An Exercise in Futility

So... That nice Honda Civic Hybrid I wrote about in a previous post, it comes with this handy dandy navigation system, built in XM Radio, and a ton of other cool features. The problem is that the driver is a moron some times, and some times, Lola, as she has been named can be a moron as well.

I give you a hypothetical question: What is the point of having GPS enabled, when you don't listen to it?

A little take on PEBKAC, this time, Problem Exists Between Steering Wheel and Chair, or PEBSWAC.

Driving from our rental in Mission Beach and Seaworld, my father decided that he should use the GPS in the car to help us get there, instead of following the 8 million roadsigns that say Seaworld, next right. As we're driving along we get the "Turn Right in a quarter mile" it even gives us the name on the screen. But what do we do? continue to drive and say, "Oh, a quarter mile, we still have a ways to go." AND MISS THE TURN!

Now, the system can't always be right, I mean it is just a computer....

The system responds to voice commands as long as you hit the button on the steering wheel. Now I can understand if I lived in NY or London, and I have a think accent, but I don't, I live in Phoenix freaking Arizona. If I said "Find nearest Bank" it should find the nearest bank, amirite? Iamwrong!

"Air Conditioning Off"

WHAT THE HELL?!

"Find Nearest ATM" maybe?

"FM Channel 93.7"

Finally we just input it manually by pressing the items we are looking for on the screen, but unfortunately, sometimes the GPS is only as smart as the person using it.

Prior to going to see a Padre's game at Petco Park, we set the directions to the ballpark and had it minimize freeways, that way we can see more of the town. No problem, we get there perfectly in time and everything is good. Now later that night, we wanted to find us a Pizza joint. "Easy" we think, in a tourist town like Mission Beach, we got this. So we all pile into the car and ask "Find Restaurant, Pizza" Nothing. Find Restaurant by Name, Pizza. We get options! We find one that sounds good, and we have it map the directions, unfortunately the pizza place that was selected was in Iowa, so we had to wait for it to calculate a drive from San Diego, CA to Iowa. Minimizing freeways nonetheless, if my memory serves me, it wanted us to drive a couple thousand miles and take about a week to do it. No thanks, not for pizza.

The Feeling of Failure

Before I started blogging, I did a lot of reading, on blogging. So it comes to no surprise to me that sometimes, posts fall flat on their face and I'm left groaning about what went wrong. This has happened to me more than one occasion, and I'd like to share with you the fun times I've had writing this blog.

First of all, criticism doesn't bother me, not everyone thinks the same way I do, that's a fact. I actually enjoy getting a comment on my post where the person just rips me to shreds, it tends to start a conversation, which drives more traffic.

Second, a friend of mine said he wanted to create a blog, but was afraid that he would be posting all this stuff for the world to see. What would happen if people don't like it? I told him it will happen and to just move on, he still hasn't created anything.

So this brings me to my purpose this article, everyone wants to create the greatest blog post that will grace the front page of Digg, Reddit, and have StumbleUpon send them thousands of visitors, but honestly, that doesn't really happen. I think it's more fun to create something and then watch it sit there, and sit there, with little to no views. Why? Because it helps me figure out what my audience is looking for.

Try it, I'm sure many of my viewers are bloggers themselves, so try varying your posts, see what happens, if you usually post about making money online, try doing a post on blogging, SEO, or something a little away from the norm, you will see ones that do really well(watch out, you dont want to get an influx of traffic to a money making blog because you did a post on fluffy bunnies), and you will also have some go flat.

What prompted this lovely little post on failure? My last post on gas prices: You Could, but You Shouldn't

Go Ahead, be jealous: