Apologies most profound for the server downtime. For a slightly more complete explanation, read here but the gist of it is, the computer crashed and there was no one here to reset it, and/or to figure out why.
I've been using song titles for blog entries for a while now, so why stop just because of an inappropriate number?
I drove the big big truck for over 200 miles of the roughly 1100 mile trip, in two stretches, of which the longer was 165 miles. This is a good step on my way to becoming Great Driver Mitch, since it's about four times as far as I had previously driven a truck.
At something like 60,000 pounds gross weight, it was also about twice as heavy as I had driven-- since practice should be begun with a margin for error. An unladen tractor-trailer weighs in the vicinity of 30 thousand, and the normal maximum gross weight is 80 thousand. Practicing with an empty truck is where you start, because (for one thing) it's obviously a lot easier to stop. True, being empty can cause trailer tires to lock up with vigorous brake application, but "flatspotting" tires beats running into something.
I drove all of those miles on the New York State Thruway (tm), which consists of I-90 (and part of I-87), and is almost entirely a toll road. The "service areas" are state-administered monopolies, which apparently have some sort of bidding process. At least two different brands of fuel can be found at different stops, and a few different food choices can be found throughout the system (any given stop will have at least two places to eat). In fact, all of that information is on the back of the toll ticket. If you want Mobil gas, you can find out where the next rest stop which sells it is located.
Fuel prices aren't too bad on the Thruway. They used to be, but then these signs appeared which said 'Lower fuel prices in effect.' Too bad no such evolution has occurred in the food prices...
Many stops have either a Burger King or McDonalds, but among the ones which do not, Roy Rogers and Big Boy is a common pairing. The Big Boy wouldn't do, being a 'sit-down' restaurant. While waiting is common in trucking, while out on the road, you either want to be moving or sleeping. That left Roy Rogers, of which my only previous experience had also been on the Thruway, and I hadn't been all that impressed. Yesterday's visit, though, sealed my opinion.
My quarter-pound bacon cheeseburger wasn't bad, though it had been under heat lamps for an unknown amount of time. Roy Rogers is a la carte, so nearly everything is under heat lamps before you grab it and put it on your tray. I can't quite forgive them for it being over three dollars, but hey-- captive audience prices, right? The fries were quite blah, clearly having been sitting around for a good long while. The clincher was the chicken sandwich that my brother got. Upwards of four bucks for a pieces-parts-pressed slab of supposed chicken-- of indeterminate age, at that. Roy Rogers is spinning in his grave.
Word to the wise: if you want an expensive chicken sandwich, then go to Arby's. You won't wish that you hadn't eaten there. You know-- I could go for a Chicken Bacon and Swiss right about now...
Ah... the trucking industry. It's the family business these days, you see. Normally, we're rather local.
"Your brother called; you're going to Boston."
Um. OK.
So if I seem a bit out of touch for the next couple of days, there's a reason for that.
No, I haven't run out of overly punny titles yet.
By the way, I'm sorry about making everyone wait a week for a new posting. I could have done this earlier, of course, but my recent participation in the trucking industry has made it hard. I'm sure everyone who actually has a regular job is now crying me a river... well, anyway-- on with the show.
With the recent end of NASA's epic Galileo mission to Jupiter, the incomparable Steven Den Beste wrote a typically long and winding treatise about how great the history of unmanned space probes has been. Except for those rather famous Martian failures. He started out talking about orbital mechanics, and why Galileo was intentionally crashed into Jupiter (aside from the scientific data gained before destruction)-- but then came to mention just about every space probe program in the history of the United States, right up through the sophisticated and Saturn-bound Cassini.
Then, having left a concept of orbital mechanics insufficiently explained, Mr. Den Beste has an entire post on the slingshot effect.
I agree that unmanned probes are really neat. They have told us far more about the solar system than we can see from Earth, of course. Many questions have been answered, only to unearth new ones. Discovery, you see, is an ongoing process. Having learned, for example, that the surface of Venus is uniformly about half a billion years old, we now wonder how the heck that happened.
Indeed, Venus is an excellent justification for studying other planets. Despite being the 'closest' planet, and very similar to Earth in size, it is easily the most alien of the rocky planets. How did it get that way? Is it entirely because Venus is slightly closer to the Sun? Could Earth ever become a similar waterless wasteland, where atmospheric pressure would crush a submarine, and the very rocks are baked to a hardness that puts concrete to shame?
Of course, some people don't need to rationalize the search for knowledge. They just want to know the heretofore unknown, and that's that. These "scientists," as we call them, are insatiably curious. I should know, since I am one.