Technology -- Ain't It Wonderful

Green Turtle Cay
N 26 46.63 W 077 20.15

You'll be surprised to hear that I've been getting along without Internet or cell phone here in the Bahamas. As long as I can post blogs and receive a few emails plus my weather reports on the SSB radio, I'm happy. We also have a Sirius satellite radio so we keep up with the news.

The other day though I was overcome by curiosity. We heard all the news about Eliot Spitzer's fall from grace, and later all the chat about this girl Kristen. I couldn't stand being the only person on the planet who didn't see Kristen's picture. It seems that she must be something very extraordinary to be worth $4,500 per hour. Anyhow, we traveled to Marsh Harbor and I went ashore to the office of the ISP, and I paid $10 for 2 hours of internet access.

Now I've seen Kristen's picture, and I understand even less. She appears to rate no more than 300 millihelens*. If so then it had to be more than mere beauty that drove Spitzer crazy. She must have done something extraordinary. I admit to feeling holier-than-thou in rejecting the nation's obsession with stories about Anna Nichole Smith, but this time I'm hooked. I want to hear all the salacious details. What did she do?

We did get other benefits from our $10 investment in Internet access. Just before leaving Marathon, we received our Lowrance GPS back from the repair shop. It worked fine, but alas, when I plugged in our Nautic Path NP-USA chip with the chart database , it refused to boot. I just got a message saying "invalid loader" and then it would lock up. That was a big disappointment. I suspected that the repair shop had upgraded my software to a new rev, which could be incompatible with my chip.

We sailed here from Florida and sailed around the Bahamas without the chart functions of our GPS. On one hand, it was good practice using other skills to navigate. On the other hand, it made us nervous.

Anyhow, I'm happy to say that on the net I was able to get to lowrance.com and there I went to the FAQ and searched for the "Invalid Loader" error message. I found it. The answer advised me to delete all unneeded files from the memory chip, keeping only the big central files. After returning to the boat, I tried that and it worked. Hooray! Ain't technology wonderful.

Some day in the future, I'm going to write a blog article about the Nautic Path chip and why it is so much better than the competing products from Navitonics.

* Note: We know from the Iliad that Helen had the face that launched 1000 ships. Therefore, one millihelen may be defined as the amount of beauty to launch exactly one ship.