Yesterday, US President George W. Bush visited Rochester, New York. As it happens, I wheeled into town with a load of scrap at about the time he was getting ready to leave.
There was considerable discussion on the CB radio (channel 19, the trucker's frequency) for a variety of reasons-- such as routing around the highway closure for the president's motorcade to reach the airport, actually seeing the motorcade, political matters, and so on.
I was parked and waiting at the metal recycling facility, which is a couple of miles from route 390, so I naturally assumed that I wouldn't be able to see anything cool, despite hearing the play-by-play relayed by fellow drivers. Someone mentioned a helicopter following the motorcade... shortly before said helicopter came into view. Well, I thought, at least I sort of saw something.
Several minutes later, I had repositioned the truck to face south for my attack run on the unloading area (and, indeed, had just entered the cab after determining that I couldn't back in to unload yet), when a comment came on the radio that sounded a lot like, "That's a big son of a bitch, isn't it?"
Air Force One then appeared over the treetops straight ahead, climbing pretty much right toward me, before turning east (by then directly away), and then finally south. I was worried that the prevalent clouds would deny a good view of the fantastically spiffy airplane, but that was only a problem for a few seconds while the plane was low and close enough to see much of, anyway.
So, I didn't even get to see the President leave*, but he sure does have a neat flying machine.
* Well, yes, I suppose I did see him leave, but I didn't actually see the President. I blame this poor use of language on being tired and shagged out after a prolonged period of being awake. Anyway, the most important people that I have actually seen are David Weber and 'Weird Al' Yankovic. Of course, they're quite arguably more important than any politician ever built, but hey...
...and I don't want to go on the cart.
Today's lame excuse is that I'm reading Empire from the Ashes, the compilation of David Weber's Dahak trilogy.
That, and I'm driving a truck (driving a big old truck).
So, I've been driving full-time for a week and a half, now. You tend to see interesting things out on the road when you spend that much time looking at the world through a windshield (you also see things in a little bit different light), and I was going to have a post to that effect about four days ago.
As usual, fate had other plans.
My room is littered-- well, filled-- with not quite random junk, including (does quick count) seven currently unused computers... not counting my footrest (an IBM PS/2), or my monitor stand (a VLB 486). A few of them have their outer cases removed, as I was just extracting bit and pieces in order to configure an office computer for someone else. So, when it was determined that I needed to get downstairs in a dreadful hurry, I (not unusually) jumped out of my chair, and hit the floor running.
Alas, the floor wasn't the only thing I hit in that almost-deft maneuver. The cheap, sharp edge of a Pentium-era machine sliced my knee something fierce. The pain was intense, but I was on a mission. I made it downstairs, hopping some of the way, and found myself a chair. You know how the skin on the knee is really thick and tough? I have now seen most of that thickness in cross-section.
Perhaps five minutes after it happened, a shock reaction set in. I felt woozy, 'got sick,' and my hands tingled oddly.
Inconveniently, all of this occurred after normal business hours, so the only option was the emergency room at Medina Memorial Hospital. It was quite busy, but at least there didn't appear to be anything too disastrous going on. Four stitches later, I was more or less mended.
Loyal readers are no doubt left with nagging questions, like "What cool things did you see while driving?" Well, I see a lot of cars, but only a few are interesting. Like a Yugo. It appeared to be in good shape, and I haven't seen a Yugo at all for several years. Let's see... a Chrysler Crossfire, two Vipers, and a GM EV1 electric vehicle.
Others will have no idea what the title of this post is supposed to mean. A lay is a song or narrative poem. The wound bled enough to soak through a couple of wadded paper towels that I had held over it, thus staining my hands. And, most importantly, it's a blatant reference to David Weber's 'war god' series of books. That's a good thing. I recommend reading Oath of Swords at your earliest convenience-- just don't look at the cover art for very long before you read the book, and therefore form your own mental image of what the characters should look like.
Ah, August 17th... otherwise known as the annual junction point of the space-time continuum (if you're anywhere near me).
I spent 12 hours today on the project of raking cut hay. This is a common agricultural activity. The thing is, we don't actually farm anymore. My efforts were for a custom forage harvesting operation. I'll probably even get paid.
