By Jim Pilgrim
I just bought a 1970 Jeep Commando. My latest project, I love working on the old stuff. Simple, mechanical, and no on-board computers. It has a Buick 225 ci V6 motor and a 3 speed manual transmission. I plan to lift it, put in a Weiand intake manifold, headers, and a Flowmaster dual exhaust. It needs some body work, but since it’s a western Colorado Jeep, it has very little rust. If it was a Minnesota vehicle it would probably look like Swiss cheese. I’m going to Herculiner the interior, put some fresh red paint on it, and fit it with a soft top; all above the 35” tires.
I love the old school stuff, but…
My daughter called me last night. She was out running errands in her 2008 Toyota Corolla.
She said, “There is a yellow exclamation point on my dash.”
I said, “An exclamation point?”
She replied, “Yeah, and it has parentheses around it.”
I had my suspicion, but since she had the car and the owner’s manual, I decided to get on my Blackberry and do a Google search. Sure enough, Low Tire Pressure. That exclamation point with parentheses had a line connecting at the bottom and represented a tire. I called her and told her to look at her tires, but none of them looked low she said. When she returned home, I got my tire pressure gauge out and her right front tire read 30 psi, all the others 37. I took a quick look and sure enough, there was a nail in her tire. I got my tools out and fixed it with a plug, good to go.
My other daughter has a birthday tomorrow and she wanted Apple headphones so I headed to the mall, which by the way is not my favorite place to be. I located the Apple store and the in-ear phones she wanted. I grabbed the package and started looking around for a register to pay for them. A couple of the workers saw that I looked confused, because there was no obvious place to check out. They asked if they could help and I said where do I pay for this? One of the guys walked up and said he could help me. He got out his iPhone, scanned the item, took my credit card, swiped it and asked if I wanted a printed receipt or would an email receipt be ok. I gave him my email address, and within seconds I had an email with receipt on my Blackberry. I’m not much of a shopper, unless you count Home Depot, Fleet Farm, and NAPA, but that experience blew me away. Instant, un-tethered communication, wow!
Our industry provides the pipes for this communication. Those cool Apps on the iPhone, the ability to search the internet from my Blackberry and diagnose an issue with my daughter’s car. They would be worthless without the data pipes. As our appetite for bandwidth grows, those pipes will have to be fiber. Every wireless company has RFPs out on the street for fiber builds to feed their cell sites. Fiber will power the 4G networks of tomorrow and will allow even faster communication for ever more bandwidth hungry applications. I am proud to be a part of this industry.
I still like working on “old school” vehicles, but I can’t see ever going “Old School” for my communications needs.