mincedLifeCentral

I was asked, along with other people in GCC, to talk about their mission trip experiences. Only I find I do not have much to talk about, thus realising that I still have lots to process through and that it's all just chucked into the closet. The skeletons want out now...

One thing in my favor is that I have the house to myself for this week. Time to make use of the personal space to go head-to-head with the "boss upstairs".

A local electronics retailer had the Navman iCN630 on a serious special, so I dipped my toes, um, wallet into it...

The unit is chunky enough to fend off attackers as you jog through a dodgy park at night, but won't be of much use finding an escape route. Not containing its own battery power confines it to either the AC transformer or the car's cigarette lighter.

Everything else is well put together. The suction mount is secure in the windscreen, the LCD screen is watchable both in exterme glare and nighttime conditions, and the voice guidance is loud and clear.

Unfortunately it didn't work properly inside my car as it demands 5V and 2.5A... to put this in perspective a typical ten year old CD walkman uses 4.5V and 500mA. It was just too much juice for the cigarette lighter to provide, with the net result of the unit blacking out as soon as there is a decent load (eg. speech playback). This, and the lack of an internal battery, I deem to be a fatal design flaw (probably somwhat rectified in the iCN635).

Having said that, tried it in another car and it worked wonderfully as long as the electrical contact is secure. So, if you spot a cheap one, have a go as long as you have an opportunity to get a refund - like I did.

I wonder how a suitcase that is checked-in all the way to Chile from Hong Kong via Auckland somehow ended up in the Auckland baggage carousel... which my relative somehow managed to pick up today...

Earlier in the afternoon I caught up with a friend and regaled her with my African stories - including the incident at Dubai/Nairobi. It was kinda funny to see another luggage gaffe within the same day, it has a certain deja-vu quality to it.

Big props to the cute lady at MENZIES for sorting this out just before closing for the day. :o)

Anybody who thinks their daily commute to and from work is long will want to read this.

Seven hours of travelling per day takes the cake - all because of the killer view at home. I'd bet that it would be too dark to see it in most days, though.

So... do you think it's worth it?

One of the supposed benefits of using a blogging tool is that you don't have to fiddle with HTML and CSS, and instead concentrate on the content.

I didn't like the whitespaces on the previous template, so I went and choose a new one.

Almost an hour later... I think it's done. So much for choosing another default template. Played with the CSS enough to make me wonder if I should've just built an entire template from scratch.

And oh, please tell me if anything looks broken as I can only test it in IE and Firefox.