I like reading The Boston Diaries–my friend Conman’s blog (damn, I still hate that word!)–but find that a lot of the more technical information in it is way over my head. This owes largely to the fact that Conman is a highly experienced and very talented programmer and network architect; because I hope to absorb even a tiny bit of his vast network experience, I read all of his articles and exercise my brain muscle.

Conman once told me that he doesn’t necessarily post because his articles are interesting to his readers; rather, his articles are more or less a reference notebook for himself–that just so happens to come in the shape of a Blog. Some people use a Moleskine. Conman uses a Blog. Makes sense. Plus, you can’t Google a Moleskine. Yet.

Sometimes Conman’s more technical entries serve to guide other developers and network administrators, because Comnan is always tackling some very obscure problem or another. Conman also posts his problems, and their subsequent solutions, in very great detail–which is perfect for those who search the vast Intrawebs for the solutions to obscure problems. That Conman writes very well and has a sharp wit is a very big plus.

Anyway, I hope the search spiders pick this article up too, because this problem really drove me bananas until I figured out what was going on.

My home network consists of several PCs and computing devices, representing today’s modern family: A Windows 2003 Server, acting as Domain Controller, serving up files, DNS, and DHCP; a desktop and laptop for me, a family PC in the kitchen, a Wi-Fi laptop for my daughter, and, when he’s home from college, a Wi-Fi laptop for my teenage stepson. Additionally, we have an XBOX 360 for my teenage stepson (when he’s home from college), and a Nintendo Wii for everyone else, both of which connect to the LAN via Wi-Fi. Two recent additions are an old–but serviceable–Dell desktop in the bedroom that is destined to be a home-theater media server,and my BlackBerry Storm 2. Lastly, I have an HP OfficeJet 6500 Wi-Fi all-in-one paper handler to round out the network.

Recently, I switched from AT&T DSL to Comcast Cable Broadband. I used to have a Westell VersaLink Residential DSL gateway/router/Wi-Fi Access Point, but replaced it with my Motorola SurfBoard SB5101 Cable Modem, coupled to a Netgear WGT624 v3 broadband Wi-Fi switching router, which I happened to have from a previous address when I had cable broadband before, downstream.

Netgear WGT624 v3

The WGT624 v3 is a pretty nice little access point; however, the last time I’d employed it, it was in a small apartment, and then only had my desktop wired to it, and my laptop WI-Fi’d to it. My network has grown quite a bit since then.

The VersaLink from AT&T handled everything just fine and then some. It was as customizable as I needed it to be, even when I did fancy stuff like route VNC to my desktop at home so I could use it  remotely. The WGT624 is no different and handles custom routing easily. But the one little gotcha that had me up for two days tearing my hair out was DHCP.

(click here for a newbie’s introduction to DHCP)

The little micro DHCP servers typically found in home broadband routers only serve up three things: IP addresses, gateways and DNS. Because I have a Windows Active Directory domain at home, I prefer to use my own server for DHCP and DNS; this gives me far greater flexibility over stuff like lease times, DNS servers (Windows Active Directory is heavily dependent on DNS, particularly a local DNS server), NTP servers, and WINS servers (yes, I still use WINS; if you use Windows, WINS is a sad fact of life).

On my Westell VersaLink, this was not a problem; I simply disabled its DHCP server and was on my merry way. However, when I attempted the same thing on my WGT624 v3 broadband router,  I exposed a flaw in the unit’s firmware.

Out of the many devices I have on my network, only three are actually wired to it–the rest are all wireless clients. When I sunset my VersaLink and put up the WGT624 in its place, I was careful to keep the SSID, encryption, and passphrase all the same so that I wouldn’t have to run around the house reconfiguring everybody.

While the two wired DHCP client PCs were getting IP address leases from my Windows 2003 DHCP server, none of my wireless clients were.

I tried everything to troubleshoot the problem. I updated the router’s firmware. I turned off wireless encryption. I changed channels. I changed fragmentation thresholds and preamble settings. No matter what I tried, when the WGT624’s internal DHCP server was on, it would pass out addresses to my wireless clients. When it was disabled, none of my wireless clients were getting address leases from my normal DHCP server. If I hard-coded IP information into my wireless clients, they’d work perfectly–which meant that they were connected to the access point just fine. They just weren’t getting an IP address.

It was as if the router were simply not passing the DHCP broadcasts to the rest of the LAN–but that was impossible; this would be the first Wi-Fi access point switch in my years of networking experience that flatly refused to pass along DHCP requests to the rest of the LAN segment.

