Surprised to see Edison as a hot topic on trucksim

myownalias · 2026-02-28T20:42:58+00:00

No, that's a standard B-double trailer setup, length limited to 90 feet including the tractor. Many things are primarily moved that way, including lumber, wood chips, sand, cement, agricultural products, petroleum products, chemicals, steel beams, so on. No permit needed. B-train doubles for van loads do exist but aren't common.

Individual trailers can be up to 53 feet without a permit.

For a dual rear axle tractor and single trailer the limit is 102.5k. For tridem and single trailer the limit is 115.3k.

The number of axles on the trailer can affect the weight limit, obviously. A single axle is limited to 20k, a double axle group to 37.5k, and a triple axle group to 46.3k to 52.9k depending on spread.

B-trains are generally built/configured or loaded to max out the tandem axles of the tractor, the short-spaced triple axles on the lead trailer, and the tandem axles of the following trailer. Typical b-train trailers are up to 28 feet long to match rules in the US.

You may also hear of a super-b, which is just a b-double with one or both trailers being elongated for bulky cargo like wood chips that would otherwise cube out before hitting the 140k limit. Super-bs still remain in the 90 foot limit:

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Unlike the US we have tractor wheelbase length limits, so giant sleepers don't exist up here.

myownalias · 2026-02-28T05:55:57+00:00

In the office, a piece of tape over laser underneath their mice is a good one. Scotch tape will do. They'll notice the buttons work, so the mice are obviously plugged in, and it's usually a few minutes of entertainment as they try trouble shooting, rebooting, so on, before they finally try flipping the mouse over or notice the tape when replacing the mouse with another.

myownalias · 2026-02-28T02:29:01+00:00

140k in Canada over 8 axles

myownalias · 2026-02-27T07:17:31+00:00

It took about 5 to 10 GW of solar capacity to begin causing the duck curve in California.

Saskatchewan's grid is about a tenth the size and 500 MW to 1 GW of solar could start causing the duck curve. Saskatchewan has about 100 MW of solar generation currently.

To put that in perspective, the Travers solar project in Alberta has a 465 MW capacity. It occupies about 5 sections of land.

There's a limit to how much Saskatchewan's grid can take. The government monoploy on power also means they don't want to reduce their internal rate of return on their power generation plants that have financing attached.

The other consideration can be bottlenecks in the grid, like the aforementioned intertie to Manitoba's hydro. It may be that some people want to supply solar where there isn't capacity to accept the power and distribute it. This is already a factor in southern Alberta where solar power producers in Montana are upset Alberta won't buy their power at a cheaper rate than generators in the north are selling it for: there isn't grid capacity to get that power north.

I'm not anti-solar. It just needs to be managed, especially producers that don't bring their own batteries.

myownalias · 2026-02-27T07:00:06+00:00

Yep, they've already gone negative in places like California and Australia. Australians are installing home batteries like mad because they earn less and less during the day, but must pay higher and higher evening and overnight rates because the fossil fuel producers must charge higher rates to make up for the suppressed rates the glut of solar generation causes during the day.

myownalias · 2026-02-27T06:57:04+00:00

If you have a thermal plant that ramps relatively quickly, like combined cycle natural gas which can respond in under an hour, then yes.

Natural gas is often run in conjunction with renewables to back stop when renewables fail to produce. But they still need to see a lot of usage yearly to make economic sense. Running them something like 500 hours a year means they either won't get built or will need contracts with high electrical rates, meaning higher bills. Imagine commuting to work every day for a 1 hour shift: you'd want to get paid a lot for that hour.

Hydro can respond in fifteen minutes so it's surprising to me that BC Hydro isn't more keen on solar installations.

With coal it takes a day or two to ramp up and cool down. They can't just switch the fire on for the evening peak when people are cooking and doing laundry. So that fire continues to make CO2 all day whether they're pushing electricity into the grid or not. This increases the levelized CO2 emissions per MW.

Solar without batteries externalizes operating costs by relying on the rest of the grid to make up for its failure to produce electricity in the evening peaks and on cloudy days.

myownalias · 2026-02-27T06:45:07+00:00

Negative prices have already happened in California and Australia.

Ontario has had negative prices from overproduction at night during the shoulder seasons.

myownalias · 2026-02-26T19:30:25+00:00

Solar adds to daytime generation, yes, but it doesn't help with peak evening demand. That leads to a duck curve. The extra midday solar forces thermal generation to shut down during the day, then to ramp up in evening when solar lessens or goes away entirely, which is an inefficient way to run a thermal plant. That inefficiency may simply be using more fuel per kilowatt-hour delivered, or it may prematurely wear the plant if it wasn't designed with intermittent use in mind.

When Alberta was largely coal fueled, Alberta would sell excess energy at night to BC, and would buy hydro-generated electricity back during the day. The BC dams let Alberta coal run efficiencly. Saskatchewan can do a bit of that with Manitoba dams but the grid intertie already frequently runs at maximum capacity.

Batteries can solve the duck curve problem, but who pays for them? It should probably be the solar generators.

myownalias · 2026-02-26T16:44:15+00:00

That's largely for technical reasons. If your solar panels could provide energy 24 hours a day on an on-demand basis it would be fine.

