Good morning!!!!

[daugen]

I always use the car's nav system on trips, if only to see the countdown clock, sort of fun to see if you are gaining or losing arrival time.
Interesting that when I took the wrong exit at top of Delaware in heavy construction and wound up in NJ instead of PA, on 295, the arrival time never got worse than 8 minutes more. Whole area was interconnected with big roads so as long as traffic was moving, and it was, was nice that my wrong choice in lanes didn't cost me much time. So I didn't worry about it and just thought oh well a trip over the Commodore Barry bridge, which actually cost me five bucks, so there was my penalty. 5 dollar fine for poor navigation.

Had the gps chartplotter in my boat set up for route guidance where it would get to one waypoint and then interfaced autopilot would angle the boat slightly to another direction. Fun to watch it happen automatically.

Never found a gps/nav system on land though that I trusted fully. Always sending me off on some silly "shortcut" to save half a mile. There are a few units out there that have a "major road only" setting. That's what I want at times. Example is when driving down Rt 95 in Philadelphia nav keeps directing one to get off the road and take a major bridge exit and then use the service road I guess paralleling the highway and then get back on. Don't know, sure wasn't going to get off the road, stay on it all day long headed South. So the nav AI isn't very bright at times. Can create a real problem if you are towing a trailer or driving a motorhome. RV software is usually smarter.

If one has a big nav screen and can zoom out, often neat to see where nearby lakes are that are hard to see from road.
I can even bring up Google Streetview on my new car, shows you driving down the street with real buildings on both sides.
Can be distracting to driver but great for passenger.

rain has stopped, time to take out the trash and duct tape a xmax card for the trash men inside a zip loc baggie to the can.
that seems to have worked in the past...

 

[ronjhall]

Had the gps chartplotter in my boat set up for route guidance where it would get to one waypoint and then angle the boat slightly to another direction. Fun to watch it happen automatically.

My 1990 boat had similar GPS chartplotter and autopilot setup (Raytheon). But back in the 90's I used it for fishing. Great for when boat was at cruise speed. But to go back where a fish was caught or school of bait fish was marked. Loran worked much better. Loran was shut down in 2010. GPS gives better data today.

 

[txdon]

:thumbsup:

I wonder, was is the best part of everyone's second childhood ?

For me it is being able to cut down a tree without anyone complaining - maybe that's because as a kid we didn't have any trees, those me and my friend Roy cut down all belonged to someone else :ashamed: .

Have you ever thought that the thrill of cutting down trees could be an inherited trait and maybe that's why as a kid you didn't have any trees.
But I do admit cutting a tree to fire wood and then enjoying it's warmth for several weeks in bitter cold is nice. It's more satisfying than pushing the thermostat button up a few degrees.:laughing:

Ron, I'll give you a review in a few weeks as we test the Garmin. The one I got was on sale at BestBuy.
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/garmin...37&gclid=CKHPgYv6sN8CFRMdgQodghUElQ&gclsrc=ds
Randy, I don't have the wireless camera option yet, I need one for the truck but it's a $170 option. I have a wired back-up camera ( about 10 years old) that stopped working that I need to check out first.

37 ˚F heading to 65 ˚F sunny no wind after a windy day yesterday when the rainless front blew in.

 

[check]

33 and the high will be 32°F. Winds NE 18 gusting to 28 mph. Freezing rain warning has ended. Right now it is raining. Later this morning the rain is supposed to switch over to snow to the amount of 2-4", is my best guess.

There goes my driveway, gone for a rutted dump again. I MUST go out this morning and I am going to North Bay, I think. I will check on 511.on.ca first.
The check on 511.on.ca doesn't look good for the North Bay trip. road conditions are 'poor' at best.
Ontario 511

The truck driver that killed the hockey players in Saskatchewan has been remanded till January 8th.
He had to surrender his passport and is 'out' on $1,000.oo bail. There are other 'conditions' too. He is facing 16 charges that amount to vehicular homicide (14 years in the can for each charge) AND 13 charges of bodily harm (10 years in the can on each charge). Things might be easier in Canada than where he was from, BUT you do not take a 138,000 lb rig and run a stop sign right in front of a bus and get away with it. Google Humboldt Broncos, it is all there. humboldt broncos - Google Search

Have a good day all

Wow, Bill, I didn’t know about 511 - great resource! We travel up Hwy 11 as far as Bracebridge all the time. Will be checking 511 from now on. Thanks!

