Posts Tagged → truck
Where is the Manual Override lever?
A friend of mine has a beautiful home filled up with high technology gadgets. Everything in the house is automated, including opening and closing toilet seats, lights, music, the kitchen wine rack, you name it; if it can be programmed to happen or turn on or off when a person enters or exits the room or uses the potty, he has it set.
First time I encountered this was at a party. It was funny and entertaining. I would experience something newfangled and robotic, comment on it, compliment my friend for his ingenuity, and then retreat to the pool deck or his living room to talk with a human being.
Then a year later he generously hosted me as a guest for a weekend as I ran for state senate, while he and his family were away. Every time I stepped into the kitchen, lights would turn on, the fridge would light up, or automatically open if I approached it, same with the coffee maker, etc. When the shower was turned on, music started.
No matter what I wanted to do, or needed to do, or possibly indicated a desire to do, the automated electronics tried to anticipate me and do it for me. Even the toilet paper dispenser was set to go, maybe not enough, but it tried to provide. Everything but the final act was done by the toilet paper dispenser, but then the guest room toilet also had a bidet feature, which if you are into that, can work wonders if set on “fire hose high.”
After that weekend, I swore I would try to avoid automation as much as possible the rest of my life. It unnerved me, because almost as frequently as the robotics were correct, they were then incorrect, and then annoying. Put another way, the first hour of that is Golly! amusing. The second hour is provocative, as the human mind tries to find ways to work around the now-annoying robots. After that, one becomes tired of the novelty, and a bit alarmed by all of the automated activity that occurs no matter which room one enters into, and what one really wants.
And there is no manual override.
Several years ago I made the mistake of buying a newfangled clothes washing machine. Our old one died, and I had run out of fixes for it. I could not find its two-way electric motor, used, even on eBay, and so it went out into the world of recycling.
Looking for that old machine’s fierce old-fashioned tear-your-arm-off churn of the washing machines we all grew up with, I accepted the salesman’s representation that this new machine could do that, if I programmed it to do it. And Lordy but does it have buttons for programming! It even can link up with your smart phone and be run from that, if you download that manufacturer’s spyware app.
I figured that with all of these sophisticated buttons and options, the machine could probably be programmed to write Shakespeare sonnets, much less really, really clean our family’s clothing.
Nope.
Turns out that the machine has programming for a high efficiency absence of cleaning water set at cold, and shame-on-you low efficiency absence of cleaning water, set at tepid, with the same weak, flaccid, slow, low-energy half-turn of the cleaning rotor as happens with the high-efficiency choice. And the churny-rotor thingy is a superior action to the lift-and-flop motion the machine is set to do from the factory.
Any mistake in trying to run a wash and then stopping it requires the machine to drain out all of the wash water and then start all over again. Which is a waste of water, and whatever electricity it used, and is usually an unnecessary step.
With this new, expensive, high tech clothes washing machine, you are stuck with a set of poor or poorer choices in how to maybe clean your clothes. The machine was designed and programmed by people who care more about energy and water efficiency than actually cleaning clothes.
Note to clothes washer manufacturers: We consumers buy clothes washers because we want our clothes to get clean, however that is done, whatever it takes, at whatever amounts and temperatures of water are needed, and with whatever rotor churn power is needed to knock the caked dirt off of my work clothes. We don’t want high efficiency water and electrictity use for anything other than thoroughly cleaning our clothes. And if the high efficiency settings don’t clean clothes, as they usually do not, then we want a choice in setting the machine to really kick ass and do what clothes washers are supposed to do: Clean. Really, really, super clean. At whatever cost in water and electricity.
And no, there is no manual override for this fancy washing machine. You the consumer are given an incomplete set of choices, and by golly, that is what you will learn to like, whether it is likable or not.
Last but not least among the examples of modern thingies needing a manual override, we have the new car belonging to the Princess of Patience. It is a 2026 Toyota Rav4 hybrid, being number four in a progression of RAV4s the Princess of Patience has owned and relied upon, with great enjoyment.
