It's a slow day people, get talking.

I'm the only guy in the office on my team. I've read SciBabe's entire backlog. Start talking or my heads gonna land on the keyboard.

I took the afternoon off. Gonna fix the drywall in my bathroom. Maybe get a burrito after.

Sag, we can only talk about biplanes for so long.

I'm hereby using the War Powers Act to open up new topics of conversation.

So, there is this thing called "Hours of Service" where-by a commercial driver can work no more than 14 hours a day and within that 14 hours cannot drive for more than 11. Then before driving he must take 10 hours off.

Now these regulations are in place to prevent drivers from being over tired and falling asleep at the wheel. Very well. Drivers in the past were often on uppers, often their driving ability was impaired. So the regulations are good and were needed. How these hours were tracked was that every driver kept a paper log of his activities, when and where his day started, when did he drive, for how long, when and where did he stop, etc.

As you might expect, every driver cheated on these logs to gain extra time. Perhaps not a great deal, though some guys carried multiple sets of logs, but enough to cover getting stuck in traffic or to gain a few minutes to make a delivery today rather than tomorrow.

Well when a driver is found to have falsified his log, not only is he fined out the ass but his company is also penalized and the number of infractions is tracked. To counter the falsification, most large to medium scale companies are going to electronic logs. A tablet connected to the main computer of the truck keeps track of when the truck is moving and a gps tracks the location. No more cheating. At all.

However, I have found that the hard limit on my drive time, and I'm talking to the second, often compels me to drive a bit more aggressively when it's getting close to me making my destination or not. Sort of the antithesis of what they are intended to do.

Also, if you notice as you drive the highways at night, there are more and more trucks in the breakdown lanes of the highways and shoulders of on and off ramps. This is because, at least in the north east, every rest stop and truck stop are crammed to the gills with trucks and there is no room. Another side effect of electronic logs. Those guys aren't broken down, they are waiting out their 10 hours. Not resting really. Pretty hard to sleep soundly in a breakdown lane. Again thwarting the intent of the regulations.

Anyway, it's these regulations that have me sitting in the yard of a sheet rock plant in Central Peensylvania staring at the cooling towers of the nuclear reactor down the street waiting out my 10 hours rather than driving home to my wife.

So that's what's on my mind.

After finally hitting my limit for tolerating my deranged boss, I put in my notice at work on Monday of this week. Now I'm in an odd limbo state because I agreed to keep working here until either I find a job or he finds my replacement. While it's a relief to bring my stealth job search out into the open, there is a possible scenario where I end up long-term unemployed again, only this time with less savings and no u/c checks. Yesterday, I had a couple of great interviews with a company that will be making a decision early next week, so it is hard for me to focus on my current job today. So I keep checking the forum here for some kind of brief distraction.

Funny, there are people here trying to talk my higher ups into those trackers...But, completely different industry. The trucks my company runs are local cherry pickers and cranes for installations and we'd just need it for the miles to report to the state DOT. Rarely do we need to go out of state.

But that said, one of my co-workers owned a company a while back, same industry, he had some installations to do in New Orleans that he sent a crew down for. He told them to stop and get a hotel, they didn't driver fell asleep at the wheel, truck hit an overpass at full speed and the compressed gas for their welding torches exploded during the impact. The hardest phone calls he had to make were to their wives.

I am writing a review of "City of Horror". While doing so, my wife was talking in my ear about this restaurant we're going to tonight, where the "hook" is that they serve fondue ([1][2]), and all I could think about was how last year we went to sushi and it was epic, so why not go back...? So, 'Horror" was on my mind, Japanese was on my mind, and so I have two sections in the patented Pros/Cons (TM) (R) (SM) (BD) section of my review: WHAT MAKES THIS MY KIND OF CITY, and WHAT MAKES THIS HORRORBLE. I started thinking about Horrorble. Then I wanted to put a link on that to make it funny. This is what I found, and it is absolutely hilarious. It's safe for work, and make sure the speakers are turned way up, because it can't really be heard in anything but vibrant sonic technicolor.


[1] I am prepared for food or lysteria poisoning.
[2] I was drugged and brought to the San Jose courthouse 19 years ago, whence I became married.

What are you driving Repo? On Ice Road Truckers this season they showed the dashes on some of the trucks and jeeze louise they are much more computerized now. The one guy's truck essentially shut him down because it didn't like one of the readings coming off the engine.

