GPS Map - Soybean Field

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I was planning to NOT do a blogpost today..........thus, this is not really a blogpost. Its just something cool and interesting that I wanted to show you.

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Below is a printout of our 15-acre soybean field that was combined last Thursday. North is at the top; click the photo to read the yield chart below the map to understand what the colors denote. Each color represents a range of yield----in bushels per acre.

Its amazing to me how this information can be so precisely recorded! The GPS system in the combine interacts with a satellite miles above the earth to produce this data. Kind of scary, eh? Truthfully, Husband could get along just fine NOT having these precise yield details to look at, but modern ag technology provides it, regardless.

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Ok......that's it for this "not-really-a-blogpost".........HAVE A GREAT DAY!!

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Guide Us, GPS

Perhaps you are familiar with Global Positioning (GPS) equipment. I'm not, but the other day was riding in someone else's vehicle in which a GPS system was being utilized. We passengers found the GPS gadget on the dash to be simultaneously fascinating and hilariously ridiculous........and, maybe a tiny bit useful for directional guidance!

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Here's the GPS unit, sitting on top of the dash in the vehicle. (The photos are really, really, really bad.......sorry about that.)

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Amazing it is (and rather frightening) to come to the realization that your whereabouts can be tracked so accurately and instantaneously from a satellite way up in space! In this photo below, our vehicle is the red blip on the green line........pulsing along in a westerly direction on U.S. 20.

Unconvinced I remain that this sort of constant directional guidance is at all necessary, but the technology exists.........so, why not go ahead and toss your paper maps out the window, train your eyes on the glowing GPS screen (possibly you should glance at the the road once in a while, too), and listen to the commands of the politely seductive female voice emanating from the GPS unit. If you actually followed her directions to a "T", you might occasionally experience the excitement of driving into a river, or through someone's house, or into a cow pasture!

The pleasant electronic female voice also immediately brings it to your attention when you have missed a turn that is on HER schedule for you to make! She then sweetly warbles, "Please make a legal U-turn......Please make a legal U-turn." (In other words: "Turn around, Idiot!") With the other noises going on in the vehicle we were in, her command instead sounded like, "Please made illegal U-turn. Please make illegal U-turn." For quite awhile we actually thought that's what she was saying!

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But, here's what really gave us all a good laugh: In this next photo, the red blip-----which was our vehicle-----was suddenly pulsing around without a directional line to follow........like a little boat caught up or down a creek without a paddle! The blurred words in the white box at the top flashed at us: "Proceed to a mapped road.......Proceed to a mapped road!" This command box materialized like a worried mother whenever our vehicle happened to take a turn to an "unmapped" location........such as our farm driveway------our HOME, mind you!!! It was then as if suddenly we were NOWHERE.......in a limbo area, lacking our bearings.......and the nebulous GPS entity struggled from afar with that confusing circumstance, fretfully pleading with us to return to SOMEWHERE.....a place it could recognize!!

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Heaven forbid that any of us should wander into an unmapped place! Please be certain to proceed only into "mapped" areas today as you blip and pulse down the road of life!!!