Finding My Ass

I've got a lousy sense of direction. Mrs. Brick and most of my friends and associates will all confirm this. One good friend once remarked as I turned the wrong way out of a parking lot we just pulled into thinking I was heading back home, "You couldn't find your ass with both hands AND a GPS." Hence the title of this entry.

So last week walking through the sporting goods section at the local China Mart I stumble across one of these.

A Magellan Triton 1500 Adventure Pack. $449.00 red-tagged down to $199.00. Even the guy @ the counter had to double check because @ the time, it was the only one marked down. And all the other units were still at regular price. The manager said that on last inventory, the whole Magellan rack came back "deleted." Whatever, that means. Oooh boy! Always wanted one of these GPSr things and this was less than 1/2 price, waterproof, AND my birthday is pretty soon so...Happy Birthday to me!

Trying to get smart on this thing...it came with "Vantage Point" software to manage map information and then transfer it to the unit itself. It also came with a program called Topo Deluxe that lets you download free 1:100,000 scale topographic National Geographic maps off of included CD's. (seems they're the benchmark map) If 1:100,000 scale isn't detailed enough, you can purchase 1:24,000 scale topographic quadrangle maps or "quads" as they call them. This adventure pack deal gives you 25 map credits to purchase 25 quads that can be transferred to the unit directly via USB cable. The free maps from NG aren't bad but at higher zoom levels, the detail blurs out a bit. Haven't purchased any quads yet so can't comment on how they look.

You can see the details okay but not equivalent to a google map zoom. I understand there's a hack in the works to import Google maps but I haven't had time yet to test it yet.

So, to test the unit the Bricks went a-geocaching this afternoon and found our first geocache today near a local slurp and go. Mrs. Brick not only navigated right to the location, she also spotted the cache as well. They're both keepers. Mrs. Brick AND the new GPSr unit.