Sunday, July 26, 2009

To my Twitter friends

As a trucker I get to travel around this great country of ours. One of the pleasures I have is sending pictures from my blackberry and posting them on Twitter. Several times since tweeting these pictures I would get an @ message from a user that hardly ever tweets thanking for sharing the beauty with them. These fine people have reminded me to be grateful not only for the mobility my body still has but how blessed i am to have a job I love doing. To all my Twitter friends that travel along as I make my way from Temple Texas to Seattle Washington every 2 weeks THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES. The life of a trucker can get lonely and for 8 to 10 days gone from home at a time having so many friends available to laugh learn and just be entertained by 24 hours a day is too cool for words. The fact that some of my less mobile friends love my pictures and tweet me about them inspires me to send more and as soon as I have the time I will start an album of pictures and post it on my web page. Who knows maybe even a book of pictures from the eyes of a trucker. SO off to tweet my friends up on twitter and enjoy their company.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

My Blackberry Bold

I have been fortunate to have a cell phone since the days of the clunkers. Never in my wildest dreams could i have predicted the evolution leading to today's smart phones. I have to begin this rant with a shout out to the website that started my addiction, http://crackberry.com/. I was looking around the web at smart phone reviews and was leaning towards the Iphone but after the reviews and thinking it would drive me crazy to type on a touch screen bouncing around in my truck. I found the crackberry web site had awesome reviews with video's from opening the box it was shipped in to some of the features of the BB Bold. The thing that I liked about their review was they told me what they liked and especially what they didn't like about the Bold. Since this was to be my first Blackberry I now had a list of short comings to decide if I could live with or not. I started looking at carriers and anybody with a Bold from AT&T had to pay $299.99 and got a rebate for $100.00. I'm thinking I want one but that a big investment for a phone. I googled Blackberry Bold and saw a link to http://wireless.amazon.com/BlackBerry-Bold-9000-Phone-Black/dp/B001JEOV8S/ref=bs_dp_ph_7 and It's price surprised me $99.99! I'm know there has to be a catch so I scour the info and its the exact same as the one from AT&T and now the entry fee is $200.00 less. I ordered it and signed up for a plan I could live with from AT&T and it arrived the day I was leaving to do a Seattle run. My wife had to drive 35 miles so I could have my new toy. I looked today and Amazonwireless has the Bold 9000 for $124.99, enough to make you wonder why AT&T charges more. The good folks at crackberry were right about the shortcomings of the Bold. 1.Browser ( I couldn't agree more it sucks but I use my laptop on the web.) 2.Battery (crackberry forums have alot of tips for this problem.) 3.Application storage space. I started searching for the cures. I started by reading the forums at crackberry again and decided to try a few browser apps and see if it improved the speed. No success and I tried at least 2 different recommended mini opera and viigo. My first pc on the web was so much faster with a 28k dial up modem. So i gave up and deleted those to save space. Now to the battery problem i went to www.amazon.com and searched for the Bold accessories and found a 2500mah battery for $26.99 including snail mail shipping. The standard battery for the bold is 1700mah. I wasn't sure I would like it because it came with a thicker back cover since it's almost twice as thick as the standard. It turned out to be a good choice I have had it fully charged and twittered for over 14 hours snapping pic's and posting them on Twitter and constantly reading and updating. This is at least 4 more hours than I could get out of my standard battery. The thicker cover will fit in the stock holster, but its a tight fit and the screen off feature doesn't work. I use a windshield mount while I drive, the thickness doesn't matter. The last thing I had to try to fix was the application storage problem and once again crackberry forums showed me how. I like to play with alot of apps and themes(free is my price)and found a solution. For $9.99 I bought the Aerize card loader from crackberry. The reviews were mixed but I couldn't find a better solution. So after they emailed me the link to install and getting it running on my Bold i was lost the documentation was poor at best. Eventually I figured it out. You had to uninstall the apps and reinstall them to get them off the BB's Memory and onto my 8gb micro card. The following is a review I wrote up for a guy that was gripping about the lack of storage space on his BB. I have the Aerize card loader from crackberry.com, it doesnt load apps from BB Appworld but if i can find the app somewhere else i can install the program on my 8gb mem card, luckily I got this before too many apps because I had to uninstall then reinstall apps to the card but i have a place now for almost unlimited app.You can save themes there too, over all its the best 9.99 i have spent on my BB Bold!!

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Thanks for the inspriration.

