Adventures in technology

Son no. 2 (SN2) greeted me when I returned from grocery shopping. He likes to eat you know.

“I’m charging the GPS,” says SN2.

“Oh right. You have to show me how to use it.”

He’s been using one for years. I, however, am just embarking down that road & surprisingly late I must admit. It’s odd considering I jumped on the tech bandwagon when I got my first desktop PC in 1993 (though I had been sitting/working at dedicated terminals since the mid-70s). I discovered AOL chat rooms (Star Wars, of course), learned to hard code HTML, created & maintained webpages, fell in love with my RSS reader, set up a work/life blog, graduated to laptops, netbooks, tweeting, iPhone, dropped my landline, and stream Netflix on my Roku – all well before most colleagues & friends. But no GPS.

I used to have maps galore in the car. I printed out routes using MapQuest. Then came the iPhone & its maps feature. Need to get from my daughter’s apartment to a bridal shop 12 miles away in an unfamiliar part of the big city? Plug in the address and have someone read out the directions. (No, I won’t pay AT&T to give me the spoken aloud route. There are times when I wish I had the Android phone that includes said speaker for free (so I’ve been told). Get with it iPhone!)

But I’m headed to a small gathering of fandom friends in Texas in a few days. (Fandom friends, you say? That’s a story for another day.) I’ve never been to Fort Worth. I think I went past it on the interstate in 1975. Now I have to figure out how to get to my friend’s house. Enter SN2’s GPS.

I’ve had an aversion to the things for years. That grating, monotone voice. “Turn right in 1.5…1…1/4… Recalculating…” This may drive me insane.

Do you have GPS navigation in your car? How many times have you wanted to toss the thing out the window?

  1. Catherine Hedge Avatar

    My mom’s has a sexy Aussie voice she likes to use. The other one drives me nuts. The way she says, “Recalculating”, sounds like she’s really saying, “Hey, Stupid! You missed the turn! I’ve told you. You never listen… Bla bla bla!”
    Have a great trip!

  2. Marie Loughin Avatar

    I’m the same way. Sort of. I adopt technology as I need it, not as quickly as you. But I am not afraid. But I’m with you on GPS. Don’t like the voice. Don’t like the feeling that some eye is following me wherever I go. I like maps. I like figuring out routes. My kids don’t like this aspect of me, though, because I get “turned around” once in a while (where “a while” = maybe a week) and then things get exciting and we see parts of the city we haven’t seen before.


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