Heh, well, this latest and greatest iteration of the tried and true and much favored RAV4 inspires our gentle, soft spoken, always well considered Princess of Patience to say things like “I hate this %*$#@! thing. I want to set it on fire and leave it on the side of the road!”
Now, what could inspire such a harsh reaction to something so wonderfully modern and reliable as her new car? In a word: Technological automation.
This damned RAV4 has more technology than a fighter jet, and more automation than the Toyota car factory that built it. The technology is overwhelming, unnecessary, superfluous, and impossible to control, unless one has a degree in computer programming. The little turny knobs we used for the past seventy years for selecting radio stations and interior temperatures worked, ya know. Simple solution, hard to break, easy to tune. Not the new car technology! It is all touch screen, which is hard to see, inelegant, and clumsy.
This RAV4 tries to grab and pull into its computer motherboard every electronic gadget and phone that passes within fifty feet of it, then downloading and storing everything digital on said gadget and phone (to then download to Toyota so the car company can then sell and monetize our most personal information). This car also has every kind of Nanny pseudo-safety feature automatically built in that a weenie sheltered mama’s boy could ever dream up.
The car beeps and chimes and dings if you swerve one inch into the road dividing line. It will also automatically swerve away from any car or dividing line it believes you have mistakenly turned towards, even if you are swerving to avoid a deer standing in the middle of the road, but end up hitting the deer instead, because of the car’s automated correction system.
Ditto for coming anywhere near another vehicle while driving or parking. Last week my left wrist was nearly broken because of the force it hit the steering wheel with, as the car automatically and harshly jammed on the brakes to “save” us from hitting the rear end of a car that was turning into an alley in a congested urban area. We were plenty far enough away from the other car’s bumper, but to the RAV4, we nearly died, and it saved us.
Whoever programmed this car’s automated sensors and driving instructions obviously never drove in Brooklyn, New York, where urban combat driving is the norm and clearances between moving and parked vehicles and with buildings and humans are all measured in tenths of inches. To everyone’s satisfaction. But not to this car!
If I were to try to drive this 2026 RAV4 in a place like Brooklyn, I would leave a trail of destruction and mayhem behind me, on account of the automated driving and “safe reaction” nanny settings programmed into the car. The car would swerve to avoid one perceived obstacle, and then take out two grandmas, a stroller, and a partridge in a pear tree in one full swoop, just to stop me from maybe hitting something. All while the damned thing scans my eyeballs and my brain for what music I might possibly want to listen to at that second.
Folks, there is just too damned much technology and automation and useless gee-whiz gizmos in everything we use. It is all working against us, against our interests, our choices, against our humanity. It is a reflection not of us and our choices, but of the weak and highly risk-averse fairies who program these things before we start using them. And there is no manual override for any of it.
Not everything analog is bad, and hardly everything digital is good. The deeper we go into digital everything, the more we want some of that old analog world back. It was easier, more user friendly, did more with less, easier to maintain, lasted longer and broke a lot lot less than the digital crap.
You want a tamper resistant and theft-proof vehicle, that does what you tell it to do, when you want it? Get a manual stick shift. That is what I want in my next pickup truck, if only to be able to regularly give Third Gear to The Man.
Freedom Convoys vs Lawless Power Grabbers
People do read this blog. Not many, but I am always impressed at the roughly four regular readers here. How some of the ideas and phrases posted here get immediately sucked up into the larger Internet discussion is a happy mystery.
For example, a month ago the old CW McCall pro-America and anti-authoritarian song “Convoy” was posted here, with a few edits to bring it up to date, and the next thing ya know, there are CONVOYS happening everywhere. I guess I was not alone in thinking about a death-defying cross-country convoy to challenge the lawlessness emanating from Washington, DC, and Ottawa, Canada.
