x86 Core Euthanasia

My computer is sort of like my pet. I buy nice things for it. I'm wary about how it will get along with the other computers, and I'm always excited to see what it can do after I install new parts. (The cats, by the way, love their new spider monkey tails. If you haven't made the plunge yet, it's totally worth it. If you've ever seen a cat running around with a can of soda clutched in its tail, you'll know what I mean.)

Unlike pets, however, if a computer part dies, there's usually a warranty. My current flock of USB ports weren't real wild about being hit with the arm-shaking jolt of static electricity I gathered from the cats, carpet and fuzzy office chair. They showed their displeasure by going on strike.

"Oh, we just can't have nice things," read the statement issued by the Motherboard, which represents the Amalgamated Union of Universal Serial Bus Ports.

So I did what any nerd would do when one of his under-warranty parts goes on the fritz: I bought some new, faster parts. In this case, I played the role of the evil industrialist, shaking his cane at the hordes of underpaid wage slaves waving signs outside one of his factories.

"To hell with all of you!" I shouted from the half-rolled-down window of my Bentley. "I'll replace you all with robots!"

Now, I'm afraid I've gone too far. You see, my new processor has the ability to "put individual cores to sleep." If they were defective or in pain, I could see a good argument for this, but according to Intel's spec sheet, these cores are perfectly operational! Never did harm to nobody, and Windows 7 is allowed to put them to sleep on a whim.

It may not be as bad as it sounds, because presumably these cores can be resuscitated. It does seem needlessly cruel to keep killing and reviving them over and over again, and I'm sure that my tacit approval will haunt me later.

It's just so fast, though! I'll just stop thinking about the poor little cores and their families, and maybe all the bad thoughts will go away.

The Assault on Something or Other - Part 2

06:00 arrived right on time: at six o'clock in the morning. Cheddar Company awoke to an enthusiastic bugle call, which was followed almost immediately by some enthusiastic swearing, enthusiastic punching, and the enthusiastic eating of a bugle.

"I don't think Major General likes bugles much," said Randy Sourhill, rubbing the sleep and some frost from his eyes.

"Either that, or he likes them a lot. That's the fourth one he's eaten. Ol' Chester just keeps making more, though. Think maybe there's something wrong with that guy?" said Jake Toboggan.

"Definitely. Normal people don't eat that much brass."

"No, I mean Chester."

Randy buckled on his fanny pack of .30 caliber shells. "Oh? Well, yeah. That guy's a moron. He's the one who keeps trying to talk to the Germans while they're shooting at us. Stupid hippie."

"You know, we could probably shorten this war if we just understood each other better," said a voice from outside the tent. Chester's silhouette, distorted by the angle of the early morning sun, painted a streak of disapproval up the wall of green canvas.

"You don't even know German," said Jake.

The silhouette put its hands on its hips. "I don't need to. Love is a universal language."

"Judging by all the bullet holes in your natural fibers, I'd say Jerry's been speakin' to you in the language of lead."

Chester did not have a chance to respond to this witty rejoinder, however. A larger, angrier silhouette appeared on the tent wall and booted him offscreen.

"You two ass sandwiches better quit watchin' tent movies and get your balls in gear, dammit!" Major General Whack Buffalo thundered. "Fuck!" he added.

--------------

Cheddar Company stood in the snow in a semicircle around the Major General. He had a map in one hand and a bazooka in the other, and was furiously slamming them together.

"This is what we'll do to that place until we find every fucking ammo drop and Nazi sympathizer in the town of Somethinggrad! We'll stomp the damn out of it! We'll chew it up and," he stuffed the map into his mouth, chewed and swallowed, "we'll wait two to four hours and crap it into a fucking bush!"

"Hell yeah!" cheered Cheddar Company, with the exception of Chester. He was too busy drawing a picture of a swastika and a peace sign shaking hands.

"Sir? How are we going to find the town? That was our only map," said an unnamed private who was just begging to be punched. The Major General punched him. Then he angrily tore off his hat and twisted it into a baguette of felt and brass and held it up to the side of his head.

"Major General Whack Buffalo here. What the fuck, over?" He stood in silence, turning red. A little circle of bare ground appeared around him, steaming, as the snow melted. "Roger! Wilco! Goddammit! Over!" he shouted into his hat, before unrolling it and mashing it back onto his head.

"Control says the town of Somethinggrad is that way!" he bellowed, pointing to a town on the horizon. "Form up, you bunch of worthless hippo-lickers!"