Even added with the recent weekend's fun activities, driving a tractor across hay fields at nearly 8 miles per hour for a very long time just wasn't unusual enough for an August 17th. Nope, I had to get a flat tire, thus holding up the harvesting group, which charges (including trucks) about $350/hour.
That, too, was not enough, as the full-time company truck driver that replaced the last one that quit... effectively quit. So, as of tomorrow, I'll be hauling scrap metal all day. The price of scrap is high right now, but is expected to go down next month, so metal is being recycled at a prodigious rate. That expected slowdown, however, will correspond to apple season. Effectively, I am now employed full-time for months, at least.
So, what's all of this nonsense about the ramifications of the calendar? Well, I'll have to explain later. I have to get to sleep early, for a change, because I suddenly have a job. Funny that it should happen today, of all possible days.
Incidentally, I stole the post title from Robert Prather-- without shame, but with great amusement.
About a month ago, I passed the road skills test for my Commercial Drivers License (CDL) class A, with tank truck endorsement and no restrictions. At last, I became Great Driver Mitch.
No doubt many of you have been wondering how I came up with that expression for my current profession. Well, once upon a time, in a land far, far away... (OK, it was Japan, but that's a land far from where I am) I think there was a manga (comic) called "Onizuka." I'm having trouble verifying this, but I hear that main character Onizuka Eikichi (family name first) was a member of a biker gang, and had all sorts of wild and crazy adventures.
Whether there was such an ancestral series, or not, there was definitely a manga, and also anime entitled "Great Teacher Onizuka." It seems that Onizuka decided that-- in order to meet girls-- he would become an O-sensei, or 'great teacher.' Dubbing himself Great Teacher Onizuka, or "GTO" (yes, he says the letters of the English abbreviation, despite speaking in Japanese), he goes on to have all sorts of wild and crazy adventures, helping out people along the way (though they usually resist at first). Highly recommended.
At one point early on in the anime, Onizuka believes that he will never get a job as a teacher, and so he becomes a long-haul truck driver. As you may have guessed, he then dubs himself "GDO" (Great Driver Onizuka). Equally naturally, this only lasts until there is a glimmer of hope that he can be a teacher again.
You know-- I've been calling myself Great Driver Mitch for a while now, and I just realized a parallel with Onizuka Eikichi for the first time. I, too, want to be a teacher. True, I don't intend to use that position to meet women, and I want to be a college professor instead of a high school teacher, but still-- the need to share knowledge... it fills me. It is neat. (Bonus points for identifying the source of that quote.)
As it happens, I am quite skilled at procrastinating. In fact, I'm so good that by the time I get around to doing whatever it is, something beyond my control will happen that delays me still further.
Which is exactly what happened on Monday, when I sternly told myself that I was going to sit down and write an article for Nucleotides that actually involved science, as opposed to these things I've been doing lately, which might charitably be described as "human interest." Not immediately, though. No, I was going to goof off first (it wasn't late enough at night to take over the phone and connect to the 'net).
While I was goofing off, a thunderstorm started to roll in. So I unplugged the phone line running to my computer(s)-- and good thing I did, as a few minutes later, there was a lightning strike that was a bit close for comfort. It destroyed our telephone, the telephone jack, and even the telephone box on the outside of the house (blew the cover right off of it). And even though I have my computers on a powerful surge suppressor, it smells like the power supply in my prized machine Cerberus has converted its last coulomb. D'oh.
One of the human interest stories that I hadn't gotten around to doing yet was going to be about the three cute kittens at my house. There would be a genetics lesson included, though, so it wasn't to be total fluff (though two of the three kittens are very fluffy). In all fairness to me, it seemed silly to write about the coat patterns of cute kittens without pictures of same, and I don't have a digital camera of my own... Anyway, to give you some idea of my ability to procrastinate, the female in the bunch had kittens of her own Monday night or Tuesday morning.
It's not that I'm exactly lazy-- if the lawn needs mowing, I get it done (and we have a decent-sized lawn). Once I'm out there, never a thought of undue hurrying or sloppy inattention to detail crosses my mind. Physical effort comes naturally to me, being raised a farmer. And I use my brain all of the time, too (if not always wisely). I think... well, all the time. I have a lot of ideas stored up.
