There was yet another story about some people who died a horrible tragic death because they used a GPS. I know it’s a tragedy and shouldn’t happen, but it’s not the GPS, it’s the (stupid) people.
I’ve heard of a couple who were lost 7 weeks after taking a logging road in the Pacific Northwest on their way to Vegas (one of whom died), this family in Death Valley, a group of SUVs getting lost in Utah, I remember a bus that tried to go through a tunnel that it didn’t fit through, a man who drove a bus into a lake, and another lake story, I’ve heard Park Rangers tell of getting calls from cell phones where someone asks how to hike out of where they are lost using a GPS, and many many others. All usually blamed on the GPS.
Every one of these stories seems to “blame” the GPS, in fact this story calls it “Death by GPS.” As harsh as this seems it’s actually the “STUPID” that is the issue (so the story should be re-titled “Death by STOOPID”).
Don’t get me wrong. I’m a gadget guy and I love my gadgets. I had an early version of the hand held Garmin GPS which was marketed to hikers, campers, and the like. I have an in-dash GPS in my car, my wife has the ubiquitous GPS suction cupped to her windshield, both our phones have Google Maps with turn-by-turn instructions (walking, public transportation, and of course driving).
Month: July 2011
Apparently, I’m a month or two slow on the uptake, but last night as I was prepping the grill to gill a pork tenderloin my wife, Stacie, mentioned that the USDA had recently updated their minimum safe temperature for pork down from 160°F to 145°F. I can’t explain just how happy this makes me.
For years, ever since a spectular dinner at The Pink House in Savannah, GA, I’ve been “underdoing” my pork. The dish I had at The Pink House was a medium rare pork loin dish with a disclaimer on the menu that the USDA does not recommending pork cooked to a medium-rare doneness. I ate it, I didn’t get sick, and I’ve been doing it that way since then.
My dinner guests often scoff and ask for the “done” pieces of a loin and I have gotten away with hogging (pun intended) all the pink pieces.
About two years ago I posted an entry regarding the frequency of use of Blogs, Social Networks, Twitter, etc. Recently, I had some more time and started updating my Facebook status more often, tweeting again, and now posting on my blog again. What I said then still holds true.
So, when I last posted regarding e-readers, I was still mostly into paperbacks, but did have a Kindle 1. However, when the Kindle 3 came out, I picked up the WiFi only version and pretty much converted to electronic readers. I think since then I’ve only read a one or two paperbacks (and I read a lot). I really liked the form factor and that I could travel for work, go on vacation, or go camping and not worry about carrying a ton of books.
Unfortunately, I dropped my kindle face down on some rocks and messed the screen up pretty bad. I hemmed and hawed about getting another Kindle as the cost was pretty hard to justify (If I had dropped a book, I would have been out a few bucks).
However, being a gadget guy, I went ahead and made the decision to re-up and get another reader. However, this time I went with the Barnes and Noble (All New) NOOK Touch. I decided on this for several reasons and am very happy with the choice.
Here’s my list of pros and cons and my opinion of the differences between the Kindle and the NOOK:
So several years ago I started a wiki for stuff and giggles. I was playing around with hosting mediawiki on a laptop that I had retired. It was a fun project and I learned a lot about setting up web services on a simple linux box. This was pre-buntu and before you could just add a LAMP package with a snazzy Linux distribution. It had a short life of it’s own when people would actually post some stuff and I had a ton of good homebrew information on the site as well as some posts from family members and friends.
It eventually got indexed and got pretty trashed. In the same vein as why I had started it, I secured it with various means (only registered users could post, simple captcha to create account) cleaned it up, and it had a long quiet life of it’s own with a few actual changes that were worthwhile. Every blue moon someone would put some spam on the site which was easy enough to clean out manually.
