Sleeperberth Cast

I am just leaving from a fairly long break. At a flying J here in Knoxville, Tn I was able to get a good EVDO signal and catch up on some accumilated downloads. Though NationalAccess through Verizon is faster than dialup these speeds are simply the stone age. In the stage of development the “internets” are in now broadband speeds should be a standard offering. In this story it appears Sprint is moving in that direction. If Verizon is to keep up it will follow shortly. Now lets get more towers up and connected!

I’m heading off to Las Lunas, to make a delivery by Monday afternoon.

[GP:FLYJKN]

The Gear Jammer
We finally get a post from the GrindKing. Seems that unfortunately trouble has found him or he has found trouble. No matter the semantics, it is good to hear from him and sounds like from this link he has an interesting podcast coming up tied to his alternative (meaning not trucking) venture. This has become one of my favorite podcasts, with his dry monotonic and completely mesmeric delivery succinctly detailing his experiences and imparting great geek tips for his listeners. In fact it was partly through his introduction of his geo blogging tool that I was inspired to find a geo plugin for use in this blog.
[GP:FLYJOB]

Ok, sound kind of odd right? In defense of this statement, I have had a week of tooth ache and it definitely has changed my conciousness. I feel tired alot… worn out due to headaches caused by the pain. I will discuss this more in a podcast I have recorded and will put up now that I have finally gotten the chance to see a dentist (and an oral surgeon). Problem hasn’t been permanently resolved, but I have the proper antibiotics now and some very serious pain medication which I won’t be able to use except when I shut down. Haven’t felt like doing anything but the absolute necessities. Podcasts haven’t really done it for me, Sex… well… we don’t need to go there.. Am I painting a clear enough picture?

But this state should be behind me and I am slowly building up steam again to fill your ipod with more insane ramblings and incoherent mumblings accompanied with more of that excellent podsafe/indie music. Heading to Memphis from Wheatridge, Colorado and to make my next load I have to get a start on it. Keep safe all and KTRSD&TSSU!
[GP:Wheat Ridge]

I had clutch go out on me just as I passed into the East Spokane, Wa (Post Falls, Id) Port of Entry. This type of problem has happened to me before. I had just left a P.O.E in Colorado going East on I-70 when I blew a turbo. This time I actually did have problems before arriving at the port. I stopped at the Flying J in Post Falls to check my load before going on into Spokane to spend a day at home before deliverying this load in Bremerton, Wa. I had trouble getting the transmission into gear at a dead stop. I was on a slight hill so I rolled down hill and was able to synchro it into gear. I held the clutch in and was able to stop without any apparent slippage. Thinking it was a fluke deal I went on to the port and then encountered the problem after being instructed to park and bring paperwork in.

I have to say, that the DOT officers were a good bunch of guys. I came back after discovering the problem was definitely more serious than I had first thought and after I passed a level 3 inspection (paperwork, logbook, permits, etc). They were very helpful and gave me permission to park it for the night if needed.

I worked on it and via qualcomm, talked the problem over with our Over The Road department and I decided to leave the truck there until I could go and get some brake fluid to add to it. Yes, it was a tad low. Not low enough that it should be a problem, but OTR said that it was a common problem in regard to Volvo’s.

Next day I tried various methods including the addition of the brake fluid to no avail. Thinking I’d have to call a tow truck or at least road service, I was pleasantly surprised when I tried one thing that had not occurred to me until some continued discussion with OTR. I was able to shift into gear with the engine off. So….. I was able to get the tractor and loaded trailer into Spokane without having to fork out $300-$500 for a tow.

That next day, which was Sunday, was a day spent trying to figure out whether the load I had would be repowered (having another driver finish the delivery) or rescheduled. Work could not be done on it till this morning. Weekend dispatch is over whelmed, having to deal with all sorts of issues, very similar to this one. Always wise to take care of business before the weekend. And I’m lucky to have a good dispatcher that plans for his drivers weekends.

