If You're Gonna Be Dumb You Gotta Be Tough Example The Umpteenth

This heartwarming story of how a supposed GPS navigation error is leading an illegal to be deported is a lovely example of how if you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough.

MILive: Mother of 2 takes wrong turn into Canada, now faces deportation from U.S.

A mother of two is facing deportation after a wrong turn that took her into Canada, FOX 2 Detroit reports. 

The Guatemalan woman accidentally ended up in Canada when she selected the Costco in Windsor (rather than Detroit) in her GPS, Attorney Ruby Robinson told the TV station, identifying his client only a “Sarahi.” She crossed the Ambassador Bridge. When she attempted to reenter the United States via the bridge, she was detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

“Sarahi” entered the United States illegally in 2018

The story is a bit suspect as there are no Costcos in Detroit at all. So you would think she would have figured that part out on the way at some point. 

On top of that, every single highway leading to the Canadian border has a sign with the words "Last Exit Before Canada".

If you've been illegally in the country for the last 7 years and still you can't read enough English to understand you should exit when seeing that sign because you're an illegal and you don't want to get checked at the border, well, then it is on you. 

This sign is only in English because:

"Esta es la última salida antes de Canadá, así que date la vuelta, es ilegal antes de que te atrapen, Pendejo!"

Is just too much to put on a sign by the border, really.

Not Gellin' With Magellan

At least not after yesterday.

After less than 90 days of use, My Magellan GPS had decided to pine for fjords.

Unfortunately, it has decided not to even display the route to those fjords but remained pretty locked up and fixed on a route on Woodward, even when I'm not on Woodward. This made it quite difficult to use it for navigation rather than as a paperweight.

Even a reset would only solve the problem for a short while and then it would lock up yet again, which is, as they say, not optimal.

Luckily, it decided to give up the ghost both when I wasn't going anywhere new and just within the Costco 90-day electronic return period so it was an easy exchange for a nice new Garmin nüvi 2455LMT.

I was easily able to transfer the waypoints that were in my old Garmin C330 to the Nuvi by using EasyGPS and the new Nuvi seems to be working very well indeed. This was convenient and beat the manual entries of all my stored waypoints as there had been no way to transfer from the Garmin to the Magellan - crazy that companies can't standardize waypoint storage types, and certainly a barrier to switching brands.

One of the annoying peculiarities of the Magellan was that when it was in map mode (when you don't select a destination or ask for navigation instructions), instead of displaying the approaching street on the title bar it would display the name the street you were on. This is less than helpful. I typically know what street I'm on and when I'm looking for a particular street to turn on, I could use a heads up rather than having to search for the name as it scrolls by on the map and was often cut off or too small to quickly see. The Garmin, by contrast displays the upcoming street on the title bar in map mode making it much easier to navigate.

Overall I'd have to say the Garmin is superior, both in terms of speed in calculating routes and in user features. I do miss the Magellan's landmark suggestions - not only would it say turn at X street but it would say for example, "At the BP Gas Station, turn left, X Street". Which was kinda cool, and surprisingly accurate.

So I'm now back to easy navigation with Garmin, which I probably should have gone with in the first place.

Garmin Freeze and Fix thanks to the Internet

My wife took my GPS, a Garmin C330, on her drive with her colleagues to Washington DC, where it apparently came quite in handy while they were traveling, especially through Pennsylvania. Her friends liked it so much a few of them are planning to buy them for themselves. I managed well enough without it for the 4 days she was gone.

Today i finally plugged it in and it immediately froze, locked solid, and i could just feel myself getting lost.

Thankfully I was well aware of my location and didn't need it, but it was worrisome that i couldn't turn it off, or make it work at all. Given I often have to go to totally new locations, the lack of the trusty Garmin C330 worried me.

Thanks to the internet however all was well once i thought to Google "Garmin C330 freeze fix." One of the search results was www.fixya.com and lo and behold there was a simple solution : Under the plastic cover frame for the screen there's a tab under the Garmin logo. Pulling on the tab takes off the screen and under it, carefully hidden away is a little button marked "reset". One push of the reset button and all was well (Unlike the helpful commenter, I did not need to wait for the batteries to die for this t work). Impressively, the Garmin has been so reliable mounted in my car I never noticed the tiny tab until it was described in that most.

Thanks to the Internet and the wisdom of techy-crowds, I'm much less likely to get lost.