Wisconsin Tacomas and bad financial advice

I really don’t get the mentality of some admin people. What you are teaching your kids right now is invaluable to their learning and may very well lead them directly into a vocation that will provide them a lifetime income.
I know this from my personal experience in high school printing class.
Not everyone is made for college, but many of us that took other routes in life still have done very well.
Hell, some of us can even afford Toyotas!

 

Time for a new Head Unit.Some of them act like a tablet.

 

Pat ,that looks great.
Was that your design or a group design?
If it’s yours it might be worth producing them on the side?


For those of us locals who may be behind you more than others will you be putting on detachable mud flaps(better known as stone deflectors) to help others windshields ?
Asking for a friend who owns DM auto glass who needs the business

 

I hear you...I'm not an Apple fanboy. Their proprietary plugs piss me off. Then there is the (re)learning of Apple's OS. They're not out of the question, just thinking staying Android may be easier on my feeble mind. Yeah, yeah, learning new shit would be good for me.

Some head for my unit would be great...but I digress...

I'm looking to do a separate tablet...probably cheaper? Then I can load Gaia on that instead of my phone, so I can see more/better (I'm an old fart). If I do go with the separate tablet, then I have to come up with a mount, but I think RAM makes something I could probably work off my SeatJackers.

Not sure how well the head unit would work for downloading/saving maps for offline use for those times I get somewhere without cell coverage.

 

I had 3 yrs of graphic comm in h.s. After graduating I did some time with computer programming. (because it payed well). Sitting in the lab one day, I just couldn't picture myself sitting there in front of a computer ALL day. I thought back to the graphics classes and I never really thought of it as work. It was always fun classes. So I carried on to NTC for a degree in printing and publishing and have now been in the industry for 20+ years.
There are so many things that can't be taught in/from a book. Hands on learning is priceless.
15 or 20 years out of H.S. I actually contacted my H.S. graphics instructor and thanked him for the interest he gave me in graphic comm.

 

Most all of the new models are all usb c now

 

Better be careful or @CygnusX191 is gonna have competition for best toyobota

 

I was gonna do a tablet but just did a CarPlay headunit. Onx Gaia etc all support it these days.

some people have put in units that’ll run stuff native but the reviews are pretty mixed from what I’ve seen.

 

Far from an Apple fanboy myself but my wife got an ipad in 2014 that is still working just fine today, a bit slower. OTOH, my buddy Will has been through four failed Android tablets in the last two years and is ready to give Apple a try. Something to consider. OMT, working that gray matter is good for us old farts!

 

Design was a picture I found of a South African company and their flatbed design. Entirely patterned off that one visual. Lots of measuring (after the factory bed came off.) Discussions about what need to be changed for my spare tire madness, and how to do that. Then some SketchUp drawings to scale to get a visual idea of the aesthetic looks and some idea about departure angle, deck height etc. More measuring. This was a one off.

I don't think it would be doable from a production standpoint with the variable labor force that I have. I have great welders this year and some coming in the next couple years, but I cannot count on that for the long term. I have had some years where I had NO welders that could even repair a mower deck. Also, this thing is definitely a six footer. We would seriously need to work on the fit and finish for a customer rig, as well as the sheer number of paint strikes (cab) and other mishaps (grinder burrs to back window etc.) that I understand and can live with, that would be unacceptable for a paying job. I point these out and we discuss how to alleviate them in the future, but this crew is graduating so I will start anew next year... If someone wanted one bad enough, we could do it, but there would have to be some understanding of the timetable and end result constraints. You also have to remember that I only have these students when they are in class-some for only 45 minutes a day. I am also up against sports and all the other distraction of school like girls/boys and absences, vacations to Florida etc. Time is impossible to track for a project like this, and once mundane things need to get done the speed towards completion exponentially decreases (until I get them finished up.) If it has to get done on a schedule I won't take the job... Case in point: we are making some large "skittle" games (2'x3' wood) type of spinning top game for some customers in Montana, South Carolina and Minocqua. We started in October with the hope that they would be done by Thanks Giving. They are not done. Maybe by Christmas break? I could have built them in a couple of days... but not as flashy as some projects and fussy, so the kids loose interest (some, not all) pretty quickly. They don't think they are getting paid, so why give any effort... but the skills and learning are the pay they just don't realize it... this all has to factor into a project. I lay awake at 3 am thinking and stressing a lot! These guys don't realize that the skills they are getting from me will allow them to make more than I do (BA + 2 MS and 20 + years) within 5 years out of HS with NO debt if they do it right.

After having had a conversation with one of our local law enforcement officers (whose son I have in class), it seems WI doesn't require mud flaps. As such I was planning on the flap free look. I bet this will be fun to follow when its raining... That said, they are probably a good idea, but WAY down any list I have (and they don't conform with the sheer sexy-ness that is visible right now!) that they probably won't get dealt with until I am 6 feet under.

 

You're old and probably more in demand by the ladies than you realize. Widows and devorcees' get lonely, too.

 

Those 2 experiences are quite common. I use Apple, not because I’m a fanboy, but because the products have always performed better and longer than I expected. They’ve simply never let me down.

 

Had three Asus Windows 10 tablets fail in a year. Two were repaired under warranty and the third was just past support date. All three failed when our rural internet connection went down during Windows update which somehow fried the NIC. A highly unusual event to occur. Our main source for listening to music at home is an Apple Classic 160GB ipod purchased in 2009.

 

Funny; I just picked up a Galaxy tab for cruising the internet and YouTube, but I didn't bother to check if it has GPS capability. I'm liking it, otherwise. I'll check it out after work today and let you know, as the idea of a bigger map screen does sound appealing.

 

You need to pump those numbers up!

 

Have to say I am enjoying watching the progress immensely. Thanks to you & your students for the winter entertainment lol. And I am much more intrigued by the hard Woolwax, that’s different than I expected but in a good way.

Others have given lots of good feedback here already. All I can say is my small company of 70k employees uses 99% iPads because they just work. No doubt there are good Android products but I couldn’t say which ones. Samsung is usually the safest bet but as others have said be careful on which one because some of the more stripped-down units don’t have all the features. But I’d wager just about anything can run Gaia nowadays.

 

BAM!