I took a bus and the walked out to a car dealership in New Jersey, out past some long abandoned factories. Big long abandoned industrial buildings and earthy and smelly, rundown farm land. It’s still winter, quite bleak and gray. I’m looking at these big pickup trucks and then it’s time to go home. Somebody suggests I take state subsidized commuter rail back to New York – it’s only a few bucks as it’s subsidized. I ride a few more stops then expected until I get to this scenic crossing over a river – scenic except you know for lots of electrical lines. I get off at the station there, and there is a scenic viewing platform, but of course the real scenic view of the river is highly blocked off with restricted area signs and chain link fence due to the electrical infrastructure. Big signs put up by State of New Jersey discuss how green the commuter rail is, being powred by the hydro dam right below my feet.
Deciding to walk the rest of the way downtown, I step into this vast underground college campus, officially it’s an affiliate of Rutgers University as I’m still in New Jersey. Vast lecture halls, all underground. I pop into a lecture hall briefly and then head back out needing to get back to the Empire Plaza and downtown. So I follow this tunnel back to the Empire Plaza, running into this long time political activist from a lifetime ago – some left wing group I used to hang out with in my college days. We talk as we walk to the Empire Plaza, the mystery level I’m completely unfamiliar with. I arrive after going what seems like miles to what appears to be the Empire Plaza but an unfamiliar level. Looks like the Concourse but this is a different, lower level. There are some signage but it’s confusing. White walls, brass, concrete I beams.
What would you know by now I need to go to the bathroom. There is a sign to the bathroom, down the stairs to an even deeper more obscure level of Plaza. At first I walk through an abandoned cafeteria, tables roped off in caution tape and a hastely posted “Posted No Tresspassing” sign like you might find on a farm. Then I find another bathroom sign that directs me through another hallway, a set of stairs to another cafeteria, this one a knock off of Pizza Hut from the 1970s, full of state workers in pin stripe shirts eating what appears to be thin microwave pizza and round plates of colored flat jello, each quarter of the plate a different brightly colored jello, red, yellow, blue and green. I am at a loss, the next bathroom signs appear to point a broom closet.
I ask one of workers and he looks up from his plate of flat colored jello and he points me down another corridor. I walk past the Office of State Purchasing from Women Owned Alpaca Farms. Who knew the state had an agency that only purchased from women owned Alpaca Farms? I guess fiber for state agency uniforms? Down another hall, set of a stairs. I see a even more state offices, the hallway narrows further, as this part of the building is very old and not accessible to people with disabilities. Apparently this part of the building was never updated to accommodate persons with wheelchairs. Past more filing cabinets and cubicles. This is a very old and dated interior, so deep in the Plaza few people ever see it. And I keep following that signs promising me the bathroom, deeper, and deeper into lower and lower levels of the Empire Plaza I never knew existed.
Invited presentation at a meeting of the Old Guard of Summit NJ on January 5, 2021. Brian Kernighan is a professor of computer science at Princeton University and one of the original Unix pioneers at Bell Labs. Brian described his experiences teaching "Computers in Our World," a first year course designed to inform non-technical students how modern hardware, software and communications systems operate, and their ubiquitous role in today's world. It was a 45-minute version of his one-semester talk!
A few weeks back I joined a few Facebook groups on Ford SuperDuty trucks, one of them is the 7.3L Godzilla enthusiasts forum. Unfortunately most of the posts lately have been reasons that you really don’t want to buy the ginormous engine – lifter failures, bad transmissions, and people getting far more horrendous gas milage then even I estimated.
Truth is it’s one of the most produced commercial truck gas engines produced in America, and many people use them to pull heavy loads over mountains, idle all day, and otherwise work them hard. Far harder then I would, and it’s good to see the other side and no potential risks and downsides of the enormous trucks. Any mass produced vehicle, no matter how good quality control is, there will be some lemons. But I also take in context – I won’t likely ever run a lift kit on a HD truck and probably will be happy enough even with close to stock tires. With factory parts, and simple engine, it will be much easier to get repairs done unlike my old lifted truck.
And then there is the issue of cost and complexity of LED headlights and taillights with all of the sensors. I was reading the Ford taillights are upwards of $4,000 to replace the broken part. That said, the XL models – like the XL Off-Road still have the halogen bulb lights which are certainly much cheaper to replace. Maybe that’s the case for staying away from the appearance package and not having the fancier headlights and taillights. That said, solid state units are certainly quite reliable and in a few years it’s certain you’ll be able to find junkyard parts much cheaper. And maybe there are Chinese-knock off parts that would work, especially if STX I get doesn’t have the fancy cameras or sensors. And is the 6.8L and 10R100 that much worse then the 7.3L 10R140? I don’t really need the extra umph for towing, and the destroked Minizilla is said to be nearly as powerful or maybe even better then it’s up sized version and the 10R100 shifts smoother. I guess it depends what is avaliable and for what out the door price.
Truth is I am probably over-analyzing it, and whatever I get for a truck will serve me well over the next 15 years. Even limiting yourself to F-250/F-350 gassers, the options seem numerous. And the big Fords are relatively simple engine designs with lots of space under the hood for repairs compared to a lot of cars these days. You can’t prevent all tragedies or loss, insuraning against every rare case quickly gets expensive and is not financially wise even if sometimes you do have to bite the bullet, cut a checkand deal with whatever life throws at you.
I thought it would be interesting to see how far out gas service goes across Albany County. It turns out that most urban and suburban properties in the county are serviced by gas lines.