If you want the latest on-the-ground news about the Canadian convoys, or Australian protests, then the only consistent place to get it is Rebel News. Rebel News is a bunch of old fashioned news reporters walking the streets and asking people questions, filming and documenting the actual interactions happening between the government agents and The People. If you think that dialing in CNNLOL or CBC or CBS will get you accurate information, you are mistaken, because they are the propagandists for the lawless government officials presently abusing their powers and doing everything possible to hold on to their power. And the harder the governments squeeze peaceful protestors, the more the protestors protest, and the more the establishment media and Big Tech try to hide and distort what is truly happening.
What do the peaceful citizen protestors have to lose? They have already lost their freedoms and their right to assemble and petition their government. Canadian Artur Pawlowski was just illegally dragged out of his home and jailed by Royal Canadian Mounted Police for planning to speak to peaceful protestors assembled nearby.
This is the stuff of 1940s India, 1940s Eastern Europe, 1970s Russia, 1980s Eastern Germany and Poland, and freakin’ 1770s America, The People vs. The Tyrants. Eventually, The People prevail, sometimes at great cost. But they do prevail over tyranny.
What is interesting is that as the various convoys picked up steam across Canada over the past few days, began to settle in at border crossings and cities’ downtowns, and began to inspire similar convoy discussions in America, and Australia, things began to happen in America and in Canada. Like different federal agencies in America and different states/ provinces in America and Canada began backing off the Covid-1984 health tyranny.
The lawless government officials responsible for the Covid-1984 health tyrannies recognize that not only have Americans and Canadians had enough of this bullshit, we also know that their vaccines and mask mandates and destructive societal lockdowns have done either nothing or next to nothing for public health. The People can see with our own eyes that probably 95% of the coercive health tyranny actions have had no affect on public health, and that it was all done for public control.
What is happening now is what happens every time authoritarians get ahead of themselves and overreach – The People take a stand and start defying the official lawlessness. It remains to be seen if some especially authoritarian officials, like Canadian PM Justin Trudeau and president* Joe Biden will try to call out the tanks and military against this peaceful civil disobedience. The lawless Biden Administration has spent the past year in overdrive acquiring, developing, and implementing mass surveillance tools, software, and personnel…. all to illegally monitor and control the American People. And in many cases, illegally kidnapping innocent Americans out of their homes and locking them up (even now) without charges. Political prisoners in the DC Gulag is a pretty big symbol that the Biden thugs really, really want absolute power over us. Maybe tanks are next.
These are the actions of power-mad, desperate authoritarians. Let us hope that enough officials recognize that their power grab failed, and that it is time to restore freedom. The trucker convoys are the beginning of the test of freedom vs lawless power grabbers, and the rubber is about to meet the road…
Ghandi would be protesting right now against the anti-democracy authoritarianism in Canada, Australia, and America, and he would be just as persona non grata to Justin Trudeau and Joe Biden as he was to the British Imperial Government
A few local signs that the economy is smokin’ hot
Me: “Hi. I would like to have Cleon make me log arch, one that I can hook to my ATV, that is stronger than the Chinese junk being sold everywhere, and that is less expensive than the crazy-priced LogRite arches.”
Lynette: “Josh, what is your time frame?”
Me: “Well, I can use it in a week, but two or three weeks is no problem.”
Lynette: “Here’s the thing about timing. Back in June, we were about to lay off one of the welders, but we put out bids on ten jobs, any one or two of which would have carried us through the year. And between last week and this Monday we heard back that we won every single one of them. So we will not only be retaining that junior welder, but we are now looking for about five more to help us meet our commitments. We might not be able to get to your log arch for a while, but one of the men will call you back later today.”
And then one of the men did call me back, with terms and a price that more or less said “If we are going to make this for you, then you are going to pay big for taking us away from our real work.”
Another sign that our local and regional economy is smokin’ hot: The log trucks, the pallet trucks, the lumber trucks on the roads EVERYWHERE and at all times of day.
