When technology turns homicidal
So, this weekend was my extended family’s Christmas party. They always do a white elephant gift exchange.
This year, I was out of ideas and finally settled on a basket of gourmet chocolate. You should always bring a gift you’d want to keep, just in case you get stuck with it.
Unfortunately, between work stress and holiday stress and PMSing, the chocolate… uh… Look, I wrapped it, ok? And then I desperately needed some chocolate and figured no one would know if I grabbed the liquor-filled stuff. And then, you know, I don’t know. I woke up and there were wrappers, wrappers everywhere, and not a gift to give.
My scale assures me that I am to blame, but I don’t believe it.
Moral of the story: bring a gift you’d want to keep, but not one that you really want to keep. Otherwise, you’ll have to go out and buy another gift.
Which I did. And then my gift and my GPS and I headed off to the party, which was outside Austin.
Do yourself a favor: never drive in Austin. I live in Houston, and I know what people say about Houston drivers. I will take them any day of the week over Austin drivers. In over two years of driving around Houston, I have never actually thought I was going to die. I thought I was going to die about every other second in Austin.
But we made it through Austin and to the rural neighborhood where the party was being held. It was a little too rural for my GPS, as all the roads disappeared and my GPS began advising me to turn left, turn right, and turn around when possible in increasingly desperate tones. I turned it off and found the party on my own.
Apparently, that offended the GPS unit.
The next morning, I turned it on again. Still no roads, but this time the GPS knew exactly where it wanted me to drive: right into the lake.
When I declined, it got sullenly silent until we hit a road it recognized. It then decided I couldn’t be trusted to stay on the road at all, and began to give me turn by turn directions.
And I do mean turn by turn. Every curve. Every. Single. Curve: Bear left. Bear right. Keep left, then bear left. For over an hour, it refused to act as though the road was longer than a couple hundred yards, and every couple hundred yards gave me an update on what I needed to do to make sure I would stay on the road.
Eventually, it settled down and decided to trust me just a little. About that time, we were arriving at my next destination—another rural area. Which, again, my GPS had no maps for. I shut it off when it advised me to drive in an ever-increasing spiral until I found a road again.
As there were no lakes around, it couldn’t advise me to jump in one when I turned it back on. I figured everything was good—it was back to acting like, you know, a piece of technology and not a grudge-possessing demon. It got me pointed back home with normal directions of the sort you’d expect from your run-of-the-mill GPS. All seemed well with the world.
Out of the blue, it advised me to turn left and then turn right. As we were on a highway and had at least 100 miles to go before the next change of direction, I wasn’t sure why it wanted me to turn. I looked at the screen.
That’s when I realized I own a homicidal GPS.
It was telling me to cross the median and drive the wrong way up the other side of the highway.
When I declined, it reprogrammed my route for me and advised me to take the next exit.
I checked the screen again. It was going to loop me around and then run me up the wrong side of the feeder road.
In retrospect, I suppose the GPS may have just reached the end of its rope and was trying to commit suicide—that it didn’t particularly care if I died, too. On the other hand, I’m the one who never updates the maps on that thing. Maybe it was happy at the thought of taking me out. God knows I ignore what it says half the time. The “Turn around when possible” subroutine gets a major workout every trip.
I did get home eventually. After the second attempt to kill me (third, if you count it trying to send me into the lake), I turned off the GPS and got out my paper map. It turns out I can still read one, even if there aren’t any blinking icons to tell me where I am on the map.
I desperately need some chocolate right now. And a drink. Or both at once. Too bad I already ate all the liquor-filled chocolates. And all the other chocolates.
But hey—at least I have a present picked out for next year’s exchange. I might even update the maps in the GPS before I wrap it.
Winter says 20 December 2010
Must be a system wide mutiny. My mother’s GPS stranded her because the city of New Braunfels had closed off the round a bout at the main plaza for an event. That completely blew it’s mind and she drove around for two hours trying to get home.
I hear you about Austin drivers. THere’s a reason 35 is the deadliest hwy in Texas. And yet, there I am.
Perhaps you could give some maps for xmas next year… low tech enough to be an elephant, but not as dangerous.