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Visit mom today and finish some Christmas wrapping (bagging).

Don, get you a $40 wireless backup camera. My last three vehicles have all had factory cameras and I’ve learned to love them for trailer connecting!

Hope everyone has a safe enjoyable
Friday. God bless.

My 2008 truck does not have cam, so i use a wireless one, meant for permanent install. I wedge its bracket behind lic plate. I power from the hitch connector.

 

[RedNeckGeek]

Good Morning!!!! 49F @ 5:45AM. Cloudy early with peeks of sunshine expected late. High 51F. Winds light and variable.

Overnight it looks like we picked up about 0.32" of rain, and it's drizzling now. Gonna be a soggy start to the day, but may still get some weed spraying in this afternoon if it dries out enough.

I have a love/hate relationship with Garmin, and especially whoever they're getting their POI info for stores and restaurants from. Even with lifetime map updates, there's a good chance the restaurant I pick will be out of business or won't be the Italian place I was hoping for and now does Chinese. I've even had it turn out to be someone's house! It's also not uncommon at all for the GPS to predict the destination is on the opposite side of the street from its actual location. That's always good for a laugh. Garmin's mapping software is a poor joke at best, and can be down right dangerous. I've been routed miles up mountains to a cul-de-sac to avoid a U-turn, sent down private driveways, dry desert washes, through orange orchards, and even boat ramps. I like to lay out routes on the laptop, then download them to the GPS. But if I don't set a waypoint at EVERY place I want to turn, the GPS will recalculate the route and it will deviate significantly from what the software on the laptop chose. For years, Garmin has allowed users to adjust settings to avoid u-turns, dirt roads, or take the most direct vs. fastest time route, but if the underlying information on road surface or even road direction (two way vs. one way road), you can get into trouble. I run with voice prompts disabled, I just don't need the often wrong nagging. Then there's the real time routing that Google has incorporated into its mapping software on the phone, and I think I mentioned here how it sent me into a neighborhood of irate soccer moms at rush hour where a policeman was writing tickets at a T intersection posted no left or right turn. I find that the GPS is good for telling me where I am and what direction I'm heading, but I prefer to have a paper map handy to keep me oriented on the progress of the trip and what is coming up next. That way I can tell when the GPS is sending me off on one of its wild goose chases and just ignore the wrong instructions. Of course, YMMV...

Got a little work done on the big dirt bike yesterday, but when the Kubota dealer called to tell me that the tractor parts were in, retrieving them pretty much ate up the rest of the day. There was some kind of police action happening in the oncoming lanes of Highway 99 on the way in to Chico, leading to miles of stopped cars. That gave me an excuse to come back through the town of Paradise, where the roads are open now. I made it to the edge of town just as the tree crews were coming off shift, and traffic was being stopped to allow the trucks to make the left turn into their marshaling yard. Must have been at least a hundred of them, mostly box trucks towing chippers, but also huge box trucks that could hold lots of slash and quite a few pickup trucks as well. My route took me only to the southern section of town, then across it west to east, then south again, maybe ten miles of driving, but in all that I saw only a couple dozen houses that were still intact; everything else was destroyed. There were piles of logs everywhere, 1' diameter up to 3', stacked in huge piles waiting to be hauled away. Telephone and electric utility trucks were planting new poles and stringing wire everywhere, what a mess. Paradise is gonna be a long time getting back to anything remotely resembling paradise.

When I got home I saw that the telephone line had been strung down the hill, and crews were preparing to start down my street. Maybe I'll have telephone service restored for Christmas.

TGIF gang!:drink:

 

[wngsprd]

Happy winter...64F this morning.

Rain was still coming down when I went out, but clouds are breaking up now.

Good news, Bella.

Mail lady drove up again early this morning with two amazon boxes and gave to my wife...we chased her down the driveway a moment later since they weren't ours. We get mail often for our "neighbor" who lives more than a mile away...but has the same street number, except one digit.

Eric, thanks for sharing that amazing QI video...very amusing as well...like when the black disk "ran away" and panicked the man sitting nearby. I took my FEL off once to prove I could do it. Since, I've only remove the bucket or the grapple, but never the whole thing since I don't have front weights.

