WTF as in... ?


So I sat down and plotted all of the long-distance moves which I have made, starting from the time I graduated college:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...1&d=1378865974

13,200 miles, give or take. Sounds like a lot, until you consider that an average OTR driver can pretty easily do 100,000 miles in a single year.




Whatever I have to.




Heh. Sorry, dude. I was on a fairly tight time schedule here. Unlike all of my previous moves, this one was into a highrise building downtown, with permits and contract movers and the whole nine yards. I didn't have a lot of fucking-around time.

Next time I move to CA, I'll drop in for a beer.

Raleigh for a bit? just a stones throw away from myself currently.

Why did you leave SD? I visited it and it was pretty cool... Just moved to Hermosa in LA a month ago from Pittsburgh, PA and love it, maybe you should try it out. Then you would have lived in the three major cali cities...

I believe he said it was full of very pretentious hipsters. Joe doesn't tend to like people who are too full of themselves, from what I can see.

The attitude of a particular workplace is everything. People work for people, and not a company, per se. You can work for the best company in the world but have an immediate boss or co-workers that exude unpleasantness and still be miserable. And yet you can work for an awful company but have a boss that you would follow to the ends of the earth. All politics is local. Likewise, people also buy from people. In most businesses, people buy large supplies and services from people they like and trust, and are often loyal to a salesman even if he switches to working for one of his competitors. It is all about interpersonal relationships.

My wife lived in Hermosa for ~1.5 years before we got married. I was sorta on-again, off-again at the job I was at so I was able to fly out there without a return trip and just chill for weeks at a time.

That place was 9/10 (beach/ocean sucked compared to NJ, environment wise, not people wise). 49.5cc scooter got me anywhere I wanted to go. People so chill & friendly.

Anyway, now Joe is in NYC with no miata.

what has motivated you to make a move to the bay area and then mere dozens of hours later, NYC?

It seems....

inefficient

That sounds about right.


Baller

Because job.

I utterly loved SD. I was in Carlsbad, which was the really upper-crust, fancy part of town in north county, and it was just deliriously awesome.

But I got an offer I couldn't refuse out here.



Well, Hoboken, NJ. I consider the Miata-less-ness to be a temporary state of affairs. That specific car just wasn't right for this environment.




Exactly. Which is why I now hang out in Greenwich Village all day.



The attitude of a particular workplace is everything. People work for people, and not a company, per se. You can work for the best company in the world but have an immediate boss or co-workers that exude unpleasantness and still be miserable. And yet you can work for an awful company but have a boss that you would follow to the ends of the earth. All politics is local. Likewise, people also buy from people. In most businesses, people buy large supplies and services from people they like and trust, and are often loyal to a salesman even if he switches to working for one of his competitors. It is all about interpersonal relationships.[/QUOTE]



Life can be funny that way, can't it?

I'd gotten fed up with the situation at Harris (not selling, not hiring, not spending money, just... stagnant) and jumped onto an opportunity in Santa Clara which, while not exactly something I was passionate about, at least got me out of a bad situation. When I got up there, I realized just how much I wasn't passionate about the work, and then a week later, a guy who I hadn't talked to in 8 years, who'd been a client of mine when I was at Harris, called me and offered me a job at WPIX-TV in New York. I flew out two days later, booked an apartment in Hoboken, flew back, packed, and left.

This was a lot more in line with where my passions are. And while I do prefer working in the OEM (supplier) side of this business, doing a few years in TV should open up some doors for me to jump back over to the other side, whereas my experience having all been in radio before was starting to become very limiting from a career standpoint.


To be fair, it was mere dozens of days, not hours. Enough time to become REALLY enamored with a place called the Good Karma Vegan Cafe in San Jose which was much more of a hippie joint than a hipster joint (this is a crucial distinction) and which I miss tremendously. In addition to the vegan food, they had amazingly good beer there and the people were really cool.

Nice, congrats. You'll be able to walk to the F1 race next year, that's a plus.

I'd be excited to take that electrobike of yours across the ferry and scoot to/through central park.

NJMP isn't that far away, neither is Pocono, when the time comes for a track miata. LVMOC has lots of nice runs through twisty sections of PA, only an hour away.

If you need shutters/blinds/motorized shades, Paul is up in that area often.
Slats & Pleats - Custom Blinds, Shades, & Shutters

I am actually going to be looking for blinds for my new house in a few months. I might have to give Paul a call and talk to him a bit. Thanks for this random tidbit.

HOBOKEN! Oooooh! I'm dying!

I was hoping I'd be able to trot out that old Bugs quote for this occasion.

Like any good GNY kid, I grew up watching WPIX and the other local independents. A friends Dad worked there years ago for a long time - rumor has it that he signed Phil Rizzuto for the Yankee broadcasts.

