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Dispatches From Camp Lobo: Can I Please Light It On Fire?
14 years ago
General
For all of you out there that actually give a toss (that eliminates just about everyone), I present to you the bane of my existence:
http://www.prlog.org/11360809-garmi.....6-for-sale.jpg
This is a Garmin GPSMap 76 hand held GPS unit. It may not look like much but this little bastard has caused me more pain and suffering than anything else, even the the heat! Now, those of you who bothered to read my first dispatch may remember me mentioning the GPS with the 488 foot accuracy. Well, this is it. And it has more tricks up its digital sleeve.
-I usually navigate to points using the compass feature, which displays the distance to the point and the relative direction I should be heading. This all seems well and good but there are some problems. You see, this thing has a lag, so it doesn't actually tell me I've passed a point until a couple of seconds after I've passed it. When one has been standing out in the middle of a field for the last half an hour in 100˚F heat and is desperate to get back into the air conditioned truck, this is rather annoying.
-Another problem is that at times it seems the direction arrow is nailed down. What I mean by that is that when I go to make a correction in the direction I'm heading the little arrow does nothing. All the north, south, east, and west markers move but not the direction arrow.
-I sometimes suspect that the direction arrow isn't actually pointing in the right direction. There have been occasions when the arrow points, say, south and I've been moving north and I've still been getting closer to the point.
-I've noticed that I can sometimes stand in place is watch the direction arrow spin around and around.
-Then there's the distances it gives me. One of the newer tricks it's pulled is that when I'm walking to a point it will tell me that I'm getting closer and closer. Fifty feet. Forty feet. Thirty feet. Twenty feet. And then it tells me I've gone 200 feet past it. This reading lasts long enough for me to turn around and head in the opposite direction before it tells me that I have, in fact, not gone past the point but I still have fifty feet to go.
-And finally, this morning, I was standing next to a barbed wire fence trying to figure out if I needed to go over it. As I watched the reading on the GPS fluctuated between ten feet and 300 feet. Needless to say, I was very tempted to chuck it in a river and claim I had tripped.
Of course, that's not the only piece of dodgy equipment I have to deal with. The Robel pole is challenging the GPS unit for the position of biggest headache. Just today the string on the one I was using snapped twice. And even when the string is attached it inevitably finds something to snag on, be it a plant, some barbed wire, or me.
That said, there are the little things that make it all worth it. Like when I was in the middle of a corn field doing a bird survey and looked down and saw a crayfish ambling past. Mind you, there was no water in sight, which made this encounter particularly bizarre. Or there was the time we rounded a corner and found an owl in the middle of the road, enjoying a recently departed mouse. Just today I found another animal bone. I think it's part of the spine but I'm not quite sure. It joins the fox skull that we found in the first week in the field. Some of you will be pleased to know that the duo have been dubbed Mulder and Scully...
http://www.prlog.org/11360809-garmi.....6-for-sale.jpg
This is a Garmin GPSMap 76 hand held GPS unit. It may not look like much but this little bastard has caused me more pain and suffering than anything else, even the the heat! Now, those of you who bothered to read my first dispatch may remember me mentioning the GPS with the 488 foot accuracy. Well, this is it. And it has more tricks up its digital sleeve.
-I usually navigate to points using the compass feature, which displays the distance to the point and the relative direction I should be heading. This all seems well and good but there are some problems. You see, this thing has a lag, so it doesn't actually tell me I've passed a point until a couple of seconds after I've passed it. When one has been standing out in the middle of a field for the last half an hour in 100˚F heat and is desperate to get back into the air conditioned truck, this is rather annoying.
-Another problem is that at times it seems the direction arrow is nailed down. What I mean by that is that when I go to make a correction in the direction I'm heading the little arrow does nothing. All the north, south, east, and west markers move but not the direction arrow.
-I sometimes suspect that the direction arrow isn't actually pointing in the right direction. There have been occasions when the arrow points, say, south and I've been moving north and I've still been getting closer to the point.
-I've noticed that I can sometimes stand in place is watch the direction arrow spin around and around.
-Then there's the distances it gives me. One of the newer tricks it's pulled is that when I'm walking to a point it will tell me that I'm getting closer and closer. Fifty feet. Forty feet. Thirty feet. Twenty feet. And then it tells me I've gone 200 feet past it. This reading lasts long enough for me to turn around and head in the opposite direction before it tells me that I have, in fact, not gone past the point but I still have fifty feet to go.
-And finally, this morning, I was standing next to a barbed wire fence trying to figure out if I needed to go over it. As I watched the reading on the GPS fluctuated between ten feet and 300 feet. Needless to say, I was very tempted to chuck it in a river and claim I had tripped.
Of course, that's not the only piece of dodgy equipment I have to deal with. The Robel pole is challenging the GPS unit for the position of biggest headache. Just today the string on the one I was using snapped twice. And even when the string is attached it inevitably finds something to snag on, be it a plant, some barbed wire, or me.
That said, there are the little things that make it all worth it. Like when I was in the middle of a corn field doing a bird survey and looked down and saw a crayfish ambling past. Mind you, there was no water in sight, which made this encounter particularly bizarre. Or there was the time we rounded a corner and found an owl in the middle of the road, enjoying a recently departed mouse. Just today I found another animal bone. I think it's part of the spine but I'm not quite sure. It joins the fox skull that we found in the first week in the field. Some of you will be pleased to know that the duo have been dubbed Mulder and Scully...
And Mulder and Scully... XD Boy, I miss that show.