The company packed up their gear and formed up. Single file, they stood with their packs on and their rifles hoisted smartly over their shoulders. Major General Buffalo strolled along the line, punching the soldiers he didn't like, which was all of them. When he came to Pvt. Jake Toboggan, he stopped and glared. The intensity of the General's hatred set fire to a small package of cashews in the private's breast pocket.

"Where the crunchy fuck is your rifle, soldier?" the General spat.

"I broke it, sir!" Jake shouted back, eyes front, back straight, cashew fire crackling merrily.

"And just how in the name of Hitler's damned elbows did you manage to do that?" the General said, in a dangerously quiet tone.

"I was melee attacking a tree, sir!"

"It'd be a waste of time for me to kill you now, since Jerry will do it for me soon enough," the Major General said. "March, fuckers!"

Cheddar Company marched. Overhead, the featureless gray sky was bruised here and there with clouds that portended snow. The tundra under their boots gave way to slushy roads as the boys entered the bombed-out rubble on the outskirts of Somethinggrad.

"Man, this looks bad," said Randy Sourhill. "Jerry could be anywhere in this mess." He looked over his shoulder at his best friend Jake. "So, you don't have a gun? None at all?"

"Nope!" Jake grinned. A blackened patch on his chest was still smoldering. "It's no big deal. I'll just kill a Nazi and take his."

"And how do you plan on doing that without a gun?"

Jake's grin melted. "Oh. Damn." He patted his pants pockets and searched through the pouches on his pack. He opened his mess kit. "I've got a spork," he said weakly. "Hey, did you hear that?"

"I dunno," said Randy. "What'd it sound like?"

"Sort of a 'thoomp' noise. Kinda like someone shaking a wet potato out the end of a pipe. And now something's whistling. You don't hear that?"

A two-story house on the other side of the road suddenly exploded in a maelstrom of fire and splintered wood. The gut-wrenching boom it made was followed by two more thoomp noises.

"Mortars! Cover your dicks boys, we're under fire!" shouted the Major General. He threw himself over a short stone wall and into what was once the basement of a house. Most of Cheddar Company followed him before the two mortar shells exploded behind them. One of them cratered the lawn in front of a barn, sending up a tsunami of soil and pebbles. The other hit the barn dead center, punching through the roof before exploding. The whole building looked briefly like a Fourth of July firecracker as flames burst from the top in a concentrated blast before the walls levered outward, still mostly intact, like a roofless house of cards.

For the men huddled in the basement, day quickly turned to a dusty twilight as one of the barn walls toppled over on top of them. It landed with a crash, sealing off the top of the square space, trapping them inside. Debris pattered down all around, pinging off the hulks of burned cars and the flak helmets of the only two soldiers who hadn't made it to basement safety.

Jake and Randy squinted through the haze. "This went downhill fast. Think we can make it to that church without getting bombed?" Jake shouted.

...to be continued!

The Survival Horror Genre

The plot of The Book of Eli in one long sentence:

After some sort of nuclear Holocaust and human society collapses, our hero Eli (who was told to take the last remaining King James Bible "west" by a voice he heard in his head) treks across the wasteland mostly on foot, defending himself with guns and a sword against cannibals and petty warlords to end up reciting the whole Bible (which he had memorized from his Braille copy that eventually falls into the warlord's hands) to a small group of intellectual people holed up in Alcatraz prison.

The plot of The Book of Eli in one short sentence:

If nuclear war wipes out most of humankind, the remaining people will be dirty and angry and won't bother fixing anything.


It pains me to say this, but the movie wasn't all that great. The critics concur. But you know what? I have a soft spot in my (head?) for this genre, and I'm willing to overlook quite a bit of nonsense in exchange for some shots of ruined cities and streets choked with derelict automobiles and cobwebby old houses with peeling paint.

(Because apparently nuclear fallout doesn't kill cobs.)

And there are a lot of things to overlook! For example, when society does collapse in these stories, people just accept it. "Collapse, you say? The zombies are nigh? Well, shit! Now I can go insane and push around a rusty shopping cart full of mannequin limbs like I've always wanted!"

Seriously? Nobody? I mean, you gotta figure on at least some looting after Armageddon, since there will probably be some assholes left. But I find it hard to believe that nobody would bother at least rebuilding the indoor plumbing.

Got it. Machinists, carpenters and literacy are particularly susceptible to nuclear bombs. Fine. I'll buy it. Let's just go look at some more burnt stuff, okay?

