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:

Sure you COULD, but you SHOULDN'T

People make stupid mistakes, it's part of our nature. Also part of our nature is to insist that we are right, no matter who tells us otherwise. I just recently got back from a vacation in San Diego with family and friends(sorry for the lack of posting) and boy do I know a few morons.

Driving from Phoenix to San Diego is a very simple drive, I10 to I8, voila. In this drive you will pass the cities of Gila Bend, Yuma, and El Centro, in that order.

Driving out, we're taking a Honda Civic Hybrid, which during this drive will get near 50 MPG due to sustained speed and all that fun stuff. Which means, we'll be able to do the 350 mile drive on one tank of gas no problem. The other car in our caravan is driving a Ford F150, gets about 400 miles on a tank of gas, so it could make the drive no problem.

Here's where the fun begins, we hit Yuma(which is right on the border of Arizona/California) and we stop at the last gas station before heading out of town to top off and make a call to the other car to do the same, the conversation goes something like this:

"Hey guys, we just hit Yuma, how far are you guys back?"

"About 20 miles, we should be there soon"

"Ok, we're about to head out, make sure to fill up before finishing the drive"

"Don't Worry about it, we've still got more than half a tank left"

"No Really, you should fill up"

"Nah, we know what we're doing, we'll meet you there"

Now don't worry ladies and gents, they made it to the hotel no problem, but if you haven't figured out their moron decision yet, here you go.

To fill up an F150, you will need around 30 gallons of fuel, to fill up a Honda Civic Hybrid you will need around 11 gallons. Lets do the math, shall we.

If the f150 stopped for gas in Arizona, the price of gas would have been $4.09, which would have cost them $122.70(ish), and that's if they completely emptied their tank, which I might add, is what they did driving all the way into San Diego. The price of gas in San Diego is around $4.46, so their gas tab ended up at 133.80 vs the Civic fueling up for $45 in Yuma, and not needing to fill up until they hit Yuma going the other way.

Sure, you may be sitting there thinking, "Oh wow, $10, the world is going to end." all sarcastic like, but think about that, it's only 1 tank of gas, it could be higher if they keep doing it. Also, think of all the other morons who are likely to make the same mistake.