My Wandering Eye is Driven By Technology
My truck woes continue- I drove mine for an entire two weeks after I got it back from it’s injector saucer and cup service (when the mechanics dirtied up it’s innards). The problem this time was that it had lost it muscle entirely, she had less power than that 2005 yucky spare truck I wrote about previously! Not only that, but she also became a bit of a fuel-a-holic, sipping 2 more gallons per mile then before the service. A mechanic I spoke to informed me what the dealer fixed and what was happening now were most likely not related, but nonetheless, I was given the keys to a different spare truck and off she went, back to the sick bay so the Doctor’s could investigate.
This time around, I was given a 2009 spare truck, one year newer then my truck, and with only about 63,000 miles on her clock. I figured 2009, can’t be as disgusting as that old 05' I had to deal with, and I was partially right. All it needed was a quick vacuum and perhaps a basic wipe down of the dash and other surfaces, but otherwise it was in good shape. From the moment I got in the thing, my eye began to wonder.....
2009 vs. 2008. 180 some hundred thousand miles compared to only 63 some thousand. Same equipment as my truck, only a younger model. My mind wandered over the list of my trucks growing ailments and I secretly began to wonder if I should call the guy out at headquarters who arranges the marriages between driver and truck and inquire if I could just keep the 09'. I was even looking over the 09's wheels and thinking how easy they would polish up at this young point in her life. I felt terrible for having these thoughts as I love my truck plenty much, but this younger model had some things my truck does not. I was able to control myself and decided to drive it around awhile before calling anyone and risk putting my relationship with my 08' on the rocks.
The first thing I noticed on the 09' was a little box with two radio inputs located on the dash. One was labeled Aux, and the other was labeled USB. Here’s an actual picture:
I have a cord that I used to connect my XM radio directly to the Stereo via the Auxiliary jack. I wasn’t sure what the USB jack was for so I tried running my MP3 player through it but got a message on the radio that said “incompatible device.” Burdened with an overactive mind, I decided to try using it for something else.
I had two things in mind, speed and communication.
Most trucks on the road these days (including ours) are governed at a certain speed. This means they are programmed to go no faster then, for example, 70 miles an hour. You can step on the pedal til you push it through the floorboards, but it will not go any faster unless you’re going down a hill. These are in place to reduce fuel and also for safety reasons. If a truck ran wide open, a lot of drivers would probably run it wide open as well. A governor serves insurance companies and trucking companies very well as far as giving them a little control of the truck. I was quite comfortable when our trucks were set at 70, I didn’t always go that fast, but it was useful when you needed to pass someone slower. One night after fuel prices shot sky high by way of the Wall Street speculators, an unseen force came through our yard armed with an electronic device and told them never to go above 66 for as long as they shall live. I kind of miss the ability to go 70 and figured this USB port might be my chance to change things.
I fired up my laptop, connected it to the USB port in the truck, opened my email application, and fired off a short note to the truck:
Dear Volvo,
My name is Jason and I will be driving you for awhile while your distant relative I normally drive gets her maladies taken care of. Please forget what those evil mechanics told you and feel free to go as fast as you want, say like, 120 miles an hour.
Thank-you and enjoy the ride,
Jason
I wasn’t sure it if it would work, the email went somewhere but I’m not sure where. I didn’t really want to go 120 miles an hour, I simply wanted to see how far I could push the speed boundaries. I soon forgot about the whole endeavor and moved on.
The 09' truck drove real nice, it seemed to ride a little smoother but certain things kind of annoyed me. The biggest thing was that the drivers seat only had an armrest on the right side. My truck has them on both sides and having only one left (pun intended) me feeling horribly out of balance. Was this a cost cutting measure? Our trucks are very well equipped with refrigerators, inverters, APU’s (heating and cooling without running the engine) so why would someone order a truck with one armrest just to save a few measly bucks? Or could it be that someone doesn’t want our drivers getting too ‘comfortable’? It’s beyond me, and the unbalanced feeling was really annoying.
The other thing I disliked at first was the radio itself- it was unusually quiet. If I am singing “All Out of Love” at the top of my lungs, I like the radio to be loud enough to drown myself out. I’m good at lots of things but admittedly, singing isn’t one of them. I am currently banned from 4 different karaoke clubs only because on multiple occasions I cleared them out of customers completely after performing only half a song. Correction, it's actually only three clubs - one still lets me in for my good looks but only on the condition I never sing again. The darn bouncers actually search me for writing instruments and scraps of paper so I am not tempted to even try.
