have nothing to Tweet about since my postings to Life On The Road, the titles anyway, is tweeted – twittered? – as a feature of Windows Life Writer. I know – who cares? The point is that I ended up just where I always do with Twitter – nowhere. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I just don’t see the reason why it is sooo popular. I get updates up the ying-yang from all the major news services on my Verizon Eris, what do I need Twitter for?

I read about five tweets from truckers and civilians and so what? Most of the tweets are days old. Life of a Trucker – NC sent out a tweet about the reservation boycott at the Port Aux Basques Marine Atlantic Ferry. Well, I have no clue where that is, but I looked it up and now I know, so that tweet made me smarter. Someplace called Trucking Planet in Tampa had 327 followers. I read it, but its all advertising. What’s that about? I definitely don’t need any more advertising in my life. Truckers United – the name sounds familiar but I don’t know what their “deal” is. Sounds like they’re new to Twitter. Sam says: “Hey guys, not too sure how many of our users use the site called ‘Twitter.’ Not a lot of confidence there to make me want to find out more about Truckers United.

Bear Hunter SRQ tweets “I’m close to Sarasota FL and I’m OK.” Hum. Am I supposed to care? I felt like tweeting back to Bear that I’m taking a sip of my Sobe zero calorie strawberry dragon fruit water and I’m OK too, but I have better things to do and why should he care? And when I’m OTR I definitely don’t have any time to pursue any of it. So to heck with Twitter.

Over to Facebook. I actually remembered my password. I updated my personal profile. I don’t have many friends or followers, which depressed the heck out of me, so I started clicking. Would you be my friend, pleeease? I want EVERYBODY to read Life On The Road. After fifteen minutes of clicking and asking, I got a nasty message from Facebook security telling me I was being annoying and abusive! Me annoying and abusive? Are you really from OOIDA and just saying you’re from Facebook?

Well, I felt terrible. Not only don’t I have many friends and find myself having to click click click to ask strangers to be my “buds”, but now I’m being yelled at by a machine I don’t even know calling me “annoying and abusive.” It’s 10:15am and I’m really depressed. I’m supposed to be taking it easy. I’m home truck-less, on short term disability, can’t afford to upgrade to an Incredible, don’t understand Twitter and now Facebook accuses me of being annoying and abusive. This is worse than driving a truck. I need an anxiety pill. Who knew Facebook was going to be this stressful.

Well, just like applying for a job with the FMCSA, I gave up. My government doesn’t want me and neither does Facebook. And then the message from Judy – “do I know you? – should I.” Listen I don’t need this dysfunctional nonsense. I was just trying to be nice. Now it’s 10:45 am and I feel the need to go back to bed. Actually, I should have never gotten out of bed. I’m emotionally exhausted.

Wait, my “old” out of date Eris is vibrating. Hey, 31 people want to be my friend. Yes! OK, my confidence is coming back. Hey, Judy, honey, maybe you ought to get to know me – I got 31 “followers” in less than an hour! They really do love me!

There was one really good Facebook page - Real Women Truckers. They have 1,038 followers. I’m so jealous. And that led me to the St. Christopher Fund, which I didn’t know about till I went on Facebook. Google them for more information. What a great thing! Check out the Life on the Road page on Facebook. It’s now 12:15 pm – time for Hot Pockets. Yes, it’s on my diet. And an Omega-3 1200mg fish oil soft gel. See ya on Facebook – maybe. And thanks for being my friend – really.

*/** names changed to insure privacy