Volvo, behind the whell

Image by networks via Flickr

Trucks, like any industrial tools in shrink to fit times, a looking for optimum point. As working element in logistics they daily are in the cutting point of technological and negotiating scissors. Customers always want an minimum price. Expenses are strong correlated with the diesel price. In good old times, this means less computing and more common sense, the price of 1 loaded mile = price of 1 diesel gal. Well, for optimum I will take this as reference point. On the another hand, without profit truck is out from the road in no time. This is an criteria. Negotiating is not my strongest point, always I'm using negotiators in my job, my point of view is technological. Leave the diesel price, from my observations high diesel price means increase of profit, maintenance expenses are the core of the business profitability.

Two centuries ago Leibniz invented a calculating machine which embodied most of the essential features of recent keyboard devices, but it could not then come into use. The economics of the situation were against it: the labor involved in constructing it, before the days of mass production, exceeded the labor to be saved by its use, since all it could accomplish could be duplicated by sufficient use of pencil and paper. Moreover, it would have been subject to frequent breakdown, so that it could not have been depended upon; for at that time and long after, complexity and unreliability were synonymous.

Babbage, even with remarkably generous support for his time, could not produce his great arithmetical machine. His idea was sound enough, but construction and maintenance costs were then too heavy. Had a Pharaoh been given detailed and explicit designs of an automobile, and had he understood them completely, it would have taxed the resources of his kingdom to have fashioned the thousands of parts for a single car, and that car would have broken down on the first trip to Giza.

Volvo trucks position on the interstate system. And any driver depend upon.

As long as truck is on warranty, services authorized to fix any breakdown may be are on the limit of factory profitability. Next, what next, disaster. Easy to feel European optimum: after warranty one or two years on the road and expenses exceed the cost of a new car. Or, to mention here the words of an Canadian colleague, after 3000 miles you have to spend one week for maintenance. At current legal speed and hours of duty: one week over the road, one on the shop. I've driving few Volvo's over the road in last time looking at excellent MPG stories from truck stops involving Volvo truck's. Classic American trucks have 6 to 6.3 mpg., Volvo 7+. Is huge and is real using "13 speed" gearbox. For full automatic 6.2 to 6.8 mpg. Any car performance in this area have huge maintenance costs. Otto invented diesel engine long time ago, it is a German invention that it suppose do not work. After is started, over 500 rpm may be it work, at 800 rpm is working, the best performances are at 1250 rpm. Where is the fuel economy ? In the driver hand, always. From the factory, they have to select between economy point and power point at the design start. For me it seems economy point, I do not have power at low rpm, is OK after 70 mph. A truck have after him another vehicle that have 53' , so if you have a slow vehicle in front of you, in California or Arizona, maintenance shop is waiting for you at next location. If, and only if, you a lucky enough to get there. There means "authorized shop". Those are rare. Detroit diesel always are asking for the proof of damaged part, protecting truckers, Volvo will found another damaged part(s)  so, you will  take the truck out from the shop without any warranty remembering that Gestapo logo:  "in  Wald da sind die Räuber" (in forest are there the robbers).

Personal experience: Diagnose in Elko, Nevada: Harness failure probably injectors. Volvo send three times wrong harness to the shop, using only one service for this wasting 10 of my days, after that truck was on tow for 400 miles to Salt lake City, Utah. Here the harness was OK, but two injectors damaged, $ 1000 each. And the truck have damaged another mechanical part and will brake the vent belt. All of us know this story as "Volvo by purpose failure". Any mechanic will fix that problem in two or three hrs. Not a dealer, they have to sell $ 4000 parts.

In the Continental USA, a single driver is working maximum 550 miles/day at 1 to 1.5 $/mile to the truck. Five days for the truck expenses and my by one day for his expenses. If you feel like a Pharaoh.

Machines with interchangeable parts can now be constructed with great economy of effort. they perform reliably. The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it.

I do not discuss here about jewelry, it is about safety over the road.

Almost 90% of all accidents are due to the human factor. When looking at single accidents, 10-20% is due to tired drivers.  Halo... a driver is not operating an computer so move the safety point to the driver.