Out of ideas, I started this thread on the Netgear forums, hoping another Netgear user may have encountered this rather bizarre issue before me.

I finally stumbled across this page on Netgear’s site that has nothing to do with DHCP as it relates to the WGT624, but rather with using the WGT624 as a plain ol’ Wi-Fi access point on an existing Ethernet segment. It says, in little text as a footnote to the article:

DHCP configuration may not work reliably because the wireless router/access point may not correctly relay DHCP information from the router. Workaround: Use static IPs on the wireless PCs.

You’ve got to be kidding.

Then the thread bore fruit: one of the contributors hypothesized with me that it must be an unresolved bug in the firmware.

So rather than fix the problem, Netgear decided rather to fix the WGT624 DHCP problem the military way: “work around it instead of work through it.” What network administrator in their right mind is going to put up with hard-coding IP information for wireless clients!? Especially given how very inexpensive and competitive Wi-Fi access point/broadband routers have become?

Here’s how I solved the problem: I bought a Linksys WRT54G2 Wireless-G Broadband Router. It was less than fifty bucks, and it passes DHCP requests like a champ.

Linksys WRG54G2

Also, as part of the solution, I will consider carefully buying another Netgear product in the future.

I really hope all the search engine spiders pick this up, because as of the date of this writing there is not yet a comprehensive review available for BeeJiveIM 2.0.1 for the BlackBerry Storm.

I’ve been using BeeJiveIM since it was called JiveTalk and used it on my Curve 8330; having one of my brilliant, yet rare, flashes of foresight, I knew that phones in my world are not perennial things and thus I sprung for the $29.99 license (it’s now $14.95) that lets you move JiveTalk, or BeeJiveIM, or whatever the hell they’re calling it these days, from phone to phone. It’s a nice little product that allows the user to connect to all the major IM services with their smartphone: AIM, Yahoo!, Windows Live, Google Talk, even Jabber–a boon for me, as Jabber is our primary method of IM.

THE VERDICT: SAVE YOUR MONEY

I began using BeeJiveIM 2.0.1 on my BlackBerry Storm 2 (with OS 5.0.0.328) a few days ago, following an interminable wait for the product to exit Beta. I used its Beta on my Storm 1, and the Beta was about as abyssmal a product as you can get. For a while there, the Beta for the Storm wasn’t even available for download from beejive.com. I downloaded BeeJiveIM 2.0.1 with a minimum of muss and/or fuss, it installed properly, and I was able to transfer my existing license over to it, all very easily. Sadly, that’s where the party ended.

My impression after a few days? No software product has ever made me want to give my BlackBerry Storm 2 top billing on a segment of Will It Blend? more than BeeJiveIM 2.0.1. The product is so unbelievably bad that I think I would have been far better off simply smearing the phone with my own feces and burying it in peat moss for a month–at least the possibility would exist that something beautiful may grow out of it.

BeeJiveIM 2.0.1 is buggier than a bait store in the Everglades in summertime; in my opinion, the product should never have exited Beta. It has some really nice features that, if they worked, would be fabulous.

But they don’t.

Bug #1: there’s no way to disable those obnoxious buddy icons. On a smartphone, display real estate and processing power are precious, precious commodities and to squander them on making buddy icons display and scroll is inane. Oh sure, there’s a check box in “Preferences” that suggests that BeeJiveIM may stop displaying the buddy icons. But it won’t.

One of my major complaints about BeeJiveIM for the Curve was the fact that it sucked down battery power like a frat boy sucks down Old Milwaukee. I accepted that fact because it was a halfway decent product, but BeeJive IM 2.0.1 is even worse. If you keep it running, talking to the network over EV-DO, your fully-charged battery will be depleted within half a day. Aah, but BeeJive added a fix: The Storm 2 has Wi-Fi capability, and BeeJiveIM can allegedly use the far more battery-conscious Wi-Fi radio to talk.

And it will, too. For about a half hour. After that, any status change will result in connection errors; to change your status, you have to shut down the software and restart it. Boo.

Just about everything I tried to do with BeeJiveIM 2.0.1 made me want to repeatedly smash my Storm against my desk. But I didn’t; it’s not the Storm’s fault that BeeJiveIM 2.0.1 is a horrible product, so I refuse to take my enormous frustration and disappointment out on my Storm. The truth is that there are so many bugs in this product that it is pointless to continue the review, and if I were BeeJive, I would be embarrassed to give this product away–much less charge $15.00 for it.

