Caught on Google Street View

Me on Google Street View
Originally uploaded by siegel_jackie.

Wouldn't it be cool to see the vehicle used to photograph Google Street View we all thought when the service was announced.

Little did I know that one of those vehicles was following behind me as I rode my bike to my athletic club (score a point for me for actually going to the athletic club.) I wish I had eyes at the back of my head, what a big missed opportunity.

I came across myself on Google Street View quite by accident. Of course I checked out my house and my block when the local newspaper announced that Google had added our city to the Street View locations. Not a soul on the street.

But, the other day I was checking out a real estate listing and wanted to make sure the address listed was the house I was thinking of. I thought it was pretty cool that they seemed to have captured a bicyclist on three or four of the waypoints. Looking closer I realized it had to be me. Confirmed by my S.O. and my sister (who else would recognize my backside)

Anyone else find themselves on Google Street View? My S.O.'s middle brother was out gardening when the vehicle came by his neighborhood in Los Angeles. Nice butt shot of him too.

Google maps read my mind

We decided to join my sister and her friends for a Thanksgiving buffet lunch at a tribal casino near us. We'd never been so checked the directions offered by the casino. It gave simple directions but mainly on the major freeway near us. Interstate 5 to CA-16

The forecast for the day was bright sun, a perfect day for a ride in the convertible. Perfect day for a county road drive, but how to get there by county road instead of the freeway? We had no idea as we'd never been there before. On the casino's direction page was a link to get door-to-door directions via Google Maps.

Put in our home address, the destination address was already populated with the casinos address. Hit "Get directions" and low and behold the directions were from one county road to another to another. 102 to 27 to 89 to 23 to 85B to CA-16. How'd Google know we preferred a back-road route? I'm convinced it read my mind.

The route took us by ostriches, sheep and lambs, cows, horses, and lots of birds of prey. Lunch at the casino was pretty good. They highlight locally grown produce.

The casino environment is not my cup of tea, but the drive and getting together with family and friends made for a great day, all thanks to Google Maps.

Thing 19 - My Google map

I started to do this exercise, signed into Google maps, went to My Maps and darn if I hadn't already created a map for my library. I don't remember doing it and it was only a month ago. Oh well, it's really easy. I guess I might as well add a picture of the building and add some more content. I do notice that now the outline of the building appears, pretty cool. I believe when I created the map all you could see were the streets, no buildings.

The map of where I work can be found HERE

This Thing was very easy. I just followed the step-by-step directions on Google Maps