A GPS for my GPS

Grr... of the year

Hello all - as usual Lady Luck is toying with me and I thought I would share with you the story for your amusement. Since my life has become an endless travel itinerary, last year I decided to purchase a GPS. It was a fantastic voice-activated Garmin 885T with MSN live information and such. Before my maiden voyage with my GPS, I happily plugged in the address in Jacksonville, Florida into Bing Maps and skillfully uploaded it into my GPS. Smugly, I believed that I would never get lost again and never have to fumble with a printed map whilst driving. On my flight, I happened to get a bulkhead seat which forced me to put my laptop case in the carry-on compartment. Unbenounced to me, a scourage of a man tried unsuccessfully to jam his carry on top of my laptop bag. Cost of GPS: $300 - last known location: NYC

Oct 2009: Naturally when I reached JAX, I reached into my laptop bag to find my brand new GPS shattered. To add to this, I now had no idea what address I needed to travel to. After much pain and acceptance, I finally sucked it up and called Garmin to cost out a repair. The lady on the phone pitied my sad story and said she would ship me a brand new model for the repair cost in 2 months time. Cost to repair $150 *grrr last known location: JAX

December 2009: Garmin shipped a new GPS to me via the god-awful scourage of the universe - Un Professional Services (UPS). They, in their infinite wisdom made 3 attempts to deliver my package within 24 hours on a day my land lady was out. Naturally, instead of holding the package at the warehouse - they promptly shipped it back to sender without as much as a phone call to me. Cost to reship $15 - last known location: McLean, TX

January 2010: I managed to reach Garmin and explain the whole situation and they agreed to send another package with my GPS to me. This time I called Unable to Perform Service (UPS) to attempt to intercept the package before their alleged deliveries. They informed me that I somehow have to magically find the exact point between deliveries 1 and 2 or 3 in order to hold at a warehouse and only for 3 days. After much agony and time-off work, I managed to find a time to go to the warehouse. Since the warehouse closes at 8pm I was rushing to make it. Had I had my GPS with MSN Traffic updates, it would have warned me of the huge delay on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. I was late and my GPS was shipped back to sender. Cost to reship $15+$40 in gas = $55 - last known location: Brooklyn, NY

Feb 2010: I managed to finally convince the warehouse to hold the package with my GPS for one more day and I took the morning off work and managed to pick up my GPS. With victory so close at hand - I opened the box right in the parking lot of Under Performing Services (UPS). and realised I was missing the MSN direct charger which provides the traffic updates. Cost to Replace Charger $35 *grr - last known location: McClean, TX

March 2010: I finally ordered the MSN direct charger and had it in hand. I managed to learn all the great voice activated prompts for making phone calls through my GPS except for how to terminate a call. After several hundred variations of saying "Hang Up" , "Stop Call", "End Call", "Dis-engage", "Phone Off", etc. I finally succumbed and pressed the End Call button. A uncharacteristically observant NJ State Trooper managed to see me do this and pulled me over. Ticket Cost: $265 *grr - last known location: Stamford, CT

May 2010: After having learned my lesson of the bulkhead GPS crushing incident, I always remove my GPS from my laptop bag and place it under the seat. On a whirlwhind trip from Paris to Zurich to Atlanta to JFK to Seattle to Vancouver and back to JFK, I had performed the same routine. Unfortunately, my fiance was unaware of my routine and was very sweet to pack up my laptop bag on the way out as I was too tired to care. Everything was packed except my GPS which lay untouched under the seat. After I realised it was gone, I called Delta who asked me "What are the features of your GPS so we can identify it?" I indicated it was voice activated with MSN traffic updates and maps, etc. They responded "Cool! Err... in that case, we don't have it." To the person at Delta Airlines enjoying this features, may you get a ticket for pressing the End Call button. Grrrr. Cost to re-purchase GPS $160 - last known location: Seattle, WA

Today: I shipped my *new* GPS this time to my fiance's place in NJ to avoid the hassles with Unlimited Problems with Service (UPS) through Amazon. It said shipped today, unfortunately , Amazon had used the old address for my fiance. and I had only checked her name. My new GPS apparently was signed for and is providing voice-activated commands with MSN traffic updates to someone in Boston. To the creditors trying to chase me down for the cost of his/her GPS, make sure you send the supoena by Unbelievably Poor Services (UPS). Cost of stop payment $25. last known location: Boston, MA

Overall estimated cost of GPS $1104 and I still don't have one.
- Conclusion, I will be using paper-based maps from now on.

