Well that was an interesting trip.
I set off "Critical Event" incidents numerous times, lmao.
I don't change trucks and then some how mysteriously change my driving habits.  These "critical events" were going off going down some of the numerous hills I had to go over.  The damn thing was setting off this s*** going 3 MPH over the company set speed limit of 65.

Here's the problem.  The last truck? I could go up to 70MPH down a hill and as long as I brought the speed back down, nothing would happen.  This is all related to the QUALCOMM - electronic logging device that does much more than log your hours.  It tracks everything you are doing with the truck, basically.  MPG, MPH, fuel use, percentage of time spent in each gear, on and on and on.  Why one of them would work differently than another in the same company is beyond me, and I don't really care.

If they want to give me trouble about it, they aren't going to like my reaction.  Because I don't give two shekels about going 68 miles an hour.  It wasn't disclosed to me when I signed on to this company.  The company's speed setting is listed nowhere on the internet when searching out this particular company for considering hiring on  I know, I looked - at the time I was considering this place.

I'm beginning to take this job with a grain of salt.  It's to take a place like this seriously when they attempt to Lord themselves over you in so many different ways, it's laughable.  Oh, and I put this company's speed limit and other things truckers would want to know on various reviews of the company on job boards such as Monster and Indeed.  People should have that kind of information made available to them to make an informed decision about whether they really want to quit their current job and move over to another place.

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Enough of that and the next morning.  Fixing to contact my manager about making sure to get that truck into the shop - today. There is no way I'm going to sit around for days while they sit on their asses and take their sweet time dealing with it - doing nothing at all.  I'll drive the thing to the town where the Peterbilt dealership is myself and take a very expensive Uber drive back to the yard and bill it to the company if I have to. 

Work is kind of consuming my thoughts at the moment.  I've made 21k and change in the first 3 months of this year, which is quite surprising considering I haven't had much detention pay and really don't seem to have worked enough to have made that much money.  But, that is on track to making at least as much as I did last year.  The job has become more tolerable - temporarily anyway - with the advent of driving another truck that goes 4 miles per hour faster.  Doesn't sound like much, but it is much more engaging now, driving that is.  Hence the fact that I drove almost 700 miles yesterday.  Just more motivated. 

So, pay staying on track, I'm not sure moving anywhere is a good idea. Excepting wanting to have a local job and home every night.  Dreaming and reality. I can make around 60k per year at the highest local run I've found.  That's a 20 grand reduction in pay.  This is a different situation than Ferguson.  Ferguson, I was going broke with the reduction in hours to 8 and not getting any OT at all - which was promised when I moved out here.  Now, at least I'm making money.  That's the baseline.

Onto other things. I spilled an entire glass of water onto my desktop computer and the water went straight into the fan intake and yes, fried the computer.  Reminder to self to have the thing set up where that will never happen again. My plans to rebuild the computer just went from sometime in the near future to - now lol.  I was already planning on replacing the motherboard, the processer, the hard drive, the power supply - the entire guts really. Especially the video card. The one in there goes out at random and shuts the entire computer down.  I've had the thing for something like 8 years, it isn't really a great loss.  If I had just rebuilt it and that happened? I would be kicking myself, hard.

So, it was a dumb mistake, but it is mitigated. 

Meanwhile, Taylor asked - very nicely asked and said please say no if you don't want to - to allow the use of my room later on this month by the grandma and grandpa.  She was going to put me up at a hotel if I agreed.  I like my room now, lol.  It's got a huge, 8 blade ceiling fan, a heater, it's own AC unit, a 65 inch screen tv, a Keurig coffee machine, a very nice dresser.  A brand new "convertible sofa" otherwise known as a futon but much classier than your basic futon and I am keeping it in new condition by putting a waterproof cover on it and a large blanket over it. It's still a dog bed, but a dog bed that I want kept in good condition.  It's been freshly repainted and the only thing major left to go is replacing the carpet.  I'm not doing that anytime soon, I have other things and it's good enough as it is.

But, as much as I like my room? I'm pretty giving person and help people whenever I can.  So I agreed to it and even agreed to a cheap, local hotel that I have already stayed at once.  $35 plus tax per night and actually not bad.  Dogs allowed if I want to go that far with it.  Maybe maybe not.  La Quinta is here too - but much more expensive. Usually in the high 80's or low 90's range per night.  But, to be honest, I could have just brought the truck home and slept in that, which I offered but she feels guilty I guess about even asking me to do this in the first place and that was an unacceptable offer from  me, lol.  The truck has a $1,000 mattress in it.  It's pretty darn comfortable.  I usually - not always but usually - sleep very well in it. Then again, I don't always sleep well in my own room, that's nothing new.  The vibration from the engine just lulls me to sleep.

Okay, well, I just got texted back after asking about taking the truck in. Yes, please come take it in. I now know if I don't do it, it probably won't get done or it will be days before it does get done.  And I"ll be sitting around doing nothing. Right now? I want to drive, drive, drive and get my checking account back into shape. The yard is nearly empty of tractors, there is work.  I want my full share of it. 

With that - I'm outta here. And probably looking up components for a new computer when I'm done with that.

G'day.