Outside?

[Elspeth]

I am sure the one in our phones is trying to kill us. We were in SF recently and trying to make it up to Union Square from the Walt Disney Museum. Hubby is co pilot and it says go up Hyde Street. I am like that sounds familiar, why is that hill near vertical? Crap that is Hyde Street?!?! Got right behind the trolley car. They stopped at the crest of the hill, I am in my Aunt's Explorer that I have never driven. and there are a bunch of tourists standing in the road taking pictures of something, so out goes the camera pointed behind us and it is Alcatraz. I was not breathing well after that. I have named them after the thing that is trying to kill you in Portal.

[bhskittykatt]

I am sure the one in our phones is trying to kill us. We were in SF recently and trying to make it up to Union Square from the Walt Disney Museum. Hubby is co pilot and it says go up Hyde Street. I am like that sounds familiar, why is that hill near vertical? Crap that is Hyde Street?!?! Got right behind the trolley car. They stopped at the crest of the hill, I am in my Aunt's Explorer that I have never driven. and there are a bunch of tourists standing in the road taking pictures of something, so out goes the camera pointed behind us and it is Alcatraz. I was not breathing well after that. I have named them after the thing that is trying to kill you in Portal.

Hubby lived in Astoria, OR when I first met him. Normally, I drove around the hill to get to his place. One day, there was a nasty wreck by the high school and the road was closed. I knew there was some way over the hill, but I couldn't remember it, so I was just looking at cross streets to see which one went all the way up. I found 8th street. From the bottom, it didn't seem that steep....as I climbed, though, I literally had to have one foot sort of propping me up to keep me from falling back while I clung to the steering wheel! And some schmuck put a stop sign on the top of this hill! Did I mention I was driving a stick-shift? I did not stop at that stop sign. (And I have never mastered the parking brake trick for starting on a steep hill.)

[PepperElf]

i don't know if the car-gps units do this but the handhelds do... they show you what satellites they can read and how strong the signal is. technically you only need 3 satellites for lat/long and 4 if you want elevation too, but ... in practice it seems to take 4+ to get everything running

[WoodenSunshine]

We were on a trip to PA and had to stop at a truck stop which was not on my GPS's maps. We were leaving to go back onto the highway and the GPS kept yelling, "HEAD WEST! HEAD WEST! HEAD WEST!"

[PepperElf]

But I don't want to go outside! The cursed Daystar, it burnssss ussss!

my boyfriend calls it the "hurty yellow thing"

[Sonoma]

I inherited my Dad's old Garmin GPS. When my sister used it for a trip to Disneyland, she named the GPS "Linda". Linda needs to have her coffee in the morning, or she will not work. The first 5-10 minutes of the trip, Linda will not give you directions. It's not like she has to do an extensive search to get the location, since we turned her on in the same physical location she was in when she was shut off the night before.

Fortunately, BFF now has a smart phone w/ a GPS application, so we shouldn't have to rely on Linda too much anymore. Though I will likely bring her on a lengthy road trip, since I like to be able to see where we're going, rather than trying to read BFF's cell phone & risking a wreck or a ticket.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

I inherited my Dad's old Garmin GPS. When my sister used it for a trip to Disneyland, she named the GPS "Linda". Linda needs to have her coffee in the morning, or she will not work. The first 5-10 minutes of the trip, Linda will not give you directions. It's not like she has to do an extensive search to get the location, since we turned her on in the same physical location she was in when she was shut off the night before.

Does she sound like she's grumpy b/c she's been woke up too early?

My youngest sister has a Garmin . . . and it's usually programmed with the Cartman voice.

Nothing like going down the road and all of a sudden you hear Cartman saying "Turn left into Kyle's mom's vagina."

The shock wears off only after the first hundred times you hear that. . .

[KatherineB]

My sat-nav has Stephen Fry.

[Miss Maple Leaf]

My stepmom's GPS likes to pull directions out of its ass.