I have to say a few words of thanks to my twitter friends @MaraBG and @MDabbles for the inspiration to finally get my blogging life underway. @MaraBG was the deciding factor since she enjoyed my email to her of how I got my name that it was my first post. I have been thinking of blogging for a short time and hers was a nice way to see how you could entertain a reader and teach them a form of free flowing structure. Don't take my word for it see for yourself @http://www.stewartandmarasodyssey.blogspot.com/. My thanks to @MDabbles who gave me the information to start a mobile blog from my blackberry. As soon as i get it working correctly, wont have to bore the followers with my on the road pictures I can post them on it and leave twitter for those really special Pictures I feel the need to share with everyone. Also if you want to see a blog that looks fantastic check his out @http://mdabbles.wordpress.com/ Thanks for tuning in more to come when i am not to tired to babble.

Terry

How I got named Little Bastard

The story of the little bastard names goes back to 1993 when I was working at a aluminum diecast factory for almost minimum wage. I was a trim press operator, and had an opportunity come my way to transfer to the QA dept. Well I leaped at the chance to get a better job and more pay.

My boss was a lady named Martha (a story herself) who could cuss like a sailor but was soft as a grandma. Martha liked me and when I went to her to turn in a 2 week notice. An opportunity to work for a different company with better benefits and higher pay. She closed the door to her and said, I know you’re a smart guy that loves his job here. How much money are we talking about. I said $2.50 an hour more, and she said since I was up for review she thought she could get me a $2.00 an hour raise. I accepted and she went to the owner. I was the first ever employee not being promoted to a supervisor position to get a raise like that Now the plot thickens, I worked along on 2nd shift and was doing ok when a job in the precision machining dept. QA was posted. I saw an opportunity and signed up for it. The next day I started my shift and the owner of the company approached me and asked me why I wanted the job. You know of course I told him to learn more and experience how the company operated. The owner who I had barely knew me said he was going to approve the transfer even though, and I quote, "Martha is going to have a SHIT FIT" He was right , she called me in the office and said" YOU LITTLE BASTARD I GOT YOU THE F***ING MONEY AND NOW YOUR GOING TO WORK FOR THAT B**CH IN THE BACK.(meaning the qa supervisor in prec.) My reply was yes boss lady I am but you never know what's in the future, but I am always going to try to improve my life. I worked for Judy (the B) for a year and finally had enough. I got a job at a different company and was doing fine at it. I came home from work that night and my wife,(who also worked at the diecast plant) told me that Martha asked her to have me go see her the next day.

Of course I went to see her I had a lot of respect for Martha as you can imagine what a special lady she was to go from an hourly worker to supervisor in a large factory that employed more than 450 people. She asked if I was interested in being a 2nd shift leadman for the qa department.She was in a bind and because the diecast foreman was such a bastard nobody wanted the job and she would get me $9.00 to start and 10.00 after 90 days. This was 1994. I accepted her job offer and reminded her what I said when the little bastard conversation happened.

I worked for this lady for 8 more years. After 3 more years of 2nd shift I was moved to 1st shift so I could do 2 jobs for the company Be 1st shift QA leadman and do dimensional layouts for engineering, I averaged 80+ hours a week for the year. Martha went to the owner and had me promoted to QA Supervisor Diecast. I was put on a nice salary Of 42,000 a year, a far cry from the $4.65 hourly wage I started at. Well life was ok and then big changes happened again (a story to itself) and I was miserable at work. We had a ass that was put in charge of all QA. Precision, Martha, and I. Finally one day I went and told Martha that I had to go , she understood my reasons better than anybody. I took my 401k money went to truck driving school and that’s that.

The reason I use Little bastard as a nick is :
In 1999 I got my first internet capable pc and was finally going to take the plunge into the net. Microsoft would not let me make an account for littlebastard so I used littlebastrad and it worked. The next 6 years on the net I made friends from all over world using that name. I learned so much from the wonderful friends that I made. I went trucking I lost contact with almost all of them. I hoped by using this nick name on Twitter I will find a least some of them.

I am positive you know the cliché Don't judge a book by its cover. I figure if somebody is so uptight that cant get to know me because of my name I probably don’t care to know them either.

I hope you enjoy this story as much as I did writing and remembering it.

Terry Huntley

P>S> Martha retired 3 weeks later after i quit at 64 years old and is like a 2nd mom to me after my mom passed in 2000. I don’t see her often enough but I will when I get back to Tx