Navigator #1
My Garmin 2610 GPS navigator arrived this afternoon, on time, from CompuPlus, a cheapie online merchant. But I had to help my son with his homework when all I wanted to do was play with my new toy. Damn homework!
The unit seems smaller than I remember it from my friend’s car. But such is the illusion of consumerism.
The installation instructions are mediocre. The software installed pretty easily despite that, although I’m not sure that my registration went through. I got a mysterious error code. But the mapping software seems to be unlocked, so I’m proceeding.
When you turn the unit on indoors, it defaults to showing you China and displays a “Locating Satellites” message, which may or may not be the case.
You load up the two disks of North American maps that come with the system and you click on the regions you want to install onto your device. An inconspicuous note in the window frame tells you how many megabytes of mappage you’ve selected. Since my unit comes with 128MB of memory on a flash card already installed in the system, I picked 127.9MB of maps, which covered all of the Northeast, up to about 50 miles west of the Hudson in NY and upper NJ. Then you tell the software to save the maps into the GPS unit, which you’ve connected by USB.
It transfers slowly. The meter says it’ll take about 30 minutes. Unfortunately, the first time through it got to the 15 minute mark and only then told me that I’d selected too many maps. So I knocked it down to 126.9MB and we’ll see if it craps out again. It’d be real handy if it’d warn you about this before you spend the time uploading. Sigh.
The upload screen grays out the choices for waypoints and routes, so I’m a little nervous that after I’ve uploaded all the mapping data, I still won’t be able to tell it that I want to go from my house to my in-laws’ house. (They live over a mile away so I need electronic help getting there. Really.) But we’ll see.
Anticipation…
Categories: Uncategorized dw
PS: Regarding my comments on the previous log about the prevelance of drug marketing in the contemporary marketplace, I’d like to say the following, for the record, even though nobody knows me, except Prof.MastaD.: I do not do recreational drugs of any kind (I do drink beer and wine), although I am not ashamed that I did smoke pot in my late teens, and early and late 20’s (with a hiatus in between during and just after grad. school–I am now almost 46), and I would, if it weren’t such a stigma, and I weren’t so paranoid, and it didn’t support crime culture, like to smoke a couple of hits of pot on saturday nights, in an ideal world. I do not however, and I’ve no reason to lie. It does enhance sex (although I am single and have been for some time) and it does highten sensitivity to music–both of which I miss. Oh ho well, that’s the price of growing up (old).
Long Gone
Gone–just gone like they were never here. books and beads and bread and breath,
all gone, like they never existed at all, except for the traces of family and friends,
of love of life, of gardens and kitchens and work. the news belongs
in the middle of the day, in the ear, in the temporary folder, to cover the silence and drown
out our self-induced thoughts. they will be spoken about on the street, in the future, in a holy place, in the hearts that must move on, to do the things that must now be done. things are harder now, irremediably so. they wanted to stay, to live on, to give back to the place where they were born. they do not know what goes on without them, as billions of contrary people turn on.
they act out their wills. they take from the world, and some pay the bills, but they make up
the present, unlike the beyond where the people who died here seem to have gone.
we have a purpose, and so we edge on with the very same plan from daybreak to dawn
till tomorrow when we must confront the same circumstance with gladness for things that are free to be drawn from opposing reasons like we never did wrong, but nothing provides us with justification for long when we recognize what it is that is missing and gone, or we hide like we lost what it was that was wrong, or that somebody else has the conclusion we search for
to make us believe that we feel like we?re here and not gone. somebody else is responsible,
and someone else is gone, while millions of critical people look on
from the surface of a world that is rock hard and strong, for below we must go
though we will not accept it, and we will never respect it, until we are gone.
we are only thinking about it now. we don?t really mean it. just tune out the static,
and when it is gone, and only the quiet is coming along, we can touch all the things
that we would like to belong in the world without people who continue to be gone.
and still they go.
Be sure to stay away from Holly Bush Lane.
http://weblog.garyturner.net/archives/001207.html
Gary.
I’d Be Lost Without My SatNav
David Weinberger is sharing details of his experimentation with in-car satellite navigation systems and I’m interested to see how he gets on with his standalone unit. My current car has a built-in (evil) SatNav computer and for the last couple…