For the last couple years, my sister has hosted an Easter get together. Given my knee problems and how the clock is getting ever closer to when I'm supposed to hop on my bike and head for Florida, I decided to ride there to get a sense on how my knee would react.
Originally I was going solo, but at the last minute, Captain Bob decided he would join me. We decided to mostly ride our standard route. We did decide to avoid the bastard hill by swinging over to Route 206. From there we wound through Princeton until we got back on track.
About 3 miles from sis's, we were going through an intersection. I was about 20 feet behind the captain. As I watched helplessly, a gold Hyundai went about halfway past the captain and turned right.
The captain was down.
The woman did stop about 20 feet up the cross road. I asked the captain if he was alright, etc. He said he was OK and actually seemed to be. Turned out that he didn't have even the smallest patch of road rash. The most significant problem was a broken helmet.
The woman moved her car in to a parking lot. I fiddled with my Droid camera trying to figure out how it worked. I figured I should take pictures of what I could for record keeping. Most importantly, I wanted to get a pic of the rear of her car in case she bolted so I'd have the license number (turns out those fears were completely unfounded).
We moved our bicyles over to where she had parked. She was about to give out her info when the police came. The most amazing part was that any given time, there must have been at least 3 police/EMT vehicles there. Another would come and one would go. By the end there must have been 8-12 different vehicles show up.
The EMTs felt up the captain, took his blood pressure, etc. The captain refused treatment and they called off the ambulance.
I called my sister and related just a bit of information to get their imagination going. I basically said that we were delayed and I was trying to keep the captain out of jail.
Captain Bob declined filing a report so the last police officier left and we got on our way. His front fender was rubbing the tire so we performed a quick adjustment and then really got on our way.
About a mile down the road as we were discussing the accident, the captain ran in to a curb and went down again. This time, the blood was flowing all over the place. It was like the Monty Python Black Knight skit.
Somehow we dealt with accident 2. We had to adjust his fender again, but then we were on our way.
The rest of the trip was uneventful and we got to sis's without further incident.
But after a while, the captain was on the cell phone talking to Mrs. Captain. She isn't at sis's because Mrs. Captain is visiting her daughter for Easter. She has gotten back to Pennsylvania. Just to the I78 tollbooth. Her car has died.
Fortunately, AAA was on the way and that seemed to end well as the last I heard Mrs. Captain was back and home with her dead car. Captain called when he got home later that night. We'll have to see how he is after his doctor visit.
Showing posts with label Droid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Droid. Show all posts
2010-04-04
2010-01-25
Droid Drippings
I finally bit the bullet.
About 10 days ago, I traded in the old cell phone for a Motorola Droid. Joined the20th21rst century.
I would have gotten an iPhone like Peachy did, but after reading a lot on the internet and talking to a bunch of people who have an iPhone concluded that the network was a significant issue. I know a couple people who haven't had a problem, but Peachy didn't have a network in South Carolina. Her cousins have dropped calls (although Rachel seems to think Paul is exaggerating a little). Given that the main justification is that I need to keep track of shuttle launches and hurricanes on the Florida trip, I felt that I ought to stick with Verizon and the Droid seems to the obvious choice for that network.
It is pretty cool alright. It isn't quite a PC in my shirt pocket, but it isn't far off. The basics are there out of the box. GMail, Calendar, navigation, and maps are there. It has pre-loaded apps like FaceBook and twitter. I'm not on FaceBook and I've written about 4 tweets total so I haven't even tried those out.
I can just connect a USB cable to the PC for charging although that is slower than the AC charger. I suspect that is because of the current restrictions on a USB port. The AC charger is rated about 1.75x the maximum USB port. The AC charger is interesting. It has a fairly compact plug and a USB cable. So I can unplug that cable and plug it into the PC.
While charging on the PC, I can backup the SD card and/or download MP3s to the card.
Weather Channel
I added a WeatherChannel app that isn't quite as good the web interface but it will do. It would be nice if it showed the several days of hour by hour as the web version does and provide as much information.
Cherry Radio
Cherry Radio is a streaming radio application. I've found WHYY (NPR) and fox news radio. If I can keep the battery charged, this should provide night time listening. I do need to find a 60s/70s music station too.
MyMaps
MyMaps is the Droid app for interfacing with google maps. MyMaps doesn't work very well. It crashes fairly often and sometimes sits for hours loading a single map. While push pins are showing up, the routes that Skippy put in for our trip are not showing up. Hopefully this will get better by August.
Google Sky Map
Google Sky Map is like google maps but for the heavens. It shows planets, constellations etc. The App seems to work ok but I haven't really been able to test it against my night sky as it has been raining forever here.
My only regret at this point is carrying the thing around. I never found a good way to haul around the old flip phone. This of course is much worse. I need more shirt pockets. Or maybe it's time to go Euro boy and start carrying a pocket book.
That's about all I've tried at this point other than GMail which works but mail is boring, so no review of that. I'll have to post an update at some point on battery life and such.
About 10 days ago, I traded in the old cell phone for a Motorola Droid. Joined the
I would have gotten an iPhone like Peachy did, but after reading a lot on the internet and talking to a bunch of people who have an iPhone concluded that the network was a significant issue. I know a couple people who haven't had a problem, but Peachy didn't have a network in South Carolina. Her cousins have dropped calls (although Rachel seems to think Paul is exaggerating a little). Given that the main justification is that I need to keep track of shuttle launches and hurricanes on the Florida trip, I felt that I ought to stick with Verizon and the Droid seems to the obvious choice for that network.
It is pretty cool alright. It isn't quite a PC in my shirt pocket, but it isn't far off. The basics are there out of the box. GMail, Calendar, navigation, and maps are there. It has pre-loaded apps like FaceBook and twitter. I'm not on FaceBook and I've written about 4 tweets total so I haven't even tried those out.
I can just connect a USB cable to the PC for charging although that is slower than the AC charger. I suspect that is because of the current restrictions on a USB port. The AC charger is rated about 1.75x the maximum USB port. The AC charger is interesting. It has a fairly compact plug and a USB cable. So I can unplug that cable and plug it into the PC.
While charging on the PC, I can backup the SD card and/or download MP3s to the card.
Weather Channel
I added a WeatherChannel app that isn't quite as good the web interface but it will do. It would be nice if it showed the several days of hour by hour as the web version does and provide as much information.
Cherry Radio
Cherry Radio is a streaming radio application. I've found WHYY (NPR) and fox news radio. If I can keep the battery charged, this should provide night time listening. I do need to find a 60s/70s music station too.
MyMaps
MyMaps is the Droid app for interfacing with google maps. MyMaps doesn't work very well. It crashes fairly often and sometimes sits for hours loading a single map. While push pins are showing up, the routes that Skippy put in for our trip are not showing up. Hopefully this will get better by August.
Google Sky Map
Google Sky Map is like google maps but for the heavens. It shows planets, constellations etc. The App seems to work ok but I haven't really been able to test it against my night sky as it has been raining forever here.
My only regret at this point is carrying the thing around. I never found a good way to haul around the old flip phone. This of course is much worse. I need more shirt pockets. Or maybe it's time to go Euro boy and start carrying a pocket book.
That's about all I've tried at this point other than GMail which works but mail is boring, so no review of that. I'll have to post an update at some point on battery life and such.