I think I like this genre so much because I think it's fun to imagine how I would survive in such a situation. Say I was the only survivor of some horrible plague, and everyone else turned into stabby, rapey zombies. Where would I sleep? What would I eat? Where would I brush my teeth and store my extra deodorant?

Because apocalypse or no, I don't want to be all stinky.

I figure the first thing I'd do is find myself a go-kart. I'd get one of the two-seaters, so I'd have room to carry all my shotguns around. Now, I'm sure you're wondering why I wouldn't go for something like a Hummer. I might have one of those on standby just in case, but the go-kart offers flexibility that a big vehicle does not. I could drive it indoors and I could maneuver it around or lift it over obstacles that would block a Hummer. Plus, I've always wanted to swipe one and take it off the track.

My base of operations would probably be a supermarket. Here in Michigan, we've got Meijer, but a CostCo would do just as well. Both of these places sell generators and extension cords, and have built-in gas stations. Bingo! Self-sufficiency right off the bat. The collapse of society and the constant zombie threat is no reason to put up with warm pop and no video games.

But a supermarket would be hard to keep warm in the winter, and it would be next to impossible to guard every wall against zombie incursion. So then what? What if I can't get my hands on a tank or a Brinks armored truck? A city bus, of course! Some cobbled-together armor, a couch and some extra fuel tanks, and you got yourself a mobile apartment. You could even run over zombies in it if you get bored.

Whoops. Better finish this up so I can leave the office.

Umm...ending ending ending....

And in conclusion, I would like to see more bombed-out landscapes and survival techniques in survival horror movies instead of being presented with a two-hour PSA about how being greedy will lead to my being eaten by zombies when the apocalypse comes.

The Moron Trains a New Employee

The Moron was sitting at his computer with a cup of horrible breakroom coffee in one hand and a chocolate wafer cookie in the other.

Needless to say, he was extremely pleased.

Because he was a Good Employee® who followed Proper Workplace Decorum, he had opted to manage his time wisely. To this end, he had created an Excel spreadsheet to help him research the different ways of consuming the cookie and coffee in tandem. Little bits of wafer and chocolate floated on the surface of the weak, oily Folgers, and the lonely cursor blinked in cell A1 of the barren grid onscreen.

Suddenly, inspiration struck! Knocking The Moron a full three feet eastward and causing him to accidentally eat his cookie, he found his head suddenly filled with ideas!

"It buuuuurns!" he cried, trying to claw the unwelcome invaders out of his head with his mouse.

"Are you okay?" his Supervisor asked, poking her head into his cubicle.

The Moron struggled to focus on his horrible coffee. He buried his face in the mug.

"Blughbubblrrrubbbble," he said, tiny spatters of coffee escaping the corners of his mouth.

The Supervisor stared.

The Moron put down his mug. "I think so. I had what I believe to be a species of headache, but it's gone now."

"It could have been an idea. They've been going around. Try thinking about musical ringtones or politics and they'll stay away. But I didn't come over here to dispense advice. I'm here because I need you to train a new employee."

The Moron climbed back into his chair and took a distinguished looking seat. "Anything to keep The Company operating like a machine with no squirrels in its parts. What's the new cog going to be doing?"

The Supervisor shifted nervously, but regained her composure quickly. "A job very nearly identical to your own. Ahem. His name is Clancy." She pushed a tall thin man wearing a bowler hat into the Moron's cubicle and left.

"Hi," said Clancy.

The Moron noted Clancy's hat, and allowed his brain unfiltered access to his mouth for two seconds. "I'm going to call you Duke Burpsworth, Lord of Snakes, if that's cool with you."

"That would be strange," said Clancy, pulling an extra chair into the cubicle and seating himself, "but I'm okay with it for the time being. So what do you do here at The Company?"

The Moron applied some Chest Puffing spray from an aerosol can and cleared his throat imperiously.

"I'm in charge of Excel," he said through the pompous fog. "I keep all the little squares filled with all the most interesting facts and figures. Would you like to hear one?"

Clancy nodded.

"Sixteen-point-three," the Moron said smugly

Clancy nodded again.

"Stunning, isn't it? I wrote that one just about ten minutes ago. It just came to me, right out of the blue. Wafer cookie?"

"Thanks."

"I keep a big box of them in this drawer. There were a bunch of folders and stuff in there, but none of them looked important, so I gave them to a hobo. Hey! It's break time! I plan to leave the building and wander to locations unknown during the next ten minutes. Wanna come with?"