One time, when she and my dad were still living in Alberta (they've since moved to mainland Nova Scotia) she and my aunt S had to drive across country to do some errand (It's been so long that I can't remember what the errand was or how far east they had to drive. My memory, it is shit).
When they got to Winnipeg the route they were told to follow took them to the Canada/US border rather than taking them into Ontario.
The guard there told them it would be too much hassle to turn around to exit and to just go on through and come back the next day (it was getting dark by this time).

They ended up spending the night in a motel and then driving back to the border the next day, where the guard they spoke to was surprised by their story. While he let them through with no problems he told them that the first guard should never have told them to just cross the border like that, that he should have directed them where to go so that they could get back on their way without having to go into another country.

Another time, after my dad and stepmom had moved back to Nova Scotia I was visiting them while on vacation. I was going somewhere with my stepmom and we were using the GPS because she still wasn't quite familiar with the town we were in.
As we were driving down the road, the GPS kept telling us to "Turn Right! Turn Right!" The only problem? There was a rather long river to our right, with no bridge to cross until well after the GPS had already started directing us to turn.

My stepmom later hooked her GPS up to her computer and went online to update its maps, which didn't help one bit. The damn thing still kept trying to drive us into that river whenever we were in the town. I wonder if it was trying to kill us or something.

[KatherineB]

My stepmom later hooked her GPS up to her computer and went online to update its maps, which didn't help one bit. The damn thing still kept trying to drive us into that river whenever we were in the town. I wonder if it was trying to kill us or something.

It wasn't an ATMOS brand one, perchance, was it? If so, I have some bad news for you...

[Jay 2K Winger]

It wasn't an ATMOS brand one, perchance, was it? If so, I have some bad news for you...

YOU WILL FACE ME, SIR!

[KatherineB]

YOU WILL FACE ME, SIR!

Hey, it's only a little threat, I suppose...

[BrenDAnn]

The few GPS my dad has had have seemed to work well, although the one he has now wanted to send him weaving and winding through residential streets to get where he was going at my oldest niece's wedding. The funniest GPS story was back when Dad was in rehab after a bad accident. My sister drove, on her own, to meet Dad, Mom and myself in the city his rehab was in. She had a GPS with her. The GPS proceeded to flip shit on her, and drove her crazy, so she took it off the dash and tossed it in the back seat. The whole time she was in town (I was riding with her for a bit), the damn thing was in the back seat screaming "TURN AROUND NOW! MAKE A U TURN AHEAD!" etc etc. Yeah, sure, we'll make a u-turn...on a four lane (two lanes each way, divided) road, with fairly heavy traffic on it. Mmhmm. ETA: The GPS on my phone is alright most of the time. Sometimes it'll show me several miles from where I actually am. It's pretty helpful, all in all.

[paxillated]

Bhskitty said: "I have been in the passenger seat before, with my phone on navigation in one hand, and printed Google Maps directions in the other, screaming "Fight! Fight for my love!!!" Hubby threatened to make me walk home..."

The quote you need is this:
"Hunt! Hunt! Hunt! Don’t stop huntin’ ‘til it’s taxidermy time!"
- Ray Lewis, Baltimore Ravens linebacker (#52), during the Thanksgiving Day 2011 game against the S.F. 49ers. He had been sidelined by a previous injury, and was yelling to the defense on the field. The Ravens won16-6.

And if I ever get a GPS, I want Brian Blessed's voice.

[kpzra]

To be fair, our new GPS works just fine inside. The old one, I was in the middle of Nevada desert and it picked up one satellite. It's 15 years old and been on several deployment with hubby though, as a vet it's earned a right to be cranky...lol

I do need to do the update though, it was freaking out when we went over the new highway/bypass that opened last month. It kept telling me to turn around and take the "unmarked dirt road to the utility road (power line road) to ..." We were just driving from Carson City to Reno, not some weird out of the way place. Oh well, it has lots of geocaches pre stored in it for when we are driving around.