And why the low price point all of a sudden!? If a user can afford a BlackBerry and the hugely expensive plan that goes with it, they can pony up $30 for a do-all meta-messenger like BeeJiveIM. I plunked down my $30 and was happy to do it. If this product actually worked, my God, it would be a bargain at twice the price. I personally think it’s Apple, once again, ruining the smartphone market for everyone by insisting that developers slave away for peanuts; if you pay $5.00 for an app, you’ll get just that–an app worth $5.00. I also have a sneaky suspicion that BeeJive is pouring its limited resources into the iPhone version, making us BlackBerry users (once again) feel like the ugly girl at the Prom that nobody wants to dance with. But I digress.

BeeJive, if you’re reading this, take this gigantic steaming pile of crap called BeeJiveIM 2.0.1 for the BlackBerry Storm back to the drawing board and don’t come back without a version 3. And make sure everything works this time, mmmmkay?

I just read another infuriating article in the Wall Street Journal singing the same old tune: Some corporate IT user is bitching against e-mail quotas, blocked websites, the inability to install his own apps, and the aging workhorse that is Windows XP.

And as an IT manager, you know what I have to say to that?

Tough shit, jocko.

We IT types get reamed from both sides of the house. It’s an argument as old as commerce itself: Management wants to spend as little on IT as humanly possible. The user community wants shiny new toys every week. The two are not compatible with one another. And the most fun happens when the user community goes to management with their laundry-list of grievances: “Waaah! The network is too slow! Waaah! We want unlimited e-mail server space to store every piece of SPAM we’ve ever received since 1994! Waaah!  We want unfettered access to the whole open Internet! Waaah! We want a 9,000GHz Octouple-Core laptop with a 90″ screen and 500gb of RAM and a 60tb drive so we can write letters faster in Word!” Then Management comes down on the IT department asking why all the users are so damn unhappy.

I happen to be pretty lucky at my job: while we get don’t always get new technology at brisk pace, it’s not a snail’s pace. And I’m lucky enough to be working with really, really smart people who are intelligent enough to know that you’re not supposed to be surfing Porn at work and that there ain’t no such thing as a “free” app on the Internet, so I don’t have to spend all my time being a mommy to an office full of recalcitrant children.

For the rest of you: Here’s a simple FAQ as to why the waaaaambulance hasn’t showed up at your desk with every little stupid IT request you asked for:

Q: Waaaah! Why can’t I have more e-mail storage space?
A: Because while disk is cheap, the boxes that the disk goes into is not. And because we don’t have a SAN (storage area network), we can’t just throw more disk in it on the fly. We have to plan disk upgrades into e-mail’s maintenance cycle and that means taking down the mail server for a few hours. Oh, did I mention that despite our repeated requests, management didn’t spring for a redundanr cluster that would keep one mail server up at all times while we worked on another to actually do these kinds of upgrades without disruption? So here’s my advice to you, bucko: Clean out your damn inbox and archive your mail locally. Trust me, it ain’t that hard, especially if you use Outlook.

Q: Waaah! There’s a laptop at Office Depot that has eleventy million times the specs that mine has! Faster processor! More disk! More memory! Bigger screen! Why can’t I have it!?
A: Because we’re a [insert manufacturer here] shop, and all of our technology purchases have to o through our corporate account so we can get corporate pricing. That laptop at Office Depot costs 10-25% more at Office Depot than what we can get it for. That’s why the purchase has to go through channels. And I asked your manager if you could have one like it the last ten times you submitted the request. He said no this time too, because it’s too expensive–and yelling at me ain’t gonna change that. Better luck asking Santa Claus. And besides–you’re making PowerPoint slides and Word documents–not curing cancer or decoding the human genome. Your current laptop is just fine. Deal with it.

Q: Waaah! I wanna surf the whole Internet! Why won’t you let me surf Myspace or Facebook or girlswith[BEEEEEEEP]intheir[BEEEEEEEP].com!?
A: Because Myspace is still the 25-dollar heroin-junkie hooker of the Web, frought with malware and spyware attack redirects. You think your PC is slow now? Wait’ll it gets infected and becones a zombie attached to some botnet, participating in DDoS attacks, SPAMming, and Kiddie-Porn storage (I swear I’m NOT making that one up–want proof? Here it is). Do that shit on your PC, in your own home, on your own time–not the company’s. I’m sick of re-imaging your goddamn PC. This is the third time this week.

Q: Waaah! I wanna install all my own programs! Why won’t you make me an administrator of my own machine so I can do that!?
A: See the previous question. Who the hell knows what you’ll install if given free reign on your box? The Internet is full of bad people just itching to take over a corporate machine, steal its data, and steal the bandwidth of the company network to do bad things.