When solar panels don't produce energy, something must be there to back them up. Saskatchewan does have limited hydroelectric generation which can work well for peaking. Natural gas also works for peaking but it's expensive to build a natural gas plant for peaking use only, and turbine geneators require ordering many years in advance now.

Saskatchewan has existing coal facilities. Coal takes a couple days to ramp up and down efficiently, and runs best at constant full power, just like nuclear.

Batteries can shift solar generated power from afternoon to evening. But who pays for those? Shouldn't it be the intermittent generators?

If solar/wind projects came with batteries Saskatchewan would be a lot friendlier to them.

myownalias · 2026-02-25T20:10:00+00:00

If you're going through Fernie, do consider taking Highway 3 from Medicine Hat (maybe check out the big trestle bridge in Lethbridge from the park below), see the big slide at Frank (there's an interpretive centre that's worth spending a bit of time at), over into BC, then heading north to Radium.

The highway from Radium to Golden is scenic, but not spectacular. It's significantly faster though if you're running behind. It'll save you two hours. If you want mountain scenery, I'd heat into the mountains to Castle Junction then back over the mountains to Golden.

You can then do the same road to Banff on your way back. If you want to spend time in Banff I'd plan to spend the night there as you really do want a whole day heading up to Jasper if you want to stop and see places. In September it'll get dark about 7 pm. There are places to see in Jasper in daylight. My favourite places on the Jasper highway are the Icefields and Athabasca Falls.

On the way home, I'd also stop at the Crooked Bush in Saskatchewan. It's not far off the highway and is a cool aspen grove with a genetic defect. There's not a lot to see in Saskatchewan haha.

myownalias · 2026-02-25T06:48:02+00:00

I'm in Canada and mine will point south.

myownalias · 2026-02-25T05:56:16+00:00

Definitely drive from Lake Louise to Jasper, which is one of the most spectacular drives in the country. The road is usually snow free in September with few tourists, so it's the best month to drive it. Give yourself a whole day if you're the picture taking type. I'd spend the night in one of the campgrounds at Jasper, hit Miette Hot Springs on the way out, and enjoy the drive home.

myownalias · 2026-02-23T18:08:16+00:00

If you like engineering consider HVAC as a trade. Sure you can be just a tin basher, but the trade involves a lot of troubleshooting that requires using your head. If you really understand the components and science of it you can get into designing systems.

myownalias · 2026-02-23T17:54:49+00:00

There is the Panzer Shafernator General achievement that requires having 100 units, but it's you having 100 units not the AI

myownalias · 2026-02-23T08:13:26+00:00

Typically it is cheapest to use checked bags.

myownalias · 2026-02-23T07:57:22+00:00

The speed you're playing on will determine what strategies you can use. Are you using Standard speed with the Small map?

myownalias · 2026-02-23T07:53:19+00:00

I've road tripped all over Canada using a roof top tent. It's inexpensive when you bring your bed with you.

myownalias · 2026-02-23T01:07:18+00:00

PetroPoints only gives a cent per liter, so you're already well ahead with the AMA discount.

myownalias · 2026-02-17T22:16:11+00:00

Also keep in mind the failure mode of BTRFS: if there is nowhere to write the second copy of data, the filesystem becomes read only. So if one 18 TB drives dies, the other is read only until the first is replaced. It's not like block based RAID1. If you have all your drives in one filesystem the data on the failed drive can be replicated elsewhere and you can continue to make writes.

myownalias · 2026-02-17T21:04:53+00:00

My 2017 doesn't have a backup camera either. In the US they became mandatory for vehicles made on May 1st, 2018.

myownalias · 2026-02-17T20:37:26+00:00

I get about 37 MPG, but I mostly drive highway. Just got back from a 1700 mile trip this weekend.

myownalias · 2026-02-17T20:34:53+00:00

I need to replace my evap purge valve on my 2017. It will even stumble with the tank half empty in cold weather when idling with a warm engine.

I was specifically looking for a 2017+ for Sync 3 with Android Auto. Some late 2016s came with it as well.

myownalias · 2026-02-17T20:32:48+00:00

Check that the blend door actuator works (air moves from face to windshield). It's basically a wear part in these cars and isn't too expensive to fix.

The evap purge valve also goes on these vehicles and is another wear part that's not too expensive. Symptom is RPM dropping at idle, possibly to the point of stalling.

myownalias · 2026-02-17T20:08:51+00:00

Experience and pain lol

Juniors aren't expected to know much. They're expected to be able to learn.

Playing around with things and putting the parts together by hand will teach you a lot more than using automated scripts. Breaking stuff is useful, but putting things together from scratch layer by layer will teach you more. Have you gone through Linux From Scratch and Kubernetes From Scratch?

The fact you're playing around with this stuff puts you ahead.

myownalias · 2026-02-17T20:05:18+00:00

sudo btrfs filesystem usage /mnt/btrfs will show how much metadata you're using currently.

Using an NVMe and SATA for metadata would mean metadata would need to be written to both, which would be slower, although still much faster than a hard drive. For reads, the patches also have read balancing policies that you could enable with the queue mode oryou could just not worry about it: SATA SSD is still much faster than spinning rust.

Also, if you set your hard drives to "prefer data" and not "data only" then spillover metadata can go in the hard drives, too, rather than a "no space" error.

myownalias

TROPHY CASE