A little bit of fiddling with the radio and somehow I got it’s quiet tone fixed. Even better, I somehow activated an even cooler feature: I noticed that when I slowed down, the radio automatically became quieter, and when I sped back up, it got loud again! All by itself, how wonderful! In the same way a TV remote controls saves you endless energy by keeping you comfortable on the couch, I could save equal amounts by not having to move my right arm ALL THE WAY to the volume knob! At the end of a fourteen hour day, I felt as refreshed as the moment I woke up, most likely from that cool little bit of technology!
Halfway through the week in my new spare truck that I was now having feelings for, I noticed a message on my inbox at the social networking site known as Facebook. One of my Friends, Charlie, wrote that he thought he was working on my truck but it was actually another drivers truck. Turns out that Charlie happens to work at the Volvo dealer where my truck has gotten into the habit of hanging around!
Charlie lived up the road from me when I was growing up and we spent a lot of time hanging around and destroying local farm environments on our motorcycles, four wheelers and rocket powered sleds. I liked Charlie not only for his sparkling personality, but also for his amazing mechanical abilities which I always seemed to lack. If one of my toys, and there were many, (thanks Mom & Dad) wasn’t running right or not at all, with a simple turn of a wrench, Charlie would have me back on the road again (sorry, local authorities.)
It’s been 18 plus years since I last saw or heard from Charlie and I was amazed by the fact that after all these years, our relationship is pretty much right where we last left it: Charlie is still real good at fixing things, and I’m still real good at breaking things. Since that message he sent me, we have talked on the phone a few times and I’m grateful I now have not only reconnected with an old friend, but I also have an insider at the dealer where my truck goes when it falls ill! (I should mention, Charlie was not the mechanic who dirtied up my bunk but I’m sure he put his friends at work on high alert that if they do such malicious things to my truck ever again, they risk being written about!) I would be elated if Charlie was the only one to lay hands on my pride and joy from now on!
Facebook is great in some respects and I’m grateful for all the reconnecting I have done with childhood friends and even classmates from years ago.
One more thing on social networking: If you are one of the ten or twenty people left on earth who still haven’t signed up for Facebook, I’m hoping the above stories will inspire you to give it a try. You might not find great mechanic friends but you very might well be able to rekindle friendships that were special to you, for your own reasons. A few words of caution: If you do give it a try, stay away from its highly addictive games like Mafia Life and it’s evil twin, Farmville.
I haven’t fallen victim to their addictive nature (as long as there is not a truckerville), but I am concerned a lot of my friends have! I see many of them posting what’s going on in their virtual worlds and I often wish they would revert back to their childhoods and just go outside and play awhile instead. After all, multiple studies have shown that these terrible so called “forms of entertainment” were actually created by our Government to keep people distracted what is really happening in our World today.
I am sure that in some small town right now, there is a guy tending to his virtual farm on his computer. At that same moment, a Man in a black suit and blacker sunglasses is pushing a wheelbarrow containing a small green alien right through that gentleman’s backyard! The poor guy missed it because he was inside tending to something on his computer that doesn’t really exist. Our Government would call that entire episode “mission complete.”
Enough with the conspiracies and social networking, lets get back to the newest object of my affection, the 09 spare truck. As the week and the miles wore on, I was really enjoying the way it drove and was seriously considering calling the powers that be to see if I could peel my name off my 08' and reapply it to this 09'.
I even had similarly vividly weird dreams in the 09' that I occasionally have in my own truck.
One dream in particular sticks out in my mind: I was driving along at what seemed like a high rate of speed. I could tell this because the scenery was moving by real fast and the radio was blaring so loudly it was actually hurting my ears. I couldn’t tell how fast I was going since the speedometer only goes up to 85 and the needle was stuck was firmly planted just past that. I checked my GPS and to my surprise, we were cruising along at 120mph! It wasn’t long til the law caught up with me and I remember being glad that the radio turned itself down as we rolled to a stop and I could hear the friendly Trooper yelling his head off. He sure was angry and wasn’t buying my explanation that I simply never saw the blinking sign- how was I to know I was driving in a 15mph school zone?
As much as I enjoyed the 09', I decided against ever making the call to see if I could make it my own, mostly because of the darn one armrest. I have myself convinced that if I am ever given a new truck with one armrest that I will flat out refuse to drive it and I’m sure I will eventually be fired for not giving up my two armrest equipped 08'. Then I’ll go work at some fast food joint and spend the rest of my days wondering why I gave up a job I loved over an armrest.
Besides that, new trucks always have issues and mine is well on the path to having it’s issues ironed out- sooner or later the 09' will have those same issues and I have no wish to go down that road again.
