Friday, May 1, 2009

Make a U-Turn You Idiot!

While Sheldon and I enjoyed dinner on date night last night we got into a conversation about GPS voices. I drove his car to pick his daughter up the other night cause he was too sick to get off the couch. She was at Sylvan Learning Center being tutored in math. I had been there with him before but I didn't know how to find it on my own. He reminded me that he had GPS in the car before he passed out again. His son and I went online and found the address of the place and then I went out to the car and programmed it in. This all seems faintly ridiculous as I have lived and worked in this metro area for the last 25 years, but I'm just not that familiar with this part of the county. I got on the road with the GPS guiding me out of the neighborhood turn by turn. I actually turned the volume up and turned the radio off so that I wouldn't miss any instructions. I was driving on route 7 eastbound for a while (10 minutes, tops) and the woman hadn't said anything. I desperately wanted her to say, "You are doing fine, keep going straight." Or something equally comforting, but she remained silent. When she finally started giving me instructions again, I was so relieved. When I found my destination, she informed me that I was there and then she turned herself off. Again I was disappointed. I needed some love. I wanted her to say, "Hey, Good Job! You found it! You're not the idiot you thought you were!"

Could I be anymore needy?

I was telling Sheldon this and he laughed and said that he would want the opposite. He would prefer that the voice be somebody mean like Stewie from "Family Guy" who would tell him that he was an idiot. "You missed the turn you Douchbag! Make a U-Turn you Idiot! How many times do I have to tell you to get in the right lane?!"

We decided that someone should invent a programmable GPS where you could change the voice to say whatever you wanted in different celebrity voices. I got online at work this morning and found...that someone already has...check this out. Course they don't have Stuart Smalley or Oprah saying "Good Job, I knew you could do it!" But maybe they'll make one just for me.

1 comment:

  1. My Tomtom has a few free voices. The celebrities are of course imitators. I downloaded Yoda, Ozzy Ozbourne, and Darth Vader. I hate Vader because he's not even close to James Earl Jones, but then, who could afford him. Ozzy is funny, but only the English chick can I stand for a 12 hr day working.

    CAB

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