critter unexpecteds and gps
Feb. 20th, 2013 11:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ceagle-That "attack squirrel" I had mentioned....
Well, I guess it's just a very, uh, 'tame' local squirrel which the local households feed and the kids all play with... no-one debriefed me though, so it's just been a complete surprise each time it has come closer.. and closer... and finally a couple of days ago, it came zooooming up to me, ran up my leg (on the outside of my pants, luckily!), up my back and on to my shoulders, ..where it then bolted up to the fence, awaiting peanuts.. apparently!
I wasn't expecting to be used as a human launching ramp or pole vault... but now that I know, I guess I'm prepared...
-In the dim dim dusk as I was walking the trash barrels to the corner for pickup the next morning, I saw the local fox just about 30 feet away, just standing and staring at me calmly... Maybe it thought I couldn't see him/her in that light... but mostly surprised the din of the rolling barrel didn't scare the critter off..
-The groundhog is still in full-swing demolishing the lawn, and I happened to see it popping up and grabbing at leaves to take down into his/her lair today.. eeesh..
-In non-critter news, shows what ya get for not reading the fine print ;p ... Saw an amazing special at Fry's.. I guess since GPS is on just about every smartphone nowadays, they are practically giving some of them away!
After waiting a long time for them to find the right model in stock, and then the sweet-talk at the checkout counter, I got to the door and luckily the final inspector noticed I hadn't gotten my discount! 8|
So it all took quite some time, and in some avenues of economics that's called 'opportunity cost', but in sheer dollars it was nice to receive another 5% off for their error.
GPS is one of those things (like Blu-Ray) that seems to have taken a disproportionately long time to find an affordable price-point-for-quality and middle-class buyers. For many years they hovered between $400 and $700 so I just wouldn't bite.
When they came down below $300 I finally decided to try a Garmin, which was horrible. Took forevvvvvvver to find satellites mainly. It had other annoyances too, but I've forgotten the others since it's been tossed in the attic in a pile of disgust somewhere all these years.
Then a few years later yet, when Wal-Mart had a TomTom for sale for just $125, I seized on that opportunity, especially since they'd been high-praised by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sayh. I must express that I've been very pleased with it, although it does crack me up sometimes with the funny grammar and vernacular (stay on the right lane, take the motorway and go straight on!), and it does make occasional *slight* mistakes.
With the Fry's price of about $70 for this new one though, it's practically free considering what it is!... so this will give me some experience with the Magellan brand, and I won't have to keep detaching and moving the TomTom back and forth between cars.
So far it seems fine, although as the TomTom has some aforementioned idiosyncrasies, this one is already revealing some too... such as, while having much better command of English, the voice is fuzzy and too fast, and as far as I can tell, it just has that one voice option at this price, where the TomTom has several.
Selecting the destination address also seems about twice as lumbering as with the TomTom. However, the Magellan comes with Lifetime-Traffic-Coverage, which is a BIG boon! It also has (unexpectedly) a satellite-driven altitude readout, which is also immensely useful for me, as it helps me control the accelerator (and therefore mileage) even more precisely, and getting another 10 or 20 miles out of a tank is nothing to sneeze at! (especially with gas nearing $4.50 a gallon lately).
Thanks for reading, and best of of wishes to you alls ... ^v^
Well, I guess it's just a very, uh, 'tame' local squirrel which the local households feed and the kids all play with... no-one debriefed me though, so it's just been a complete surprise each time it has come closer.. and closer... and finally a couple of days ago, it came zooooming up to me, ran up my leg (on the outside of my pants, luckily!), up my back and on to my shoulders, ..where it then bolted up to the fence, awaiting peanuts.. apparently!
I wasn't expecting to be used as a human launching ramp or pole vault... but now that I know, I guess I'm prepared...
-In the dim dim dusk as I was walking the trash barrels to the corner for pickup the next morning, I saw the local fox just about 30 feet away, just standing and staring at me calmly... Maybe it thought I couldn't see him/her in that light... but mostly surprised the din of the rolling barrel didn't scare the critter off..
-The groundhog is still in full-swing demolishing the lawn, and I happened to see it popping up and grabbing at leaves to take down into his/her lair today.. eeesh..
-In non-critter news, shows what ya get for not reading the fine print ;p ... Saw an amazing special at Fry's.. I guess since GPS is on just about every smartphone nowadays, they are practically giving some of them away!
After waiting a long time for them to find the right model in stock, and then the sweet-talk at the checkout counter, I got to the door and luckily the final inspector noticed I hadn't gotten my discount! 8|
So it all took quite some time, and in some avenues of economics that's called 'opportunity cost', but in sheer dollars it was nice to receive another 5% off for their error.
GPS is one of those things (like Blu-Ray) that seems to have taken a disproportionately long time to find an affordable price-point-for-quality and middle-class buyers. For many years they hovered between $400 and $700 so I just wouldn't bite.
When they came down below $300 I finally decided to try a Garmin, which was horrible. Took forevvvvvvver to find satellites mainly. It had other annoyances too, but I've forgotten the others since it's been tossed in the attic in a pile of disgust somewhere all these years.
Then a few years later yet, when Wal-Mart had a TomTom for sale for just $125, I seized on that opportunity, especially since they'd been high-praised by
sayh. I must express that I've been very pleased with it, although it does crack me up sometimes with the funny grammar and vernacular (stay on the right lane, take the motorway and go straight on!), and it does make occasional *slight* mistakes.With the Fry's price of about $70 for this new one though, it's practically free considering what it is!... so this will give me some experience with the Magellan brand, and I won't have to keep detaching and moving the TomTom back and forth between cars.
So far it seems fine, although as the TomTom has some aforementioned idiosyncrasies, this one is already revealing some too... such as, while having much better command of English, the voice is fuzzy and too fast, and as far as I can tell, it just has that one voice option at this price, where the TomTom has several.
Selecting the destination address also seems about twice as lumbering as with the TomTom. However, the Magellan comes with Lifetime-Traffic-Coverage, which is a BIG boon! It also has (unexpectedly) a satellite-driven altitude readout, which is also immensely useful for me, as it helps me control the accelerator (and therefore mileage) even more precisely, and getting another 10 or 20 miles out of a tank is nothing to sneeze at! (especially with gas nearing $4.50 a gallon lately).
Thanks for reading, and best of of wishes to you alls ... ^v^