Credit Crisis - Shivji style

First post in nearly a year but this is my only legal way to achieve catharsis. Many talk of the credit crisis as a crisis in lending, my crisis was that of consolidation. I am a road-warrior and thus I like to keep my life optimized and portable. Bills are all paid automatically on my credit card and so are all purchases. This way I have credit protection on purchases and collect points :). Although as a business analyst I know consolidation also means a single point of failure, I never applied this to my own life.

Last month my credit card number was used somehow to buy sushi and a diet coke. Those who know me, know I would never purchase diet coke and therefore this charge was fradulant. So I called the bank and they told me to fill out a form and take it to a branch, they also told me the process would cancel my card so I should probably use another one. Seemed simple enough. Little did I know this ordeal would become a saga.

Week 1 The AMEX card - In order to ensure I still had a credit card during this process, I applied for one of those Delta Skymiles AMEX cards figuring that I would also get the 5,000 MQM points in the process. After 5 mins I was approved and very happy so I waited for my card in the mail. It didn't arrive, instead I got a nasty note from the credit bureau asking me to send them an IRS form and a letter confirming my address from the Bank. I called AMEX and they said this was standard procedure. So I shelled out the $50 to get the IRS to mail them the form and figured I'd get the Bank letterhead when I went to the branch.

Week 2 The Branch - After clearing my schedule and finally getting a chance to go to the Bank I arrived at the Bank of America on Park Ave. It is a perfectly respected looking place with a greeter. I explained I needed to fill out a form to dispute a charge. She gave me a look and put me in an office while she spoke to her friend outside for about 30 mins. After I walked outside she finally decided to attend to me. After asking her for the letterhead, she simply responded "oh we don't do that". Infurtiated I asked her for at least the form to dispute the fraudulent charge. She again responded that she has never heard of this form and that I would have to call the bank. Incredulous I asked for her supervisor who after about an hour was able to find this magical form and provide me with a letterhead. He also explained he was having "personnel issues" with his staff. No wonder banks are in trouble.

Week 3 Time Warner Cable: Kirsten and I sat down after a long week to watch a movie on demand instead of going out to the theatre. Everytime we ordered the movie, it would start and then about ten minutes in would complain that "the movie is currently unavailable". We tried this 3 times and various different cryptic errors would appear at different times. I finally called Time Warner and asked what was wrong. Apparently, my credit card on file that was used for authorization had been cancelled and my account was considered in violation. Argh!

Week 4 E-Z Pass: Driving out to NJ last night, we went over the Triboro bridge in the EZPass lane expecting to go through as normal. The EZPass said low balance but of course I knew it often says this and automatically replenishes using my credit card. This time of course it didn't because I hadn't changed the information on the EZPass site. The officer came out and confiscated my EZPass. I was furious - even though I explained to him the situation, I apparently have to request a new pass in person and wait 36 hours!


Week 5 Returns: I had bought some christmas presents and then decided to get something else instead and wanted to return the orginal present to Brookstone. I went in with the item and the receipt expecting this to be a simple process. Of course, they requested the original credit card on which the purchase was made. I told them that this card was cancelled and I have a new one. They required me to get a notification from the Bank claiming that my new card was the same card. Of course, once I got this notification, the return time period had expired and all I could get was store credit.

So far I have had more than a month of reprecussions from my credit card cancellation. I have no idea what other services are linked to my card but it makes me re-think my portable life solution. Perhaps I need a fall-back card to failover to in case of issues.


Grr... of the Day

Today I tried to get my EZpass restored so that I don't have to wait another hour or so in line at the Bridges and Tunnels. Unfortunately they are not there today because it is Martin Luther King day. I will have to go early Saturday morning....ARGH

Playlist of Life

So I happen to pull up one of my retro high school mix CDs from the 90s (I am not sure exactly when the 90s took over from the 80s as the new retro but I digress) and I was rocking out the songs. Halfway through the list, I realized how connected I felt with the music, how in my own element I was and how I knew every lyric.

After analyzing the words I was singing, I began to ask myself - what the hell do these lyrics even mean? I know these lyrics meant something to me at some point for them to be so profoundly engraved in my memory - but I need your help to figure out what the hell that was. Here are the songs and a particularly problematic line or two - feel free to post your interpretations:

10. Glycerine, Bush / Bush-X (if you happened to be Canadian) - Sixteen Stone - 1996

"we live in a wheel, where everyone steals but when we rise it's like strawberry fields" - was Gavin hungry for strawberries??