We have NAVs in both vehicles, and they work great...but I still rely on android google maps to show me traffic status if I am on an Interstate...more detailed than the vehicle NAV. We used to use 511 (both over the phone, and on a phone or PC app) here for traffic status, but google caught up, and loads faster. 511 still does better to show snow or ice conditions, and you can look at highway mounted cameras. I haven't used any 511 systems except Virginia in a while, but Arizona and New Mexico had great systems.

In fact, yesterday used google to warn me about a wreck on the bridge-tunnel in Norfolk yesterday, and just hung out at my mom's until it cleared. We left an hour or so later, but flew through the tunnel and got home as soon as we would have if we had been stuck in traffic. Had a good visit, and a great seafood lunch on the dock at Lynnhaven Bay.

I gave my mom an iPhone for Christmas since she felt she was missing out on everyone's text messages and photo sharing. I added a line to my wireless plan, and got a brand new 6s on sale for $5/month for two years. Since I'm an android user, I had to learn how to use it while teaching her. Slick phone. Very long story on getting it ordered and activated, which I'll share later.

 

[CWB Wyo]

It's not to bad this morning 35°. Yesterday was In the upper 40's and mostly sunny. They are calling for snow showers this morning and a few inches overnight. With a high in the mid 30's and 15-20 mph winds.

Spend most of yesterday in town shopping and getting tiers on one of the vehicles.

Not much going on today. Need to take some packages to the neighbors today. Tomorrow we are going down to SLC for the holiday to be with the daughter and grandsons. If they don't close I-80 on the Sisters because of snow and accidents. They do it almost every time it snows.

Hope everyone has a good start to the holiday weekend.
CWB.

 

[LS Tractor Owner]

Good morning to all! Low of 30, going up to 52 today. No precip forecast until Christmas evening, rain to start, then maybe some snow possible. Too far out to accurately predict. Wind kicked up again in the middle of the night, woke us up. A strong breeze currently.

PT went well, did feel the effects thereafter. No bad pain, but swelling increased and a feeling of pressure. We'll see how it progresses.

I'm still old-school when it comes to mapping. For me, nav programs try to do too much, taking shortcuts or constantly changing routes. I pretty much map it out, write down the directions, and just follow those.

At work we have a proprietary computer aided dispatch system which is surprisingly accurate for navigating neighborhood streets. It still lacks the ability to achieve 100% though. Here's an example: I have been on a street that has an overpass over the highway. An accident occurs on the same street, just beyond the overpass. We can actually see it, within probably 500ft. The nav system brings us to the overpass, has us get on the highway going west to the next exit, get off and cross over the highway, get back on going east, and get back off at the same street we were originally on. Needless to say, we don't follow the mapping. Makes us laugh.

My MIL, daughter and her 'troop' of 4 are coming for Christmas and staying for 4 days. Wifey has started preparing all the goodies already this morning. Will probably continue through tomorrow I'm sure. I've been designated the chief dishwasher and clean up committee chairman. Oh, almost forgot that I'm also the secondary chief taste-tester:licking:

Going to get the smoker fired up today and put a rib roast on. Found a good deal at $4.99lb, picked up a 6 pounder. Ussually use applewood, but going to do hickory this time.

Everyone have a great Friday and start to the weekend. Prayers sent

 

[PJSprog]

34°F and light rain/snow mix this morning, going up to 39° today.

Our skunk behind the barn has been making his presence known again inside the barn. He's quite the stinker. May have to deal with him this weekend.

Eric, I've never removed my FEL. Never really had a reason to do it. Pretty much everything we do with the tractor involves using the bucket. Mowing the pasture is about the only exception. I did drop the bucket the last time I mowed, and liked the increased visibility up front, but still like the FEL "feeler" out in front of me.

L4N, I read about that Humboldt tragedy when it happened. Tough thing for any place to deal with, but even tougher in a small community like Humboldt. The way most people drive, I'm honestly surprised this sort of thing doesn't happen more often.

I used to have a TomTom GPS unit on my Goldwing. Those things are OK, but they definitely have some shortcomings. I never could get the "free" updates to work right. It was OK as a tool to get me in the general vicinity, but accuracy was definitely not it's strong point. The unit itself had some physical issues as well. A slow shift in the touch display eventually made the on-screen keyboard all but unusable. My Wife had one in her older Sorento, too, and it had the same issues. I remember thinking at the time that I should have bought a Garmin. Guess they're all pretty much the same.

May try to cut out of here a little early today and beat some of the crazy holiday traffic. The ladies in the upstairs office have already said they are leaving at noon.