Clancy shook his head slowly. "Oh, no, I'll hang back here and get to know the rest of the staff. I can keep an eye on your key card and ID badge for you, though. That way you don't have to lug them around."

The Moron skipped happily out into the parking lot, freed of more burdens than he knew, and aimed himself at the nearest bakery.

The Assault on Something or Other

The chatter of small arms fire was the sonic backdrop on which Major General Mack "Whack" Buffalo painted loud and offensive pictures with his gravelly voice.

"You ducktwats were supposed to secure the arms drop and what the fuck happened with that? Private Monkeyhole over here fuckin' shot at the parachute and the whole bitch'n'kaboodle came crashing the damn down! Crotchetty-bang! Bananas and grenades everywhere!"

Private Jake Toboggan timidly raised his hand. "We were able to recover most of the bananas before they fell into enemy hands, sir," he said.

Major Buffalo threw a file cabinet at him.

Fighting had been intense over the last week, as Cheddar Company worked its way slowly across the border and into Minnesota. The boys had partied hard the night they finally took the capital. The party turned sour when Command informed them that they were actually supposed to be meeting up with ground forces in Moscow. Evidently there had been a huge misunderstanding, and everybody was understandably angry about it. Especially the Minnesota state government.

After some hasty apologies and travel arrangements, Cheddar Company was huddled around a stove in a treehouse surrounded by a sea of snow and the howling winds of the northern Siberian wasteland.

Jake pushed the file cabinet off his chest and took his seat. "Like it's somehow MY fault the Nazis managed to hide Moscow," he muttered. "Probably using some of their creepy honky magic to foul our chambers and wrinkle our maps and stuff."

He addressed this complaint to Randy Sourhill, his best friend and the worst sniper the Allies had. Randy looked up from a pile of gun parts in his lap. "Come on, man. My father was a honky. You know it hurts me when you say things like that."

"I didn't mean nothin' by it. It just sorta slipped out, you know? Your dad was a good man. One of the good honkies."

The boys bumped fists.

"Is that your Springfield?" Jake nodded at Randy's pile of parts.

"Sure is," Randy said, gazing lovingly at the steel and wood and springs and levers of his faithful companion. "Jennifer's a good gun. Just needs a little adjusting before she stops chewing up casings and catching fire. Hand me that beeswax, willya? Thanks."

"Son, you need to get yourself a new one of those. That thing's half masking tape now," Jake said, watching as Randy rubbed wax into the dents in the Springfield's charred stock.

"Jennifer may be a little old, but she's my girl, and I ain't gonna trade her in for a younger model. That's not the way I roll. Could you get out of my light, man? I can't see what I'm doing."

The incandescent fury radiating from the red face of Major Buffalo began to melt Randy's beeswax. "What the hell is up with this stuff?" he said, shaking it next to his ear. "I think it's broken."

"Fresh-squeezed fuck patties, son! I'mma break your FACE in about seventeen and a half seconds if you don't shut your ass-neck and pay some barfing attention, DO YOU HEAR ME?" The Major General stomped back around to the other side of the stove. "Where the fuck was I? Oh, right. All of you! I hate aaaaaallll of you!" he pounded his fists on the stove's cast-iron top, punctuating each word with a clank and the sizzle of superheated loathing. "And furthermore, we're down to our last banana and grenade, and I'm going to personally eat them both. Goddammit, we roll out at oh-six-hundred, ladies!"


...to be continued.

Tips for a Warm Household

Tips for a Warm Household. Sounds kind of like the title of one of those books; the kind whose authors are smiling women with perms and way too many teeth.

But it's not. This is a strictly scientific essay. It was written to inform and educate and take up space on your screen, and nothing more. Although it would be an interesting study to see what everyone's initial response or expectation was when you first read the title. You can tell me in the Comments section.

Now that us in the Northern Hemisphere have spilled winter all over ourselves, like a clumsy toddler carrying around a plate of pancake syrup, it's time to start keeping an eye on the gas bill. This is assuming that your furnace burns natural gas, of course. If it burns unnatural gas, you'll want to be keeping an eye on THAT bill.

Let's take a look at my bill. Whoa. Looks like it's been preparing for the winter in the same way the squirrels have; it's gotten fatter. It went so far as to grow an extra decimal place, even. The envelope it came in has bulked up too. It's stuffed full of colorful 3-fold brochures, offers to insure your appliances and coupons good for a dollar off 12-packs of Dr. Pepper.

