An open letter to Google Maps

Dear Google Maps:

You have led me astray several times in the past few months:

1. My wife and I were driving home from Washington, D.C. right before the "Snowpocalapyse". I was even allowed to leave on Thursday instead of the planned Friday at Noon in order to make it out of the city. Our plan was to start driving home after a visit to the L.D.S. Temple, stay in a hotel approximately one hour outside of Washington and then continue on our way the next morning.

Well, luckily I had written down the phone number of the hotel, because Google Maps led us to the middle of nowhere. (Although it did lead us to Poffenberger Lane, which is my mother-in-law's maiden name.)

2. My wife and I were traveling to IKEA in Maryland. (Suburban D.C.) Although I am somewhat familiar with the area, I had never been to this particular IKEA and printed out a Google Maps direction in order to help us to get to our destination safely. Well, good thing I have a familiarity with the D.C. area because the Google Maps directions did not get us the right way. An hour later we arrived at IKEA, having taken an alternate route through the city since we were unable to navigate the confusing directions that would have lead us around the city on the Beltway. (Although, considering traffic that night, perhaps I made the quicker choice.)

3. I live in Lexington, KY. There is a street near our house - Star Shoot Parkway - that has been finished at least since we arrived here in August. However, it does not show up as finished on Google Maps. Ergo I have not used Google Maps for ANY directions in the city. In addition, I use other programs in order to plan out my running routes.

4. On a recent trip to southern Florida, my wife and I were driving to the eastern visitor center of Everglades National Park, located in Everglades, FL. However, upon reaching the city, the Google Maps directions led us to some house that had no affiliation with the park. Luckily I was able to find a sign and we arrived at our destination.

I love Google Maps for its easy-to-find route on the specific map, and the ability to drag the route from the "quickest route" to include specific destinations. However, lately you have been unable to provide me with clear directions that get me to the promised destination and have broken my trust. You don't have the fuel cost gauge that Mapquest utilizes that I find quite handy for long trips. In addition, I do not find your printable directions easy-to-follow, a necessity if I'm trying to look at them while driving.

I'm not mad, Google Maps; however, I am disappointed.

~Logan Schultz

Google takes a stand

Some of you may have seen a news headline that Google might exit China due to censorship and human rights reasons.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=aU43JmiuDJaQ

I was astonished. A company might leave a highly profitable and important market because of a belief in something other than making as much money as possible?

That is a stance which I find admirable. Props, Google. I am now switching all of my web searches to Google. Sorry, Bing.

Some Revised Boise State Thoughts

Disclaimer: Yesterday I had written a little piece on Boise State, empathizing with them about being undefeated and not being able to play for the "National Championship" (quotes intentional). Give them a chance, I said! It's not their fault they don't play "big" schools from the BCS conferences...those teams won't give them a chance to play them!

Well, I remembered today one HUGE argument why Boise State and TCU were not in the "National Championship" (quotes intentional) game. Therefore I have removed my earlier post and replaced it with this post:

While watching the Fiesta Bowl I was reading during halftime and happened to catch a little bit of the Marching Bands. Ah, Bowl Season - the one time that the marching bands get shown on television. I guess the marching band is an important part of the college football tradition. It's fun to have the band play a few songs during halftime (Full Disclosure: I played one year in the high school marching band). My mom certainly loves it when the marching band comes on and plays an old school jazz tune (In The Mood? Anyone?)

Well, both Boise State and TCU's Marching Bands were horrible. Horrible! I watched them. They were not in sync. People did not step on the beat. The lines were not straight. I'm pretty sure the American Fork High School Marching Band (shout out to Sam and Zoe Bateman) would have done a better job than them.

How can you expect to be taken seriously if your marching band is so bad?? It was a joke. Literally every picture they took of the band contianed some glaring mistake. So that's my revised blog post about Boise State (and TCU, I suppose, although the Mountain West has a couple of good marching bands. See BYU and Utah). Go get yourself a good marching band, THEN maybe I'll listen to your complaining about not being invited to the "National Championship" (quotes intentional).