It's just that it's so much easier to read a nice David Weber novel (which also engages one's brain) than to sit down and force myself to formally write all of those things I think. sigh.
What? You want to hear more about David Weber? Ha ha! Good idea. But that, my friends, is a story for another time...
That's right, I became less young (at least as far as this integer-obsessed society is concerned) today. Sometime after 11 AM, I believe.
I am now 27, which is amusing to me. Why? Because, according to 'Weird Al' Yankovic, 27 is a pretty funny number.
Last time, I told you about my first day as Great Driver Mitch. It was a Friday, and we don't haul much on weekends this time of year. I drove just a couple of days in the second week. The third week, though, featured a long day every day-- with the partial exception of Tuesday. Work on Tuesday was artificially shortened.
The story isn't particularly technical, but I learned some time ago that many people know nothing at all about trucks. So, as usual, a little background is in order. You learn something new every day, after all-- unless you only read my site, in which case it's definitely not every day.
A tractor-trailer is held together by a large pin on the trailer (the "kingpin"), which is secured by locking jaws in a hinged plate on the tractor. That plate is called the "fifth wheel," presumably because it's vaguely round, and trucks only had four wheels back when it was invented. A fifth wheel looks like this.
A tractor-trailer is also known as a "semi," because the trailer is technically a semi-trailer; the weight is supported roughly half by the trailer axles, and half by the tractor. A full trailer would place relatively little weight (or none) on the vehicle pulling it-- like a trailer pulled by a car, or a child's little red wagon.
Now, since the front of a semi-trailer is so heavy, and it has to be about four feet off the ground in order to get the tractor under it, there has to be a rugged mechanism for holding it up. This consists of a pair of extendable legs, known (even officially) as "landing gear." A landing gear leg looks like this (external link). Both legs are conveniently adjusted by the single crank.
Most of time, a trailer is loaded and unloaded while still coupled to the tractor. Sometimes, though, this is a poor use of time or equipment, and a technique called "drop and hook" is employed. One form of drop and hook is 'spotting' empty trailers at several locations, where they can be loaded at the convenience of others, and then you come and haul the load once the trailer is full. This was the theory behind the third load of the day on Tuesday...
OK, so I wheeled into town 'bobtail' (without a trailer), to pick up an already loaded trailer, and then proceed merrily to Rochester. Since I don't have my license yet, I don't want to give the impression that I'm some sort of ham-handed idiot. As such, I dropped the air from the tractor rear suspension, and gently backed under just until the kingpin hit. Wouldn't want to bang into it like an unskilled fool. I then reversed direction and gave it a little tug. Wouldn't want to twist the driveshaft. Declaring (out loud, no less) the connection secure, I made the rest of the connections, and we were on our way.
My usual co-pilot is teaching me old-school techniques, and one of these is to use the trailer-only brake valve to test the trailer brakes-- and, in theory, the security of the coupling. So I did that, and the brakes worked. There was then a fairly loud and jarring bang. We figured that it must have been a particularly intense version of a common effect that follows using the trailer brakes-- because it couldn't possibly have been... no, that thought doesn't bear thinking on, because it couldn't be that!
The co-pilot then explains the importance of making sure you're hooked up properly, saying "Once you drop a trailer [accidentally], you never want it to happen again." I'm thinking that he's right-- that would be a very bad experience. A few seconds later, we slowly came to a small-- but steep-- rise, and there was a sound that I'd just as soon not hear again:
BOOM!
When the trailer fell, it sheared the pin on the landing gear foot that hit the pavement first. That single foot was designed to hold up 50 tons. Sheared it. We extracted the pin later, and it was shaped like a steel burrito.
As Shannon Foraker might say, "Oops."
So much for my looking like an idiot. Idiocy aside, though, we had to solve the problem of hooking back up. The very front of the trailer was nowhere near four feet from the ground, and the landing gear wasn't designed to lift a loaded trailer any great distance-- even with the crank in low gear.
The solution came in the form of a gigantic articulated wheel loader. Indeed, Caterpillar only makes three larger loaders. It picked up the front of the trailer-- perhaps fifteen tons-- and then the landing gear could be cranked down with ease. The trailer was backed back to the spot from whence it came, and the load was delayed due to the extremely uncool occurance. As it happens, I hauled it the next morning. Heavy bugger.
