Hello everyone
or maybe just, hello, people disposed to read my blog.
I'd lke to read your blogs but I have to click on your icons individually to see if you've written anything recently as I do not seem to have a friends' blogs and bookmarks thing to click on and see what you've all been up to.
Today I brought my laptop by the Cingular store and was informed that their cards do not as yet work with windows vista and it will likely be a month or two before a vista compatible card is available. Gads. I guess I can still hook up at truck stops. But that is not ideal, as I would lilke more privacy for visiting SG.
I did some very unsmooth trucking just before I got home. Saturday I blew out four tires on my trailer thinking that the way to unstick locked up brakes would be to pull against them. Oops wrong answer. The repair people asked me for my registration, and I looked in my permit book and couldn't find it. One of the night guys over at swift told me it was a 4x6 card from oklahoma, and the contents page of the permit book says that the registration is in a clear pocket on the inside cover of the book. The clear pocked clearly labeled registration is right there. So I thought my truck had no registration.
So after I get my truck underway again I wanted to get on 95 south towards avenel NJ, but i couldn't find a way onto 95 south, I could only see 95 north and various roads that I didn't know whether they were truckable or not. So not only do I end up going over the GWB heading north, I managed to put my truck on the lower, cars-only level. Right when I get through the toll gate, a cop pulls in front of me and stops me, directs me over to the side of the road, and and asks me for my registration and license. Well our conversation wasn't real pleasant and he gave me two summonses, one for the road fuckup and one for no registration. The next day I called the permits dept and they told me that the registration for my truck was arizona, not oklahoma, and that it was a fax copy. The faxed me another copy but before I even went into the terminal building to get it, I found it in my permit book, in alphabetical order under A. It just happens to look more or less identical to the other pemits o f all sorts that I have, and after some idiot has just told you your reg is okla you're not going to look at the ariz documnet thinking that it's going to be your registration.
Anyway, I phoned my mentor about how much fun I'd been having and he told me not to lose much sleep over it. Some source or other tells us that our first 2.86 months as truck dorivers are our hardest. Do not ask me how they came up with that number. Beginners like me are more likely to have stupid minor screw ups, whereas the experienced drivers are actually more likely to kill people, and swift's business model integrates beginning drivers. So.
Last year swift drivers were in 22 fatal accidents and 16 of them were our fault. So with 17000 drivers my odds of killing someone are about one in a thousand, and if I do this job for 20 years, one in 50. I don't really like those odds. Whatever, I'm in it at least until my car is paid for.
YOu have to tumble out of the tree before you can soar on the thermals, but the learning curve is vexingly long and frustrating. Vexing thing about things you don't know, is that you don't know you don't know them until you get massively fucked up in some way.
And now for something completely different
Today I bought a copy of Shambala Sun, a buddhist magazine, based on the merit of one article where the author is talking about the buddhanature. The author makes mention of how hurtful it is to children they are told they are not good, because it is a native internal statement that one is a good person. That is one aspect of the buddha nature, a basic property of goodness. When you take that basic assuption of goodness away from people, they flail about desperately trying to construct goodness or worthiness for themselves, trying to wear the right clothes, do the right job, think the right thoughts. At a conference of some western buddhist teachers and the dalai lama, they asked him how to deal with feellings of worthlessness in themselves and in their students. It took the translator a long time to explain to his holiness what the westerners were asking him, and his response was, approximately " how can you possibly dislike yourself if you have the buddha nature?"
Having read this little bit gave me some new perspective on people who look down on the movement in schools to teach chlldren self-esteem. If you take away someone's basic assumption of their basic goodness, something that exits despite the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, it becomes something they have too look for as manifested in said fortune, and they will interpret their fortunes, as direct reflections on themselves. While there is something to be said for taking responsiblity for one's own destiny, and in fact a lot of buddhists will tell you that who you are and what happens to you are the same thing, you are fundamentally altering who a person is and what's going to happen to them, if you tell them that goodness is constructed, because nothing that can be used to construct goodness has an inherent meaning of goodness if the self itself does not inherently have goodness to bring to the things it attempts to construct a portrait of goodness with. I hope that made sense.
Anyway, I'm not really psyched to get back on the road again, but I'm not destroyed about it either. My neighbor has been taking good care of my cats and that's a relief, and I got to see my family again. Simple things ecome very valuable and you appreciate them when you do not have them immediately at hand.
Anyway, I'll try to get hooked up here at least a little bit at the truck stops, and hopefully the damn vista compatible wireless cards will come out.
I hope my readers will take the view of themselves and others as inherently good, and see the mistake of culture that leads people away from that understanding, with highly deleterious effects.
aleikum salaam
JBL
or maybe just, hello, people disposed to read my blog.
I'd lke to read your blogs but I have to click on your icons individually to see if you've written anything recently as I do not seem to have a friends' blogs and bookmarks thing to click on and see what you've all been up to.
