[Magdalen] Home again, home again

[Roger Stokes]

On 10/01/2017 18:29, Scott Knitter wrote:
> You did better than I did with my first time driving out of IAH
> airport. GPS would have helped back then. I went everywhere except
> where I needed to go!

The first time I drove out of IAH, indeed the first time I drove in the 
USA or drove a car with the steering wheel on the left, I got lost on my 
way to Lynn's.  I didn't know how to operate the wipers and it was 
raining like it would never stop. I couldn't position the GPS where I 
could see it and the road I should have taken looked like an airport 
service road so I passed it by. I am now far more confident about 
driving in the USA.

Incidentally, how many people realise that we have Gulf War I to thank 
for GPS being publicly available? It was developed for military use and 
the satellite signals were coded so as to limit their use by others. The 
coalition that was involved in restoring Kuwaiti independence needed 
access by many allies to more accurate satellite-based navigation so the 
USA enabled this as there weren't enough receivers capable of decoding 
the encrypted date. This is what opened the door to our ability to use 
it to  know where we are and how to get to where we want to be.

Roger