So, what had gone wrong? We'll never know, since if the problem had been detected before the disconnect, then nothing would have fallen off of anything. The working theory is that when I dropped the air on the tractor, the fifth wheel became too low, and the pin rode above the jaws that should have grasped it. There are a couple of other possibilities, but the bottom line is that it wasn't coupled properly in the first place. Car drivers will be happy to know that it is impossible for a Fontaine (our favored brand) fifth wheel to just come unhooked.
Needless to say, I am now paranoid about the possibility of a false coupling. It's just as my mentor said-- you never want it to happen again. Indeed, one of my college professors had a highly applicable saying: "You learn by doing-- and usually what you learn is 'don't do that.'"
According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, the past tense of travel can be spelled as "traveled" or "travelled." For whatever reason, I dislike the aesthetics of both spellings. Ah, well...
I hadn't driven a truck lately, but I was a passenger two weeks ago, when we went to Hamilton, Ontario, Canada to pick up liquid fertilizer. Now, at least half of the time, when I say "liquid fertilizer," people think that it's a euphemism for manure. Logical, but not in this case. We haul a few types of liquid fertilizer, but lately it's been the all-nitrogen variety. My working hypothesis is that it's urea and ammonium nitrate dissolved in water-- a large amount of it, considering the stuff weighs 11 pounds per gallon.
Here in the United States, local distributors supply "30% nitrogen." I'll eventually run the math to see how they compute that. At the place we went to in Canada, the Canadian trucks picked up 28%, and the American trucks received 32%. As to why that is... regulation? tradition? Who knows.
Hamilton is at the western tip of Lake Ontario, and we picked up the fertilizer right on the waterfront. A large amount of industry occurs in that region, and it was neat to see it-- if mostly in the distance, on the other side of a broad channel. Only one ship within sight was unloading at the time. At that distance, I can only guess that the product was coal.
Anyway, the Canada trip went well. There's an awful lot to see while cruising along the QEW (Queen Elizabeth Way, possibly the highest-traffic highway in Canada)-- and it was all new to me, considering I haven't even been in the country since 1992. There's an amazing amount of greenhouse floorspace, for example.
We crossed the border both ways with just a few questions. Of course, we had customs papers for the load. We think they can measure the rough weight of the truck, so they know when you're empty. They run your license plate numbers. At some crossings, (but I don't think all, yet) they X-ray the trailer-- and if they're suspicious after a couple of tries, your truck will be guarded by heavily armed men while the situation is examined, probed, and sometimes disassembled.
They have some funny trucks over there in what the TV commercials
advocating Canadian tourism call "the world next door." I'll have to describe them sometime.
That trip was on a Wednesday, and was the same day that our only employee (a driver, oddly enough) quit. Slightly inconvenient, that. On Thursday, I tagged along with my brother again, and we hauled another load of urea ammonium nitrate (UAN)-- this time out of Rochester (New York). That's where most of it that we haul comes from.
After everything was loaded up and battened down (it's a liquid product, so nautical terms seem barely appropriate), I decided to go start the truck. Seemed like a good idea, so we could leave as soon as possible. My brother then proceeds-- instead of evicting me from the driver's seat-- to get in on the passenger side, and demand that we leave immediately.
Now, I had never before driven a truck loaded to the normal maximum gross weight of 80,000 pounds. The theory is the same as an empty truck: acceleration is low, stopping requires planning, and you have to watch it going around curves at speed. Yes, the theory is the same-- only more so. But, hey-- you learn by doing, right? It went fine, with a little coaching now and then.
By Friday, my brother had more-or-less hired a retired driver (and friend of ours) to be my co-pilot, and had scheduled three loads for me to haul. We have two trucks, and he was going to be busy all day, too. I am a holder of a CDL (commercial driver's license) learner's permit, so, legally, I need a licensed driver along for the ride. Aside from the legal matter, the advice is appreciated.
It ended up being two loads. The first was junk cars, and that went OK. The second was liquid fertilizer, which surprises no one this time of year. It ended up being something of an adventure.
