Truth? I don’t consider myself a “techie,” because I actually mistrust technology a whole lot. Case in point: I received a hip (expensive) GPS locator (a TomTom to be exact) for Christmas. As I’m the type of spacey kid who gets lost at the drop of a hat but is constantly traveling about the East coast, it was a brilliant and wonderfully kind move on my parents’ part. I love how the female British voice I chose tells me to go “straight on!” after the Williamsburg bridge, but to be honest, I think the TomTom causes more havoc than it prevents.
Without warning, and quite frequently, it will simply lose the GPS signal. Now, when you’re making a dozen tiny turns in the span of two minutes, to suddenly not be given directions is dangerous, indeed. One can easily become dependent on the damn thing, but a word to the wise: copy down directions before you leave. Furthermore, keep a map in the car – or better yet, a road atlas for the entire country. While I’m excited to one day really test drive my TomTom by driving across the country, it definitely is not reliable enough to be my primary means of navigation.
However, on the plus side: one can do quick searches of the local area (for example, “Camping Grounds” or “Pizza”
, use the TomTom to calculate navigation time down to the minute, and (if I had Bluetooth) check for possible traffic delays. It’s a great contraption, when it’s got a signal…
On the topic of technology that simply fails, both Camino and Google Notifier (which used to give me satisfying *ding*s whenever I got a new e-mail) are acting completely screwy. Notifier has simply stopped being able to access my inbox and tell me what mail I have (even after a reinstall). Camino likewise has just started sucking- after a few minutes of normal functioning, it will simply stop being able to load any websites. Safari, on the other hand, works fine…
Don’t you hate it when you get attached to some technology that just inexplicably stops working? Someday I’ll give it all up, move back to the land, get me a chicken and grow vegetables…
