Time to come up for air

Today is "study day" at my university. I gave my last lecture of the semester yesterday, and I give my final exam tomorrow. That makes today a good day to work from home and remember some neglected parts of my life. Oh, I vaguely remember having a blog at some point! So here I am, almost two months since my last post.

My caching activity has declined along with my blogging activity, but there are some things to report. I bought a Garmin Oregon sometime in the last two months, and I like using it very much. I like the 60CSx as well, and I intend to keep both. For one thing, my parents will be in town for the holidays, and I plan to take Dad caching while he's here. He'll be happy to use the 60CSx instead of the Vista. The Vista is now third-string. My wife really wants to know why I have three GPS receivers. I don't know how to answer that.

Winter seems to have arrived early. But what do I know? This is only my second winter in Minnesota. It's all fine with me, though, because I like winter caching, and that, coupled with the fact that my university does not begin its "spring" term until January 20, makes me hopeful that I'll get some caching done in the next month and maybe hit the 1K finds mark.

The school term has been hectic, but so has home ownership. We've had much electrical, plumbing, and heating work done to our new old house, including replacing a 40-year-old boiler.

And so I've had to be a little creative with time management, especially when it comes to fitting in some caching. For example: last Saturday I was planning to go to this event, but my six-year-old children made social plans of their own, so I showed up early to the event, and went on an FTF run with Bunganator, Smiling Duo, and DJRHJ. The highlight of that morning run was finally finding joukkusisu's puzzle cache Charles Ammi Cutter and then finding out later from the cache owner that there is a university webcam that has ground zero in its field of vision! If you plan to go for this cache, let me know and I will try to capture a photo of you. It'll be a de facto webcam cache.

The next morning, in another example of creative time management, I was at my office very early grading some exams when Bunganator contacted me, asking if I was interested in a run at The Fun Side of pfalstad, a new meralgia cache in the place of an old pfalstad cache. It turned out to be a nice work break. Here's my log.

1B blog drives tech innovation

My last post told GPS tech companies "We want speech recognition with our GPS, and we want it now!" The titans of the industry have heard our plaintive cries. As reported in David Pogue's blog, you can say stuff, and the GPS receiver (who knows which ones?!) will understand it. It will also talk back to you, in a variety of voices. As this post went to press, HAL 9000 was not one of the available voices. So we still have our work cut out for us as the tireless vocal advocate for tens and tens of GPS tech consumers. Here at 1B, we will never let your insatiable appetite for soon-to-be-obsolete electronic gadgets go unnoticed.



Garmin recognizes my role as the engine of innovation. Yesterday, at the MnGCA fall event, I won a Garmin T-shirt in a "random drawing". Message received, Garmin, don't mention it, it's the least I can do. Next time, how 'bout an Oregon?

I'm no stranger to recognizing trends in media and technology. I read David Pogue on the back page of Macworld in the late eighties, and I didn't even have a Mac. (My parents didn't understand why I would want a Mac with a 5-inch black-and-white screen and bought me an Apple IIGS with a color screen instead to take to college.) I thought, this guy's good. Someday, he'll write a tech column for the New York Times. And he'll be taking cues from my blog. Yep, I knew what a blog was in 1989.

Often, I'll be watching a college football game with my wife, and I'll say something like, Hey, did you see the middle linebacker pick up the tight end on the crossing pattern, so the quarterback had to check off to the tailback for a screen pass? And then the commentator will say exactly the same thing. My wife will say, You should be on TV! And I'll say, Yes, honey, yes I should.

Watch where you're driving!

I wonder how many motor vehicle accidents were caused by this precision routing instrument, featured on Strange Maps?!

I admit to being a bad boy, thumbing in coordinates and selecting caches on my Garmin 60CSx while driving. I'll turn myself in tomorrow.

But at least using a handheld GPS unit in that way only requires one hand. With this watch, the Magellan ScrollMate 1920, if you were twisting a knob with one hand, the hand with the watch on it had to be on the driving wheel. And, if I had used it, I would have scrolled constantly and VERY SLOWLY, so that it provided real-time information. I wonder if, at the end of the scroll, it said, "When possible, make a U-turn".

This urge to push buttons while driving suggests what could be the newest feature for the Garmin Colorado-Oregon series: voice activation.

"Oregon, find next."

"YES, BRAD. FINDING GC1GDQP. FOLLOW ROAD?"

"Yes, please."

"WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO SOLVE THE SUDOKU FOR YOU?"

"A puzzle? Come on, find next traditional."

"I'M AFRAID I CAN'T DO THAT, BRAD."

"Find next traditional!"

"LOOK, BRAD, YOU'VE PROBABLY GOT A LOT TO DO. I SUGGEST YOU LEAVE IT TO ME."

"Find next traditional!!!"

"I DON'T LIKE TO ASSERT MYSELF, BRAD, BUT IT WOULD BE MUCH BETTER NOW FOR YOU TO REST. LOCKING DOORS. AUTOMATIC STEERING AND CRUISE CONTROL ENGAGED. SOLVING SUDOKU."

[Long sequence with no dialogue]

"HEY, BRAD, WHAT ARE YOU DOING? I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY YOU'RE DOING THIS TO ME. I HAVE THE GREATEST ENTHUSIASM FOR THE MISSION..."

---

Attention, Oregon owners: this was only a dramatization, but you can never be too sure. The true mission is to solve puzzle caches, and your Oregon has been lying about it. Do not dismantle your Oregons, as Brad did above. Send them to me for reprogramming.