When I worked downtown, I would take PATH from WTC to Hoboken, then back to Ave of the Americas when the subways took a dump. Presuming PIX is in midtown, you have found a really good commute.

I've driven more than that in a month OTR. I hated that job.

I'm debating what to do with that bike, since I can't ride through the tunnels, nor can I take it onboard the PATH train with me during peak hours. So it's not likely going to be spending much time in Manhattan.

For the short-term, I've bought a $99 Walmart bike to ride between the apartment and the PATH station, basically something I don't mind if it gets beaten up a bit while chained up on the street. And on the Manhattan side, I'm going to be relying on CitiBike for now.

If that turns out to be problematic, I may consider doing yet another e-bike, this time a folding-style. With this flat terrain, I can easily sacrifice a fair bit of motor and battery power in exchange for lightness.




I give up. What's te old bugs joke?



42nd between 2nd and 3rd. So now quite as good as if it were on the west side, but not horrible.





Why was this, dare I ask?

Because I've often thought to myself that if I ever get tired of this technological rat race, OTR wouldn't be a bad way to go...

Guess I'm dating myself - I always assume everybody has seen every Bugs Bunny cartoon.

Cliffs - Bugs goes to great trouble to return a penguin to Antarctica, where the penguin starts to cry, leading to the following

Hahaha. Ok, you have to admit, that's kind of an obscure reference. Not like turning left at Albuquerque.

I can't believe someone made a shitty texmex restaurant out of that name.

There's a tex-mex restaurant called Hoboken Born Penguin?

no.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1379000818

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1379000818

good news everyone! looks like they've gone out of business for sucking.

Oh, cuz that would have been cool. Someone could ask "what do you feel like for lunch?" And you could reply "let's try Hoboken Born Penguin."

Rarely home, lonely, boring, confined to a sleeper 24/7, except for a shower every 2 or 3 days in a truck stop, and a quick hot meal at a truckstop restaurant. Then it's a stressful job, trying to keep an often unrealistic schedule that the dispatcher assigned you. Then when you are late, you get your ass chewed out by the consigner and your dispatcher. When you actually do get home, it's usually only a day. Or a part of a day, and by the time you sleep and wash clothes, you have no time to do anything. Good money, but no time to spend it. It would be a good way to make money if you had a family to support though, you just wouldn't get to see them much. Some people can handle it, but I wasn't one of them. I literally had a breakdown on the road after being gone for 3 weeks, being rushed and worked to the ragged edge. When I got a load back to Birmingham, I turned in my keys and quit on the spot. Losing the pay was tough though. I was bringing home $1000-1500 a week, which for around here is a fuck ton.

Hmm.

Well, I'd definitely have to move someplace cheaper, as $1,500 a week isn't a fuckton anywhere I've lived recently (San Diego, Silicon Valley, NYC).

But on the other hand, you've very nearly described my dream job otherwise. Granted, I usually travel by air rather than by ground, but the whole "away from home for weeks on end" thing doesn't bother me in the least- I do it all the time, and in fact I get antsy when I'm in one place too long.

Might be the thing for you then, when you get tired of doing what you've been doing. Yeah, the pay for the most part in that industry is pretty standard around the country, so living somewhere cheaper probably would be in order. Around here, you can get a very nice house for $200k or $800-900/month, and can get enough groceries to last a family of 3 for a week, for around $100. Birmingham/central Alabama has actually been rating in the top 10 in the country or something like that, for best cost of living to pay ratio. Money can go a long way here, it just sucks that the area is pretty shitty overall.

I remember when I went to NYC, I was floored by the cost of things there compared to here. A pizza that you could get for $10 here, was $25-30 there. Or a pack of cigarettes here for $3.50, there $10. WTF! The $500 I took for fun money on that trip didn't go nearly as far as I had hoped.

You obviously have no immediate family to take care of. Leaving a wife for weeks at a time would put a huge strain on a marriage. Small kids means more so. Freedom to move around is one of the perks of being single.

Me? I'd be bored out of my mind inside of a month. I'd end up driving the rig into some db that cut me off, just to see the carnage.

I take it that you were a company driver. What was your impression of the scene for Owner-Operators, in terms of pay, scheduling, etc?

Yes I was. I did flat bed, which pays more than van/enclosed trailers, but also requires more work. You're responsible for securing and tarping loads as much as 50,000 pounds. Which in itself is a several hour job, on top of driving time, in heat, cold, rain, snow, ect. But on average it pays probably 20% more. I worked for one of the highest paying flatbed companies in the country though, so it was pretty nice for a first job in the field.