Q: Waaah! Windows XP is old! I want a new, modenr operating system like Vista!
A: Well, you’re actually in luck there. Windows 7 is out, which is actually better than Vista, and isn’t the bloated pig that Vista was. I run Windows 7 on a Dell D610 at home, with a single-core 1.7GHz P4M, 2gb of RAM, and a 60gb hard drive-pretty modest by today’s standards, and so far it has done everything I’ve asked it to do. But I don’t know whether you realize this or not, but VISTA DIDN’T WORK! It was a big, bloated, buggy, DRM-filled, horrific steaming pile of dog shit. But don’t you worry. We’re doing compatibility testing on Windows 7 right now, and we’ll have an image available for rollout in a few months. BUT: That’s only if I can get Management to spring for the licenses, to the tune of $179.99 per computer. We need Windows 7 Enterprise, you see.

In summary: I’m sick to death of reading these hyperventilating articles from frustrated users bitching about their IT department. They haven’t the foggiest ideas that we in IT are no less frustrated, caught on the one side with having no budget to work with and on the other consisting of hoardes of screaming, dissatisfied users. IT is a hard job. If you think it’s so easy, you do it.

At the end of the day, the IT policy we make is directly dependent on the company policy that comes down from the upper echelons–and my loyalty is to the people who sign my checks, NOT to you. I’ve been tasked to keep our employees productive, our IT assets safe and accounted for, and give you the tools you require to do your job–no more, no less.

If you don’t like it, well, that’s just tough.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I don’t hate the iPhone. but I loathe AT&T, and I loathe them because their service totally stinks. Butterfly and her kids had AT&T phones when we met, and I counted down the seconds until her contract was up and I could bring them all over to Verizon with me–About half the calls between she and I were marred by interference and outright drops, and she couldn’t get a signal on her phone in our living room–she was constantly missing calls. Even text messages sometimes wouldn’t be delivered for days at a time. When she or I send texts even today to AT&T customers, that still happens, albeit less frequently. But it still happens.

Now I really hate AT&T.

I’ve been reading for days about their legal response to Verizon’s new spate of “There’s a map for that” ads:

…and the conclusion I can draw? Someone better call a waaaaaaaaambulance for AT&T. Not only does their voice network stink, but their 3G data network is seriously outdated and hasn’t nearly kept up with its ambitious smartphone offerings–iPhone included.

And now the war is getting even uglier. Verizon has fired right back at the lawsuit–not only doubling up on its “There’s a map for that” ads (including some hilarious Christmas-themed ones), but now Engadget is reporting that Verizon’s legal team has fired a response to AT&T’s legal team–one drafted from the ground up for publication.

AT&T did not file this lawsuit because Verizon’s “There’s A Map For That” advertisements are untrue; AT&T sued because Verizon’s ads are true and the truth hurts.

In the final analysis, AT&T seeks emergency relief because Verizon’s side-by-side, apples-to-apples comparison of its own 3G coverage with AT&T’s confirms what the marketplace has been saying for months: AT&T failed to invest adequately in the necessary infrastructure to expand its 3G coverage to support its growth in smartphone business, and the usefulness of its service to smartphone users has suffered accordingly.

Yup. The truth sure does hurt, AT&T.

Lastly, Engadget published this great editorial that debunks all the myths surrounding AT&T’s and Verizon’s data networks once and for all–and is required reading for anybody following this.

I’ll echo the sentiment of the above editorial–as well as many of the folks watching this fight with interest: Hey AT&T, instead of spending untold zillions on corporate lawyers, think maybe you outght to invest that money into, I dunno, improving your network? Maybe? Huh? Whaddaya say?

After writing my post about The Food and Wine festival at EPCOT, I started to thinking back about what EPCOT was supposed to be, and what we eventually ended up with–and decided that this really did need to be a Rant and Rave article after all.

I could prattle on about it how sad it is that Walt’s grand vision never came to pass, and describe in detail the depths of his brilliance and his enthusiasm surrounding his ideals and goals for EPCOT, but I’d rather defer to the master himself–Walt E. Disney–in a short film, made in 1966 (not long before his death), about his California theme park and the magnificent plans for some swamp-front property in Orange and Osceola Counties.

