The Trucking Nerd

I am pleased to announce John Starks as a guest writer for the Trucking Nerd.  John has an array of experience and a tall resume with some very well known companies.  After working with John for a stint, I can attest to his expertise and knowledge of trucking, particularly from an operational and management perspective.  He will be crafting articles periodically for the Trucking Nerd to add some additional perspective and insights.  His content may not necessarily be technical in nature, but will always be relevant to the trucking industry.  His first article relating to operations and technology is published.

When I first started the blog, I also had registered TruckingNerds.com in the event that additional perspectives would be added to the blog.  I encourage anyone else who enjoys writing and is interested in technology and / or trucking, feel free to drop me a line!

Popularity: 99% [?]

How many of you have experienced an IT project where at the end of the day either the program that was created does not do what it originally was intended to do so no one uses it or it does exactly what is needed but there is a new “fire” today so again no one uses it? 

During my career in transportation, I have been fortunate enough to work with a large, mid-sized, and small carrier.  A carrier as large as 9000 trucks down to a carrier of 150 trucks.  I’ve seen and experienced many things but one thing that I’ve seen in common at all these companies, relative to relationship between IT and Operations, is how these departments work together. 

Many times I’ve seen operations requesting reports, new applications, improvements, customized programming, etc. that, in the heat of the moment, they “need” but 2 weeks later has fallen to the wayside with the latest fire. 

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As I’ve come to learn more about blogging, I realize that the trucking blogsphere is somewhat slim pickings, there just isn’t a whole lot out there.  I’m always on the lookout for feeds that make my shortlist and am particularly interested in other trucking and or technology related blogs.

There are a few blogs out there I enjoy, as mentioned the Private Fleets blog and a few of the others I link to here.  There is also another author, Dan Goodwill, a transportation consultant / author.  He recently posted an article highlighting some popular trucking related blogs.  I recommend checking it out if you are looking for blogs to subscribe.  I also recommend periodically checking for new blogs which enter the arena which it seems a few more here and there keep popping up.  You can leverage blogged.com and technorati to help you out!

Popularity: 82% [?]

I am normally a moderately conservative implementer of new technology into production environments at work.  There is one decision we made back in 2005 however that was a little before the mainstream, but has worked out rather well.  I recently read this article from eweek regarding the cost savings and growing number of VOIP implementations.  Being a relatively early adopter of VOIP, I can attest that it is a worthwhile venture…and a little less risky now.

I get asked from time to time about our phone system and why I like it so much and why I’m so eagerly awaiting the next release of it in 2008 which we’ve got plans to upgrade to.

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Congratulations to Wayne and RPM, they were the chosen winners in the mug club giveaway.  The winners were chosen using the random number service from Random.org!   Stay tuned for future give aways.  I’ve got some additional ideas on future SWAG…will have to see if any of it pans out.

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How many times have you come across a technical problem and have no idea where to even begin to start with it?  My favorite is when you get an error that usually has some vague text and then a sentence that says “Please contact your System Administrator for further help.”  I always chuckle since I am the System Administrator and I’m usually as perplexed as the typical end-user.

98% of the time, spending a few minutes applying deductive reasoning, googling or shooting an instant message out to my fellow nerds I usually get an answer or at least have come up with a few paths to explore.  But what happens when the issue is very vague?  Or if it is intermittent?  Or worse yet, you’ve exhausted all leads and are still striking out?

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I had the pleasure of chatting with Trevor Dunsford, a software developer from Canadian based Bison Transport last week.  The topic of our discussion was a software application they had written to extend TMW Systems TMWSuite application to allow advanced appointment scheduling.

TMW’s Order Entry application leaves a little to be desired when it comes to the ability to optimize the appointment scheduling process.  The scheduling abilities in Order Entry are confusing and not intuitive.  It also doesn’t take into account any sort of ability to administer appointment workflow when multiple people are responsible for setting appointments.  Bison realized this gap and took matters into their own hands by developing a slick add on application they call the Appointment Queue (AQ) .  Trevor has written a nice blog entry detailing the application.

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As I mentioned in a previous post, we have standardized on SQL Reporting Services for our reporting needs.  Coming from a Business Intelligence consulting background I had used a handful of powerful reporting solutions such as BusinessObjects, Spotfire, etc, so I was very leery when I first started experimenting with SQL Reporting Services.

After working with it for over two years, I can safely say that it is a very decent (and free) reporting solution for people running SQL Server.  For small to medium businesses who already own SQL, odds are with a little bit of experimentation, you can make reporting services work for you.

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Popularity: 99% [?]

In my earlier post regarding the new release of the .NET 3.5 Framework and Visual Studio 2008, I mentioned a very exciting concept within the .NET framework called XBAP which stands for XAML Browser Application.  XAML is basically a layer of abstraction that describes the presentation of a .NET app.  So what is XBAP?

XBAP is simply taking a .NET application and making it run in the browser.  In the olden days, you’d have to determine if you were going to write a desktop based application or a web application.  Web applications are not as robust and feature rich in the UI and presentation in addition to having many constraints being a stateless model, hence why most complex applications end up on the desktop.  That era is one step closer to being ushered out.  With XBAP, the gap that exists between web applications and full client applications is closing. Read the rest of this entry »

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When it first dawned on me that the deadline for analog cell service was coming to a closure in 2008, I didn’t think much about it.  After all, it is reported that only 1% of the cell phone population use a cell phone that is analog only, so what’s the big deal?

The big deal is that there are millions of devices around the US that rely solely on analog, and many of them are not phones, they are devices like OnStar, GPS tracking systems, alarm system devices, etc.  When the analog service is shutoff, these devices will be rendered useless.  This could happen as early as February 18th, 2008 since this is the date the FCC says it is ok for cell companies to shutoff analog services.

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