Tuesday, 10 July 2007

• another game-that-is-not-a-game, and a personal note

  Google Maps is a wonderful tool.  It appreciates my skills as a creative navigator, which is why it allows me to chart my own course.

  Most online mapping tools ask you for Point A and Point B.  They then give you what they deem to be the most efficient route (least amount of time and distance traveled -- usually this involves highways).  But I know that I don't usually follow their directions to get to the nearby highways.  No, no.  I have secret backroads.

  Google Maps now lets me take their sage advice and sully it with my own experience as a driver.  I merely take the blue line which shows their route, and drop it onto the road I would take.  The Google Maps recalculates the journey (route, time, distance) using that path.

  Dear God how I love it!  I have wasted hours trying to compare Google's directions to my own methods.  I am happy to report that the backroads do save time.  However, when I went to play with the directions from the U.S. to Ireland (which had you swim from Massachusetts to France) I found that Google finally fixed that little "bug".  A damn shame too, because I was itching to swim directly to Ireland rather than detouring through the Continent.  Oh well.

   

  Anyway, I actually have an update on my life too.  I turned in my notice of resignation and my last day as a corporate drone (hopefully forever) will be July 27.  I feel like I don't really have any plans for what comes after that date, but when I tell people that I want to take some time to figure out what I'd prefer to be doing they all think that is a great plan.  How sad is it that people envy my decision to just pick up and leave, with no prospects to follow?  I'd like to question why they'd stay if they are also so unhappy, but I know that it is difficult to walk away from the trappings to stability.  Especially if you have a house or family.

  But I suppose I'll find out whether this "plan" is a colossal mistake soon enough.  It'll be fun.

  • 10:05 AM
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