I’ll get my own ride back one of these days and I’ll once again have two armrests for perfect comfort. Even though I’ll have to waste precious energy manually turning down the radio (especially when the law catches up with me) I’ll be as happy as ever. Some new and emerging technologies (like social networking and auto-volume radios) are great life enhancing tools, others that have been around awhile (like my 08' truck), are plenty good enough.
This time around, I was given a 2009 spare truck, one year newer then my truck, and with only about 63,000 miles on her clock. I figured 2009, can’t be as disgusting as that old 05' I had to deal with, and I was partially right. All it needed was a quick vacuum and perhaps a basic wipe down of the dash and other surfaces, but otherwise it was in good shape. From the moment I got in the thing, my eye began to wonder.....
2009 vs. 2008. 180 some hundred thousand miles compared to only 63 some thousand. Same equipment as my truck, only a younger model. My mind wandered over the list of my trucks growing ailments and I secretly began to wonder if I should call the guy out at headquarters who arranges the marriages between driver and truck and inquire if I could just keep the 09'. I was even looking over the 09's wheels and thinking how easy they would polish up at this young point in her life. I felt terrible for having these thoughts as I love my truck plenty much, but this younger model had some things my truck does not. I was able to control myself and decided to drive it around awhile before calling anyone and risk putting my relationship with my 08' on the rocks.
The first thing I noticed on the 09' was a little box with two radio inputs located on the dash. One was labeled Aux, and the other was labeled USB. Here’s an actual picture:
I have a cord that I used to connect my XM radio directly to the Stereo via the Auxiliary jack. I wasn’t sure what the USB jack was for so I tried running my MP3 player through it but got a message on the radio that said “incompatible device.” Burdened with an overactive mind, I decided to try using it for something else.
I had two things in mind, speed and communication.
Most trucks on the road these days (including ours) are governed at a certain speed. This means they are programmed to go no faster then, for example, 70 miles an hour. You can step on the pedal til you push it through the floorboards, but it will not go any faster unless you’re going down a hill. These are in place to reduce fuel and also for safety reasons. If a truck ran wide open, a lot of drivers would probably run it wide open as well. A governor serves insurance companies and trucking companies very well as far as giving them a little control of the truck. I was quite comfortable when our trucks were set at 70, I didn’t always go that fast, but it was useful when you needed to pass someone slower. One night after fuel prices shot sky high by way of the Wall Street speculators, an unseen force came through our yard armed with an electronic device and told them never to go above 66 for as long as they shall live. I kind of miss the ability to go 70 and figured this USB port might be my chance to change things.
I fired up my laptop, connected it to the USB port in the truck, opened my email application, and fired off a short note to the truck:
Dear Volvo,
My name is Jason and I will be driving you for awhile while your distant relative I normally drive gets her maladies taken care of. Please forget what those evil mechanics told you and feel free to go as fast as you want, say like, 120 miles an hour.
Thank-you and enjoy the ride,
Jason
I wasn’t sure it if it would work, the email went somewhere but I’m not sure where. I didn’t really want to go 120 miles an hour, I simply wanted to see how far I could push the speed boundaries. I soon forgot about the whole endeavor and moved on.
The 09' truck drove real nice, it seemed to ride a little smoother but certain things kind of annoyed me. The biggest thing was that the drivers seat only had an armrest on the right side. My truck has them on both sides and having only one left (pun intended) me feeling horribly out of balance. Was this a cost cutting measure? Our trucks are very well equipped with refrigerators, inverters, APU’s (heating and cooling without running the engine) so why would someone order a truck with one armrest just to save a few measly bucks? Or could it be that someone doesn’t want our drivers getting too ‘comfortable’? It’s beyond me, and the unbalanced feeling was really annoying.
The other thing I disliked at first was the radio itself- it was unusually quiet. If I am singing “All Out of Love” at the top of my lungs, I like the radio to be loud enough to drown myself out. I’m good at lots of things but admittedly, singing isn’t one of them. I am currently banned from 4 different karaoke clubs only because on multiple occasions I cleared them out of customers completely after performing only half a song. Correction, it's actually only three clubs - one still lets me in for my good looks but only on the condition I never sing again. The darn bouncers actually search me for writing instruments and scraps of paper so I am not tempted to even try.
A little bit of fiddling with the radio and somehow I got it’s quiet tone fixed. Even better, I somehow activated an even cooler feature: I noticed that when I slowed down, the radio automatically became quieter, and when I sped back up, it got loud again! All by itself, how wonderful! In the same way a TV remote controls saves you endless energy by keeping you comfortable on the couch, I could save equal amounts by not having to move my right arm ALL THE WAY to the volume knob! At the end of a fourteen hour day, I felt as refreshed as the moment I woke up, most likely from that cool little bit of technology!