There's a stretch of U.S. Route 50 east of DC that will have ten or twenty trucks lined up at rush hour, I always assumed because no one in their right mind would waste their road time moving at six miles an hour on the beltway and I-95 between Annapolis and Richmond. I figured they were sleeping, maybe their playing X-Box in the sleeping compartment.

You on the Maryland border or up in Harrisburg?

As an aside...if you ever find yourself in West Chester PA at a recycling plant, that's mine, and don't unload anything - make them do it. You never know what's in those drums.

Sure, I'll bite.

My original dissertation work, which I consider my best work, has been to I believe at this point ~15 different journal outlets and rejected, usually as a desk reject without being peer reviewed because of "fit" for the journal. Which brings us to now, about a year ago it got revise and resubmitted (success) at an average/slightly below average journal. The issue is that it is the most agonizingly slow journal I have ever worked with. 3 months before it got sent out for review, 3 months out for first reviews (about average), 3 months of me making revisions, 3 months on editor's desk, now into month 2 of being out for review again. All this for what I consider my best work, even though I have had massively better success with other parts of my scholarly work and am doing ok overall. It's so confusing to work with your favorite work and find out that everyone else who has evaluated it thinks it's among your worst work.

Add to all of this that my wife is coming close to when she goes up for tenure but seems to have some sort of permanent mental/emotional block with respect to finishing any papers for review, but is otherwise is an excellent scholar at all the other parts of the job... I feel like the last 6 months have been pure torture. It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion but I really have no influence over its outcome besides being negative on it because of my worry.

I actually, out loud, said "What the fu-u-u-ck," during this gameplay footage of DARK SOULS 3.



I have been playing video games since the Odyssey². The last game I said this about was BAYONETTA, and that was because you basically rape god to death. The bar is set high is what I am saying.

Yeah, when a random limb flies out of that tree's tree-gina I laughed. Looking forward to that one.

I have been pondering Pandemic Legacy today. I don't know why, apart from about 3 of us who all seemed to hit April at the same time, no-one here seems to be talking about it. It has gone ballistic on BGG, hitting the top 3 games there. It is one of those rare gems that has come of age by becoming more trashy, and is loved by many people who think Pandemic is only OK.

But the main frustration I have is that because it is a story driven campaign, you just can't talk about it, or read too much about it on the web. There are serious spoilers to be had, so if you want to keep the experience pure, you need to keep your distance from anything related to the game. My second group will want to play it, and I just don't know what I will do, as knowing the storyline will dramatically change decisions made. This isn't like a movie where rewatching while knowing the twist, gives a different experience, but still fundamentally similar. Knowing what is upcoming can change your decisions, which will make you more prepared for what is coming and for the game to become easier.

sagrilarus wrote: What are you driving Repo? On Ice Road Truckers this season they showed the dashes on some of the trucks and jeeze louise they are much more computerized now. The one guy's truck essentially shut him down because it didn't like one of the readings coming off the engine.

There's a stretch of U.S. Route 50 east of DC that will have ten or twenty trucks lined up at rush hour, I always assumed because no one in their right mind would waste their road time moving at six miles an hour on the beltway and I-95 between Annapolis and Richmond. I figured they were sleeping, maybe their playing X-Box in the sleeping compartment.

You on the Maryland border or up in Harrisburg?

Well being the "new guy" I get the "broken in" truck to drive. I'm in a 2006 Volvo with 865,000 miles on it. Not all bad, I've sort of bonded with Big Blue, as I call it (the newer trucks are red). It doesn't use DEF (diesel exhaust fluid) which is a distillate of pig piss used to cut down on soot in exhaust fumes and it's still a manual transmission. Most new trucks are all automatics. And it's got less miles than the first truck they tried to foist off on me. That one had 1.4 million miles on it.

I'm outside of Danville right now which is up by I-80 about 100 miles north of Harrisburg. I was down in Capitol Heights Maryland a few weeks back and the DC traffic was nerve wracking.

Don't worry Pete, I'm driving a flatbed so no refuse. Mostly sheet rock, excuse me "drywall". Sheet Rock is a brand name like Kleenex as I have recently learned. Also move a lot of lumber, roofing shingles, and coils of steel wire used for making the forms used when pouring concrete.

Here is a rare selfie I took to show my friends what a man looks like when told he's got to cool his heals for 5 hours waiting for the truck to be loaded.