9. Closing Time, Semisonic, Feeling Strangely Fine -1998

"Time for you to go out to the places you will be from" - Okay. This seems like an obvious statement. What of it?

8. Yellow Ledbetter, Pearl Jam, Jeremy - 1992

- Apparently there are no lyrics to this song. Only Eddie Vedder mumbling through it.

7. Champagne Supernova, Oasis, What's the Story Morning Glory - 1995

"Slowly walking down the hall, faster than a cannonball" - Was Noel bowling the night before?

6. Resurrection, Moist, Creature - 1996

The lyrics to this disturb me but you can find them here . Why was this a good song again?

5. Push, Matchbox 20, Yourself of Someone Like You - 1997

"I wanna take you for granted, yeah I will I will" - Was this about domestic violence and why wasn't there an outrage about this - I mean I remember feminist girls singing this with me!

4. Round Here, Counting Crows, August and Everything After - 1994

"[incomprehensible] sleeping children better run like the wind" - why do the official lyrics contain and incomprehensible placeholder. Is that like a license to mumble mumble?

3. The World I Know, Collective Soul, Collective Soul - 1995

"All the words that I've been reading, Have now started the act of bleeding, Into one"

2. Lightning Crashes, Live, Throwing Copper- 1995

"the angel opens her eyespale blue colored iris,presents the circle and puts the glory out to hide, hide" - this is a great line that I belt out at the top of my lungs - I'm just not sure why

1. Superman's Dead, Our Lady Peace, Clumsy - 1997

"Doesn't any, any, any, any, anybody know... That the world's a subway, subway" - That explains why the MTA is losing money.

"Why eieieie yeah superman's dead - Eieieie yeah is it in my head" - Yes it is in my head. But Whyieieie?

Grr...of the Day

I really like the look of worn jeans with little rips. They give the jeans character and I think they symbolize a wash and wear personality. I was doing the laundry today and I realized that I had no more jeans left as they all needed to be washed. Luckily, I was able to find an old tattered pair of jeans which I thought would be perfect for a laudry excursion. As I was putting clothes into the dryer, I dropped a sock and bent down to pick it up - to the tune of "rrrrrrrrip". Apparently, my tattered pair of jeans had decided to tear straight through the butt cheeks. I ran into the bathroom and put on a pair of soggy un-ripped jeans. Argh.

The Toxic Fresh Air of the West Coast

So after spending nearly a month on the west coast, I have realized that there is something in the air here that changes people. This change has a multitude of very strange effects:

1. Perfectly respectably east coast socialites suddenly feel the need to become xtreme sport junkies. For instance, a certain person I know who used abhor a walk in the park...seems to want to climb an over-due-for-eruption volcano one saturday morning. Also regular sports are not impressive here. I play soccer, but unless I play it on a natural field at the top of the rockies naked, I am the punch line of out-of-shape jokes.

2. Apparently as a side effect to the xtreme sports symptom is that everyone is in bed by midnight. The cities shutdown as people need to sleep before their 6 am canoe portaging expedition the next day. So if you have arrived from the east coast, do not bother to adjust your clock by 3 hours, assume midnight is 3am and you'll have no problems with timings. Oh and don't bother to set an alarm, the complementary hotel yoga instructor will wake you at 6am.

3. The airborne toxin seems to cause a stigma associated to going to a club. You can never have a club for the sake of having a club. In my time here, I discovered a club disguised as a mall, one disguised as a bowling alley and another that was apparently called Pro-club which is usually a gym but doubles as a club at night.

4. This toxin has a side effect on fashion sense. Apparently, hoodies and pyjama pants are acceptable dress attire to fancy clubs. Perhaps this is to promote the disguise of going to the gym/Proclub. If you are wearing a button down shirt, you are ridiculed because what would happen if you were suddenly required to go xtreme kayaking in the rapids later that evening!

5. Also in the air is the government's secret test hormone to cause the growth of earthy beards. Everyone seems to have them. Perhaps it is to give everyone the Man in the Mountains look and thus invite them to the extreme sports held in said mountains.

6. The hormone also seems to cause slow driving. No one drives over the speed limit. They are programmed to cruise control at 65mph in the fast lane. While I start singing that Dennis Leary song...they are busy stimulating the growth of earthy beards in the car.