We pick up this UAN stuff quite close to the Rochester airport. It's an old fuel or oil terminal, circa 1951. Now, I had observed the loading procedures at this location many times, but I hadn't attempted to perform any of them.
The fight to place the overhead loading pipe was more comical than anything else. Re-extracting it proved a little tricky, as it got pinched by one of the technologically advanced truck inner tubes that are inside the tank to counter the slosh effect (since the trailer isn't full to the top, a wave forms readily from acceleration or braking). Once it was freed, I head a little clink and splash.
The rubber gasket for the manhole lid had been hit perfectly by the end of the loading pipe to cause it to fall right in. It didn't float. I tried to fish it out, but I couldn't reach the bottom with available tools.
The main road headed west out of Rochester is interstate 490 (so named since I-90 passes directly below the city). If your destination has a southward bent, stay on 490. For almost straight west with a hint of North, get on route 531. As it happens, that's the direction to our home base-- so a huge percentage of our truck trips go down 531.
The delivery was supposed to be at a farm just east of the end of the 531, on route 31 (go figure). We had a street address. So I got off at the last exit, drove through quite slowly... and missed it. Suddenly, we were past the number (it was on the left-hand side), though there had been a mysterious dirt driveway that wasn't any too wide-- the ditches are deep enough to topple a truck with ease.
The solution (pun detected) was to continue a few miles, get back on the 531, and try again.
So I stopped across the road from the driveway, and went to have a look. Sure enough, there were plastic tanks there-- complete with a tractor and a little barn-- but no people. Did I mention that the delivery was two days late, since the driver had unceremoniously quit just before he would have hauled this load?
I had just about decided to either start making phone calls, or just fill the tanks, when a red pickup truck wheeled in. The guy didn't know what to do, but he called his home base to check. He reported the presence of a fertilizer truck, and then relayed the bad news: go to the main farm, which is off of Elmgrove road. That's the first exit from the 531. On the plus side, I was told that I couldn't miss it, and that there'd be a guy waiting.
So I went down 31, through an estimated four stoplights (which is a fair distance, on a curvy hilly semi-rural road), and eventually wound my way to the main farm. Couldn't miss it, indeed.
There was also, as promised, a guy waiting. He ambled over to the truck... and gave me the bad news. That place you just left? You have to go back there.
You see, they'd been expected a shipment of dry fertilizer that day, and had two hoppers waiting to receive it. Apparently, the red pickup guy had spoken with the home farm via phone again in the meantime, and they asked, "Wait, what kind of truck is it?" He told them it was a tanker... so they then knew of the mistake, but they didn't know how to contact me in the truck.
It looked like I might be able to drive around the building right there, so I asked. The guy says no, you'll have to pull around another building, back up, and go out the same way.
I do that, with some coaching. It wasn't too hard, since I had the target to back toward of two pickup trucks. With guys standing around. So if they'd moved the pickups, I could have driven out that way. Or maybe they knew something that I didn't. Mud, perhaps.
Wind back down the street, and come out to make the unassisted left turn onto Elmgrove. At a bit after 4 PM. This looked roughly like it was going to be possible on the twelfth of Never. But a shiny blue refuse truck eventually came to my rescue, stopping traffic to let me go ahead of him-- out of the kindness of his own heart.
Get on the 531, bop down to the end, make the now familiar right turn onto 31, and approach the driveway of failure intolerance. Came in on an initial arc that would lead to the ditch, backed up a bit, and that was that. The trailer wheels were feet from a really serious disaster.
The pump was brand new. Hadn't pumped a drop in its life. That wasn't a problem. What was a problem is that the outlet comes straight out the top, and we didn't have an elbow on hand (so to speak). So a two inch (inside diameter) line filled the 11 lb/gal product emerged from the top of the pump, and trailed down to the ground (about five feet). That didn't look healthy for the plastic pump housing, so I stood there to hold it against the fender.
Unfortunately, the hose junction on the outlet was leaking a decent amount. Attempting to tighten it with a small Crescent (tm) wrench failed.
About that time the red pickup guy from before drove up in his bulldozer. He scammed a second hose clamp from a nearby tank, had just the right size wrench, and we redid the thing with both hose clamps.
All better.
Had to fill three different tanks to get it all off. No big deal. And then...