O/O do get paid more, and have a little more freedom. You CAN turn down loads, and take time off, but you have to worry about your dispatcher considering you unreliable and not giving you the sweet loads. Then you have to worry about fuel prices, maintenance, ect. If things go smoothly, and you run things like a well oiled machine, you can probably bring home 10-20% more per year. If you manage to get the truck paid off, then your pay goes way up. Then you can buy your own trailer, and most companies will pay you a few more cents per mile if you have your own trailer. Then you have the freedom to bounce from company to company if things go wrong. O/O drivers are ALWAYS in demand, and it's easy to find a job.

Also, unless you bring a bike or something, you don't have the freedom that you might think you'd have. You are limited to parking at truck stops, and taking side roads is pretty risky, if you don't know the area. Might end up at a dead end, or at a low bridge. I thought I would get to "see the country" and make an occasional stop to sight see and eat at good restaurants when I started, but soon realized that that isn't really how it's like. You see only what you can see from the interstate, and that's about it. You can wave at places you want to stop as you drive by though.

O/O get paid quite a bit more, but consider that as an owner operator, if you've got a reliable *used* truck with 200k miles on it, you've got 5 years to pay your $80,000 vehicle loan, at which point your truck will have 900,000 miles on it and be ready for a full rebuild - once you pay off the $20,000 for a rebuild, then you can start making some decent money for 3-4 years until the next rebuild / next truck purchase.

That's assuming you can make it 6-7 years and 1.3 million miles without a significant accident.

Source: My father was O/O for 25 years. Paying off a truck always seemed to be bad luck for him...

Yeah, getting it paid off without a major breakdown or accident is the key to making good money. Finding the balance between low price and low mileage is key in a used truck. Get something too new and you'll be paying it off forever, something too old and it'll take a dump on you before you can get it paid off, then you're really screwed. Once you get it paid off though, then you can upgrade to a nice new truck and start making good money.

Presupposing that one has the means, would it be better to simply purchase a new truck for cash up front, rather than financing a new purchase or always buying used?

trucks depreciate just like new cars - there's always some idiot that wants to buy a new truck to start his new OTR career, just to find out that it the absolute worst job in the world for him, forcing him to sell it for a loss. The age of the truck will depend on how risk tolerant and how mechanically inclined you are. If you trust the PO and you trust your mechanical abilities, start out with something that has half a million miles on it. If you absolutely have to have all of the latest greatest tech, then you're going to pay out the ass for all of the latest greatest tech. In the end, they all get your load from A to B. If you think you're ever going to haul 40 tons up a grade, you're definitely going to consider forking out some extra cash for power. It's no fun doing 40mph up a 13% grade with an 80k load with other trucks passing you every 30 seconds because you don't have the torque to run any higher than 6th or 7th gear.

The decision to pay cash or finance should ultimately depend on the interest rate of financing compared to the potential rate of return in an investment.

:wavey: Hey! That sounds like my old underpowered ProStar. "I can make it in 6th... or maybe 5th... shit, down to 4th..." barely chugging along. Meanwhile other trucks pass me doing 10mph faster than me. My governor was set at 62. Another plus about being an o/o, no speed limiting. Doing 75-80 on I-35 between Fort Worth and Wichita would have made that trip much more livable. Or my frequent Monday trip from home in Birmingham to Laredo TX. That is a long, bullshit, boring ass drive.

Joe - If you want to make (reasonably) good money with (somewhat) lower cost of living, look to the Dakotas and the Bakken Shale area.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1379084058

Well he was in Silly Con valley for a couple of weeks and didn't even look up any of the locals!

I looked up one of the locals, and had quite a lot of beer with her.

Did you do anything more than look up her dress? :giggle:

No, she was still pre-op, and I didn't want to see that.

Saw this today, thought of you:


Couple of penguins chillin' on the 100th floor of 1 WTC. Jersey penguins. They were born at Jenkinson's Aquarium, which is about 60 miles south of Hoboken, but it's close. :D

Hoboken?!? I'm diiiiiiein!

That's pretty cool. I used to work on the 82nd floor of the former 2WTC. My thoughts on looking out the windows were probably not much deeper than those penguins - "Wow, cool! Long way down!" Although, this time of year it was good watching all the lights coming on - especially the bridges.

Apologies for the late reply.

I make TV happen.

That's a snide description of the job. My range used to be much broader but shallower, encompassing a very specific (and now obsolete) technology deployed across hundreds of radio and TV stations across the US and Europe.

Today, my job is narrow but deep. I work for one TV station. Well, one TV station and three national networks. They're all in the same building. I'm tasked with everything between the front of the camera lens and the transmitting antennas, three of which point horizontally (and with a very slight downward conical tilt) at the earth, and two of which point up into space at the 125° W longitude (soon to be 123° W longitude as of mid-December) geosynchronous orbital slots.

A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to drive the Galaxy 14 satellite for about ten minutes (under close supervision), which was admittedly just prior to its retirement. I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna be able to top that one before I retire.