Blog 24: May Extra Blog

Carl La Russa 

North

Blog 24: May Extra Blog

This month has been very busy at my mentorship. First my mentor and I had to take a trip down to Sycuan Casino in San Diego to replace three faulty tracking units in some buses. When we arrived at the casino, we were notified by the transportation official that Sycuan 6, code-name for Limo 6 was getting an interior makeover which created more stress for my mentor because he has to track down the vehicle and do a separate installation at some other time. On top of that, our tech support man, Tom Smith who lives in the UK was unable to provide us with technical support as he was attending to other business. With all these issues on our hands, we still managed to replace the other faulty units and check that all the units at the casino were running properly.

The following week, my mentor calls me and tells me that Sycuan 6 is at a customization shop in Ontario and that it was going to be his only chance at intercepting the limo before it heads back down to San Diego. So I agreed to go along with him and install a new unit. We get to the shop at around 9 A.M., get the keys to the limo from the manager and we begin working. Two hours later, we complete the installation and call it a day. 20 minutes after I get home, my mentor calls me and says that the unit is not registering on the tracking program and that there is a faulty connection within the wiring. The limo was scheduled to leave the shop that evening and go back down to San Diego, but luckily for us, they decided to postpone it until the next morning. In the end everything worked out as planned.

Here is my mentor inspecting the faulty unit that we retrieved out of Sycuan 42.

Here my mentor is preparing to replace the faulty unit in Sycuan 2.

It turned out that the unit that was installed in this van by the casino mechanic was buried under the dashboard. It took us about an hour just to locate the unit.

Blog 23: Senior Project Reflection

Carl La Russa

North

5/22/2015

Blog 23

1.) Positive Statement

  - What are you most proud of in your block presentation and/or your senior project? Why? 

- I am proud of how I was able to salvage my activity. The software required to run my tracking program wasn't working properly on the laptops so I decided to have my audience create a geofence on a sheet of paper. With my senior project, I am proud of having been able to go and visit actual companies that use my mentor's tracking system.

2.) What assessment would you give yourself on your block presentation? 

- I would give myself a P.

3.) What assessment would you give yourself on your overall senior project?

- I would give myself an AE.

4.) What worked for you in your senior project?

- What really worked for me in my senior project was having my mentor as my next door neighbor. The conveniences of just walking over to his house and talking to him about my project was really beneficial for me.

5.) What would I have done differently in my senior project?

- If I could go back in time, I would've started my Independent Component 1 earlier. I didn't realize until about January that was falling behind on my hours. I was pretty stressed the last couple weeks of January trying to schedule visits at businesses that work with my mentor.

5.) How has the senior project been helpful to you in your future endeavors?

- The senior project has really helped me gain more insight into the transportation industry and how technology is revolutionizing the way people move. I plan to become a mechanical engineer one day and hopefully work with vehicle systems that use GPS or any other sort of electronics.

Blog 22 Mentorship

Carl La Russa

North

5/12/2015

Blog 22: Mentorship

1.) Literal   

•      Del Shindell, my mentor's house.

2.) Interpretive

• Having worked with my mentor for almost a year now, has taught me a lot of things about vehicle tracking and how it works. The most important thing that I've gotten out of my mentorship is being able to research a topic quickly and apply that research to reality whether I was installing tracking units, opening them up and diagnosing problems, or helping customers with questions they might have about vehicle tracking. Through my mnetorship, I was able to present what I had found more fluently to my classmates helping them paint a better picture of what I do during my mentorship in their heads. Having some solid research already in mind helped me further my research into my topic and find important information related to my EQ.

3.) Applied

• By completing my mentorship, I've been able to gain knowledge that people who just read articles and websites on my topic would've never been able to acquire. My EQ, "Who benefits most from vehicle tracking software?" has been easy to find answers for, but as for the answers, its been difficult to find research to back them up. This is where my mentor and all the people that I've talked to about my topic have provided me with answers and reasons as to why those answers apply to my EQ. My mentor gave me many answers to my EQ and many reasons as to why they were legitimate and it was my job to find others who would narrow them down and give me specific information that I could use for my research and presentations.

Exit Interview Blog

Carl La Russa

North

Exit Interview Blog

1. My EQ is "Who benefits most from vehicle tracking software?". My three answers are Teen Drivers, Commercial Truck Drivers and Adult Drivers. 

• My best answer is Commercial Truck Drivers because GPS tracking encourages them to stay on task without taking detours or long rest stops, drive more efficiently by taking the fastest route to a destination and be responsible for someone else's property. With a tracking unit installed in a commercial vehicle, a driver will become much more cautious about what he or she does with the vehicle when out on the road. For example, say an employer mandates that all of his/her employees can't exceed 70 mph while making deliveries and a driver exceeds the maximum speed limit set by the boss, the boss will know exactly when and where that particular driver exceeded the speed limit and be able to take action accordingly.

