The magic directional box

I’ve been using my GPS in a rather mundane way recently. I know the route I want to take, but I turn the GPS on anyway. Even though it never takes me the route or direction I normally go, it does keep very good track of my arrival time. That way I know if I have time to make a stop before I get to wherever I am going. Neat trick that.

This morning on my way into work, I noticed that I wasn’t getting yelled at as often. Wow, did this thing learn my pattern overnight? Then I noticed it wasn’t telling me when the turns were coming up. The only thing I heard from it, was “re-calculating” every time I deviated from its intended route. The route would show up mapped, but I would only “hear” about it when I made at least a 90 degree turn from the intended route. Something strange was happening.

Then I noticed something odd. My little blue truck on the screen was not driving on the mapped road. In fact, it looked to be about 0.2 miles off the road. If the GPS was correct, I was driving through fields, houses, trees and over creeks (all at 55 or so). No wonder it didn’t talk much, it didn’t really know where I was.

Apparently, I’m having some trouble getting satellite reception. This is the second time this happened in a week. I can’t find any news articles on GPS disruptions, so it may just be a local thing. I wonder….

justj