Monday, November 12, 2007

Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band 'Greatest Hits'


Working in the promotions department at a radio station has its problems. One of the biggest problems is trying to get to client for a remote. Often times, we have no idea as to where we’re going. Mitch recently headed out to the Original Hollywood Horror Show’s haunted attraction down in Snow Camp.

If you’ve never been there… Let me tell you, it’s out there. WAY out there. Mitch ended up in Siler City with the directions that he printed from Map Quest. Totally not cool.

Getting directions online aren’t really the way to go. The directions are often crazy… They’ll take you in all kinds of weird ways. I’ve seen the directions printed out by the sales folk and attached to the paperwork for the live remotes. The directions that I’ve seen in which I know where the locations are… How do the kids say it today?… Whack.

So we’ve invested in a GPS thing called a Magellan. You type in your destination’s address and it tells you how to get there. The damn thing even talks to you.

I was asked to drop by Scrugg’s Florist to pick up some arrangements and bring them back. So I did the logical thing a person in my busy position would do… I sent an intern.

Our intern Devin took it on the maiden voyage last Friday. She isn’t from Greensboro and my directions seemed a little confusing to her. In the nick of time, Weather Dave arrived with our new little navigator.

Devin LOVED it! It got her there and back with no problems at all.

So I decided to take it home today and give it my own road test. Go ahead and say… The little boy inside me wanted to play with the new toy. In defending myself, I must say… You can’t teach someone to use something unless you’ve used it yourself.

That’s my stance.

I plugged it into my 12V outlet on Roxy’s dash, programmed my address into it by using the fastest way, and pointed my hood in the direction Magellan was telling me to go.

First of all… It was telling me to go the opposite way that I normally go.

Believe me. I’ve timed and measured every single way to work that I travel. Mr. Magellan was NOT sending me the fastest route. Oh sure, it bypassed all those staggered and painful stoplights on S. Elm Street, but it was not going the quickest way.

I decided to toy with it by going a totally different way. That is until I couldn’t go a different route. It told me to make a left into a nearby neighborhood and I didn’t want to take it. So I told Magellan, “I’m not going that way you little motherf*cker.”

I didn’t understand why it would send me through a neighborhood where the posted speed limit is 25mph. Come on! I can bypass that tar pit of dodging rich little rug rats on scooters by going another mile up the road to take the back way home. Comparatively speaking… Driving 45mph a mile further is better than taking the “shortest” distance at 25mph.

Where’s the “fastest” in that route?

The cool thing was that it kept recalculating a different route every time I passed by a road it told me to turn on. I learned that you can’t get lost with our new little satellite navigator.

Like I’ve previously written… I know many different ways to work and back. And I’m always shaking up my routine just in case I get a stalker or at the very least, an overzealous fan.

I go a certain way for rush hour. I go another way when it’s not rush hour. And on the way home, I usually take the fastest route. The one the Magellan and I don’t seem to agree on.

But overall, I like the little GPS wonder and I can see where it would definitely make traveling somewhere you’ve never been seem like a cakewalk.

1 comment:

  1. I had GPS in a rental car recently and it was pretty cool but not something I will likely spend money on anytime soon.

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