Never before have I seen so much activity in just one business sector, as I am seeing now in the timber industry, except maybe in 2008 when the Marcellus Shale boom was indeed booming across Pennsylvania.
Log trucks are especially visible. How can you miss a log truck? It dwarfs every other vehicle around it, and looks incredibly incongruous. Log trucks have these huge wide open bays or bunks to hold the logs, and a boom arm with a claw for lifting up 6,000 to 10,000-pound logs. A log truck has about 5,000 board feet or more of medium to high grade logs of all types on it, heading from someone’s private forest to someone else’s mill. From there the logs will be carefully analyzed for grade, and either sold-on or sawn up on site. Hardwood lumber is used in flooring, cabinetry, and furniture, all of which when active indicate a strong consumer and home building economy. Even tulip poplar, once sold for pennies per board foot, is now used for couch frames and cabinetry frames.
At every timber job there are expensive machines at work, with drivers who earn enough money to support a family. And the loggers, guys born with a chainsaw in one hand and a rifle in the other, they cut down a dangerous tree every ten minutes, then lop it and move on to the next before choking up the logs and skidding them to a landing.
Then there is the landowner, who gets good money for something they did absolutely nothing to create.
The sawmills, whether small Amish mills or huge international mills selling hundreds of thousands of board feet per week, are beehives of activity. Every person working there is earning money, and spending money, and contributing toward the larger economic activity around them.
Say nothing of the new homes and kitchen cabinets being built, or of the beautiful hardwood flooring and furniture being made for those new homes. All from someone’s private forest.
The point is, these are just two small examples of how the economy is exploding, and how after many years of stagnation we finally get to do more than scratch out a living, but actually do well and pay for our kids’ questionable college “education,” buy new cars, take nice vacations, and set something aside for our later years, when we are no longer able to work so hard.
It really is a new day in America, and boy does it feel good. One gets the impression that this good feeling is widespread across America, with the sad exception of places in North Carolina and Florida, recently hit hard by hurricanes, and our hearts go out to the victims there. The one thing they can rest assured about is that the materials needed to rebuild their lives are on their way as I write these words, and they are America-made, and America-grown.
Should I riot? Burn my neighborhood?
The other day a cop stepped out in front of my vehicle and motioned me to pull over.
“Explosives checkpoint,” he said, leaning into the truck cab and looking around.
“Got a driver’s license?” he asked.
Policemen stood all around, serious faces, thumbs hooked into gear belts, a dog, a strange looking machine pointed at the truck.
“Sure,” I said, digging through my Benjamin Franklin replica wallet for the ID. “Anything to help you guys.”
And I meant it, even while I did not like being pulled over for nothing. It feels like a police state. And we hunt. The truck is full of high powered rifle rounds, shotgun shells, tools, knives. What happens if the police find these things? They’re not explosives, but in the context of their search, they might be alarming.
And consider that the bumper has NRA stickers, Don’t Tread on Me, etc. My politics might be provocative. Who knows where that can lead.
A couple minutes later, a different officer walked over to the cab, handed me my license, and said thanks. He apologized for the inconvenience. We made chit chat about our kids, the high cost of college, and other stuff.
We parted ways on friendly terms.
Was I profiled?
Was it my pickup truck? My conservative stickers? My tough guy appearance?
Do they think I’m a “domestic terrorist”?
Should I get mad about this? Riot? Burn down my neighborhood?
I went and ate lunch. And forgot about this uncomfortable moment until now. Nope, I never took it personally
We aren’t all “in this together,” but most of us are
As the “United Nations” and its ally Barack Hussein Obama demand that a sovereign nation immediately cease defending its citizens from incessant rocket attacks, Westerners can and should wake up.
Do not think that America will not be held to the same bizarre standard. Beware of what is behind that.
As illegal invaders are now bussed into the American interior and given free taxpayer-funded benefits, be aware that future attempts to remove these squatters from our soil can and probably will be met with the accusation of committing a “crime against humanity.”
The UN will probably make that accusation official.