So, I am waiting to get the tractor back so I can finish delivering this load, which is rescheduled for delivery on Tuesday morning in Bremerton. I have been busy while at home and will get a podcast together and up as soon as I get back into the groove of things. It will be interesting to restart, for I have received a sony stereo microphone from TruckerLlew. This definitely shows me that he is serious about taking a fairly lengthy hiatus from podcasting. Fear not though, I’m certain he will be back with his dulcet tones passing over the cyberwaves to us podcast listeners sometime in the future. And I will ship him back this microphone when that time comes. Anything I can do to encourage Brian to get back on the cyberair is a definite must. But in the meantime… I have the pleasure of being able to use this nice little mic.. and not a moment to soon…. with my other microphone shorting out.
[GP:East Spokane]

Made it to a rest area just outside of Big Timber, Mt and inside Greycliff Prairie Dog Town State Park. I am thrown off my schedule and can’t seem to get off of a night shift kind of rotation. Seems fortunate my wife is going through a similar ordeal, for she has been on Mare watch with a friend. Finally last night the mare foaled, and so the watch after several weeks is finally over. I’ll blog more about that later. Maybe even get a few pictures up on my new flickr account if I can just figure out how to use the falbum plugin I have installed. I may have to reup the plugin. So, off to Spokane and finally Bremerton, Wa. Will have another podcast sometime within the next few days.
[GP:Greycliff]

Arrived here in Wheat Ridge roughly at 0200 after dropping and hooking to my next load. After scaling out my load a parking spot opened up just as I was preparing to give up the hunt and go to another location. I had to take care of a little Icon trouble (the name of the system that runs the optimized idle for Cummins.) when I discovered the light bulb had burned out. They have a special part that you can only get at Cummins/Volvo, but any bulb of near size does work.

I’m really liking this GeoPositions plugin. I had a bit of trouble when I entered the wrong Google API in the plugin which caused my tags to go defunct. Once I figured that problem out it has been working like a charm. Would like to replace the multimap image/link with a Yahoo beta maps api. I am really impressed with the resolution Y! maps beta is capable of.

TruckerLlew is still blogging from time to time as well as posting on the Truckers Podcasting Network. Looking from this post he will no doubt be podcasting sometime in the near future. Good News indeed.
[GP:Wheat Ridge]

Ok, it never ceases to amaze me that any time off can really change my endurance as drastically as it does. I actually shut down at a rest area just to the west of Boardman, Or. I was just beat. I had another 1/2 hour of my 14 hour clock, but I usually have energy to spare and I was a fighting it just to make it that far. In fact I would have shut down in Portland but for the fact that parking was very sparse.

Qualcomm is going nuts as the company is letting all drivers know that the upgrade (interesting to know that was the cause of the downtime. Seems someone could have been a bit more forthcoming about that information before hand.) has been completed. Message after message.

[GP:Boardman]

QualComm is quiet. The computers are down at dispatch. Anyway, whatever is ailing them I am currently here in Kent at my delivery after fending off the lunatic neighbor. After I finish here I deadhead to Portland and then we’ll just have to see where I end up from there:)
[GP:Kent]

I arrived home yesterday and within the span of 5-10 minutes it took me to get from my truck to my apartment door I received a call from my company informing me my complaining neighbor had once more called. I had somewhat anticipated this and had turned the refer off for temperature on the load is to range from 35-45 degrees and it is and has been in that range for the past few days. After speaking via my company contact to the police, it has become clear I will not be able to park there if I am running a refer at all. I am legally parked but if this bozo continues to call and complain, the police though reluctant will have to respond.

I have upgraded to WP 2.0.2 and updated my feedburner plugin so that if you subscribe to my feed through Itunes (and possibly others, though I haven’t discovered an occurrence as of yet) you will get a cloned feed and it will prompt you to redownload old podcast episodes. My apologies for this nuiscance. I have yet to discover a way around this. If you know of a way to update my WordPress and themes or can point me in the right direction… I’d really appreciate the input. Just drop me an email or post a comment.

I’m testing another plugin. Geo plugin isn’t working and the developer seems to be working on other projects so I am trying another plugin called GeoPositions. Will see how this works. Just click on the appropriate Icon to the map tool you would like to see where I am posting from and… Voila! Pretty cool, huh?
[GP:Spokane]

On my way home I am in Rocker, Mt at a Pilot Travel Center. Am testing the use of a geotag plugin for WP.

Well, I’m having trouble getting this to work. It’s not displaying. So… I’ll have to give it a go later. Definitely don’t want to waste more time here when I can be at home bugging my neighbors with the presence of my Big rig and the noise it is capable of making.