This past weekend, my girlfriend and I went away for our anniversary. That is why there was no update yesterday, however there will
be another update tonight to make up for it. Anyway, we had directions on where we were going, but we decided to bring along her
TomTom anyway. This is seriously the most annoying piece of technology ever, and I would have thrown it out the window if it didn't
work for the most part. If you're not familiar with the device, it's a GPS unit that talks to you and tells you what to do. The problem is
it doesn't do an exceptionally good job.
The written directions I had would have instructions like to take one highway for like 50 miles. That wasn't good enough for TomTom. I'd
be driving along when it would suddenly chime in to tell me "In 600 yards, stay left." Unless this thing thinks it's psychic and knew where
I was going to go next, it had no reason to think I wasn't going to stay where I was. That is, of course, unless it's programmed to think
I'm a total and complete fuck up. Even if that were the case, I wouldn't appreciate hearing it. You can also set it so that it
will beep when you are breaking the speed limit. If you've ever driven in Massachusetts, or anywhere really, you know that no one does the
speed limit on the highway. Having that feature is like asking to be broken.
The strangest thing about this device, however, is that it has no understanding of distance. For a GPS unit, that seems like an important thing.
We were driving along on our way home, and the TomTom chimed in to tell me that I had to turn left in 200 yards. It then immediately said
to turn left. This highlights two problems of the machine. The first is that it doesn't tell you to make a turn until it's too late to make it.
Telling me to turn left when you know I'm driving MPH and am more than halfway through an intersection does me no good, especially when you're
still telling me the intersection I need is 150 yards away. The other problem this highlights is that I don't really know what 200 yards looks like.
I do, however, know what 200 yards does not look like. If you're somehow unaware, 200 yards is the length of two football fields, excluding
the end zones. If I'm told 200 yards, I shouldn't have to worry about missing my turn in the next three seconds. Sure, there are vehicles which can cover that
distance in three seconds, but most of them are airborne, and I feel confident in saying that none of them were engineered by Kia.
The important part, however, was that the trip was a lot of fun, and the TomTom did make driving slightly more entertaining, even if
it insisted on interrupting me when I was in the middle of a sentence. A word of advice, TomTom, just because you talk with a British
accent doesn't give you the right to interrupt people.
Should I change my name to Dr. JeebusJeebus?
© 2008 by Dr. Jeebus