Sunday, February 12, 2017

The Price of technology

Dave Howell, Nellie D. 37VT63

Technology is advancing so quickly.  This point was driven home recently as I searched for a way to keep Nellie's Slurpee from running at night.  The noisy ShurFlo pump, mounted under the stateroom floor, can wake the dead.  Since the Slurpee's micro controller doesn't have a built-in clock, the search was on for one that I could add.  Allow me to digress for a minute.  When Bicki and I set sail for Mexico in 1995 it was at a seminal moment in history.  Since the 1800's sailors have gone to sea with sextants.  We had one too.  But we also had a new fangled, handheld device called a GPS.  For the princely sum of $800 it told us instantly and continuously our lat/long.  An added benefit was that it could tell UTC time with the accuracy of an atomic clock.  And this brings us back to the Slurpee and the solution to its real-time clock problem.  Since 1995 GPS prices have halved and halved again.  Today when the  GPS pictured below can be had for $3.32.






No comments:

Post a Comment