Fun with driving directions sites.

Recently, I received this in email from my friend and South Bay restaurant informant, Kim:

>Go to http://mappoint.msn.com/DirectionsFind.aspx
>Choose Address In=Norway and City=haugesund for start
>Choose Address In=Norway and City=trondheim for finish

So, anyone who has used mapping sites knows that they all occasionally give directions that suck in some way, for some destinations, but this one is a bit extreme, given that the route is 2713.2 km (1685.9 miles) long, leaves Norway, crosses the North Sea, and comes back across the English Channel, transiting seven countries before returning to Norway.

This is probably a record for most roundabout directions for "fastest route". (I haven't tried asking it what it thinks is the "shortest route".)

Feel free to give it a try for the gory details, but note that this only works Haguesund to Trondheim. I'm told the reverse gives relatively reasonable results.

Because I'm the kind of guy who likes to visit mapping sites, I decided I'd test some of mappoint's competitors.

( results from and cheap shots at a bunch of other route mapping sites )

The moral of the story seems to be to ask for directions locally, even when you're asking a website. Asking Americans how to get someplace in Europe seems a particularly fruitless exercise.

(To be fair, I wouldn't ask Europeans for directions in America, either.)

On hooking and unhooking bra straps.

While hooking together bedfull_o_books bra straps in preparation for laundry--if you don't hook them together they snag other items in the wash--I remembered a conversation I'd had with some folks a while ago about unhooking them one-handed.

No deep conclusions here. Just funny mental juxtapositions.

Off to laundry. :)

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Well, I was going to go off to laundry, but now I have a question:

Does anyone know a really good reason why one should not microwave liquid laundry detergent which has become frozen in the car in order to unfreeze it?

Winter, feh.