While the airport of tomorrow and transportation center Walt envisioned at the extreme southern end of the property (8:34 in the film) never materialized; Disney World does–or rather did–in fact, have an airport, of sorts:

Lake Buena Vista Airport, Orlando, Florida, on the 1972 Jacksonville sectional chart

According to the website Abandoned and Little-Known Airfields, a small STOL field existed sidelining the east side of the Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom parking lot. The paved asphalt and ramp are still there, and still meticulously maintained in true Disney fashion:

The former Lake Buena Vista STOL Airport runway 12/30 (click for Google interactive Map)

Ironically, in our post-9/11 world, a permanent TFR (Temporary Flight Restriction) zone–in English, an FAA-mandated No-Fly zone–has existed over both Walt Disney World and Disneyland since 2003, and reiterated via NOTAM (NOTice to AirMen) by the FAA as recently as February 2009. Oh sure, you can apply for a waiver to fly over Disney. Good luck with that. Not that you could actually land on 12/30 anyway–it’s been closed to air traffic for many, many years (thank you, over-protective, hyperventilating, hand-wringing Disney legal)–and, according to reports, is a staging area for cargo containers and buses.

But this is only one of Walt’s grand dreams that died with him; I could go on and on and on but if you watched the whole film, you were, as I was,  likely shaking your head in sad wonderment that such a beautiful vision of tomorrow was supplanted by what exists on the Disney property now. In fact, outside a handful of independent bloggers and historians on the Web keeping the dream of the EPCOT that could have been alive, only the briefest of nods to Walt’s true vision for EPCOT isn’t even in EPCOT at all:

Rather, this beautiful, sophisticated, detailed model of Walt’s grand design for the Experimental Prototype City Of Tommorow–his largest, most sophisticated, and most spectacular dream–has been relegated to a dark, dusty, little-known tunnel in the People Mover in the Tomorrowland section Magic Kingdom, almost as if Disney management are embarrassed by the fact that they have completely eschewed Disney’s dreams and vision, dashing them both upon the rocks of corporate profits and pandering to shareholders.

Fellow blogger Michael Steele in his blog, URLS from the Edge,  said it best as he recalls in this entry an anecdote about the sadness of the EPCOT that could have been:

Chris Cole used to tell a sad story that went something like this:

“Walt Disney said “Let’s make cartoons in color!” and marketing people said “You’re crazy, Walt, no one wants or needs that” and then he did it anyway and it was amazing and successful and the marketing people said “Wow, Walt’s a genius!”.

Then Walt said “Let’s use cartoons to tell full length stories; tales which can never be told with real films and actors” and the marketing people said “You’re crazy, Walt, no one wants or needs that” and then he did it anyway and it was amazing and successful and the marketing people said “Wow, Walt’s a genius!”.

Then Walt said “Let’s create an amusement park like no other – a clean, friendly place, where we can build narrative spaces and meaningful experiences that people will remember all their lives” and the marketing people said “You’re crazy, Walt, no one wants or needs that” and then he did it anyway and it was amazing and successful and the marketing people said “Wow, Walt’s a genius!”.

Finally Walt had his greatest vision to date; He said “Cities are in horrible shape, poorly laid out, designed by chance and greed, and giving rise to all kinds of environmental and social ills. We can do better than this! Besides, mankind will someday journey to the stars, trips that may take centuries – we’d best learn how to live together soon; let’s build a carefully designed arcology that puts the people’s needs first, and which improves and changes efficiently as technology evolves. We’ll call it EPCOT; Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow!” and the marketing people said “You’re crazy, Walt, no one wants or needs that”.

…and then Walt died…

and the marketing people took control of the company said “Walt was crazy, let’s build a big themed shopping center – people want and need that!”

(Editor’s note: I wish I could find out more about this Chris Cole person–I’d always tucked this anecdote away in my mind thinking that he was maybe a top Imagineer working with Disney up until his death, but sadly, the only mentions on the Intrawebs I can find of Chris Cole bespeaks of his skateboarding prowess–and I don’t care how young-at-heart you are, I’d have a hard time believing that a contemporary of Walt’s is still spry enough to shred on a skateboard at the profesisonal level).

Alright, I’m going to settle this once and for all.

Conman has responded to my anger-induced tirade about GPS and has included the following quote:

Yes, you got us from Deepest Darkest Florida to our hotel room via GPS, but damn if it didn’t take us a very circuitous (if not very dark, and deer prone) route.  A GPS does you no good if you need to get from Anaheim to El Segundo and it has you going through Compton.

Once again, I will reiterate that I personally do not care how circuitous the route was. We got to our hotel, and that was that.Again, I’m a very results-oriented individual.

