40 Days and Counting

In all the years I've spent in Alaska I have never driven the Al-Can Highway.  This year it's time for a change.  No getting on an airplane in Bellingham and getting off in Anchorage.  No driving a boat up the "Inside Passage", although, it's a beautiful trip (except for the Gulf of Alaska part).  I'm going to drive a car all the way from Bellingham Washington to Homer Alaska, take pictures, meet people, then take the ferry to Kodiak.  Should be a fun experience.  The only uncertain part, at this time, is where am I going to spend the nights?  Camping out for the duration of the trip doesn't appeal to me.  Especially since I'm starting out the last week of February.  A little research on hotels and cafes should come in handy. LOL, I'm too old to sleep on the ground any more.  It's just not as soft as it used to be. More later.

Holy Cow! Somebody read my Nobeltec blog!

Of all the unexpected things, comments on my last blog entry.  I guess putting your thoughts online is a bit like having sex in a public place.  Sooner or later, someone is going to see you and say something.
Anonymous's comment made me go back and reread my last entry to make sure I was being accurate. Yep, it pretty much correctly describes the red night light function in vns 9.3, when your using vector charts.
I haven't called Joel Haney yet, (head of Nobeltec's quality assurance) but I did go buy the Nobeltec upgrade to version 10.7 ($350.00).  Once installed, all the vector charts I had purchased and updated no longer worked (why?).  I had to buy the Max-Pro charts unless I was willing to accept the inferior Raster charts which came with the upgrade, which I don't care about since I already own them all anyway.  (This is where the "cynical" part from my tag-line comes in) Why did I have to move from one chart company to another?  Who owns the first chart company and who owns Max-Pro?  Wait a minute, I think Boeing/Jeppesen owns Max-Pro, I mean C-Map.  I had previously paid for vector charts which were supposed to work with any and all versions of Nobeltec, so, no joy here.
And the most significant observation and /or question is: Why are we having to pay for an "upgrade" to fix an existing programing error/incompatibility in the nav system? So far I haven't seen anything significantly new in the 10.7 release to warrant the $350 dollars.
Here is an analogy which pretty much explains my annoyance with Nobeltec...  When Microsoft releases a new operating system they know there will be problems and issues.  When they learn about these issues they find the solution and send the fixes out for downloading but, they don't charge you to fix their programing mistakes.
I'm staying with Nobeltec for now, because of the significant investment in time and money over the years.  But I'm not happy about being used in this fashion.
Good value for the money you spend.  That's what its all about and I don't see much value for the money spent this time.