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Volvo behind the whell.

Image by networks via Flickr

Trucks, like any industrial tools in shrink to fit times, a looking for optimum point. As working element in logistics they daily are in the cutting point of technological and negotiating scissors. Customers always want a minimum price. Expenses are strong correlated with the diesel price. In good old times, this mean less computing and more common sense, the price of 1 loaded mile = price of 1 diesel gal. Well, for optimum I will take this as reference point. On the another hand, without profit truck is out from the road in no time. This is an criteria. Negotiating is not my strongest point, always I'm using negotiators in my job, my point of view is technological. Leave the diesel price, from my observations high diesel price mean increase of profit, maintenance expenses are the core of the business profitability.

Two centuries ago Leibniz invented a calculating machine which embodied most of the essential features of recent keyboard devices, but it could not then come into use. The economics of the situation were against it: the labor involved in constructing it, before the days of mass production, exceeded the labor to be saved by its use, since all it could accomplish could be duplicated by sufficient use of pencil and paper. Moreover, it would have been subject to frequent breakdown, so that it could not have been depended upon; for at that time and long after, complexity and unreliability were synonymous.

Babbage, even with remarkably generous support for his time, it could not produce his great arithmetical machine. His idea was sound enough, but construction and maintenance costs were then too heavy. Had a Pharaoh been given detailed and explicit designs of an automobile, and had he understood them completely, it would have taxed the resources of his kingdom to have fashioned the thousands of parts for a single car, and that car would have broken down on the first trip to Giza.

Volvo trucks position on the interstate system. And any driver depend upon.

As long as truck is on warranty, services authorized to fix any breakdown may be on the limit of factory profitability. Next, what next, it is a disaster. Easy to feel European optimum: after warranty one or two years on the road and expenses exceed the cost of a new car. Or, to mention here the words of an Canadian colleague, after 3000 miles you have to spend one week for maintenance. At currently legal speed and hours of duty: one week over the road, one on the shop. I've been driving few Volvo's over the road in last time looking at excellent MPG stories from truck stops involving Volvo trucks. Classic American trucks have 6 to 6.3 mpg., Volvo 7+. Is huge and is real using "13 speed" gearbox. For full automatic 6.2 to 6.8 mpg. Any car performance in this area have huge maintenance costs. Otto invented diesel engine long time ago, it is a German invention that it suppose do not work. After is started, over 500 rpm may be it work, at 800 rpm is working, the best performances are at 1250 rpm. Where is the fuel economy ? In the driver hand, always. From the factory, they have to select between economy point and power point at the design start. For me, it seems economy point, I do not have power at low rpm, is OK after 70 mph. A truck have after him another vehicle that have 53' , so if you have a slow vehicle in front of you, in California or Arizona, maintenance shop is waiting for you at next location. If, and only if, you a lucky enough to get there. There means "authorized shop". Those are rare. Detroit diesel always are asking for the proof of damaged part, protecting truckers, Volvo will found another damaged part(s)  so, you will  take the truck out from the shop without any warranty remembering that Gestapo logo:  "in  Wald da sind die Räuber" (in the forest, there are robbers).

Personal experience: Diagnose in Elko, Nevada: Harness failure probably injectors. Volvo send three times wrong harness to the shop, using only one service for this wasting 10 of my days, after that truck was on tow for 400 miles to Salt lake City, Utah. Here the harness was OK, but two injectors damaged, $ 1000 each. And the truck have damaged another mechanical part and it had  broken the vent belt. All of us know this story as "Volvo by purpose failure". Any mechanic will fix that problem in two or three hrs. Not a dealer, they have to sell $ 4000 parts.

In the Continental USA, a single driver is working maximum 550 miles/day at 1 to 1.5 $/mile to the truck. Five days for the truck expenses and my by one day for his expenses. If you feel like a Pharaoh.

Machines with interchangeable parts can now be constructed with great economy effort. They perform reliably. The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it.

I do not discuss here about jewelry, it is about safety over the road.

Almost 90% of all accidents are due to the human factor. When looking at single accidents, 10-20% is due to tired drivers.  Halo... a driver is not operating a computer, so move the safety point to the driver.

