Last week i was unable to post since i was in Birmingham AL at a highway construction competition. My team took home first place so the 36 sleepless hours we spent toiling over the project was well worth it.
Now, back to the task at hand. For this weeks post i read another article from Better Roads, this one discussing the new John Deere Motor Grader. The new grader offers unequaled choices for operator comforts like fingertip controls and an LCD screen for monitoring critical aspects of the machine. A rear view camera provides an added measure of safety as the machine navigates on a job site. Additionally, a Grade Pro Package is offered for high-production grading operations like road construction. This package provides additional operator comforts like a high back, air ride operators chair. The added comfort plus enhanced cross slope controls and 6 wheel drive, coupled with never grease joints and self diagnostic system mean the new grader can work longer shifts for lower daily operating costs. All this technology combines to help inexperienced operators while still saving on fuel consumption; technology is no longer a stranger to the dirt and grime of high production machinery.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
The Wages of Smart
The article i'm writing about comes from Highway Contractor, a heavy civil/highway construction trade journal. As with any construction project, completing the early stages of road building is all about doing it right the first time. Often this requires the use of new technologies.
Contractors typically have three goals for a job: do it safely, move the dirt one time and move the dirt quickly and efficiently. The article i read talks of evolving technologies for grading equipment that will help contractors meet the 3 goals just mentioned. When site preparation companies start talking about their work we find that it is less about the dozer, the grader or the compactor and much more about the available technology that will make the most efficient use of the equipment.
In this article there is a lengthy discussion about a program the CAT is releasing that connect all of a projects grading equipment together and to the project drawings so that each machine can monitor grade elevations, grade slopes and soil compaction as they work. This alleviates the need for a grade checker (person) to continuously survey the site. Not only does this new program allow the machines to stay in constant calibration and avoid hitting each other, it also allows for underground utilities to be input and subsequent avoidance zones implemented. This information helps insure no damage is caused to these utilities and certainly drives home the contractors' goals of doing the job right the first time and moving dirt as fast and as efficiently as possible.
Contractors typically have three goals for a job: do it safely, move the dirt one time and move the dirt quickly and efficiently. The article i read talks of evolving technologies for grading equipment that will help contractors meet the 3 goals just mentioned. When site preparation companies start talking about their work we find that it is less about the dozer, the grader or the compactor and much more about the available technology that will make the most efficient use of the equipment.
In this article there is a lengthy discussion about a program the CAT is releasing that connect all of a projects grading equipment together and to the project drawings so that each machine can monitor grade elevations, grade slopes and soil compaction as they work. This alleviates the need for a grade checker (person) to continuously survey the site. Not only does this new program allow the machines to stay in constant calibration and avoid hitting each other, it also allows for underground utilities to be input and subsequent avoidance zones implemented. This information helps insure no damage is caused to these utilities and certainly drives home the contractors' goals of doing the job right the first time and moving dirt as fast and as efficiently as possible.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Miller
So i'm supposed to be study for 2 exams that i have today but instead i'm trying to read miller, good luck with that. Basically all I've gotten out of miller is that she is more concerned with the action on which the rhetoric is used, the actions are inherent in the rhetorical situation and that these situations happen again and again over time thus similar actions occur.
Question is, what does miller have to do with us writing our commissioned documents? Seems to me that if most of us have to read the assignment 2 or 3 times and still have several questions about its meaning then we probably wont be very successful at implementing the ideas into our work.
Don't get me wrong, i have not problem sitting in class delving deeper and deeper into the philosophical ideas behind all of our readings but i need it to tie into the class deliverables (graded assignments). I don't mean in the form of a quiz or test either; like when we talked about rhetoric and audience before writing our instructions, that was applicable to a certain extent, so far "Genre as Social Action" is providing less than a clear correlation. Maybe its just me, idk.
Question is, what does miller have to do with us writing our commissioned documents? Seems to me that if most of us have to read the assignment 2 or 3 times and still have several questions about its meaning then we probably wont be very successful at implementing the ideas into our work.
Don't get me wrong, i have not problem sitting in class delving deeper and deeper into the philosophical ideas behind all of our readings but i need it to tie into the class deliverables (graded assignments). I don't mean in the form of a quiz or test either; like when we talked about rhetoric and audience before writing our instructions, that was applicable to a certain extent, so far "Genre as Social Action" is providing less than a clear correlation. Maybe its just me, idk.
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