You've been reading those brochures, haven't you? The ones that give you tips on how to cut down on your gas usage? Right. Like they're going to help you use less of the product you pay them for. Probably explains those extra digits.

Well, you can toss those right out. Or, on second thought, save them. You can burn them. That'll come in handy later. So now that you've cleansed yourself of Gas Company propaganda, how do you go about reducing your gas bill? Is there, in fact, a way to use less and still be comfortable?

No. Not directly. But you can increase your comfort by working with the air you already have lying around your home. So put on your sweatpants and your hard hat with the miner's headlamp and let's get to work!


Supplies Needed:

• One (1) ballpeen hammer. You will want to make heavy use of the peen part, since nobody ever does, and you're a real go-getter, aren't you? That's right.
• Two (1) rolls of masking tape. As its name implies, it will come in handy when you have a whole bunch of mistakes and holes to cover up.
• Six (1) packages of black licorice. This stuff was intended for industrial use anyway.
• A whole bunch of pillows.

Your first objective is to find out where all the cold air is coming from. Like earwigs, cold air is sneaky and likes to hang out along the edges of windows and walls and in your mailbox. Wave your hand near one of these areas. Feel that? That tickling sensation you feel on your palm is earwigs. Scream like a three-year-old and shake those creepy little bastards off. When you finish your wuss prance, you might be tempted to peen the earwigs right then and there. You might want to rethink this, as it would be needlessly violent, and you'd probably miss. Nobody respects a person with peen dents all over their floors and walls.

Trying not to think of earwigs, identify all the windows in your household. They are the rectangular, glass-covered openings cut into your walls. If you touch the glass, you will find that this leaves unsightly finger prints. Knock that shit off.

You may also find a good deal of cold air loitering around your windows. Following the directions in the gas company brochures, you've put up signs, you've yelled at it, and you've tried ignoring it to see if it would go away on its own. Of course none of it has worked, and the cold air remains floating smugly around your windows. The best way to scare it off, as our own primitive forbears discovered, is with fire. This is where those gas company brochures actually come in handy. A few strategically placed brochure fires will let the cold air know you mean business. You need only do this maybe once a month, as cold air has a pretty good memory.

Once you have the cold air on the run, you can keep it out by hammering the black licorice into all the cracks around the window frame, and along the mullions. Be prepared to replace some of the panes, as you will invariably peen some of them out onto your lawn. You may wish to have a friend handy at this point to wave a torch at the cold air while you cover the gaping holes with masking tape.

With the windows out of the way, you may now focus on the attic. As you have probably read somewhere, warm air rises. This is because it is filled with yeast, which is a totally different discussion, so stop asking about it.

What happens is that all the warm air goes to hide in the attic. Unlike cold air, which is brash and feral, warm air is quiet, reserved and agoraphobic. You might be tempted to try coaxing it out of the attic by offering it black licorice, but that would be foolish. You wouldn't offer black licorice to your worst enemy unless you were a total sadist. And if you ARE a total sadist, you probably deserve to be miserably cold, so you can go ahead and stop reading this now.

So how do you keep the warm air from holing up in your attic? With the pillows, of course. Sprinkle them liberally around your house to make it more inviting to the shy warm air, and eventually it will come down. You may also wish to play some soothing music. Some Hindemith, perhaps, with pianos in it. Warm air likes pianos.

If you find that you do not have enough warm air because, for example, you have a small attic, do not be unduly alarmed. Warm air can be found inside many electronic devices. You'll have doubtlessly noticed by now that your videogame console, laptop computer and toaster all harbor copious amounts of it. Place these devices inside plastic bags when in use, and you can capture some of the warm air as it escapes! Wait for it to calm down before releasing it, however, or it will head straight for your attic.

Congratulations! You are now a master of the molecules; an arbiter of the atmosphere. Just be sure to keep a weather (ha!) eye out for the marauding cold air, and remind your friends to keep their voices down around your warm air.

My Guardian Angel is a NavStar® Satellite

Sorry about the big quiet spot! I'd like to thank my readers (I love you both!) for not deleting your bookmark out of frustration or for the sake of browser cleanliness.

I bet now you expect me to say something like "But a lot has been going on in my life!" and proceed to tell you all about it. I won't do that. Because not a lot has.

I'm going to tell you about it anyway, though.

