Ah the thrill of being in a car touring on the open road. With the wind in our hair, good music in our ears (classical no less), and our trusted canine companion (Daisy) at our side, my wife, Patti, and I set out to see the world. At least we planned to see the northwest part of America.
To assist us in finding our way and not getting lost on our journey, we also had our trusted TomTom, an inanimate GPS device. Now you’ve surely heard that some (strange) people treat some of their mechanical devices as having the traits of living creatures (e.g. planes or cars) by giving them pet names. However, on this trip, Patti and I also extended the practice to our (now beloved) TomTom.
This rather innocent hint of insanity began when we had to pick a voice for our TomTom from a choice of perhaps 20 or so voices. Of course voices for both men and women were available, and naturally choosing one almost immediately became a bone of contention. Patti was outraged that voices for either Julio Iglasias or Sam Elliot were not among the choices available.
I personally would have liked to have found the unique voice of W. C. Fields among the possible choices, but alas, such was not the case. We finally settled upon a female voice that didn’t have too much of a nagging quality, and thereafter dubbed the GPS device with its pleasant female voice, “Joan”.
We first had to read and digest the (ahem) simple and easy to read instructions. (NOT!) In any case, we had a differing approach in trying to gain an understanding of how to use the handy little “gadget”. (Perhaps I should also mention that during these initial stages of acquisition, Patti derisively referred to Joan as an “expensive toy”.)
Women are said by some people to be quite different from men. It’s a total violation of the hearsay rule, but I heard that when the aforesaid “difference matter” came up before the national French legislative body, they all stood to a man and shouted, “Vive la difference.” (This is totally irrelevant, but it makes for a nifty addition to the story, don’t you think?)
For example, when trying to figure out how to use a new gadget, the two sexes employ a totally different approach. Women tend to read the instructions word for word, line by line, and attempt to make a very literal interpretation. Men, on the other hand, tend to read an absolute minimal amount until they feel confident that they can argue effectively with the person who drafted them. Then by the time that they can also swear with feeling at the new product’s drafters, they will be confident that they have acquired at least a “working knowledge” of said instructions.
Next men will proceed to “fiddle with the device” and see if they can make it work. Actually, I’ve also noticed that the less a man reads before he acquires his so-called working knowledge, the more “manly” (i.e. technically advanced) he appears to be to the masses. For example no self-respecting plumber will allow himself to be seen reading instructions of any sort, or he must not be much of a plumber.
Anyway in trying to find out how to use our new TomTom (a/k/a Joan), I made a manly scan of the afore-mentioned instructions for two full minutes before passing them over to Patti. But not before I had properly labeled the author of said instructions a cretin for writing them in such an obtuse and idiotic manner. (And also thinking to myself that they were probably written by a woman.)
While Patti studied the bewildering printed explanation of how the GPS device worked, I networked by catching Ross Graham at a local coffee shop. I figured I could gain much more by cross examining him than trying to sift through such a collection of unintelligible hieroglyphics. Ross quickly phoned his wife, Charlene, to get a few things straight before showing me some of the finer points – sort of a courtesy call you might say..
By now I was fully armed with enough knowledge to turn Joan on, so I placed the suction cup holder on the windshield and pressed Joan’s “on” button. This immediately caused Joan to pop off the windshield and thud against the floor boards whereupon she let go one (perhaps as many as five) bad words in a male voice which sounded not unlike my own. It must have been the shock of the fall that caused the sudden change in her voice. (At least that’s the version I’ve been able to sell to Patti, and at least so far . . . )
Joan next completely lost her voice and would not display the roadway layouts. Then she went stone cold dead and refused to communicate with us in any way (i.e., the progression of events was not unlike most of my prior experiences in dealing with females.)
Anyway I found the source of the problem to be that Joan’s memory chip had popped out from the fall and was LOST in the (less than expansive) environs of the floorboard of our trusty Expedition. This took place in all of about thirty seconds into our first meaningful experience with Joan.
Strange, but I could almost hear musical strains to the theme of the movie, Titanic, somewhere in the distance, and the unspoken word “disaster” weighed heavily on my mind. While whizzing along at highway speeds through such cities as Reno, Nevada and Seattle, Washington at night, we were not likely to strike an iceberg. But when we considered that we would be following the directions of a fragile TomTom named Joan that might detach from the windshield at any moment, it gave both of us pause to consider.
Therefore one safety measure we both agreed upon was to have Stan Kline at K&K body shop install a permanent dash mount which was obtained from Sight and Sound. Then with a little epoxy and a customized mounting interface device acquired from MountGuys (on the Internet), Patti and I felt prepared to turn Joan on again – if we could replace the chip on Joan’s shoulder, so to speak.
A call to the TomTom factory revealed that we could buy Joan another two Gig chip at Wal-Mart, and she’d be just as good as new once we’d downloaded the digital maps from the manufacturer’s web site. Thank heaven Patti had the foresight to store the key instructions on a disk prior to Joan’s “shakedown cruise”. (This simply provides further evidence that those &%#% unnecessarily complicated instructions were probably written by a female.)
Stay tuned for the continuing electronically enhanced (mis)adventures of Patti and myself on a tour of the west coast in future columns. We also pay a visit to the Little Bighorn in Montana to get a little historical perspective into the trip. Oh, and by the way, the catchy title for this column was a phrase coined by the illustrious Hubert Humphrey. He was a man who ran for president in 1972 and who was much admired by Bill Richardson, current Governor of New Mexico and national presidential candidate.
In the former paragraph I’ve clearly resorted to pathetic practice of name dropping to impress the reader. But in my defense, neither Hubert’s nor Bill’s voices were available as TomTom selections. It possibly involves mere oversight on the part of the manufacturer, but it could also be the workings of a right wing conspiracy. The reader can bet the farm that The Coffee House Philosopher will check it out.
No comments:
Post a Comment