Lost GPS?

August 31st, 2007 · 26 Comments · GIS

I know I packed my GPS unit when I moved to the new house, but for the life of me I can’t find it anywhere. The family is going out camping this weekend for Labor Day near Jerome, AZ and I really need it. Guess I’m heading out tonight to buy a new GPS unit. It is probably for the best as I never liked that old Magellan unit I had.

Have a great Labor Day weekend folks!

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26 responses so far ↓

1 Morten // Aug 31, 2007 at 4:26 pm

I’ve once been told that back in the old days (believe it or not) people used something called a compass and a map to navigate.
The map was made of a thing called ‘paper’, which was an ultra-thin kind of bendable and foldable one-time-use monitor that required no power. The compass is far to advanced for me to understand, compared to understanding the simple GPS technology that just relies acquisition codes, PRNs, Kalman filters, atomic clocks etc.
2 KoS // Aug 31, 2007 at 6:47 pm

Bah, who needs a map or GPS. Just wing it!! Add some excitement/spice to life.

KoS
3 Chad // Aug 31, 2007 at 6:51 pm

All you need to do is remember that moss grows on the East side of trees.. or was that West? Hmm, South?

Well, anyway.. follow the crows, they will lead you to fast food restaurants.
4 James Fee // Aug 31, 2007 at 9:38 pm

Chad, what are these trees you speak of? Are they like cactus?
5 Robin Capper // Aug 31, 2007 at 10:00 pm

Cant remember the origin of this,

“I lost my GPS, it knows where it is but I don’t!”
6 Bonzo // Sep 2, 2007 at 12:34 pm

I thought Arizona was completely subdivided over and developed by now, so how could you possibly get lost? Oh, I think I kow..you must be concerned about getting stuck in a maze of dead-end cul-de-sacs, right? Yeah, you’ll need a GPS for that. Perhaps you can flag down a soccer mom, most of those SUVs and minivans have GPS in them nowadays.
7 matthew // Sep 3, 2007 at 9:30 pm

what happened to the mouse functionality on those google map insets? i’m using firefox 2.0…
8 Justin // Sep 4, 2007 at 7:54 am

Bart: Krusty’s tired of having phonies around pretending to be his friend. I’m sure he’ll find plenty of people who’ll like him for who he is.
Krusty: Uh… that could happen! Who needs friends? The incessant beeping of the Global Positioning System is all the companionship I need. [laughs and pats the system fondly, before receiving a powerful electric shock and throwing it into the water.]
Krusty: Tell me where you are now, you bastard!
9 Cellulose // Sep 4, 2007 at 11:30 am

why does this feel like the teaser to a Navteq or TeleAtlas sales pitch?
10 James Fee // Sep 4, 2007 at 12:21 pm

I didn’t end up getting a new GPS and somehow I survived. We had a great time, but it was a little hot for me. I have to buy one of those battery operated tent ceiling fans next time. I slept out under the tarp the first night because it was so hot.

Damn global warming….
11 camper // Sep 4, 2007 at 12:38 pm

You call this camping? GPS, battery operated fans, etc… what the heck ever happening to some good old backpacking camping where you carry all that you need several miles down a trail and get away from all the plastic consumable crap that everyone has become “dependent” on?
12 James Fee // Sep 4, 2007 at 12:46 pm

Who said I didn’t go “down the trail” to get to the campsite?
13 Cellulose // Sep 4, 2007 at 3:58 pm

@Camper

A lot of people do what you describe. They’re called homeless.
14 Karl Rove // Sep 4, 2007 at 4:04 pm

James, I think what you are doing is called Glamping.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18754116/site/newsweek
15 James Fee // Sep 4, 2007 at 5:04 pm

Glamping, I like that.

I didn’t lug around that backpack following my Dad backpacking all those years to not have silk sheets when I’m nearing 40.
16 anon // Sep 4, 2007 at 7:22 pm

You don’t need GPS to go camping.
17 James Fee // Sep 4, 2007 at 7:27 pm

anon: I’m sorry, I can’t buy that. Personally I’d rather carry a GPS unit than a bunch of quad maps. You can make an argument to me that car camping and backpacking are very different (I’d buy that since I’ve done both and I sure a heck don’t carry a 50 gallon cooler of beer on the backpacking trip), using a map and a compass and using a GPS are two very similar things.

I geocode my photos that I take so you can bet that I carry my GPS even when I’m taking my son to the Phoenix Zoo. Using a quad map from 1972 doesn’t make you more of a camper or hiker tan someone using the latest GPS device.
18 Chad // Sep 5, 2007 at 3:42 am

@anon: Hmm, you have not seen some of the locations I have gone camping then.

And if you go up into the Michigan U.P. to camp and hike.. you NEED a GPS because a compass just /will not work/ because of all the ore in the ground.

But you should always carry both though.. GPS’s can run out if you are out of batteries.

Besides, having a GPS with you when you are out is just plain fun as well.
19 glenn // Sep 5, 2007 at 6:19 am

dude,
why not just get yourself a nice new N95 GPS-enabled smartphone.. then you’ll always have a GPS and a multi-media computer wherever you you.. man, you could blog away all week-end while camping, grab pics, upload vids, etc… ;0)
20 KoS // Sep 5, 2007 at 7:01 am

If Surviorman and that other guy can navigate/camp without a GPS, so can you!! It’s on TV, anyone can do it, right? They make it look so easy, a urban man can do it.

KoS
21 Chad // Sep 5, 2007 at 7:08 am

Bear.. er Edward I mean? He has a film crew to tell him where to go (really though.. you should read the MvW forum on the Discovery site.. brutal against him now)

As for the Survivorman.. it was interesting how he did the time map to build a simple survey of the area.
22 James Fee // Sep 5, 2007 at 7:42 am

Glenn, I’m a Verizon customer and I’ve got serious issues with GSM. If Nokia has a CDMA, maybe I’d look.
23 Larry Geiger // Sep 5, 2007 at 12:12 pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmHIZX_993Y
Please, Jim, buy a real GPS!
24 Bill // Sep 7, 2007 at 3:50 am

Your Google map keeps putting this in my Google toolbar every time the page loads: “Jerome, AZ, United States of America”

My wife asked me the other day why I’m so interested in Jerome, AZ.
25 James Fee // Sep 7, 2007 at 6:38 am

Interesting, I’ll remove it. Wonder why Google does that.
26 Bill // Sep 7, 2007 at 7:15 pm

It wasn’t a big deal to me. I was amused that she thought I kept checking out Arizona. Thanks for removing it, though.