We are in the emergency services field and a few years back some of the vendors were pushing cloud based solutions. You probably don't want to dial 911 when Uncle Festus is dying of a heart attack and have the calltaker say "We're sorry but the Amazon cloud servers have crashed." Anybody that says 'emergency' and 'cloud' in the same breathe is an idiot.
And we don't need any third world influx to lower the average even further.
There's a reson for that. It's called *Emissions Legislation*.
Lack of proper training is all that is.
Yep, that's me - buy 'em new, piss 'em off when they reach *my idea* of their use by date. That has typically been somewhere between 125-160k kilometres
In the US at least, a lot of those jobs weren't rendered obsolete by
*automation*, they simply *migrated* to a lower cost manufacturing country.
I get tired of trying to explain to nuff nuffs why a code reader simply won't cut it for the bulk of diagnostics on modern cars. For a start, codes can be misleading. You need also to have a very in-depth knowledge of vehicle *systems* including how they operate and integrate into the rest of the vehicle. At a *minimum*, you need a quality DMM, a decent diagnostic scanner and a digital oscilloscope. But even that is inadequate if you don't fully understand *electricity* and, these days, have an understanding of computer networking.
Racist!
We're spoiled for choice here in the People's Republic of Ann Arbor. I don't know if it's because a lot of the independents started out as specialty shops for foreign cars (which achieved earlier and greater market penetration here), or if it's because the professorial class has never been shade-tree mechanics.
I used to take my car to Japanese Auto, which subsequently morphed into Auto-Tech, reflecting the fact that their metric wrenches became useful on American cars.
Cindy Hamilton
Roughly speaking, the average hourly pay for a member of the United Auto Workers currently ranges from $28 to $38 or so for those hired before September 2007, and between $16 and $20 for workers hired afterward.
$28 to $38 is more than I make as a software engineer.
Cindy
I'd rather use a web site coded by a moron than a pacemaker coded by a moron.
Cindy Hamilton
...
Not to the ones out of work it doesn't...nor to the actual reality of the numbers in the actual population and to the resulting effect on economy. It's just a number conjured up to keep the real situation hidden for mostly political reasons because otherwise it's just too much of an embarrassment to either political party regardless who's currently in office.
And, more specifically, it's (U6) indicative of the number of these "good, well paying" menial labor jobs you say are so abundant that would be required to put the masses to work to be able to attack the societal problem of job displacement owing to automation and the like.
Finis...
Yes, codes can be misleading if you do not understand the system.
A friend had a car that did not always run right and would often fall out of the cruse control while on the interstate. He had it to several places and they could not find the trouble. We took the car on a long trip and the cruse control would hardly work for me while I was driving the car.
I am somewhat taller and the friend got to noticing the cruse fell out as I moved my left foor around. Long story short, he looked under the hood and found the computer box was on the other side of the firewall where I was putting my foot. He put a wire from the case of the computer box to the firewall and that solved all the problems. I am sure thre is no code for a bad ground of the computer box.
On 7/26/19 3:13 AM, micky wrote:
Not at all opposed to the changes, just commenting on them. It seems like the changes happened fairly rapidly. Speaking of plows, planters, etc. My dad farmed with one horsepower for a time. He said mules were slower but could go longer. He'd be 102 if he was still kickin'. Common tractors were probably around 110 hp. or so when he retired. Cabs were just becoming common. Comfort and noise were issues with them. Planters had markers. A marker is an arm that folded out to draw a line in the dirt for the farmer to follow on his next pass through the field. Waving at a guy who was planting was a waste of time. Planters are so big now that markers are impractical. Now gps guides the tractors. A straight row is nothing to comment on now. Irrigation was by gated pipe and furrow with a few center pivots. The pivots were mainly the Valley water drives requiring about 70 psi to operate. Those were replaced gradually by electrics of various brands. Sprinkler packages could be low pressure since pressure wasn't necessary to drive the machine. Thirty psi is common now. That saves energy and money. Farmers can run and monitor their irrigation systems from their smart phones. No need to run a route a couple times a day to see what's happening. They can see that the one at the old Smith place is broken and go there to fix it. They can contact the dealer with their cell phone from that spot if they need help.
In the early 90s my wife's nephew made $65,000 putting transmissions together in Kokomo his first year out of high school. There was a lot of overtime in that but damn. The benefit package alone was worth $15k or more and that was when insurance was cheap.
I saw that firsthand in the '70s. Much of the capital equipment had been acquired in the '40s and was nearing the end of life. The choice was to rebuild the machinery or adopt the emerging automation technologies. Most chose the former.
The company I worked for had the contract to remove molding equipment from a plant in Connecticut, rebuild it, and set it up in a plant in Georgia US. This was early in the game when moving to the southern states was preferable to Mexico or, later, Asia.
It was interesting. The workers in CT were motivated and dependable. The workers in Georgia had a finely tuned sense of how much work was needed to get by in the matter they were accustomed to. By Friday the plant was almost empty except for the foreman who had come down from CT and my crew.
Moving to Mexico was a step up when it came to worker efficiency.
In the early '70s Volvo had a rudimentary controller. After getting into my friend's Volvo after a beer stop, it would not start, so we opened the hood. We both had quite a bit of experience at keeping elderly American stuff running but realized we were looking at something quite different.
Summary: the controller was under the passenger seat and I had kicked a connector loose when I got in.
I make it to the low end of the UAW scale... Admittedly Montana isn't where you go if you want top dollar. I used to work in the Boston area and made the decision that the aggravation wasn't worth it.
My argument against unions goes back to the early 20th century. The trade unions affiliated themselves with the employers. As long as they had a place at the trough workers outside of their union didn't matter. They did their part to suppress unions like the IWW that wanted to include everyone.
The CIO supposedly addressed the problem and the UAW was their creature. That widened the net to all auto workers and not the individual trades in the auto plants but it still didn't help the industries the CIO couldn't be bothered to organize.
With union membership falling except in the public service sector 'buy union' to pay UAW wages to the lucky few rings hollow.
The Stone Container pulp mill paid really well in this area. Today the area is a semi-demolished EPA site the country is trying to repurpose but the settling ponds are a problem. For a while the former employees wired their hardhats to the chain link fence of their former workplace.
Part of the problem was pulp mills need wood chips and the lumber mills were closing rapidly. Add to that the Republican sponsored energy deregulation that drove prices up.
And no need for high school kids to make money during the summer moving pipe...
I don’t do it on km. I kept using the previous 73 Golf until I could no longer register it because I had been stupid enough to ignore the known windscreen leak after a replacement windscreen until it eventually rusted thru the floor and I couldn’t be arsed to cut out the bad bit and weld on a new section. That one was bought new and lasted 45 years but was a bit daggy by then. Particularly noticeable when using it again after a long distance trip in a work car.
The current Getz is now 13 years old, has just now developed a very minor fault, the windscreen washer bottle. It doesn’t have any cruise control at all and that would be handy, but I can't find a viable new one to replace it yet. I'd prefer one that used a speed limit database so that it will completely automatically go at x over the speed limit even when I come up to a town on a long distance trip. And ideally read the street signs so that’s automatic at road works etc too.
Odd that I can't fine one regardless of being prepared to pay stupid money for it like a Volvo etc. But since the EU has mandated that by 2022 or something, should show up sometime soon.
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