Peel and stick, old boiler, new navigation

Last night Cindy and I worked on preparing race bibs with the new MyLaps timing chips.  Peeling and sticking the chips to the bibs is much easier than the Ipico bib chips which are huge in comparison.  However we quickly identified another issue.  Because of the thickness of foam that protects each timing device it makes stacking/storing the bibs difficult and much more demanding space-wise.

A large shoe box that used to be able to accommodate 250 bibs with Ipico chips now can barely hold 100 of the bibs with MyLaps chips.  Since I have 3000 chips/bibs this could quickly present a large storage issue.  I also need to be able to transport the finished bibs in some manner that keeps them from falling out while minimizing the space taken up.

Cindy came up with a good idea as far as storing the bibs at the house.  In the guest room we have a bunch of empty drawers.  Cindy pulled one of them out and discovered that 300 completed bibs fit in there quite well.  We have something like six empty drawers, meaning we wouldn’t have enough room for all 3000 bibs but we could house over half of them in this manner.  Since I only need around 1000 bibs ready for the next race that is all we are focusing on getting done short term.   For our two large races we do each year (2500 each) I think we would need to have some running club people lend a hand to cut down on the amount of time the bib prep process would take.

While we were prepping bibs we were watching my latest Netflix rental, Boiler Room, an old movie that I never saw in it’s entirety.  I added it to my queue after seeing a brief clip where Ben Affleck reams a room full of stock broker trainees.  The movie was quite good and gave an in depth view into just how slimy the financial/stock industry can be.  A-

I just received a Nuvi 2597LMT GPS yesterday.  It may be seen as an odd purchase by most since I already have a relatively new Tom Tom GPS that we used on our last road trip.  The Tom Tom works well but had a couple holes that annoyed me.  It includes lifetime maps but if you want traffic alerts you had to pay extra for the service.  It also had no bluetooth phone calling which made no sense to me considering the device has Bluetooth support to connect to the Tom Tom app on my phone.  It’s silly that the device has a mic, a speaker, bluetooth capability but no ability to take/make hands free calls. Well the Garmin addresses both of those holes with free lifetime maps, traffic and BT hands free calling.

This morning on my way to work I had both GPS devices up and running in the Prius.  I still have a lot of digging around in the Garmin to figure out how to fully get around the unit.  The device seems nice and I like the default information shown on the Nuvi when you are just driving around in map mode more than the Tom Tom.  I did notice a couple things where the Tom Tom has the edge.

As far as I can tell, there is no way to do a conventional overhead view on the Nuvi where the screen looks more like a big Google map.  Sometimes I like this view to get an overall picture of the surrounding streets.  The Tom Tom allows me to flip between overhead and the first person view that the Nuvi appears to use exclusively.

The Tom Tom mounting hardware is also slicker than what the Garmin uses.  With the Tom Tom the charging cable attaches to the mount instead of directly into the GPS, allowing you to easily pop the unit out of the mount and store it when you aren’t driving.  The mount is magnetized, making removal and insertion of the Tom Tom very easy. The Nuvi uses a much more low tech mount with a clumsy latch that you have to release. The usb power cable plugs directly into the gps so when you disconnect the gps you have to address the cable as well which is a pain.

I think overall the Nuvi will still be my preferred navigator of choice because of the phone support.  I hate trying to dig out/answer my phone when driving.  Being able to do this effortlessly in the Prius (already can do it in the Tacoma), will be a nice tech convenience.

Cindy was a mowing machine yesterday, mowing the entire property inside the fence.  When the back of the property is mowed it makes everything look great.  Did I mention how nice it is to have tasks like this done while I am at work?