7. Also pertainent to the driving is the lack of street lights on major highways which results in people driving even slower. To compensate, the government as added lighting to ski-lifts in the mountains to help guide you towards them in case you are in dire need of an alpine adventure at night.

Grr... of the Day

I am staying at the very fancy Grant Hyatt downtown in Seattle. The room here is fabulous, bed is very comfortable. and the blinds are an electronic contraption that open and close on demand by a switch. The only complaint I have is that I have not for the life of me been I had not been able to find the switch for said blinds. After a night of discovering the sun comes up at 6 bloody o'clock am, I desparately attempted to avoid another early morning. I tore apart the beautiful room like a cyclone and finally called the front desk to help find the switch. Unfortunately the earthy bearded yoga instructor they sent also came at 6am. After a rather unbelievable attempt to contort his body to look behind the bed and over the bedside table he discovered that the switch is coveniently located behind the lampshade and labelled "shade". Apparently, the west coast extreme sports requirement includes contortion of the body to find the shade switch.

Historic

After watching the inauguration of the new President on T.V., I began to realize how historic this moment is. It is the only time in history you will ever hear Verizon literally begging people NOT to send picture messages. Apparently they can't deal with the concentrated cellular demand in one location. I wonder if the million people they show in their commericials following you around as part of "The Network" have problems calling each other because of their concentration. Seriously, if they would all take their cellphones home - your rate of dropped calls would drastically go up.

It was also historic because it finally proves my theory that Dick Cheney is in fact the evil Mr. Potter from "It's a Wonderful Life" back to bury the banks and building and loans. Especially today with his new wheelchair. Note resemblence below:

Furthermore, somehow 2 million people got the day off work. I mean seriously how many people could really pull the "uh ... I'm sick the Tuesday after MLK" trick? That has to be a record. Also I would love to have covered the traffic in D.C. today. D.C. traffic is agonizing. Today it must have been historically bad.

Don't get me wrong, I'm ecstatic that Obama is the new president. I just feel that celebrating the fact that somehow against all odds, a minority became president is, in fact, sad. Because it shouldn't have been that hard, taken so long nor be deemed so unlikely. That the right person will be elected blind to any affiliation is the ideal we uphold - anything less, we should by now reject. The fact that reality is far different is pathetic and I refuse to celebrate that. Historic would be if, for once, we didn't care what race, religion or background the president was and no one made a comment pro or con about any of those attributes.

I will not deem this day historic by the colour of his skin, but in retrospect, by the content of his presidency. If in 4-8 years he does lead this country to better foreign, economic and domestic policy - this inauguration will then be historic. I believe he will lead that way but based only on his character.

Grr... of the Day

I have recently realized that my caffeine dependence has become out of control. Without coke (-a-cola) , I fail to function and my entire day is shot to hell. However, I believe the fates are conspiring to deprive me of my caffeine. Today, the pop machine was sold out of all caffeinated variants of soft drinks. In my desparation, I turned to a cup of coffee (which I rarely drink). I turned it on and it exploded. Sparks flew all over the place. Being an Electrical Engineer, I began to investigate and found that a spider had somehow used it's web to tie the ground and hot contacts together and the heat generated had melted the contacts together and blown a fuse. Unfortunately, none of that heat had affected my coffee which was still cold and now possibly contains a drowning, electrocuted spider. Is it sad I still want to drink it?

No politician will read this but...Invest in Trains

I am no economist but I think the solution to our current economic crisis is to invest in trains. In the Great Depression, some of the more successful programs were those that were targeted at rebuilding the nation's infrastructure and creating new jobs. Labour and resources are probably cheaper right now and the political appetite for change is rampant. Today the Acela Trains in the North East are capable of much higher speeds if only the tracks were upgraded to handle them - that would be a great first step.



But I think the benefits go further than that. Today air traffic control is a nightmare all along the Eastern seaboard of the United States and Canada because the airspace is overcrowded. The result of overcrowding is overscheduling more flights than airspace allows around NYC airports like Newark resulting in a third of flights being delayed and thus this proves demand for travel is strong. Building better, faster train capacity like Japan's new highspeed version, shuttling within the overcrowded, under-served corridors could alleviate air congestion as well as interstate traffic. This could also reduce emissions by nearly ten times that of flying.

