Even if you despise the use of GPS, you have to admit, it’s of significant benefit in the following cases:
You’re somewhere that you haven’t been before and need to get back to a route that you know. (e.g. if you visit a friend for the first time in their new house in a development and come out late in the evening and realize you’re in a place with a lot of curvy streets and cul de sacs, with similar sounding names, and houses that look a lot alike, and very scarce and dim streetlights). Just entering your home address into the GPS shortcuts things.
You want to find out how long it’s going to take to get where you are going. In LA, a 15 mile drive can take anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour and 20 minutes. It’s great for setting expectations on your arrival.
You want to avoid major traffic issues by taking alternate routes before you’re in the traffic situation that you should have avoided (accidents, shutdowns due to work going on, etc.
With respect to the last item, I became a convert to routine use of GPS many years ago when I decided to drive to Santa Monica (a drive I’ve done hundreds of times). I opened Maps on my phone (my car didn’t have real time traffic at that time) and entered my destination. Google Maps advised me to enter the freeway a few miles beyond the nearest entrance, the one I usually took. I had time, so I decided to see what would happen if I took this strange advice. As I entered the freeway at the recommended on ramp, I glanced back to the left. The CHP had shut down all lanes of the freeway about 20-30 yards back from my on ramp. 5 lanes of stopped traffic, backed up as far as I could see, and a completely empty freeway in front of me.
I check GPS on routine drives to see what it tells me about traffic and accidents. Not always and I really should check it more. Sometimes I’ve been stuck going to work when Waze would have kept me from getting into trouble.
I voted for the politician within the group as being a better advocate but that’s with all things being equal. Some people are just bad at their jobs. Some have Marion Barry sized luggage. There are factors that could make certain politicians outside of the group more effective than some inside the group. Since I know no one is checking my work or keeping score I picked the closest answer.
I always use GPS no matter where I’m going because it’s not uncommon for me to take a wrong turn and get lost even on routes I’m very familiar with. Or sometimes I forget where I am. You know, your mind drifts off somewhere and you suddenly resume conscious thought and realize you don’t know how far you are in your route…
A few for me is probably a bit less than several, but there’s enough overlap that I voted they’re the same.
And I think the difference is less in actual numbers than in how I’m thinking of it. How much split firewood is in the house?-- whoops, only a few pieces! How many phone calls do I have to make today? – bah, several of them. The actual number may be the same, though. And I might use either of them neutrally.
(There’s actually a fair amount of firewood in the house. Which is good, because for the first time this year (!), we’re finally having a snowstorm.)
Re GPS: I use it when dealing with rush hour or bad weather so I know how slow my normal route is due to either. It’s often worth my while to take what would normally be a more time-consuming route because of slower posted speeds but if the road is less-traveled, there can be a big chance of arriving where I’m going before the busy highway would get me there.
They’re both less than many; but, having thought about what I said in the rest of that post, I didn’t vote in the first one because it isn’t really that “few” is for me a smaller number than “several”, but that “few” calls attention to there not being very many while “several” calls attention to there being more than one or two.
I’ve been waking up “too early” for more than a week now, as the sun is rising earlier. Yes, I’m affected by the time change. In a good way, it’s putting me back on schedule
I wasn’t sure what to answer for the shower poll. I have never in my life tried to dry my feet while still in the shower, and my towels aren’t even within reach until i step out. But i do generally wring some of the water out of my hair, and sometimes “scrape” excess water off the rest of my body with the side of my hand, so as not to saturate the towel. Does that count?
I towel off in the shower, so the bathmat doesn’t really get damp. It’s there just to contain any random drips and decrease slipping if my feet aren’t totally dry.
I think we have a failure to define terms in the bath mat poll. I use a bath mat that’s the same size or smaller than a bath towel, that’s made to be hung up to dry. It has no backing and no nap. I hang it on the shower door normally, and drop it on the floor before I shower and step out onto it to dry. Then I hang it back up.
I wonder if people who aren’t me are using something much more substantial as a “bath mat”, something thicker and more rug-like perhaps with a backing which would be difficult to hang to dry, so it shouldn’t get too wet.
I dry off partially before stepping on the mat, so checked that; but it’s not my feet that I dry off before doing so. I wring out my hair, wrap it in a bath towel, and dry off the upper part of my body with another towel; then step out onto the mat and dry my legs and feet.
I’m only medium affected by the time change; but that’s significantly affected by the fact that I do most of my work by the sun and my energy levels, not by the clock. I may get several days to adjust before I have to do anything more than make a couple of phone calls in co-ordination with what the clock says.
Regarding the Express Lane: I selected “It depends” because I’ve been invited to the Express Lane when the cashier has no one in the lane and my cart is definitely over the limit of items or maybe over the limit of items.
Regarding the bath mat: Current situation is that I don’t have a bath mat and dry my upper body before stepping out of the shower. The floor will be dry in minutes because my condo has a weird airflow that makes the bathroom the warmest room in the place, by far. When hoteling, I always pick up the bath mat to dry it faster.
Timing of sunlight does affect me greatly so it is a difficult adjustment, but I have learned to cope. I’ve already put the kitties and myself 40 minutes into that hour difference because I knew it was coming.
This is what I was thinking. My current bathmat is more rug- or mat-like, and I just let it lie there on the floor to dry. But when I’ve used an actual towel as a bathmat, I’ve hung it up to dry afterward.