Dave's casting aspersions on my sense of direction:
James missed a great evening because he got lost. With a GPS and TomTom. Sad, very sad.
[Via writerus drivelus]
Now, it's true, I did try to get to the Coventry Flying Club on Monday night, and I did make the mistake of trusting my navigation to TomTom Ken, the Australian voice we settled on for our sat nav. Ken got off to a fine start, trying to send me off on numerous well-intentioned but ill-advised routes from Bromsgrove to Coventry Airport - initially determined that I should go through the centre of Coventry, he kept trying to get me off the motorway far earlier than advisable at rush hour in the West Midlands. Incidentally, Ken is worse than useless navigating you through the M42/M40 junction - attempting to direct me to follow the M42 round Birmingham, rather than divert towards London on the M40, his directions were "Take the exit, then take the motorway". Cheers, Ken - that really narrows my options down...
Anyway, I wasn't having any of that, and took the other exit to the other motorway (that'll teach him for being non-specific). I forced him to recalculate his route a few times by driving down to the Warwick junction of the M40 and making for Coventry Airport from there. I think this may have annoyed him. Sadly, the motorway junction was the last time I would see a sign pointing towards the airport (an airport which, by the way, Tom Tom doesn't even believe exists). Somewhere near Kenilworth, Ken announced "You have reached your destination", then the map began alternately telling me I was on the M40, or somewhere near Rugby. Attempts to get Ken to reroute me towards the airport failed, and eventually I was sucked into the Coventry ring-road. A few orbits of the city centre were enough to get me back to escape velocity, and I decided that, since all technology clearly hates me, I would be best off heading home, so followed the first sign I could see that said 'Birmingham' on it.
For what it's worth, I'm sorry I missed the meeting - sounds like it was a laugh. My vote for best SQL/VS2005 feature currently goes to 'solution folders', which I discovered this morning, and which let me group projects within a solution into related groups. As someone who componentises his software to death, anything that helps navigate a 30+ assembly system better is a good thing.
My advice to TomTom users though is not to try the patience of your sat nav buddy. He can and will take his revenge.