So, for shits and giggles, let’s compare the two routes back to the hotel I could’ve taken.

I must preface this by setting the stage for you, dear reader: We four–myself, Conman, Bunny, and PipeWrench, are visiting a friend in a very rural Northern Florida town (Blountstown, to be precise). It’s 12:00, maybe 1:00am. It is pitch black outside. The rural roads in Blountstown are barely even paved (and some aren’t), forget about them being at all illuminated by whatever government runs the place up there. My Prius’s standard, non-HID headlights are doing a fair-to-midland job of illuminating the road ahead of us, but not much else. I am equipped with my ever-present Mag-Lite flashlight, as well as a second LED flashlight I’d purchased at a gas station on the way up. My failing memory being what it is, I consulting the U.S. Navy’s moon-phase website to try to remember if I even had any moonlight at my disposal, and the answer is no. It was pitch black. Blacker than Hitler’s heart. Blacker than a black cat on a pile of coal at midnight on a moonless night–much like the one I had to navigate during.

Now, the goal here is to successfully navigate from the middle of fucking nowhere back to I-10 eastbound (and, subsequently, back to our motel in Tallahassee) in the middle of the night with zero illumination we don’t actually provide ourselves. However, I have an ace-in-the-hole; Aiding me in this task is Chives–a Garmin Nüvi 350 (which has since been discontinued by Garmin in favor of newer, more feature-rich models, but oddly, I prefer bare, elegant simplicity in my GPS devices):

The Garmin Nüvi 350

Lastly, I’m naturally not going to betray my friend’s address; but suffice to say that he lives not too far away from the church I’m using as my starting point. I’m also not going to show the entire route back to the hotel–because it was directly on I-10 and several miles to the east. No, I want you, fair reader, to see the routes in question in detail.

So here is the first route. This is the route picked by my Nüvi, as well as Google Maps, and the route I ultimately followed to I-10:

Route 1, favored by the Garmin and Google Maps

The route was naturally picked by both Google Maps and by the GPS as being the most efficient. Of course, neither the GPS nor Google Maps have any way of knowing that these shitball roads weren’t illuminated and that I was going to have to navigate this route in total darkness on a moonless night.

Here then is the second, perhaps better, route; the only other route from my friend’s house to the Interstate and one that would’ve certainly been favored by Conman as being decidedly non-circuitous:

A less-circuitous route

Did both routes lead to I-10? yes. Did I know about them both? No–I only knew about the first one, and frankly, being as unfamiliar with the area as I was, there was absolutely no guarantee that the second route was any less deer-infested (Conman’s major sticking point that I had chosen… poorly) than the first one. The only thing that can be said with any certainty is that the second route was straighter. Frankly, the second route wasn’t that far out of the way, and would’ve provided a straight shot to the Interstate. But here’s the thing, see: I didn’t know about it, and neither did anybody in the car with me, including Conman. I would’ve had to tell the GPS how to take me along that route, and because of my unfamiliarity with the area, I didn’t automatically know that such a route even existed.

When both Google Maps and my Nüvi selected their routes, they weighted FL-69 the same as myriad local roads that made up the “more circuitous” first route because somewhere, some NAVTEQ cartographer has assigned them all the same weight. Looking at a paper map, and with the clarity of hindsight, a strong argument could perhaps be made that the second route may have been better. But I didn’t have a paper map of Blountstown with me; all I had was Chives and three tired, nervous passengers who were wondering–as I was–where the hell we were, and wanted to get back to the relative safety of the motel.

So this is what I consistently get beat up over when Conman talks about the GPS. I think I did a damn good job ensuring the safety of my passengers during that trip, and don’t deserve to be beaten up afterward for not taking the “most efficient” route back to the motel. That’s roughly analogous with saying “Gee, mister, thanks for saving my life, but you sure could’ve done it better: here’s how.” There’s gratitude for you. How about some props for me getting us from Light-My-Fart, Florida back to the motel in Tallahassee without driving around in circles lost for three days and getting us all there alive and in one piece?

A couple of times, as we were making our way along the first route, Conman asked: “Where is your GPS taking us!?” I replied with “Back to the motel.” And, ultimately, I was right; to directly address one of Conman’s main criticisms of GPS, I’ll use his reply to my last post as a reference:

“A GPS does you no good if you need to get from Anaheim to El Segundo and it has you going through Compton:”

I submit to you this: yes, this route does indeed go through Compton. But it does so on limited-access interstates and state roads. And besides: I DEFY you to show me on a PAPER MAP where it says “Compton is a dangerous neighborhood.“

Uh-huh. I thought so.