Today I brought my laptop by the Cingular store and was informed that their cards do not as yet work with windows vista and it will likely be a month or two before a vista compatible card is available. Gads. I guess I can still hook up at truck stops. But that is not ideal, as I would lilke more privacy for visiting SG.
I did some very unsmooth trucking just before I got home. Saturday I blew out four tires on my trailer thinking that the way to unstick locked up brakes would be to pull against them. Oops wrong answer. The repair people asked me for my registration, and I looked in my permit book and couldn't find it. One of the night guys over at swift told me it was a 4x6 card from oklahoma, and the contents page of the permit book says that the registration is in a clear pocket on the inside cover of the book. The clear pocked clearly labeled registration is right there. So I thought my truck had no registration.
So after I get my truck underway again I wanted to get on 95 south towards avenel NJ, but i couldn't find a way onto 95 south, I could only see 95 north and various roads that I didn't know whether they were truckable or not. So not only do I end up going over the GWB heading north, I managed to put my truck on the lower, cars-only level. Right when I get through the toll gate, a cop pulls in front of me and stops me, directs me over to the side of the road, and and asks me for my registration and license. Well our conversation wasn't real pleasant and he gave me two summonses, one for the road fuckup and one for no registration. The next day I called the permits dept and they told me that the registration for my truck was arizona, not oklahoma, and that it was a fax copy. The faxed me another copy but before I even went into the terminal building to get it, I found it in my permit book, in alphabetical order under A. It just happens to look more or less identical to the other pemits o f all sorts that I have, and after some idiot has just told you your reg is okla you're not going to look at the ariz documnet thinking that it's going to be your registration.
Anyway, I phoned my mentor about how much fun I'd been having and he told me not to lose much sleep over it. Some source or other tells us that our first 2.86 months as truck dorivers are our hardest. Do not ask me how they came up with that number. Beginners like me are more likely to have stupid minor screw ups, whereas the experienced drivers are actually more likely to kill people, and swift's business model integrates beginning drivers. So.
Last year swift drivers were in 22 fatal accidents and 16 of them were our fault. So with 17000 drivers my odds of killing someone are about one in a thousand, and if I do this job for 20 years, one in 50. I don't really like those odds. Whatever, I'm in it at least until my car is paid for.
YOu have to tumble out of the tree before you can soar on the thermals, but the learning curve is vexingly long and frustrating. Vexing thing about things you don't know, is that you don't know you don't know them until you get massively fucked up in some way.
And now for something completely different
Today I bought a copy of Shambala Sun, a buddhist magazine, based on the merit of one article where the author is talking about the buddhanature. The author makes mention of how hurtful it is to children they are told they are not good, because it is a native internal statement that one is a good person. That is one aspect of the buddha nature, a basic property of goodness. When you take that basic assuption of goodness away from people, they flail about desperately trying to construct goodness or worthiness for themselves, trying to wear the right clothes, do the right job, think the right thoughts. At a conference of some western buddhist teachers and the dalai lama, they asked him how to deal with feellings of worthlessness in themselves and in their students. It took the translator a long time to explain to his holiness what the westerners were asking him, and his response was, approximately " how can you possibly dislike yourself if you have the buddha nature?"
Having read this little bit gave me some new perspective on people who look down on the movement in schools to teach chlldren self-esteem. If you take away someone's basic assumption of their basic goodness, something that exits despite the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, it becomes something they have too look for as manifested in said fortune, and they will interpret their fortunes, as direct reflections on themselves. While there is something to be said for taking responsiblity for one's own destiny, and in fact a lot of buddhists will tell you that who you are and what happens to you are the same thing, you are fundamentally altering who a person is and what's going to happen to them, if you tell them that goodness is constructed, because nothing that can be used to construct goodness has an inherent meaning of goodness if the self itself does not inherently have goodness to bring to the things it attempts to construct a portrait of goodness with. I hope that made sense.
Anyway, I'm not really psyched to get back on the road again, but I'm not destroyed about it either. My neighbor has been taking good care of my cats and that's a relief, and I got to see my family again. Simple things ecome very valuable and you appreciate them when you do not have them immediately at hand.
Anyway, I'll try to get hooked up here at least a little bit at the truck stops, and hopefully the damn vista compatible wireless cards will come out.
I hope my readers will take the view of themselves and others as inherently good, and see the mistake of culture that leads people away from that understanding, with highly deleterious effects.
aleikum salaam
JBL
VIEW 6 of 6 COMMENTS
jormagund:
Dude, I don't know how reefer drivers can stand it. Some of those things are so freakin' loud. When possible, I take special care not to park next to one. But of course, trucks come and go. During the course of my dinner, one with a particularly obnoxious reefer unit decided the (previously occupied by someone else) spot next to mine looked appealing. It's like trying to relax next to a wood chipper.
lizzi:
I don't like those odds either. Please be careful and enjoy your travels! 