The Hizzle of T-Fizzle

My latest batch of bread. I’m not sure if it was the way I had the towel draped over them during the second rising or what, but these loaves are wider and flatter than the others I’ve made. Since I have been able to make edible bread a few times, I felt ready to do a little experimenting. I had read in a few sources about using high heat and steam to help make a crust, so I did these at 475 for 15 min, spraying water into the oven at 5 min intervals. The result is indeed a dark brown crust. Perhaps a bit too dark? I also put sesame seeds on one loaf at X’s request. Unfortunately, the dough seemed to take a long time to rise so I didn’t pull the bread out of the oven until after 11PM. I was concerned that the brown crust would be rock hard, but as the article I read suggested, the crust indeed became soft just like “real” bread.

On the TomTom front, I had heard that the traffic service is actually currently free in the US because it isn’t really complete yet. I tried to feel TT out without trying to sound like a freeloader, and got a response that they were launching a new version of the traffic service in mid-april. I waited until then and tried to connect and still got an expiration notice.

Last week I saw someone with the same error code who said they simply had to contact TT and get their Plus account reset. They said they were told that traffic is free in the US until the end of June. So I sent TT a message and by the next day, I was getting traffic reports. The “new” service is much improved. It now reports the type of incident and the estimated delay It also shows a graphical representation on the traffic bar of how much of your remaining trip is subject to the delay. When you get to the actual traffic jam, the road itself is has a special pattern on it to illustrate the jam. The accuracy is probably about the same, that is, I found some spots where the traffic was at a dead stop and TT said nothing, while a reported 10min delay was clear in real life. That’s just a limitation of the system. They really should have some sort of user-reported traffic function. The TT can talk to the internet, so surely it can phone home and say “Hey I’m going 5 MPH on I95″ and if a statistically significant number of devices make similar reports, that information can then be relayed to other devices in the area.

For the time being, you have to think of paying for the traffic service as paying for the INTEGRATION with your device. You can get better info for free, but you currently can’t get that information shot directly to your HUD I’d have to call Traffic.com or switch to the radio. It can only be justified as a convenience cost, but it’s only about $6/month. Now that the information is useful, I probably will actually pay for it.

Of course after a couple of days, I am now getting a different message that TT Traffic is disabled, so I’m waiting on TT customer service for a fix. Speaking of their customer service, I have heard complaints that they are slow to respond and aren’t helpful. I have gotten responses to all of my questions within 24 hours. This morning I posted a follow up to my issue and got a response from the CSR within 15 minutes. They seem to be very responsive, so take heart.

Otherwise, a nice weekend. Saturday we watched Jer play rugby (pics later) and had dinner with X’s family before going to Brownies for her joint bday party with Kira. Sunday we spent the day at my parents’ new house. While their moving back west means no more beach house, it does mean that it’s faster and easier for all of us to get there. We were there pretty much all day, eating, playing games, etc. We haven’t been able to do that in awhile, and I think we’ll be able to do it more. Yay!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 at 2:05 pm and is filed under Mobile Post. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.