Off Topic: Why Grandma and Grandpa Should Go to the Gym

This weekend I helped my best friend move. Aside from trying to avoid breaking down and rebuilding two cribs (twins), our biggest challenge was safely transporting a large, antique, fragile, heavy China cabinet. In the end, we decided the movers would load it into her Mom’s Explorer and Mom would drive it over to the new house. Her Dad was not available.

But things ran late with the movers and her Mom needed to get home for an evening event. So, her parents found a solution. Her Dad drove his car to the new house and the two of them unloaded the China cabinet safely into the garage.

Her Mom and Dad are 82. They go to the gym. In fact, her Dad was at the gym when we called. Happy Mother’s Day!

When Hyperlocal Backfires…

I was out and about last week a few blocks from my house doing errands. I saw a sign for a garage sale on the weekend. There was a directional arrow and the location was described as Belmont Square. I know there’s a Belmont Street near me, but I’d not heard of Belmont Square. I’ve lived in the house for 13 years. Hmmm. I looked up the location on the ‘net - Belmont Square is a cul-de-sac off Belmont Street. I think the “Square” threw me for a loop. Those sort of streets in my book have names like Circle, or Place, or Way. Belmont Square sounded like an office park! Though I have to say I was sure it did not refer to Belmont Center, the “downtown” of the town of Belmont six or so miles away…

Over the weekend I was helping a friend move to a new house. On the way to the old house was a sign for a garage sale. It was behind Friendly’s. As I sat in the intersection at a red light I tried to think of where the nearby Friendly’s was… This was a neighborhood I knew well as it’s in a neighboring town from the one where I grew up. Nope, no Friendly’s nearby - but there were two within say two miles - one in Woburn and one in Stoneham. I was in Stoneham. I don’t recall an arrow…but both seemed rather far from where I sat to prompt a visit to a sale. My guess, after thinking about it for a moment, was that the sign hanger simply put it where there was lot of traffic (looking where the light is…) without regard to the distance to the sale.

My thought on both of these incidents: I’m certainly not ready for hyperlocal information such as this!

Old Poll, New Poll

Back at the end of March we asked: If available free, how would you use background data provided to your desktop GIS from the cloud (as ESRI is doing in a future release with Microsoft’s Virtual Earth)?

Just about half of 224 respondents said they expected they’d use it all the time. Timothy Hales just posted a tutorial on how to set it up which may be helpful to readers just receiving ArcGIS 9.3.1.

48% - I’d use it all the time!
34% - I might use it on some projects.
10% - There are security issues that prevent my org from using it.
10% - I don’t think I’d use it at all.

Next up, Do you share your current location with anyone via social media tools (Twitter, Facebook, RSS, website, etc.)?

Vote on the lower right hand side of the blog home page.