After years of having to rely on those more directionally astute than I, and having to answer questions like "how long have you lived in this town again?" and "but we just went yesterday! How can you not remember how to get there?" I finally broke down and accepted a GPS navigation unit.

The Garmin™ people were nice enough to provide me with one of their lovely units. Because I am an Internet celebrity, all I had to do was get in touch with them through a third party, give this third party some money, and wait for a fourth party (UPS) to ship it to me. Badda boom, badda bing! When the unit arrived, I pounced on the box, sending up a mushroom cloud of packing peanuts.

"Hee hee hee!" I squealed, tearing into the packaging with giddy abandon. "No more stupid questions! Soon I will be free to daydream all I want while driving, and my little touchscreen friend here won't sass me for it!"

There it was. Nestled in a colorful box amongst the peanuts; a device that looked like an iPhone designed by Fisher Price®. I wonder if the batteries have a charge? I wondered out loud to myself, because there was nobody around to make fun of me for that either.

Turns out there was. The speaker made a little electronic honking noise, and the screen lit up. "Making initial contact with The Satellites. This could take forever if you try it inside your house. Run outside RIGHT NOW and wave the device at the sky like some kind of epileptic moron. Be sure to forget your jacket," it said. Of course, being the type of person who follows any instruction displayed on an LCD screen, I did just that.

Five minutes after the shattering crash my ass made when it froze off startled some nearby owls, I was greeted with the message that the satellites had been found. "All of them?" I wondered aloud to the remaining owl, but I didn't stay outside to find out. Most of them. Good enough. I scampered inside and stood in the middle of the living room.

After the obligatory poke through the settings menus, I loaded up the map. There I was! A little graphic of a blue sedan, sitting over the Western edge of Michigan. "This thing is so cool," I mumbled into my chest. I zoomed in. And in. Aaaaannnnd in. Hey, look! A little picture of a house. A green bar at the top of the screen spelled out my location in white text.

"Your living room, four feet from the couch," it said. These things get more and more accurate every day, I thought. I turned 30 degrees clockwise. "You look like you're headed to the bathroom," the green bar said. "There is extra toilet paper under the sink if you need it." And helpful!

Satisfied that the Garmin worked as advertised (and then some), I powered it off and went to bed. I'd drive to work with it tomorrow, to see how it handled out on the road.

When morning came, I yawned, stretched and...smelled coffee. Hmm. Dad must have come over and, um, made coffee in the wee hours of the morning. Not entirely out of the question. I stumbled out into the kitchen.

It was empty, save for the cats, who are always waiting for me in the kitchen in case I drop some bacon. But there it was! A cup of coffee, still steaming, sitting right next to my GPS on the counter.

On the...

I distinctly remember putting the Garmin back in its box and leaving it in front of the door, so I'd be sure to bring it with me. Did Dad move it? He must have. He'd have tripped over it if he didn't. I picked it up. Hmm. Would have been nice if he'd turned it off when he was done inspecting it, though.

"Good morning!" the screen said. "I made you coffee. The mug is located at..." and it gave coordinates. "Work is in an hour and a half, and exactly 13.46 miles from your coffee. Enjoy!"

Not bad for a hundred bucks! I sipped my coffee and brought up the Garmin's navigation screen. "Where would you like to go?" it said above the on-screen keyboard. I keyed in my employer's address. "It's guaranteed to be boring there. Where do you really want to go?"

I typed in "Nashville".

"Ha ha," said the Garmin. "No, seriously."

I exited the navigation screen and went back to the map. "Standing next to the dishwasher, contemplating a shower," the green bar said. Proving it wrong, I went out to the garage and got in the car. "Eeew. A Buick?" the green bar said.

It turns out that the NavStar® satellite system the Garmin uses is pretty accurate. It showed me my speed in miles per hour, what road I was on, what compass direction I was headed in, and where the nearby Chevy Cavaliers were, offering alternate routes to avoid them. Neat.

"Stop checking the screen to make sure the Garmin still knows what road you're on," the green bar said. "The Garmin can take care of itself. Fruitridge Ave, next exit."

After a journey of exactly 13.46 miles, I pulled into my parking spot at work. "There. Work. I hope you're happy," the green bar said. "We could have gone somewhere fun, like one of many local Steak'n'Shake restaurants. But noooo! You had to--"

I powered it off. Perhaps I would search the Garmin website for firmware updates. I didn't play my Internet Celebrity card just to end up in the same position I was in before. If I wanted my navigation prowess sassed, I have friends for that.