The location of the aforementioned bulldozer left a relatively small space to back into for turning around. The other side of the laneway was some other guy's lawn (he was mowing it), so we didn't want to drive on that any more than necessary.
My co-pilot provided useful suggestions. It took a while. A sense of accomplishment was achieved.
That trip might be a record for most screwing around, but you know what? I got a lot of practice, and I once heard tell that you learn by doing.
I'll be away for a few days (starting fairly soon), and I may even be completely unable to access the 'net. Since I don't have time to do one of my long, fact-ridden articles, it occurred to me to do something that I haven't done before. I'll tell you what's on my slate for the future of the site. Not that people use slate anymore, but a Notepad window makes a fine substitute.
You may have noticed that I will often end an entry with an allusion to future scribbling on the subject. I haven't been kidding about that; there are notions simmering away for all of them.
Something that I have wanted to do since the beginning is pure science education. The first in the queue in that genre is a condensed course in genetics-- from the DNA strand to the organism-- which will no doubt be broken up into several lessons. I will then study commas, in order to divine whether I should have used such devices in the preceding two sentences (just kidding).
I have at least two articles in the hopper that are of a controversial nature. I am not afriad of controversy as such, but I refuse to make a spectacle out of it that is all sound and fury. I yearn to share knowledge with others, out there in the marketplace of ideas, so it would be foolish to scare my customers away via gratuitous... there must be a word for it, but I can't think of it. Anyway, those two are being handled gently, becuase this is a rational place-- not the Jerry Springer show.
Since it appears that there are (roughly) 524,288 excellent blogs in circulation these days, I will endeavor to link to some of them when it is appropriate to the subject matter. Why, I might even try to open a debate with another blogger at some point. (Yes, I have an idea.)
Let's see... ah, yes-- fiction. I may not read as much as I would like like, but books and other sorts of fiction will need to have their virtues and vices extolled. Bonus if I also manage to find non-fiction somewhere.
My coverage of space exploration and its attendant technologies has been pathetically little-- especially when contrasted with my large enthusiasm for the subject. I feel that my space proposals are both grand and reasonable, but I may not be the most impartial judge of that-- so that's where my highly objective viewing public comes in.
I reckon there's enough things to talk about to last a very long time. Just to use genetics as an example, once I explain the basics (unless you already know the basics), there are all sorts of neat things to discuss. Disease-causing bacteria, housecat coat patterns-- and you'd never guess how downright interesting fraternal twins in cattle can be. And then there's politics, which will no doubt always be a distraction. At any given time, there will be someone in a position of power doing something stupid. It's probably encoded in their DNA.
It's no doubt shocking to those who know me that I haven't mentioned computers as of yet. Well, I guess I'll have to do something about that.
Might as well begin at the beginning. My family acquired a Commodore 64 back in 1984, which would make me seven years old. We didn't have a floppy drive for the first couple of years, so computer activities were limited to two of cartridge-based games, or typing in programs by hand with no ability to save them. A floppy drive came in time, as did connecting with other C64 owners in school. I even dabbled in doing "useful" things-- as recently as my senior year of high school (1995), I typed papers on my C64-- using the excellent GEOS (Graphic Environment Operating System). Excellent, you ask? Sure. Bringing a functioning graphical user interface and a full suite of productivity applications to a 1 MHz computer with 64K of memory was no mean feat.
Long about 1990, I took a big heap of savings ($600) and bought myself an Amiga 500. The Amiga line had offered great graphics, sound, full preemptive multitasking "and so much more" since 1985. It was so far ahead of everyone else that it was just stupid, so naturally the machine was put out by Commodore-- a company which refused to throw away perfectly good money on advertising. Though the Amiga gained a lot of traction in Europe, Commodore went out of business in '94. Sigh. I took my trusty A500 with me to college, and showed off its capabilities. Not in terms of what it could do, as that was no longer remarkable, but rather that it did so with so little. Fellow geeks used to Macs and PCs were baffled. "What do you mean you can multitask with a 7 MHz CPU and half a meg of RAM?" Those were the days...
Along the way, I spent a lot of time using Macs and more modern Amigas, and less time with Sun, SGI, and DEC systems. I even divined how to use RIT's VAX cluster, though I hear they're trying to phase it out these days.