Already, Americans who want our borders to be maintained in an orderly way are being falsely accused of racism, as if the trucking in of hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens – in violation of American law – is an act of caring and love to the people who actually built and run America.
Across the Middle East, Christians are being hounded out of their ancestral areas. Bethlehem, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Turkey….you name it, these areas that once held large populations of Christians are seeing a growing refugee problem as these believers are chased, beaten, burned, tortured, and robbed to the point where they have no choice but to flee or perish.
Very little press is reporting on this crime.
Recently, the Jews were similarly driven out of the Muslim countries, and even once-Jewish places like Hebron and Tzfat, to the point where by 1958 a million refugees had mostly arrived in Israel, their homes, farms and businesses stolen and (still) occupied by Islamic supremacists. Populations that had lived peacefully for a thousand years before Islam was even created were suddenly attacked. That canary in the coal mine is being attacked again, now, from Gaza, and the world has turned against the canary.
If American and European Christians do not recognize what is in store for them both at home in America and Europe, and abroad, then they will eventually suffer the same fate as their Middle Eastern brethren.
Gotta make a stand against evil, folks.
What Would Nixon Do, or Do Americans really want to recover from this?
Obama’s “re-set” with Russia empowered Putin to become Stalin II. Russia is expanding un-checked in all directions as it re-creates the totalitarian Soviet Union, sacrificing airliners full of civilians along the way, with impunity.
Obama’s apology tour in the Middle East empowered Muslim imperialists to go to war against everyone, including the very European nations that have increasingly hosted them.
The Middle East is breaking apart everywhere and along every ideological fault line possible. The West’s sole outpost there, Israel, is surrounded by enemies, desperately conducting a non-war of non-defense, under circumstances where the World War II Allies carpet bombed and incinerated hundreds of thousands of their enemies in a single day, in battles fought day after day.
At home, Obama illegally trucks in hundreds of thousands of sick, diseased, poor illegal aliens to help bolster his political party, in economically depressed areas already loaded with broken communities.
If Richard Nixon resigned because of a failed nonviolent office break-in to get psychological files on an American traitor, then what should Obama do?
What will the Republican Party do to protect America from its enemies, foreign and domestic?
Is anyone paying attention? Do more than a handful of Americans really give a damn what happens to America and its representative government of checks and balances?
Do Americans want to recover to the great nation we were before, or are they satisfied to watch Western Civilization crumble around them, come what may?
Are Turtles Crossing the Road Really a Threat?
Why drivers seem to target slow-moving, non-threatening little turtles is beyond understanding.
Don’t we all have a soft spot in our hearts for innocent, vulnerable, gentle creatures that do us no harm?
The same goes for snakes, which eat the rodent mice, rats, and chipmunks that do so much damage to our homes, crops, gardens, and vehicles.
Every spring and summer, turtles cross roads as they leave water bodies like rivers, ponds, lakes, and marshes, and seek out soft soil where they can lay their eggs, so that the next generation of their kind can continue their unimposing life cycle. Yet every year, roadways are littered with dead and wounded turtles, many dying slowly in the baking hot sun.
Their crime is nothing more than appearing in front of humans behind the wheel of a machine. Are so many of us really so homicidal or sadistic that we go out of our way to hurt, injure, and kill a little helpless animal?
The unfortunate, sad answer is Yes, a lot of drivers go out of their way to hit turtles with their cars. You can simply look at where the turtles lie, crushed or wounded on the side of the road, where the car driver had to actually veer off the roadway to hit the helpless little thing. What is really sad is that turtles take at least ten years to breed, so killing one or two (or stealing one or two) in a given area can doom or kill off the entire population there.
If you have compassion for turtles, you can watch these instructive videos below, where curious turtle-liking guys put a rubber turtle alongside some roads near their homes and generated some unhappy results, and where drivers get out to try and help injured turtles.
Bottom line is Yep, drivers went out of their way to run over the little rubber turtle.