Internet & the plethora of vernacular

Twenty-five years ago the Internet as we now know it was in the process of being birthed by the National Science Foundation. Since then it's been an information explosion. From e-mail to eBay, communication and shopping have forever changed.
By Barrett Lyon, Opte.org

1 World Wide Web Tim Berners-Lee created user-friendly "Web pages" that could travel over the Internet, a network built to shuttle research between universities. The world logged on: 747 million adults in January.
2 E-mailTech’s answer to the Pony Express . Programs such as 1988’s Eudora made it easy to use. In-boxes have been filling up ever since. Nearly 97 billion e-mails are sent each day.
3 Graphical user interface (GUI) Most computer displays were blinking lines of text until Apple featured clickable icons and other graphic tools in its 1984 Mac. Microsoft's Windows took GUI ( pronounced 'gooey' ) to the masses.
By Mark Lennihan, AP

4 AOL AOL turned people on to Web portals, chat rooms and instant messaging. Early subscribers paid by the hour. AOL once boasted 35 million subscribers. It bought Time Warner for $106 billion in 2001.
5 Broadband The answer to the drip-drip-drip of dial-up, high-speed Internet service fuels online entertainment. About 78% of home Internet users in the U.S. have broadband, up from less than 1% in 1998.
6 Google So popular it’s a verb. The search powerhouse, with a market capitalization of nearly $149 billion, perfected how we find info on the Web. Google sites had nearly 500 million visitors in December.
7 Mosaic/Netscape Created by Marc Andreessen and others, Mosaic was the first widely-used multimedia Web browser. Spin-off Netscape Navigator ruled the ‘90s until Microsoft’s Internet Explorer took off around ‘98.
8 eBay Thanks to eBay, we can all now buy and sell almost anything (skip the body parts). eBay has 230 million customers worldwide who engage in 100 million auctions at any given time.
Screenshot

9 Amazon.comJeff Bezos’ baby began as an always-in-stock book seller. It survived the tech bubble and now is the definitive big box online store. It was the second most-visited online retailer in December, after eBay.
10 Wi-fi Have coffee shop, will compute: Wireless fidelity lets us lug our laptops out of the office and connect to the Net on the fly. More than 200 million Wi-Fi equipped products sold last year.
11 Instant Messaging LOL! Web surfers began to “laugh out loud” and BRB (“be right back”) in the mid-‘90s, with the launch of ICQ and AOL Instant Messenger. Millions use it to swap messages and photos, even telephone pals.
By John Makely, AP

12 Yahoo! Stanford University graduate students Jerry Yang and David Filo created this popular Web portal in 1994. It remains a favorite for email, photo sharing (it owns Flickr) and other services.
Screenshot

13 Compuserve/Prodigy In the 1980s, they became the first mainstream companies to offer consumer Internet access. CompuServe was more for the geek set; Prodigy was more for the masses.
14 The Well The precursor for social networking, the Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link, founded in 1985, was the original (now longest-running) virtual community. It gained popularity for its forums.
15 Vices Regulators scrapped plans for a .xxx domain, but vice remains one of the Net’s biggest businesses. Online gambling, illegal in the U.S., topped $12 billion last year; online porn was $2.84 billion. Searches for "Paris Hilton video" return about a million hits.
By David Rae Morris, USA TODAY

16 Spam/Spyware Unsolicited e-mail, and software that watches your Web habits, mushroomed from annoyance to menace. Junk e-mail now accounts for more than 9 of every 10 messages sent over the Internet.
17 Flash Adobe’s Flash player is on 98% of all computers. Seen a video on YouTube or MySpace? Then you’ve probably used Flash. It animated the Web, spawning zillions of online cartoons and videos.
18 Online mapping tools MapQuest started saving marriages in 1996 by offering turn-by-turn directions. Followers such as Yahoo and Google beam directions to cellphones and offer satellite images of neighborhoods.
19 Napster Created in Shawn Fanning’s dorm room, Napster let more than 26 million people tap into a free database of music. Record companies shut it down. In its wake emerged legitimate download sites, such as Apple’s iTunes.
Handout