Halfway through the week in my new spare truck that I was now having feelings for, I noticed a message on my inbox at the social networking site known as Facebook. One of my Friends, Charlie, wrote that he thought he was working on my truck but it was actually another drivers truck. Turns out that Charlie happens to work at the Volvo dealer where my truck has gotten into the habit of hanging around!
Charlie lived up the road from me when I was growing up and we spent a lot of time hanging around and destroying local farm environments on our motorcycles, four wheelers and rocket powered sleds. I liked Charlie not only for his sparkling personality, but also for his amazing mechanical abilities which I always seemed to lack. If one of my toys, and there were many, (thanks Mom & Dad) wasn’t running right or not at all, with a simple turn of a wrench, Charlie would have me back on the road again (sorry, local authorities.)
It’s been 18 plus years since I last saw or heard from Charlie and I was amazed by the fact that after all these years, our relationship is pretty much right where we last left it: Charlie is still real good at fixing things, and I’m still real good at breaking things. Since that message he sent me, we have talked on the phone a few times and I’m grateful I now have not only reconnected with an old friend, but I also have an insider at the dealer where my truck goes when it falls ill! (I should mention, Charlie was not the mechanic who dirtied up my bunk but I’m sure he put his friends at work on high alert that if they do such malicious things to my truck ever again, they risk being written about!) I would be elated if Charlie was the only one to lay hands on my pride and joy from now on!
Facebook is great in some respects and I’m grateful for all the reconnecting I have done with childhood friends and even classmates from years ago.
One more thing on social networking: If you are one of the ten or twenty people left on earth who still haven’t signed up for Facebook, I’m hoping the above stories will inspire you to give it a try. You might not find great mechanic friends but you very might well be able to rekindle friendships that were special to you, for your own reasons. A few words of caution: If you do give it a try, stay away from its highly addictive games like Mafia Life and it’s evil twin, Farmville.
I haven’t fallen victim to their addictive nature (as long as there is not a truckerville), but I am concerned a lot of my friends have! I see many of them posting what’s going on in their virtual worlds and I often wish they would revert back to their childhoods and just go outside and play awhile instead. After all, multiple studies have shown that these terrible so called “forms of entertainment” were actually created by our Government to keep people distracted what is really happening in our World today.
I am sure that in some small town right now, there is a guy tending to his virtual farm on his computer. At that same moment, a Man in a black suit and blacker sunglasses is pushing a wheelbarrow containing a small green alien right through that gentleman’s backyard! The poor guy missed it because he was inside tending to something on his computer that doesn’t really exist. Our Government would call that entire episode “mission complete.”
Enough with the conspiracies and social networking, lets get back to the newest object of my affection, the 09 spare truck. As the week and the miles wore on, I was really enjoying the way it drove and was seriously considering calling the powers that be to see if I could peel my name off my 08' and reapply it to this 09'.
I even had similarly vividly weird dreams in the 09' that I occasionally have in my own truck.
One dream in particular sticks out in my mind: I was driving along at what seemed like a high rate of speed. I could tell this because the scenery was moving by real fast and the radio was blaring so loudly it was actually hurting my ears. I couldn’t tell how fast I was going since the speedometer only goes up to 85 and the needle was stuck was firmly planted just past that. I checked my GPS and to my surprise, we were cruising along at 120mph! It wasn’t long til the law caught up with me and I remember being glad that the radio turned itself down as we rolled to a stop and I could hear the friendly Trooper yelling his head off. He sure was angry and wasn’t buying my explanation that I simply never saw the blinking sign- how was I to know I was driving in a 15mph school zone?
As much as I enjoyed the 09', I decided against ever making the call to see if I could make it my own, mostly because of the darn one armrest. I have myself convinced that if I am ever given a new truck with one armrest that I will flat out refuse to drive it and I’m sure I will eventually be fired for not giving up my two armrest equipped 08'. Then I’ll go work at some fast food joint and spend the rest of my days wondering why I gave up a job I loved over an armrest.
Besides that, new trucks always have issues and mine is well on the path to having it’s issues ironed out- sooner or later the 09' will have those same issues and I have no wish to go down that road again.
I’ll get my own ride back one of these days and I’ll once again have two armrests for perfect comfort. Even though I’ll have to waste precious energy manually turning down the radio (especially when the law catches up with me) I’ll be as happy as ever. Some new and emerging technologies (like social networking and auto-volume radios) are great life enhancing tools, others that have been around awhile (like my 08' truck), are plenty good enough.
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