| Quotables |
"Only I wasn't steering anything, not even myself. I just bumped from my hotel to work and to parties and from parties to my hotel and back to work like a numb trolleybus. ... I felt
very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo."
-- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar |
| |
"On the surface, it sounds irresponsible, but to flourish in a rapidly changing world, you actually need to make more mistakes. Fail quickly. Fail often. If you do something and it
doesn't work, just recover in a hurry and try something else. ... Help develop a culture that is willing to fail its way to the future."
-- Price Pritchett, Culture Shift |
|
"There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room. It's like watching Paris from an express caboose heading in the opposite direction -- every second the city gets smaller and smaller, only you feel it's really you getting smaller and smaller and lonelier and lonelier, rushing away from all those lights and that excitement at about a million miles an hour."
-- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar |
|
| |
| |
| |
|
| meet samantha |
| Wednesday, May 13, 2009 |
Samantha is a Garmin nuvi 260W GPS navigator to which I am completely addicted at this point. I've had her less than two weeks and it's already been an adventure. Read on, por favor.
For starters, she came with a car adapter included (as well as a mount for your dash). Of more importance, however, is what she did not come with: a wall charger, a USB cable, a carrying case. Of course, they'll be happy to sell you all these things on the Garmin web site. If you register your device online beforehand, though, you'll receive a 10% discount on related merchandise.
What do you need in order to register your device? A USB cable. Which isn't included. They'll be happy to sell you one, though. And if you register online beforehand... you see where I'm going with this.
I found a universal bundle at Wal-Mart for $15 that included a wall charger, all manner of Garmin, Magellan, and TomTom connectors, and a standard USB cable. So much for the Garmin site. Finding a carrying case was another matter entirely.
Currently, I'm on my third one, and it looks to be the last. This was a much bigger ordeal than I expected. I realized a bit late that I was looking for exactly three things in a carrying case: a clear window for protected viewing, a belt loop for hands-free carrying, and a slot in which to put the stylus. The first case I got at Wal-Mart was junk, it went back immediately. The second one was a bit better but had no belt clip or clear window. Yesterday, I hit the jackpot at Office Depot, of all places, whilst looking for spare styli. They didn't have those, but they did have a great case that had all the specs I wanted. All I need now is one of those weighted dash mounts, and I'm all set. I may not get that before the trip, though.
Oh yeah, we're going to Texas in a couple of weeks. My cousin Tyler is graduating high school, and we're also going down farther south to see my nephew. So it'll be nice to have a GPS nav in the car.
So back to Samantha. She sports a 4.3" screen, spoken street-to-street navigating instructions (the American English voice is named "Samantha" -- "Serena," the British girl, pronounces things funky, and "Karen," the Australian girl, sounds too digitized for my taste), and allegedly, somewhere in the vicinity of six million points of interest, including restaurants, gas stations, entertainment venues, amusement parks, etc. What surprised me, though, is what she apparently doesn't know... the Quik Trip across the street from my apartment isn't listed, for instance. The McDonald's next to Wal-Mart at Blue Ridge isn't either. Do I need help finding these things? Of course not. But if they're not stored in Samantha's brain, what else is missing? They aren't exactly new locations.
Fortunately, you can add locations to your 'Favorites' menu on the fly, and it stores them according to -- are you ready? -- longitudinal coordinates. That just kills me. :) You can hit "Where am I?", and it will give you the coordinates that correspond to your exact location on the planet at the moment. Handy if, for instance, you're separated from your group at a festival and need to meet up. Provided they have a GPS as well, they can read you their coordinates over the phone, you can enter them into your unit as a destination, hit GO, and it'll take you right to them.
Don't even get me started on geocaching. That's a whole other entry. I went this past weekend, and let me tell you, that was a trip.
Samantha sounds a bit curt sometimes, but she is the best $140 I never spent (she was an early birthday prez from the folks, and we got her for a steal to boot). I have such a piss poor sense of direction, she's going to be of immense help.
Anyone else have GPS? Any fun, interesting, or horrific stories to share? We don't have any other geocachers in the audience, do we? |
posted by N.T. @ 11:25 PM  |
|
| 1 Comments: |
-
We just got a GPS (Tomtom) and the British voice, Jane, 'sounds a bit curt' too!! lol we find ourselves mouthing off to her without thinking..."I don't WANNA turn left, JANE!" I KNOW I missed the turn, JANE!" it's humorous. As for not having certain locations, all i can think of is that the franchise hasn't paid Garmin/Tomtom to 'advertise' their location. I don't know if ours does the coordinates like yours...have to try that out. :)
|
| |
| << Home |
| |
|
|
|
|
We just got a GPS (Tomtom) and the British voice, Jane, 'sounds a bit curt' too!! lol we find ourselves mouthing off to her without thinking..."I don't WANNA turn left, JANE!" I KNOW I missed the turn, JANE!" it's humorous. As for not having certain locations, all i can think of is that the franchise hasn't paid Garmin/Tomtom to 'advertise' their location. I don't know if ours does the coordinates like yours...have to try that out. :)