That Magellan Cyclo 505
The Magellan Cyclo 505, which comes pre-loaded with maps detailing the entire United States of America, has a feature that allows the user to navigate to points of interest or POI. While at Greenway500 bike shop, we had a look at the Magellan Cyclo 505 Mike had bought to test, study, and get his mind around so he could become sufficiently knowledgeable to discuss with customers the product’s benefits and drawbacks. The points of interest loaded on the Cyclo units includes Bike Shops as a category. Neither my updated (software/maps) unit nor his just-out-of-the-box unit showed any other bike store in the greater Muncie area than Goldman’s Bike Shop at Selma. That’s got to discourage a retailer from carrying a product that only lists a competitor in his category. I checked the Magellan support website today and compared the POI update file (dates from May 2014) with the file on my 505 unit. Mine is a more recent iteration, and it does not show the Greenway500 bike shop as a point of interest. I made a suggestion about this on the Magellan website, but who knows whether the company is even a little bit responsive to support website suggestions?
During the fairly steady rain through which I rode on the day of Richmond trip, the Cyclo’s touch screen became entirely unresponsive after first becoming EXTREMELY SLOW to respond to touch input. Eventually, the screen just froze (appearing to register no new data as I rode) and I had to restart the unit. Even then, it failed to respond to touch and only thereafter did respond to touch after I’d dried the screen with a piece of toilet paper from a trailhead outhouse. Then, instead of hitting the arrows to move from screen to screen to see what hills were coming up or location on the map or how far I had left to ride on the track I’d pre-loaded from RideWithGPS.com, I left it on the basic data screen showing average MPH, distance traveled, current speed, and so forth. But screen fail irked me and I wasted too much time monkeying around with the device.
When I first used the Cyclo in Indiana, it took several minutes to acquire satellite signals and begin recording data. The same thing again happened when I used the Cyclo again in Tennessee after returning home last week.
Church Attendance
This year, we were at the farm for two Sundays, and on both days we attended Church of the Nazarene worship services with family. Although my own theology is extremely Calvinistic, I noted the Nazarene preacher did a reasonable job of exegeting the texts from Colossians. The emphasis of his preaching, though, fell upon application. I appreciated the fellow’s work and, with the exception of the congregation’s musical program, enjoyed worshiping with the Nazarenes on consecutive Sundays. Certainly, my young son enjoyed the children’s Sunday School class and Children’s Church programs. That said, he was unable to tell me anything he learned on either Sunday.
This year, we missed the Vacation Bible School grand finale worship-show. I was okay with that.
The first Sunday at the Nazarene church, one of the pastor’s PowerPoint slides failed to load or loaded in the wrong order and he seemed peeved saying, “That’s wrong,” and waiting for the sound/tech guys to correct the problem. I wondered why he didn’t just use spoken words to convey his point when technology failed. The following Sunday, something similar happened and the pastor simply carried on speaking through the technical glitch, indicating he is fully capable of unlearning reliance upon the sort of electronic audio/visual marvels that have become the hallmark of the modern worship service experience. This is to the good.
About the musical program, the thing that irked me most was the overwhelmingly LOUD canned audio presence – so that even when the audience was encouraged to join in singing, they were completely inaudible. At one point, the music-team sang a song that struck me as a sort of incantation or spell intended to conjure the third person of the Trinity. The four singers stood in front of their microphones each waving at least one hand in the air overhead, rhyming “Holy Spirit, you’re welcome here – come and fill the atmosphere.” The lyrics would have been more appropriate to a séance, in my reckoning. Anyway, to accompany the song, the canned music included repeated heavy bass-notes that reverberated against my spine threatening to convulse my colon and thereby producing a windy emanation from my bowels. I was not pleased. To me, this kind of attempt by a congregational music team to impose its will on my mind and body by an intrusive attempt to establish its rhythm in my person is among the most offensive forms of unwanted touching. The obvious goal of this musical number was to render the audience susceptible to the power of suggestion for the purpose of faux-charismatic manifestation. I don’t think that’s Christian. I felt angry and wanted to smash the church’s audio equipment – sort of like Gideon destroying the village Baal idol.
Paternal Guilt
On a couple of the days I rode, I felt pretty guilty about not spending the time playing outside with my son. The guilt was a little assuaged by the fact that he seemed to enjoy the time spent with his cousins. On one afternoon, I’d planned to take him and a cousin to a local playground to run and climb, but a behavioral problem interfered with that. On another afternoon, I’d planned to take my son and some of the other kids to a lakeside playground to run, climb, and throw rocks in the water, but an old school-mate of one of the kids’ mothers showed up with two of her own children and all the kids played at the farm together. I’m glad my son seems to have bonded with his cousins – he was very sad the day we left for Tennessee because he didn’t want to leave them. Still, I need to spend more time with the boy on these summer trips. I’d hoped to take him canoeing at Daleville, but the heavy rains during the previous weeks made that seem like a less than safe idea for a father-son outing. Maybe next year.
Christov_Tenn 