Sunday, June 2, 2019

Is Obama Stupid Or Malicious - Plus, Why I've Dumped Waze

According to this morning's daily email from the Blaze, ex-President Obama was in Brazil recently and spread a bunch of absolute lies about American gun laws.
The moment was captured and put on YouTube, where it has since been removed by the user. But not before it was shared on Twitter and Facebook. 

"Some of you may be aware, our gun laws in the United States don't make much sense," said Obama. "Anybody can buy any weapon any time, without--" he had to pause as the foreign audience applauded him criticizing the United States. He then continued saying "You know, without much, if any regulation, they can buy it over the Internet, they can buy machine guns."
At the risk of being too pedantic, and at the cost of repeating myself yet again, when anyone questions whether another person is stupid or malicious that's not an exclusive OR choice.  They can be, and often are, both stupid AND malicious.

I feel pretty confident that my readership doesn't need the facts explained here, so I won't.  For the rest of you, nothing after the words "don't make much sense" is true.  Not even slightly true.  To borrow a quote from author Caleb Howe:
But Obama obviously wasn't going for facts. He was just indulging one of American liberalism's favorite pastimes: criticizing America to an audience abroad.

In fact, that was kind of his specialty, back in the day.

My absence of a post yesterday was not at all planned, but ran afoul of too much day with not enough free time. 

Yesterday was a memorial service for a friend's mother, about an hour's drive away in the center of the state.  We've been to this place once before but a year ago, so while I remembered much of the area and how to get there, knowing exactly where to turn was fuzzy.  During our 2017 eclipse trip, we auditioned the GPS driving app Waze, and while we weren't delighted with it ("I'll give it a 3 out of 5") it still promises the helpfulness of users reporting accidents, delays, and other problems.  I've had it off and on my phone since then but thought I'd use it. 

It's hard to estimate how big an audience an app like Waze has, but these folks imply it's one of the more popular GPS-driven apps with over 30 Million users in the US.  During the eclipse trip we compared it to the native maps app on the phone, and there didn't appear to be much difference.  Except for the unnecessary side trip Waze imposed on us that day. 

The place we were going to was on a street called Lakeview Drive.  This is like Main Street in being the kind of name that there could be one in almost every town, maybe more than one, so we were careful entering the full address, down to the zip code.   As we neared the end of the drive, Waze directed us off the main road we knew to be on.  It wasn't completely clear why, but we followed its driving directions.  There was construction going on and we didn't know if was routing us around that.  It wasn't long before we found we were not just at a wrong address, we were in the wrong city, about 10 miles away from our friend's home. 

Here's the kicker: on the Waze app and on the native Maps app on the iPhone, it said we were on  Lakeview Drive.  On the the street sign in front of us it said Lakeside Boulevard. 

There's the occasional story in the news with the theme that someone following their GPS drove into a lake or did something stupid like that.  This is how it happens.  When we were on that street, the signs clearly said Lakeshore Blvd and as you know there's no way to convince Waze (or Maps) that it's wrong.  It was telling us to drive into a park near a pavilion, which we knew was wrong, but it took a lot of puzzling to figure out how to get where we needed to be. 

We ended up being over an hour late to the memorial service and being later getting home than expected.

Like many people, we have a few options for a GPS.  Most people have switched from a standalone unit (Garmin is still the big name) to an app on their phone.  I have an '09 Ford Exploder with the first gen Microsoft Sync; that has GPS maps in it (that cost about as much to upgrade as to buy an entire Garmin GPS).  We have choices.  For now, I've deleted the Waze app again and I think I'm going back to my standalone Garmin GPS.

Thankfully, we didn't come across anything like this sign.  Posted here; somewhere in the history I think it said this was in New Hampshire. 


  1. Is Obama Stupid or Malicious?

    Next question.

    1. That's and, not or.

  2. Oh, and re: Waze, etc.

    Actual ink-and-paper mapmakers routinely put imaginary streets, non-existent connectors, mislabeled names, etc. into their copyrighted product, as Easter Eggs to catch copyright infringement, among other reasons.

    Fly-By-Night GPS companies have been caught over and over importing that data right into their product, with no cartological oversight whatsoever, and making users beta-test it.

    Sometimes in situations best described as "sketchy".
    But hey, dead consumers don't file lawsuits.

    I once tried to bypass freeway congestion using smartphone GPS.
    After an hour of circling in maze-like cul-de-sacs that connected with nothing they showed, I managed to follow my nose down a hill, reconnect to the jammed freeway, and suffer through the route that actually worked.

    I would never use map-based GPS again, unless I had verified it in person (which kind of obviates the need for GPS, doesn't it?) and I still carry paper map and compass into the backcountry, because dead consumers can't sue.


  3. Google owns Wayze. Google Maps is slowly incorporating its features. That's why there is little difference.

  4. Whether or not Obozo is stupid is an irrelevant question. He isn't an abject moron like many on the left but neither is he the brilliant academician the left wants the world to believe he is....what he ACTUALLY is would be a PUPPET. If left to his own devices I doubt we'd see or hear much from him. He'd be content to shoot hoops, smoke some choom and play butt pirate with his buddies (he hasn't been called "bathhouse Barry" for nothing). He might occasionally make a speech for select i.e. receptive and enthusiastic audiences to make some spending money but he is NOT a political animal. He's a PUPPET. But unfortunately for the SCOAMF when he signed on to be the mouthpiece of George Soros and the commie left he failed to realize that when you make a deal with the devil it's for life. Now he MUST do their bidding or they will punish him.
    That means his puppet master Iranian born Valerie Jarrett will continue
    to write his speeches for him and plan his itinerary and he WILL continue to mouth those words, go where he is told and do what he is instructed to do. He sold his soul to become President. Now he's paying the price.

  5. Take off and photograph it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

  6. Within 10 miles of my home there are 2 signs that say essentially that "Your GPS is Wrong." There used to be 3, the subdivision in question brought in some dirt, and did landscaping that makes it pretty clear.

    One of the 2 signs is in front of a creek, where the bridge has been gone for at least 50 years. (Some remnants were probably visible on the photo.) That sign was recently made larger and with better paint because "How can my GPS be wrong?"

    Then there is one road which seems to have avoided detection by all the mapping companies. (I know because I was trying to find a property for sale when I moved back to Ohio.) So yeah. Don't trust the mapping companies.

  7. @Aesop, I think you were referring to these (came up in an article I was reading last week, had to look up what it meant)

    For the record, there are mechanisms for submitting map/route corrections in Waze, but of course you wouldn't want to be attempting that while driving/navigating, and only the most dedicated would go back and log the issue after the fact.

    I am disappointed that there is not more navigation/orienteering taught in Drivers Ed or the like (even when I took it nearly 20 years ago). I guess this is something the scouts would be teaching if they were still as ubiquitous an organization as they once were.

  8. About 5 years ago or so our stand alone Garmin when tasked with finding the Walmart super cntr. in Asheville NC took us to someones house in the middle of nowhere. We now run the stand alone gps along with both my wifes apple nav app and my android tablets map app. When they disagree we know we are in trouble,but at least we know it in advance.

  9. Map & compass.