Thought out loud

Yep, that’s right. After doing quite some detours and swearing that I seem to be incapable of finding a place somewhere further away, I’ve finally got myself a Navigation system.

I already had some navigation aids, even TomTom. But it was always installed on a PDA using a Bluetooth GPS receiver. IF it worked, it worked great. But most of the time, there was more hassle than benefit. Usually one of the batteries was empty (Receiver or PDA). If that wasn’t the case, the receiver was so disoriented, that I had to drive about 20 km until it finally got a lock. For long distance drives, thats not so much of a problem. Usually one of the batteries will die once I get anywhere near my destination.

Apart from the navigation part, I was fed up with using wired headsets for my mobile phone while driving. Luckily, todays navigation devices offer hands-free phone operation using bluetooth and integrated microphone and speaker.

Finally, i decided to buy a TomTom GO 930T because it offers me all the things I want as explained above, and it even features TMCpro! Luckily my local dealer had one in stock

After picking up the nav I was eager to test it right away. Still on the car park in front of my dealer, I had to install the nav so i could test-drive it home. The packaging is of good quality and the packaging system looks like someone gave it quite some thought. The suction-cup arm fixing it to the windscreen is sweet and sleek, you hardly see it behind the nav.

The nav is powered through a standard USB-C connection and the provided car-charger offers an angled plug so the nav can be placed so far down, that it almost lies on the cockpit. Too bad that the cable is too short. My cigarette-lighter is not next to the ashtray, but between the two front seats under the armrest. I was only able to power the nav with the power cord going right across the cockpit.

Next is the TMCpro antenna. Which is long, very long. It reaches from the lower left corner of the windscreen up the A-Column and across the top just about to the mirror. At least you have 4 suction cups to adhere the cable to the windscreen. The connector is a straight plug which is about 4cm long. Not so sleek as the power-plug.

After having everything set up, its quite a cabling mess in the left corner of my cockpit. I’ll try to move the TMC antenna so it runs across the bottom line of the Windscreen.

Then, the big moment was here. I switched the nav on. And about 10 seconds later it knew exactly where it was. I AM ASTONISHED! Even now while I’m writing this, the Nav gets a quite clear signal from the GPS satellites. And my window and shutters are closed.

I’ll play around a bit and get to know all the functions and gimmicks. Update will follow

Last Friday some friends and I visited the Zurich FanZone. It was the game Croatia vs. Turkey which ended in Turkeys favor. But first things first…

We arrived in the game break, which was about the worst time to arrive. There were endless queues in front of the Food- and Beer stalls. After some queuing we finally got our “beer” (I put the word beer in “’s on purpose, as it was Carlsberg). Now we made our way to my Girlfriends stall. She works in the FanZone since the beginning and I only saw her sleeping. But anyhow, I’m so proud!

Just across her stall there was a TV screen and we followed the penalty kicking after extension. The spectators were quite peaceful. No serious trouble inside the FanZone. Both Fan blocks were quite heated up, but they remained peaceful.

I had about 3/4 of my mug still filled with beer. After the turks won, the S.W.A.T. Team of the Police cleared out the complete Fan-Zone. We got thrown out roughly including our beer. I couldn’t even agree on a meeting-spot with my girlfriend. It’s not really nice feeling a beating stick in your back.

We moved out of the FanZone before we would get “escorted” out and waited in the McDonalds nearby. I’ve sent my Girlfriend an SMS where we would wait.

All in all, the visit to the FanZone was enjoyable, except for the exiting-part. I got the feeling that the police was scared. OK, it was a high-risk meeting, but still. I think they over-reacted a bit.

Just my two cents

End of February we ordered a Broadband Cable connection for our Backup-Office (on the other end of the country). Last week, the Cable-Modem finally arrived (Remark: 3.5 months later). Our guy there connected the Modem and … drumroll please … it didn’t work.

Today I called the help-line, hoping that they could tell me if they “see” the modem on the network. I had the order confirmation in front of me hoping that all the information they could want from me is on there.

After idling in the waiting loop for 10 Minutes, listening to the IVR’s voice telling me that I must check the newest offers on their Web-page, I finally got a human being on the line. She actually sounded quite cute. Knowing that I’m that kind of customer that doesn’t have any info (I used to work at a Helpdesk too), we tried to find the customer-number on the order confirmation. According to the Call-Agent, it should be a 6-digit number. Yes ma’am, I’ve got loads of numbers on that paper, but not one that is 6 digits long. After looking up some names, she found the order and gave me the customer number, which is as follows 1234567 O…K, that 7-digit one was right on top of the form. Never mind.

After explaining our situation (All LED’s green, but no IP) and that I’m nowhere near the Modem, she checked our line. She actually saw the modem on the net, but something was “funny”. I should go and re-boot the modem. Again, I explained her that this would mean a 3-hour drive and if she minded to wait on the line.

After some audible mouseclicks and keyboard-clatter, she told me that the account wasn’t fully activated. It would be done “in due time” (Days from now). Good thing for a call-agent, she didn’t let me talk her into giving ne a more specific timeframe. Bad thing for me.

Now lets wait what happens. I’ll be in that office next week….

Today I had the new edition of “Armee aktuell”, a magazine for the members of the Infantry Brigade 5. Unlike magazines of some other formations of the swiss army, this one is not so strict army-style. You get reports about the last WK of all battallions in the brigade and whats coming up in the next year(s). As I was on a “real” engagement this year, it was very interesting to read what the other companies did. Who knows, maybe we’ll get mentioned in the second edition?

The best thing though I found on the last page. Finally, all the dates of WK, KVK and so on are made available on the internet using google calendar. On top of that you can download a .ics file per battallion to import the the dates into outlook. They even use tinyurl!

Here is the calendar for the InfBr5! YAY

The world is mad, and the world wants mad world records. This I know for sure.

Thats why I support the Firefox Download-Day 2008.

The Goal of this event is to achieve the most downloads ever in 24 hours. Guess the Download-day will be somewhere in june or july.

I Wonder if the Servers will handle that load.