Life on the Road – Trucking News Blog

I’ve seen your billboards. I’ve heard your commercials. You know the ones. How one freight train will take 250 trucks off the road and improve highway congestion. How your trains are so fuel efficient. How service via rail is so superior. How you protect the environment. How by using trains I can reduce my carbon footprint.

Railroads, I’d like to tell you just where I’d like to put my footprint. And it has nothing to do with carbon or the environment. You people have lost your minds. And I’m going to take a few minutes just to tell you how wrong you are and how your message to the American public is a bunch of hooey. Oh your slick, I’ve got to give you that. But I, for one, can see right through all your nonsense.

Let’s start with the most important point. America doesn’t care what you have to say. Trains are no longer sexy. Kids want to be truck drivers and jet pilots, not train engineers. What fun is it to just to go forward and occasionally in reverse? When America thinks of trains, they think smoke, loud ear piercing horns and having to wait at annoying rail road crossings while your cars jingle jangle across the tracks. And while folks are sitting in their cars waiting for your train to someday pass, they’re praying its doesn’t go off the tracks and spew ammonia or some other lethal chemical all through their neighborhoods.

America hates trains. In fact, the day you chose to get rid of the friendly red caboose at the back of your lineup of toxic clickety clackety noisy rusty railcars, America’s love affair with the train died. Trains are dangerous. They’re too big and too heavy. They scare people. When is the last time someone asked for a train set for Christmas? When is the last time you took a train somewhere? Have you ever shipped anything by rail?

Jim, my jibber-jammer is down. I need that part. Ok, I hear ya Bill, I’ll get my guys to get it on the next train out. You should have it in two or three weeks. Listen, nobody even knows how to ship anything by rail. Don’t you need to be right on the tracks? What if the material is oversized? How do you get it to the railroad? Where are the railroads? How would I get something from Charlotte to LA? Do I use the Burlington Northern or the Carolina Illinois Railroad which will transfer it to the Midwestern Union Pacific or Santa Fe or California Wyoming Express to yet some other train so it gets to LA somehow someday?

Can I tell you a little secret? Make sure nobody is looking. Ready? OK. There is NO railroad in the world that can do anything without trucks. All the switches, locomotives, rail yards, freight cars, engineers, lights and horns don’t make any difference without trucks and truck drivers. Because even if JB Hunt, Schneider, UPS and Swift intermodal their trailers anywhere, they still have to be picked up and delivered by truck. Ain’t no darn railcar going to drive into Wal-Mart and back up to a dock with the freight.

When America thinks freight transportation they think truck, not rail. When America thinks rail they think hazardous chemicals, hot molten tanks cars with white clouds of smelly smoke and yellow mucus liquid oozing from the top and freight cars with graffiti sprayed all over them with hobos, beggars, criminals and illegal immigrants riding inside or on top top of them.

Railroads, nice try, but trucks are the foundation of America’s movement of goods. If you eat it, drink it, sleep on it, sit on it or ride on it, mostly likely it was delivered by truck. In fact, the backbone of any rail system is the truck, not the train. And you know it. So good luck with your “campaign” but you’re not fooling anybody.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cemeteryrodeo/2049011904/

I enjoy digital photography while on the road, maybe more than most. It’s a great pastime for truckers because we always have something different around us for a subject. Family and friends get a better idea of what we do out here when they have a visual to look at too. The cost is relatively low and cameras that shoot RAW format photos are coming well within the casual amateur’s price range. I will explain this odd format that is starting to raise questions among casual users.

When I started reading about RAW, it sounded like a file format for professionals only. You need special software and only higher end cameras would write these files, so I assumed I didn’t need it for what I was doing. I was wrong. The only difficult parts of shooting RAW format photos is taking the extra time to convert the files when you load them to the computer and learning the software that converts them.

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There is much debate with Linux concerning it’s usability for common people. The install pretty much puts folks into 2 categories – the Linux sucks crowd and the Linux is awesome crowd. I would be in the Linux sucks crowd.

The reason Linux sucks is that nothing works easily and you have to relearn computing. I have things I want to do on the computer and configuring the computer is never on the list. Right from the install you will have problems and you’re only reasonable resolve is to go to forums and search. If you ask any uneducated questions they’ll tell you to read the manual and that you lack intelligence. The “manual” is a mind-boggling reference that is as loosely put together with non-descript terminology as the forums. It’s not that Linux itself sucks, it’s that it is a highly unfinished project. It works great once you jump through enough hoops to make it work. If you can get a piece of software to work in Linux, the performance gains will make you want to forget about Microsoft, even when you’re using Microsoft programs on Linux.

