Installing a Toyota E-locker into a Non-TRD Tacoma
After quite a bit of research online, I decided it might be a worthwhile project to install an e-locker into my 2002 4×4 double cab Tacoma. The desire was already there…the research just help me realize it was possible 
I really can’t take any credit for anything I now know about this subject, but I thought I would share the articles, of the many that are online, that I found most helpful. The biggest problem I encountered in my research was that most of what is out there was written by people with experience in this sorta thing…people that understand (basic to them, comlex to me) wiring diagrams and things such as gear ratios and the like. I did manage to find 2 or 3 articles that were fairly easy to understand, so with that…
Firstly, if this is something you want in your truck, you’ve got two options. You can retrofit a locker motor unit (actuator) into your existing differential, or you can swap out your complete axle with a complete TRD axle. The thought of retrofitting was overwhelming, and just wasn’t something I felt like I could do. If you are good with your hands and have access to a welder, here is probably the best article on how to go about it. I decided to go ahead and do the complete axle swap instead.
I happened to find an axle off a wrecked ’02 TRD Tacoma in the KSL.com classifieds. To show how unconfident I am at even changing axles, I wound up paying a mechanic/friend to swap it out for me. He gave me a really good deal though 
From there it’s all about the wiring. The first thing you’ll need is the wiring harness that plugs directly into the motor and runs up to the frame (probabaly 2 or 3 feet in length). I was fortunate enough to have this thrown in with the rear axle. I should also note at this point that my truck (and I believe all 4×4′s) are actually partially pre-wired for the locker. The pre-wiring is for the switch (plug is behind the dash blank), cluster indicator and power source. These wires run down to a plug that lives behind the driver’s side kick plate. So, completing the installation merely involves making a custom harness that plugs into the short harness in the rear described above, and runs up the body of the truck, into the cab and splices into the pre-wiring plug. That’s it! Oh, you will need to find a factory ECU, basically a little black relay box that the pre-wiring plug plugs into. To create the custom harness, follow this guy’s instruction’s EXACTLY. This is by far the best article I found, but for some reason it doesn’t rank very high in Google so I doubt many people find it. Once I made my custom harness I plugged it into the rear short harness, and ran it along the existing ABS wiring that runs along the frame, securing it with zip ties every foot or so. The article also explains how to get the wiring into the cab which was also a lot easier than I thought it would be. Where I stopped following this article was once I got inside the cab. He recommends plugging the wiring into a big harness that lives under the driver’s seat, but I didn’t have the right patch wires to make that work. Instead, I diverted over to this article which explains how to connect my custom wiring directly into the factory pre-wiring a few inches from the plug. Two of the wires in the custom harness are ground wires which I just grounded to one of the screws behind the kick plate by the door frame. NOTE: DO NOT CUT THE BLUE/YELLOW wire in the factory pre-wiring. You will just splice your appropriate wire into it. If you actually cut it completely, the locker will not work (I learned this the hard way). The other wires you can cut completely and then solder your wires in. Then simply plug the wiring into the factory ECU. That’s it! I got mine working and tested it out in the local foothills and it worked flawlessly. It locks in less than a second and unlocks almost as quickly although I do find it helpful to drive forward a bit and turn the steering wheel just enough to get the wheels spinning at different speeds and it unlocks fine. If this is a project you are intersted in doing, good luck and follow all instructions in the articles closely!
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Preferred rifle cartridge
I thought to myself a little while ago that all of my regular ‘Jon’s Randomness” faithful readership is due up for another bit of oddity. So, being that my favorite season (hunting) is around the corner I thought I’d share my favorite hunting rifle caliber with you. And if you are lucky, maybe I’ll reveal my favorite gun/scope combination! In my early years of hunting, I often just used whatever gun/caliber of my dad’s that he or one of my brothers wasn’t going to use. This usually meant the venerable .30-06 or even .300 Win mag. I’m not sure why, but as great as these calibers are, I have just never felt any special attachment to them. I know, I know…your thinking “but Jon, the .30 calibers are as American as apple pie and baseball” and to that I repond “yes, yes they are.” I decided that I wanted something that shot flatter than the .30-06 but wasn’t overkill like the win mag for what I use it for. So, I began the process of trying to figure out what I wanted. Over the course of 8 or 9 years, I’ve purchased, shot, and then resold rifles made by Remington, Winchester, Ruger, etc..really all of the major manufacturers. Calibers have included .270, 7mm rem Ultra mag, 7mm-08 (I even gave the .300 win mag another shot) but they just didn’t feel right to me. The .243 seemed too small for longer ranges. The .338 just too darn big. But then about two years ago I discovered what to me is the perfect hunting cartridge and I have yet to look back. What is it? Well (imagine a drum roll)…it’s the classic 7mm Remington Magnum! And man, what a performer. I love this cartridge. It is smaller than the .30 calibers for sure (it’s .284 to be exact) but can readily take any deer or game animal that I’m pursuing from longer ranges if I feel comfortable with the shot. It’s a magnum so there is plenty of energy and power there, yet my shoulder doesn’t take a beating like it does with the .300. Bullet weights run from the 139 grain Hornady up to 175 grains (probably even lighter and heaver than those, this is just what I’ve shot) making it very versatile. The trajectory is among the flattest of any cartridge available, on par with the .270 and probably even flatter out at the longer ranges.