20 YouTube The video-sharing site, bought by Google in 2006 for $1.65 billion, ignited a user-generated revolution online and introduced millions to the delights of Stephen Colbert, Chad Vader and Lonelygirl15.
21 The Drudge Report Matt Drudge’s news site helped break the Monica Lewinsky story in 1998, paving the way for politically-minded bloggers everywhere. He claims to have about 500 million visitors a month.
22 Bloggers The more than 75 million Web logs have changed how the world gets its news. Bloggers have challenged the traditional media, lobbied for and against wars, started debates, and posted far too many pictures of their pets.
23 Craigslist Craig Newmark’s gathering place for (mostly) free classified ads changed the way we find apartments, cars and dates. The site relies on users who supply friendly neighborhood information - about 14 million ads a month.
24 MySpace This online hangout has replaced the mall as a home away from home for teenagers. The site has more than 173 million personalized pages. News Corp paid $580 million for it in 2005.
Handout

25 Gaming and virtual worlds More than 19 million globally pay to explore three-dimensional Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games such as World of Warcraft and virtual communities such as Second Life, which let players do business or just hang out. Both use the easy connections fostered by the Web to build communities.
The Vocabulary of Professionals
http://www.chemistry.org/portal/a/c/s/1/acsdisplay.html?DOC=careers%5Cfeatures%5Carticles_vocab.html

Today as I was riding into work on the train, I read a newspaper advertisement aimed at people trying to find a job. Some of the words were hard to make out, because the woman holding the paper kept shifting in her seat. She’s not really into sharing. But the headline that caught my eye was, "Learn the 40 Words that Professionals Use". Amazed that they only use forty, I wanted to know more.
Generally, I don’t read from the woman in front of me, because frankly, her tastes don’t match my own. Lately, she has vacillated between exploitive entertainment-industry rags and paperbacks filled with romantic woes. I never found out how the previous one ended, but in the last passage I read Camilla and Thor were racing away from the castle of her torment on a thunderous steed with rain pounding down upon their ravaged bodies clad only in! Well, you get the picture.
Words can say a lot about you:
-the ones you use in conversation, -the ones you choose to read, -and the ones you write. Limiting your vocabulary to say, forty words, can stunt your development, socially and professionally. Restricting syntax to that of your profession provides transitional barriers as well. To be successful in an upwardly mobile lifestyle, you will need the use of words and phrases that relate your experiences, feelings and intentions to others. It should also be noted that those "others" who lead us and set policies may not be chemists. For many, our futures lie in the hands of MBA’s or, shall I say it, marketing specialists.
These creatures of the outside world seldom care about thermodynamic equations, even though they may someday face entropic death. They speak of real cats, not those trapped in theoretical boxes, and the only retro-synthesis they have experienced is the post-modern fashion flashback to the 70’s.
The most common relational denominators typically deal with societal trends and fads. Places to look for help include sports, movies, or if you’re really desperate, "American Idol." Even if you don’t watch the TV show, knowing that Sanjaya’s hairstyle weekly evolves into gravity defying configurations can give you an entrée into a conversation.
Knowing the language of other professions is also helpful. In addition to speaking English, Spanglish and broken German, I have training in finance, project management and IT. Coming from a background in the "central science', learning how to speak like others seems old hat. Goodness knows I’ve already had to learn the lingo of biology, physics and medicine just to ensure that my research projects went smoothly.
Ultimately, the best tool for the expansion of your vocabulary is reading, and although it may sound like a foreign phrase, "reading for pleasure' will yield the best results. Certainly, you should be reading technical articles and books for your professional development, but they are unlikely to incorporate the plethora of vernacular used in common language.
In closing, I challenge you to flex your linguistic tongue, by learning the 40 words used by professionals. If the lady in front of me would move her thumb, I would read them to you. As it stands, I guess you’ll have to search them out yourselves.

This article was written by David Harwell, Ph.D., Assistant Director of the ACS Department of Career Management and Development.
Views expressed on this page are those of the author and not necessarily those of ACS.
Published April 30, 2007