My point: if you don’t know the area to begin with, it makes NO FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCE if you pick the route yourself, with a paper map, or the GPS receiver picks the route for you. Neither technology (and yes, paper maps are considered a technology) will give you information on what areas are dangerous and what areas are not.

I’m sure my passengers were nervous; the route was indeed dark and spooky. Because of that, I took the route it picked very slow, easy, and carefully. Never once during the trip did I eschew common sense in favor of the GPS, nor give up my sense of driving intuition to Chives. Chives wasn’t driving the car, I was. Me. The whole time.

Had I seen a ditch in front of us, I wouldn’t have blindly driven into it because the GPS told me to, and I find it kind of offensive that someone would think I would. Sure, there is the odd story of folks who blindly follow their GPS while simultaneously abandoning common sense. But even as the amount of these stories increase, they are still very few and very far between when compared to the thousands and thousands of times, every day, that GPS technology is employed properly, responsibly and achieves its desired result: Getting someone un-lost, or getting them to their destination with a minimum of fuss.

In closing, I am reminded of a line from “Inherit the Wind,” spoken by Spencer Tracy whilst playing the role of Henry Drummond:

“Gentlemen, progress has never been a bargain, you have to pay for it. Sometimes I think there’s a man who sits behind a counter who says, ‘Alright, you can have a telephone: but you lose privacy, and the charm of distance. Madam, you may vote, but at a price: you lose the right to retreat behind a powder puff or a petticoat. Mister, you may conquer the air–but the birds will lose their wonder, and the clouds will smell of gasoline.’”

From The Boston Diaries 10/23/2009 entry

It must be a change of season… because Conman is going on about GPS again. This is a very old argument between Conman and I, especially given our complete diametric opposition on this particular subject. It also happens to be a major irritant for me, every time I hear Conman drudge up more anecdotal cases of GPS blunders and misuse. I think he does it because a) he knows it’ll make me upset (which it invariably does), and b) for some inexplicable reason, he just has a massive boner against the technology.

Because I count myself among the ranks of the “directionally-challenged,” I was a very early adopter of GPS technology–having purchased my first GPS receiver back in 1997–and have been using GPS devices for many, many years since. In that time, I have endured ceaseless ribbing and derision from my friends–first, because I have always been totally lousy at following driving directions (this has to do with a rare eye condition I have called nystagmus that keeps me from reading street names and addresses until I’m practically on top of them), and second because I have to rely on a gadget to know where I am. But I personally feel that GPS has improved my life in ways I cannot even begin to calculate, enabling me to take off to an unfamiliar address without having a panic attack or setting off on a vacation with my family (or solo on my motorcycle) for a few laps around the country without any fear of becoming hopelessly lost, as I am prone to becoming without such technology. And I have a terrible–almost irrational–fear of being lost.

Now, just because I, by my own admission, am “spatially challenged,” doesn’t mean I’m an idiot. I’m a pilot, and have learned the exacting art of aerial navigation using huge, complicated sectional aviation charts and cockpit navigational instrumentation that has scarcely changed since Charles Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic solo. And to be fair, I don’t use my GPS to get me to work and back every day–I wouldn’t be lost navigating around town without my GPS. I also know full well how to read and use a road map, and how to find an address. However, if I were going to an address I’d never been before, I’d damn sure want the GPS receiver along, because it allows me to find that address in about half the time and without the eight-hundred U-turns I’d have to make otherwise because I can’t read the goddamn street signs until I’m thirty yards away from them. And because I’m not an idiot, I realize that GPS will give you the same kind of “pretty close” directions you might get from a friend–but it’s up to you to actually find the place. The GPS will get you pretty close. It won’t always get you there. That’s where your intuition comes in, and I do have some of that, contrary to what my friends might think.

Now, Conman has obviously gone to great length to search the depth and breadth of the Internet to extract from it the most anecdotal, possibly apocryphal, examples of GPS usage gone awry he can possibly dig up. Even in the case of the very article he’s referenced in his journal entry to support his curmudgeonly view of “GPS is a wholly bad technology,” it bespeaks of folks who have a neurological shortcoming in their brains that keeps them from accurately fixing their position in the world at any given moment–and then become hopelessly lost, on a fairly regular bases. And I’m actually somewhat surprised, given Conman’s penchant for GPS-bashing, that he didn’t include this little nugget from the aforementioned article:

[Bohbot, a researcher studying the navigational capabilities of laboratory mice] fears that overreliance on gps, which demands a hyper-pure form of stimulus-response behaviour, will result in our using the spatial capabilities of the hippocampus less, and that it will in turn get smaller. Other studies have tied atrophy of the hippocampus to increased risk of dementia. “We can only draw an inference,” Bohbot acknowledges. “But there’s a logical conclusion that people could increase their risk of atrophy if they stop paying attention to where they are and where they go.”