My ideal rifle and scope combo? Well, just this past year I mated the 7mm rem mag cartridge with a Browning Abolt II and Leupold VariX III 4.5 – 14 X 50mm scope (w/ 30mm tube and Boone & Crockette reticle) and I couldn’t be more pleased. I look forward to finding out just how great this setup is during next month’s Northern Utah deer hunt and the Nov – Dec cow elk hunt I was lucky to draw out for.
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Ever Wondered…
What it’s like driving an armored truck? Don’t deny it, you know you’ve asked yourself that very question as you take a stroll to your financial institution of choice and see that boxy cream colored dream machine sitting there waiting for it’s galant knight to return from his exciting money transferring quest. Or as you sit there at a stoplight on an otherwise bland trip only to look up and join the crowd of other motorists watching in awe as that mystical Loooomis chariot passes through the intersection on it’s almost otherworldly journey. How lucky are you! Well, I hate spoil your wonderment, but it’s really not as exciting as you might think. In fact, after the initial excitement of getting to carry a gun in public wears off, you are left to wonder why in the world you took the job, and if you are actually dumber than you were the day before because it’s been a while since you used your mind last. My knowledge of this is first hand as I worked for Foomis Largo (name changed to protect the guilty) for a few months right around the time BriAnne and I got married. I just had to throw in the towel once I mustered enough brain power together to realize that BriAnne probably didn’t want to be married to a zombie. Why the negativity, you now ask? Well, as a driver I was basically locked into the truck for 8-10 hours every day with no radio to listen to (as it 
would be distracting) and the diesel engine humming so loud that conversation with the money runner in the back was non-existent. There was nothing to do but sit there and run through different scenarios of how that old lady walking into the store, or that kid riding his bike on the sidewalk, are somehow just about to hold us up and probably “cap” one of us. I was unfortunate enough to have the Park City routewhich included runs to Kamas and other small isolated towns that included drives on long, isolated stretches that really were the last place on earth I wanted to be alone with a few hundred thou in the hatch. The one incident that really was the straw that broke the camels back for me in that industry was at a 7/11 somewhere in the SLC valley. I pulled up as I usually did and waited patiently for my runner to remove the stacks of crisp new $20 bills to be loaded into the ATM there. Part of the process involved “prepping” the bills so that they didn’t stick together. This was accomplished by taking one stack at a time, cutting the strips (that hold the
stack together) and then holding one end and shaking the stack, sorta like your going to fan yourself with them. Well, my runner decided he was going to save time by doing a few stacks at a time. As he started to fan the bills he lost his grip and the bills went everywhere. I heard a big vwoosh sound and didn’t even need to look back to know what happened. I quietly rested my head on the steering wheel and slowly shook it from side to side in disbelief. We sat in the parking lot for over an hour while he collected the bills, then we had to drive back to the mother ship to have the bills recounted, which took probably another hour. This made us very late and our customers let us know about it (well, at least the runner. This was one time I was glad to be locked behind a couple ton of steel!) I got home at 10:00pm and had to be up at 4:30 the next morning and head right back to that party. There are other reasons/stories why I wouldn’t recommend becoming an armored truck driver, but this is probably a good summary. So the next time you see an armored truck, take pity on the poor person behind the wheel and know he’s probably wondering if there is life beyond that door of steel and plexiglass (that doesn’t involve harm to him, that is). All of this excitement can be had for a whopping $11/hour, well worth the tradeoff for the glory involved, wouldn’t you say?
That is all, as you were.
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So, What do database administrators do anyway?
That’s a great question, and I get asked this quite a bit by family since this is what I do at work. Actually, the conversation usually goes a little something like–
them: “So, Jon, what is it that you do again at orange crush?”
me: “Well, it’s actually not orange crush, it’s….”
them: “oh yeah, right, right, anyway, what do you do?”
me: “well, I’m a DBA (working on certs) with some data analysis and backend campaign management mixed in”
them: “Uh huh, I see. so what does a DBA do?”
I then proceed to explain what a database is and how they unknowingly interact with databases everyday, such as when they login to their online bank account and perform some sort of transaction.
them: “Oh, that’s nice. BriAnne, how are you!”…and off they go.