Eventually, though, I fell into the clutches of the Windows camp. By my best count, I have built some twelve Windows PCs in the last five years-- six for me, and six for other people. Six systems of my own in five years, you ask? Yes, but it's not what you think. The first four were built in the first 15 months or so-- almost entirely from parts that other people didn't want any more. It was joked that my personal computers were following some variant of Moore's Law. The fifth system (which I'm typing this on) was all new components, thus I had gone from 50 MHz to 550 MHz in a shade under a year and a half.
The sixth is my pride and joy, the mighty Cerberus-- a dual 1.33 GHz (overclocked from 1.0) AMD Morgan Duron box, running Windows 2000 Pro, that I built 15 months ago. I use it for participating in the Folding@Home distributed computing effort, which aims to model how proteins fold-- both correctly and incorrectly. In theory, this will improve our understanding of many diseases. Cerberus is also my gaming rig-- usually at the same time proteins are being crunched (two CPUs are better than one, in my estimation).
So, that's the general overview of where I am, and how I got there-- on the geography of the desktop computing world. Apologies to the computer intolerant.
Though success is not always attainable, I try to keep up with all of the sites on my blogroll. I was reading Steven Den Beste-- of USS Clueless-- yesterday, about how he had redone his blogroll again. He does this every four months or so, in order to give exposure to underexposed blogs.
I recalled the previous blogroll revamp at the Clueless, and a little corner of my heart jumped at the thought that I might someday be picked. Not yet, though. No, there was no sense in getting my hopes up right now-- but, with work, I could aspire to be on the short list next time around.
I didn't check the new blogroll until I had read the entire article. Only one of the links was purple, indicating that I had visited it. My curious eyes zeroed in on that one, and then my thoughts were flash-frozen.
Oh... my... Goodness! It's... me!
Well! That rather changes the situation. As is the way for largely unknown bloggers, I have been fretting that rather few people were reading my work, regardless of its quality. This, however, is a gold-plated golden opportunity. People will come, and they will read at least a little. If I fail to produce, though, then those people won't be coming back. Mr. Den Beste provided a stroke of luck-- but from here on out, it's all merit. Fair enough.
I expect big things from this cohort of seventeen blogs. Let's make the best of our newfound exposure.
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.
If I have any loyal readers, then they have probably been wondering what happened to me. The answer is that I've been busy moving, and am now saddled with dial-up internet at 26.4 kilobaud. Ah, well. You can't have everything.
I should return to something like a normal blog existence in the future, except that it'll have to wait a bit longer. Family reunion this weekend. You understand, of course.
I apologize for the delay in following up on my altogther too short pilot posting. Technical difficulties are, of course, to blame-- darn those Usual Suspects.
I think of the title of my nascent web log as a pun which is not very good. This is different from a "bad pun." Naming can be a difficult thing, at times, and (alas) Winds of Change was already taken. After racking my brain for a while, I decided on Rising Nucleotides, which was meant to suggest that a rising tide of knowledge is a Good Thing. It is also a gag based on my vocation. Nucleotides are not only the building blocks of DNA and RNA molecules (the A, T, G, C, and somtimes U that you hear about), but also one of them-- adenosine triphosphate (ATP)-- is the energy carrier molecule that powers reactions in cells.
I am pro-science, anti-idiotarian, and I think quite an awful lot. I like art and music, though I do little to increase my knowledge of either. I mean that in a consumption sort of way; I can't draw for beans. I "totally dig" computer technology-- indeed, I have built several computers for myself, and about as many for other people.
Science fiction is a good thing. It does us good to think about the future, since "we're all going to live there some day." Regardless of whether that sounds corny, to deny the underlying truth is to fall victim to short-sighted foolishness. And that would be bad.
I intend to use this space to talk about matters that concern me-- be they hot-button political issues, cool technologies, scientific discoveries, or any other adjective-modified noun which strikes my fancy. Sometimes I will have a definitive opinion on the matter; when things are less clear I will attempt to stimulate thinking. Reader comments are welcome-- at least in part because they would prove that there are, in fact, readers.
Howdy. I'm Mitch, and this is my blog. As you may have surmised, based on its title, I am something of a biologist.