Good Morning from foggy Ventura, California--i suspect that the fog will burn off and we will have a sunny late afternoon/afternoon, so i really must finish my pre-rainy season pruning and shredding here at Cockapoo HQ and get down to the rent house and work on it.

My topic for today, and that phrase reminds me of a preacher from my childhood, but never fear, Bible verses are not involved, is USE OF THE GLOBAL POSITIONING SYSTEM that is almost surely in your automobile and/or your phone.

My oldest son is a tech guy, a software engineer, and he works for a big big big big company in Cupertino, California. as you would imagine, he is an early adopter. When he came home for a visit with his first gps i thought he was NUTS and that's not the first nor last time i held that opinion but so far his tech innovations have proven to enhance my life, so much for my thoughts on tech. Mike was geotagging before geotagging was cool and i just couldn't understand the attraction or need.

of course, i've been in this town for 66-3/4 yrs, so i know where i'm going...except when i don't.

a few years ago my husb and i decided to rent an apartment in Florence for a couple of weeks (Untours) and we wanted to hunker down and enjoy the city. no rental car was necessary nor was one practical because THERE IS NO PLACE TO PARK, anyway. i realized that, altho we are map junkies, life would be easier if i had a gps and knew how to use it. (let me say here that husb is older and has rheum arth, so dexterity is an issue, hard to press those little buttons, so i do the manipulation of remotes, etc.) i bought a great little gps from Garmin and we proceeded to tour our home town using gps. we decided that the only way to get familiar with it and to trust it was to use it to go places we already knew how to find, and that is what we did. we discovered that we could deviate and the garmin would try to get us back on track, etc. we then branched out and started heading for the wilds of the Los Angeles Freeway system, etc. We discovered the pure joy of leaving the designated route when traffic backed up and proceeding on surface streets as smoothly as possible. WOW

on to Florence where the massive stone buildings and narrow streets didn't always make satellite connections easy, but gps was magnificent and we marched all over the city using it for about 10 days and then, stupid me, (i should say, stupid-retired-cop me) i put the garmin in my rear pocket while waiting for a bus and when we got home...no gps. sadly, husb had put his little wallet in his breast pocket and it had disappeared as well. i'll put the rest of the story in another post. it involves some extremely attractive carabiniere...

when we returned to California, w/o garmin, i started researching smart phones and eventually replaced my un-smart phone with a Blackberry and used the gps it had installed. eventually it died and i bought an iPhone, we replaced our old cars with a new one and started using our Honda gps.

in the meantime, i've been hearing stories from friends about getting lost, trying to find a gas station, trying to return to their hotel (Santa Fe trip), etc. each of these people is in possession of at least one gps. WHY AREN'T THEY USING the tech that they are paying for?

i just don't understand it. if i, a poorly educated elderly woman can learn to use a gps, believe me, anyone can do it. this tool is liberating! this tool is gratifying! this tool is everything my son predicted and more...do us all a favor and save yourself time and energy: start using your gps.

WARNING: 1) bring your chargers when you are using your smart phone. i have an extra cable and leave it plugged in the car. 2) bring backup maps: we have lost cell service here in SoCal during natural disasters and big events (like the opening of the Reagan Library).

relax and enjoy