Thursday, July 17, 2008
St. Louis Drivers
Is it just me, or have there been more people pulled-over than usual? The police seem to be out in force, bringing the long arm of the law to, well, to speeders.
I'm thrilled. I'm a long-time believer that St. Louis drivers are amongst the worst you'll find in the country. And I learned to drive in Houston. And I lived in LA. And I've driven in Jersey. But St. Louis has something special: a willful ignorance of traffic laws, the likes of which I've not seen.
I can live with speeding. I can live with the lack of turn signals. It's the utter disdain for consideration that gets me. Texas drivers can be insane, but Texans are normally pretty cordial, and that generally includes time they spend driving. And nobody in L.A. is moving very fast anyway, so they try not to take it out on each other. But in St. Louis, it's every motorist for himself! Nobody lets you in when you try to merge. And the worst: nobody yields for emergency vehicles--and that really bothers me. When you're in too much of a hurry to let an ambulance through...
So hopefully the police are trying to, you know, work on that.
FoxTrax GPS Fleet Tracking
Clever solutions for vehicle tracking
www.FoxTraxGPS.com
I'm thrilled. I'm a long-time believer that St. Louis drivers are amongst the worst you'll find in the country. And I learned to drive in Houston. And I lived in LA. And I've driven in Jersey. But St. Louis has something special: a willful ignorance of traffic laws, the likes of which I've not seen.
I can live with speeding. I can live with the lack of turn signals. It's the utter disdain for consideration that gets me. Texas drivers can be insane, but Texans are normally pretty cordial, and that generally includes time they spend driving. And nobody in L.A. is moving very fast anyway, so they try not to take it out on each other. But in St. Louis, it's every motorist for himself! Nobody lets you in when you try to merge. And the worst: nobody yields for emergency vehicles--and that really bothers me. When you're in too much of a hurry to let an ambulance through...
So hopefully the police are trying to, you know, work on that.
FoxTrax GPS Fleet Tracking
Clever solutions for vehicle tracking
www.FoxTraxGPS.com
Labels: random
Thursday, June 12, 2008
How Did I Ever Survive Without My GPS Jacket?
A company in the UK called Bladerunner is offering a jacket with built-in GPS tracking. Originally intended for mountain climbers, their biggest customers now are actually parents worried about their children being lost or kidnapped.
While slightly macabre, it's indicative of an emerging world in which GPS is ubiquitous and we're getting used to the idea of always knowing where our loved ones and friends are. Echoes of this creep up in social networking sites, again, designed to let your friends know where you are and what you're doing at every moment.
How long will it be until we start to notice the pangs of withdrawal when we can't find our friends after being so used to having access to every last detail about their life? Like nowadays when we wonder how we ever got by without cell-phones. I remember the last time I was at an amusement park--when our group broke up into smaller pairs to go pursue various rides and activities, rather than arrange a rendezvous point/time, we knew to call each other when it was time to meet for dinner. We had grown so accustomed to the convenience of the phone that the idea of navigating an amusement park without one struck us as oddly foreign.
Strange.
FoxTrax GPS Fleet Tracking
Clever solutions for vehicle tracking
www.foxtrax-online.com
866-686-2780
While slightly macabre, it's indicative of an emerging world in which GPS is ubiquitous and we're getting used to the idea of always knowing where our loved ones and friends are. Echoes of this creep up in social networking sites, again, designed to let your friends know where you are and what you're doing at every moment.
How long will it be until we start to notice the pangs of withdrawal when we can't find our friends after being so used to having access to every last detail about their life? Like nowadays when we wonder how we ever got by without cell-phones. I remember the last time I was at an amusement park--when our group broke up into smaller pairs to go pursue various rides and activities, rather than arrange a rendezvous point/time, we knew to call each other when it was time to meet for dinner. We had grown so accustomed to the convenience of the phone that the idea of navigating an amusement park without one struck us as oddly foreign.
Strange.
FoxTrax GPS Fleet Tracking
Clever solutions for vehicle tracking
www.foxtrax-online.com
866-686-2780
Labels: GPS, random, technology
Friday, June 6, 2008
GPS Assassin
Here's an idea, for anyone adventurous enough to try it. Ever heard of the game Assassin? You get a group of people with water-guns, and over the course of a designated period of time (typically a week or a few days), they try to "assassinate" each other without being caught. What's fun about this game is that, with the exception of taking time to hunt and kill your friends, it doesn't disrupt daily life.
It's quite popular on college campuses, where you have a lot of people who know each other (and all live in relatively close proximity) and have unstructured schedules with lots of free time. Not so easy with people who have day-jobs/kids/mortgages, and live and work farther apart from each other.
So here's my idea. GPS Assassin. Organize it on the web. Get 10 people, each person posts a picture and is issued a GPS tracker that they have to keep on and in their vehicle or on their person. Anyone can see anyone else's device. When you get "killed", you turn off your tracker and identify yourself as such on the site. Everyone should live and work within, I dunno, fifty miles of each other, and you'll be looking at a time frame of about a month, rather than a week or a few days.
The twist here is that with GPS, not only can you stalk your "victims", you can see who's stalking you. I think getting online in the evening to see a co-player a few blocks over and on the move could be quite exhilarating. Last man standing wins. Or spice it up, play on teams and restrict it to a week. I think there's some potential, here.
Have a good weekend, and be careful out there.
It's quite popular on college campuses, where you have a lot of people who know each other (and all live in relatively close proximity) and have unstructured schedules with lots of free time. Not so easy with people who have day-jobs/kids/mortgages, and live and work farther apart from each other.
So here's my idea. GPS Assassin. Organize it on the web. Get 10 people, each person posts a picture and is issued a GPS tracker that they have to keep on and in their vehicle or on their person. Anyone can see anyone else's device. When you get "killed", you turn off your tracker and identify yourself as such on the site. Everyone should live and work within, I dunno, fifty miles of each other, and you'll be looking at a time frame of about a month, rather than a week or a few days.
The twist here is that with GPS, not only can you stalk your "victims", you can see who's stalking you. I think getting online in the evening to see a co-player a few blocks over and on the move could be quite exhilarating. Last man standing wins. Or spice it up, play on teams and restrict it to a week. I think there's some potential, here.
Have a good weekend, and be careful out there.
Friday, May 30, 2008
While the Cat's Away
Well, it's Friday, and the boss has left early to catch a plane. He's going to go watch one of his buddies from the Navy command the space shuttle, which is scheduled to take off tomorrow and will include a much-needed toilet for the International Space Station.
No, I'm not making any of this up.
He's only been gone for about half an hour, so we haven't broken out the pony keg or anything like that (yet). Mostly, I'm struck by what an odd news week it has been. The toilet goes out on the space station. Corn syrup overtakes I-270. Rachel Ray is a terrorist.
Rather than come to any point or informed opinion about any of this, I'm simply going to sit back and be thankful that the world is a very odd and entertaining place.
Have a good weekend everybody.
No, I'm not making any of this up.
He's only been gone for about half an hour, so we haven't broken out the pony keg or anything like that (yet). Mostly, I'm struck by what an odd news week it has been. The toilet goes out on the space station. Corn syrup overtakes I-270. Rachel Ray is a terrorist.
Rather than come to any point or informed opinion about any of this, I'm simply going to sit back and be thankful that the world is a very odd and entertaining place.
Have a good weekend everybody.
Labels: current events, random
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