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Adding your photos to a blog post, web page, ebay, etc. can be a little tricky. You cannot just upload the image file that comes right from the camera because the file size is to large to be practical. You need to downsize the image with Photoshop, Gimp, or other photo editing software. It’s time consuming and sometimes you do not get the desired results. There’s an easy way to have near perfect web ready photos and it’s free. Read the rest of this entry »

In this episode I discuss three entertainment related gadgets, the Haier Ibiza, the Slingbox Solo and the Wallace Technologies VuQube, along with a GPS device that’s very different from any I’ve seen previously. I also offer a security related tech tip along with a commentary regarding some of the misinformation that seems to be floating around regarding truck stop Wi-Fi. In a couple of days, probably Saturday, I’ll post a transcript of the podcast on the Trucker Tech blog so, if you’re interested, you can check it out.

By the way, if you like this podcast, or even if you don’t and you want to see if they’re all this bad, you can find Episode 1 here at Life on the Road and Episodes 2 through 5 at Trucker Tech:

• Episode 1
• Episode 2
• Episode 3
• Episode 4
• Episode 5

 

 Trucker Tech Podcast: Episode 6 [00:29:45m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (863)

I’m tremendously interested in your comments; especially those that include topic suggestions, constructive criticisms or corrections. There’s lots of ways to get in contact with me and I list them at the end of this podcast.

Quick Links

Here’s where I list as many of the links relevant to the podcast as I possibly can. If I miss something, just leave a comment and I’ll dig it up.

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A PDF is a document that can be read by any computer that has Adobe Reader installed. The reader is free and most operating systems can use the reader. Even companies that severely restrict their employees programs will allow them to have Adobe Reader. So you have the rare situation where almost anyone can read one document type without spending money.

Chances are, due to the popularity of PDF’s you’ve come across them. There are some nice features that make reading the document much like reading a book, only better. It’s easy to zoom into any level and when formatted correctly, you can search the text. They also have form capabilities that allow you to fill out a form online. Tax forms are starting to be done this way. Read the rest of this entry »

Whether your the PC expert always getting called on to help or your not the expert and need some help, it’s always easier to fix a problem if you can look over the person’s shoulder that needs help. There are several programs out there that allow remote access. Most of the programs require a registration process and money. The PC that’s in trouble needs to setup an account, pay, then give out their account and password so you can log in and connect.

There is a built in Remote Desktop in Windows XP Pro (click here if you really want to know), I’ve seen it and used it, but it’s definitely not the best solution in this case. Read the rest of this entry »

It is frustrating to only have a few minutes to get on the computer when it takes 5 minutes to get it started. This is what happens when you load software that likes to put itself in the startup. For some reason, many software companies are very sure that you will use their software so much, that you would automatically like it in your startup.

Removing items from your startup is a good way to diagnose problems also. You can single out programs that are running in the background that are in the startup. If a program keeps reappearing in your startup, it could be a bad program such as a keylogger. If you’ve narrowed it down to such a program you can search for a way to remove it. Read the rest of this entry »

Christmas time is a popular time to give and receive new computers. Friends and family have enlisted me to help them with the purchase and setup of new computers, so I’ll pass on a little bit of what I do to prepare a new computer.

New computers are loaded with extra software that you do not need. Some even  contain spy-ware right out of the box. The reason is that the manufacturers get incentives to lure you to software and services. Don’t complain to much though, it helps keep the price down. Some of the offers may actually be a good deal for you also. However, unwanted programs are certainly a time consuming hassle to remove if you do not want them. If you just leave them on the computer, some can slow the computer down and keep giving you “nag” screens. You do not want to waste your time with the nonsense. The following is a list of steps I take to prepare a new system.
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We have a couple of articles here and here on Life on the Road stressing the importance backing up your data. Especially a laptop in a truck. Hard drives and monitors take a beating from all the vibration in the truck. Use your documents online and have Google backup your data for you! A WIFI or Broadband connection is needed.

Google Plans Service to Store Users’ Data
By KEVIN J. DELANEY and VAUHINI VARA
November 27, 2007; Page B1
Google Inc. wants to offer consumers a new way to store their files on its hard drives, in a strategy that could accelerate a shift to Web-based computing and intensify the Internet company’s competition with Microsoft Corp.

Google is preparing a service that would let users store on its computers essentially all of the files they might keep on their personal-computer hard drives — such as word-processing documents, digital music, video clips and images, say people familiar with the matter. The service could let users access their files via the Internet from different computers and mobile devices when they sign on with a password, and share them online with friends. It could be released as early as a few months from now, one of the people said. Read the rest of this entry »