1. Over the course of my mentorship, I've been working with my mentor who mostly sells tracking units and software to commercial transportation companies. These companies rely on my mentor's tracking system to locate their vehicles and make decisions based off of the information that is given to them through the program. After studying my topic for over a year now, all the research that I've done has proved to me that commercial vehicle drivers depend on tracking systems to get paid the correct amount of money, show that they are responsible with company property and to complete their jobs when and where they're supposed to. 

•  Some problems that I faced during my mentorship were trying to organize visits to car dealerships and fleet businesses that my mentor already worked with. At the beginning of the year I was trying to get my mentor to organize visits to some of the places that he works with for my independent component. What was difficult about this was calling the businesses and trying to setup a time to come by and visit along with my mentor when my mentor has a tight schedule and people at the businesses have little time to talk. To solve my problems, I took some time during my Thanksgiving and Winter Breaks to go and stop by some of these places without my mentor and try and get contacts for future interviews and visits.
• The two most significant sources that helped me answer my essential question are "Understanding GPS Principles and Applications" and "8 Misconceptions About GPS Vehicle Tracking." The book "Understanding GPS Principles and Applications" goes into depth on how GPS developed from just a military tool in the early 1970s to something that plays a vital role in everyone's lives today. One section of the book called Applications in Transportation explained to me that vehicle tracking plays a major role in many transportation companies and other highway services. My other significant source, "8 Misconceptions About GPS Vehicle Tracking." explained to me how many business owners and people who are in charge of large fleets don't believe a tracking system will benefit them at all. What this article does is that it takes all the arguments and gives an in-depth explanation as to why they are wrong and in-turn argues why more people aren't buying tracking systems for their vehicles.

April Extra Blog

Carl La Russa

North 

4/29/2015

This past month, I've been very busy working along with my mentor on a brochure for his tracking company and trying to boost sales on tracking units. We were able to create a good looking brochure that encompasses everything about the company and how our tracking system works. We ran into a couple problems along the way when we read over the content on the brochure and discovered that we had completely left out any information on the tracking website itself and that that is the main key to actually viewing vehicle activity. We had so much information on the tracking units and benefits of tracking that we had forgotten to include anything about the tracking software.

Independent Component 2

Carl La Russa

North 

4/24/2015

Independent Component 2 Blog

a.) "I, Carl La Russa, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work."

b.) My mentor, Del Shindell, Alex Weiss, and Steve Szczuka have helped me complete my 30 hours of work. 

c.) Senior Project Hours Log updated.

d.) Over the past couple months, I've been working alongside my mentor, Del Shindell, to secure deals with trucking companies in the Chino area by making a Sygmatech brochure, that we would be able to hand out to potential customers and business cards that I could hand out. During the month of March, my mentor explained to me that business has been a bit slow lately and that he wanted to begin finding new clients for his tracking system. For several days during the second week of March, I was over at my mentor's house designing a brochure with pictures and captions that would inform potential clients about the system and its capabilities along with the benefits of having a tracking system in their fleet. To go along with the brochure, my mentor wanted me to get my own business card in case I was confronted with a potential client. Another reason my mentor wanted a brochure for his company was so that he could use it to give to some of our neighbors up the street since one of them manages a fleet of construction vehicles and was interested in the system. During all of this, I spoke with Alex Weiss and Steve Szczuka, both experts that have worked in the field of GPS and GPS tracking. Mr. Weiss worked with my mentor at a company called Hughes Aircraft about 20 years ago where they contracted with the U.S. military building systems that could track submarine torpedoes and missiles. Mr. Weiss helped me answer some questions that had about GPS and how it has evolved over the years into becoming a major component of people's lives. Mr. Szczuka on the other hand helped me understand how GPS might evolve to meet future needs and how itself is changing the future of tracking and navigating. Over the last couple weeks, I've been making calls to trucking companies, trying to peak some interest about my mentor's tracking system and what it can do for these companies. 

e.) The second independent component has helped me a lot in answering my essential question. First of all, when I was out pitching the tracking system with my mentor, I was able to see how tracking systems have already benefited many businesses. For example, when I went into Frontier Transportation in Chino, one of the managers there explained to me how much time and money they've saved by tracking their vehicles. I heard the same story from Odyssey Tours when I visited their bus yard along with my mentor. Along with all the product pitching, I was able to speak with some great experts within the field who really were able to explain to me why GPS is so important whether it be in transportation of any other application.

Here is the front page of the Sygmatech brochure that my mentor and I designed.

This is the inside of the brochure that explains everything about the tracking system from the tracking unit specifications to the features of the tracking program.

March Extra Post

This month, my mentor and I have been pretty busy setting up the tracking software after one of the servers was wiped. What I was asked to was setup the geo-fences that my mentor used in order to locate vehicles more quickly. While I was working on setting those up, I helped my mentor setup the fences that are being used by the bus and commercial vehicle accounts. 

Here is my mentor by his computer working on the Odyssey account, setting up the Odyssey Bus Yard fence.