The classic argument in the US is that Americans don't like to travel by train. Well recent polls in North Carolina show support growing for at least public transportation. But bloggers like the Anti-Planner raise good points. To where do we build these trains and what do people do when they get there. Usually the train stations are in obscure places without public transport and you need a car to continue to your journey. I have this problem with the Raritan Valley line of the NJ Transit as it drops me off in Suburbia. Additionally, it is Diesel powered and not allowed to travel through the tunnel and therefore I have to switch trains to get into NYC and eventually take a cab ride in Raritan.

So then, for the long hauls, why don't we build more Auto-Trains that can carry vehicles with them. Apparently, the one that is operational is Amtrak's most profitable line. Of course we need to understand the market for the train locations, lest we suffer the fate of the Rochester - Toronto ferry that I took a few times, but which ultimately went out of business because of lack of Torontonians eager to visit the fabulous city of Rochester*. But I believe there are legitimate markets out there that could easily make the case for inter-city train travel.

Of course no politician will ever read this. Nor will anyone care long enough to do something like this. It would be a huge capital project requiring so many governing bodies to agree - most of whose political ambitions will be satisfied before the first piece of tack is laid and some other politician will come in and can the idea. So alas, there will be no Train Station Nation, but I think we'd be better for it.

* Apologies to Xerox and Kodak - but did you found your businesses on taking and photocopying colour photos of the Toronto skyline?




Grr of the Day...

I have a tire that hates me. It is the rear driver-side tire and it is losing air. Or I am losing my mind and it is filling it with air. Two months ago it was leaking air and finaly burst. I bought a new tire and had it replaced. A week ago it was flat again and so I took it in cursing my luck that I must have drove over another nail. Except that the repair place can't find anything wrong with the tire or the rim or the valve-stem. I bought an air compressor just to be sure and pumped it up. Unfortunately I believe the gauge on the air compressor is broken and I seem to have over-filled the tire and it must have popped a seam and gone flat again. I have taken it in for repair to a different shop and yet again they can find nothing wrong with it. I have come to the obvious conclusion that I have pissed off a two-tonne poltergeist that sits in the back seat sometimes to annoy me and then subsequently leaves when I take the car in for repair.

Choose your own adventure

In way, I think life is one big choose your own adventure book. You gather a little bit of storyline and reach a fork in the stream. You then jump to a page based on your best guess, only to read ahead that you chose the stream where the cannibal pygmy natives* hunt their prey. You then get angry at the book because, well, otherwise you only have yourself to blame; after all it was your choice! Then, of course, you try to fumble your way back to the decision point and chose a new path, because it is pathetic to accept that as you end. You never really make it back but you reach another equally interesting fork in the road and make your best guess. Lather Rinse Repeat.

I am kind of at the stream where three forks combined and formed a raging rapid that is barreling down in one direction. I have no reason to, but my instinct says, do I have to be on this raft? I could pretty much get off now and well choose any other land adventure I want. I just don't want to meet the pygmies as I believe the last few years have fattened me up and made me tasty.

There are many cliches about how to deal with the decision making process. There is the "life is about the journey not the destination." cliche. Well that's good, since the ultimate destination is death. I also love the "oh stop strategizing about the future and live in the moment" philosophy. In order to live in the moment, you have to be somewhat stationary. I would like to those live-in-the-moment types smell a rose in a level-five turbulent rapid. Finally, there is the "take each day as it comes". Well that is like waiting for the pygmies to find you!

So how do you slow down life in order be able to sit and think about the future before it is already happening to you? I guess I just got a piece of good advice from Team:
"Do not switch around your life for constraints that do not exist." There is no real reason for me to get off the raft yet and I have time before the rapids subside. They way you slow things down is by waiting to gather information before you reactly drastically to drastic changes in your life.

* no offense to cannibal pygmy natives. Their adventure book might equally end in a village of a savage social society hungry to burn their way of life at the stake.


Grr... of the Day.

I have these incredibly noisy wipers that sound like a banshee on a bender. To make things worse - they are "rain-sensing" wipers. Every time a butterfly flaps water on its wings these demon wipers begin to wail. So, being in Toronto, I decided to buy new wipers from Canadian Tire which I boasted to everyone would have exactly what I needed. I looked up the wiper model from the catalogue for my car and even stood in line for the part representative to tell me I picked the right ones. Satisfied I went home to put them on. After deciphering from the graphics that there were 3 kinds of wiper brackets and trying for an hour, I am convinced my prissy German car has a 4th kind not covered by the 3 brackets. I subsequently proved this after the wiper bracket broke in half on my test run. I asked the part dealer why this would happen and he indicated that the part was certified for my car but that didn't mean it would fit.