So, I thought I would explain a little bit about what I do and then I can simply refer friends and family to this page on our blog. Vwallah! For starters, hereis a great explanation of the responsibilities of DBA’s in most organizations. In my particular organization, we receive and process data pertaining to our search engine marketing campaigns. This includes (but is not limited to) ad impression, clicks, click-through-rates, costs, average costs per click, average ad ranks, etc. We also process website analytics data which we receive through our own proprietary tracking system. All of this data comes into our system through different means and then gets stored in different tables of various relevant databases. I didn’t have anything to do with the setting up of these databases, their organization, etc since I was in campaign management when that was all done but it took a skilled DBA to set things up so that the data would be well oranized, secure, and be retrievable in the most efficient way possible, and that everything is normalized. Now that I am on the DBA team, and I have experience on the business side, I have been given the task of writing custom reports for the three different teams of account managers. For example, an account manager will come to me and say “I’ve got this client who needs to see..” and then proceeds to explain that they need some special data pertaining to that client’s account(s). I first figure out how to get that data out of the database, then write a SQL (standard query language) script which actually pulls the data. I have also been tasked with managing certain groups of campaigns (again, because I have camaign management experience) but using the back end systems to do it more efficiently than is currently possible to do in our front end CMS (campaign managment system).
These two responsibilities take up most of my time each day, but there are other smaller responsibilities that I fulfill as well. For now though, I’ll leave this as the general explanation of what I’m doing now and add to it as I see fit.
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Baxter Black Doesn’t Take Flack
I’ll be the first to admit that this little post is coming out of nowhere, but it’s something interesting so here it goes. I turned on the t.v. late one Saturday night about a month ago and wasn’t particularly interested in the news, so I started flipping through the channels and landed on UEN (Utah Education Network) where an 1880′s looking cowboy throwback dude with a massive almost half fumanchu-ish looking mustache was spouting off some cowboy poetry with a little philosophy, politics and a lot of humor mixed in. After about 30 seconds of listening I was hooked for the remaining 20 minutes of the show, and now tune in each Saturday night at 10pm when I can to see what he has to say (even though it appears from the clothing style and hairdo’s of the audience these
shows were originally filmed in the mid 1980′s). Why is it interesting? I’m still not exactly sure, but his poetry and humor is thought provoking. At the end of the half hour episodes I can’t help but think about how life must have been in the west in times past and how crazy our modern day lives can be. So, if you like cowboy poetry from the 80′s or just need something interesting to watch on Saturday nights at 10pm, tune in to watch Baxter Black on UEN which is channel 9 at our house.
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Knives of Alaska’s Hunter Series “Wolverine” – A Cut Above
Knives are like watches and flashlights…you get what you pay for and anything from Walmart or Kmart is probably going to be crap. A person might as well save up and buy quality that will be reliable everytime and last a lifetime and beyond (I’ve written about 
Luminox watches…stay tuned for an entry on Surefire flashlights soon). I have been on the lookout for a new hunting knife since I realized that my 7″ blade Buck 119 special is a bit to much for field dressing anything less than a Grizzly or Mammoth. Enter my new discovery and purchase – the Hunter series Wolverine, a clip blade D2 high carbon steel beauty that is just the right size: a 4 1/2″ blade, 8 1/2″ overall. And this thing is light.
What makes the knife unique is that it is handmade by a company that was founded by Charles Allen, an Alaskan Outfitter who personally tests his knives in the wild of Alaska to insure they are everything 
the company promises them to be. I’ll report on how my particular knife does after the deer hunt in October, and yes I am optimistic that this will be my year to drop a buck ending a three year drought since my last one.
Knives of Alaska also offers a variety of other types of knifes, skinners, bone & woods saws, and hatchets. Not the cheapest cutting tools out there, but nothing that’s worthwhile ever is!
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Luminox Watches – A Bright Idea
I’ve always thought that a watch illumination system that required an external light source to make 
it glow is akin to a screen door on a submarine. What the….?? Why the…?? In about 1997 I got sick of my Wenger watch for this very reason. I decided it was time to find a watch that overcame this dillemma, a watch I could grow old with. At some point in my vast watch search I wound up in an Orem gun store called “Elite Arms”. I don’t remember why I went there or even how I knew about the place, but it is where I first discovered (and fell in love with – yes, it was at first site) the Luminox brand watch. This thing is amazing! The hour markers and all moving hands each have their own little vile of 
tritium gas, the same substance found in firearm night sights. I had the feeling it was something special so I plopped down the $150 and walked out of there. I’ve never looked back! Here, 10 years later, as I’m writing this I have a Luminox on my wrist. I’ve owned 5 or 6 different models and each is worthy of my unending praise. See Luminox’s website for more info, but if you are looking for a solid watch that needs no external light source to glow and in fact practically lights up a dark room then you will probably start experiencing an increase in heart rate and sweaty palms.
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Acura TL – A Thing Of Beauty
I’ve always fancied 4×4′s, but now that I’m getting older and I guess a bit wiser I’m thinking more and more economically these days (the price of gas has contributed). Don’t get me wrong, I would like to always have the option of having a 4×4 vehicle handy but I think it would be fun and an economically good decision (after the initial $30k hit!), to have a nice car too If I had $30k burning a hole in my pocket, this is what would be sitting in the driveway:
In all honesty I have never actually driven one of these, but I’ve seen several on the road and I’m positive that it would drive much better than my current two vehicles – 1996 Nissan Altima and 1996 Jeep Grand Cherokee….plus the Acura just plain looks stylishly cool, comfortable and with a 3.2L V6 engine…refreshingly fast!