I’m shocked that I didn’t get a hyperventilating phone call–or, at the very least, an urgent e-mail–from Conman, decrying “See!? I told you GPS is evil and bad! The damn things’ll even give you dementia!” I swear to God that I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if Conman published an entry in The Boston Diaries saying that he found an article that says GPS gives you cancer.

I think what makes me so angry is that Conman insists upon repeatedly and vehemently digging up evidence to attack a technology which I feel has improved my own life so very dramatically–and is so incredibly defiant even in the face of overwhelming acceptance of the technology. I could just as easily put the shoe on the other foot and tell him: Hey, Conman, wearing glasses is so dangerous; you could slip and fall, and your broken lens can poke your eye out. I know it’s incredibly unlikely, but hey, man–it could happen! So what you should do is just stop wearing the things. I mean really, what do you need to see for anyway?

Conman doesn’t like to mention the one time that GPS came in really handy for him, too. But don’t ask him about the incident. If you read Conman’s account, you’d think that we were on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride and I was about to drive him off a cliff and directly into the path of hoards of rabid deer. The reality of the situation was that I was trying to find my way back to Tallahassee from the back-roads of very rural Florida, around midnight, in the pitch-blackness that comes with barely-paved roads and no streetlights, with a car-full of passengers whose asses I was responsible for. Now am I really, in that situation, going to pull off to the side of the road and bust out the paper map every few minutes? Or am I going to let my GPS receiver take me back to the Interstate?

I told Conman then, and I’ll say it again right now: I’m a very results-oriented person. We were out in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. Then we were at the motel. I, and everyone else in the car, have my GPS receiver to thank for the latter. I don’t really give a shit if the route the GPS receiver decided on wasn’t the very best route to get from point A to point B. The end result was we got to our destination unscathed, and honestly, that, to me, was the only thing that mattered. I win.

In closing, it is worthy of noting that the friends who are not Conman and would deride me for my “dependence” on GPS technology have pretty much shut their mouths at this point, especially after witnessing the veritable explosion in popularity of the GPS receiver over the last five or so years. They’re practically standard equipment in new cars these days, and have been commoditized down to the point where you can pick up an extremely good receiver at Radio Shack for about $150.

So maybe I’m not so crazy after all.

When I got home very early this morning, I learned some highly unpleasant things about a typical door on a typical two-car garage:

1. There is a very large spring that keeps it balanced such that a relatively low horsepower electric motor can raise and lower it
2. When that spring breaks, the door weighs eight hundred million pounds.
3. A 1/3 horsepower electric motor cannot raise, unassisted, an eight hundred million pound door.
4. A typical male of average strength can only just barely raise, unassisted, an un-sprung  two-car garage door to free his wife’s car–without passing out.
5. I think I seriously injured myself getting the garage door open.

I’m actually glad I discovered this at 2:00am and not Butterfly at 700 am, as she would be late taking T-Rex to school and getting to work.

I’m going to go medicate myself and lie down now.

Alright, I know. I’m a techie. I work in the IT industry and have a great deal of experience, and I’m immodest enough to say that I’m damn good at what I do. I’m even somewhat personable, to boot (although you may not come away from reading this entry thinking so). So because I’m somewhat personable, I don’t mind answering the odd legitimate question every now and again. I even like it sometimes; it gives my mind a bit of a workout.

I’ll tell you what I’m not: I am definitely not Google.

I don’t want to be Google. I don’t even have all the answers Google does. And few things piss me off more than someone asking me a really simple tech question that the first one or two Google hits–had they been not-lazy enough to consult Google before asking me–would have easily answered for them.

I know full well how doctors and lawyers feel at social gatherings: “Oh, you’re a doctor? I have a pain in my foot, what is that?” I get the same damn thing, all the freaking time: “Oh, you’re a highly-placed IT professional? My Internet at home is slow, what is that?”

I work for my company. I don’t work for you. And I am absolutely 100% done doing freebies for all but my family (the ones I like, anyway, and that list is subject to change without notice) and my very closest friends. If you want me to help you, 1) search Google for your answer first, before you call/talk to/e-mail me, and/or 2) make an appointment. I charge $90 an hour with one hour minimum.