Rains County Leader (Emory, Tex.), Vol. 125, No. 7, Ed. 1 Tuesday, July 26, 2011 Page: 3 of 14
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TUESDAY JULY 26, 2011
Bains CoPntnTirailrr Q
1st National to fund new
East Tawakoni VFD pumper
MY TAKE ON TECH
GPS comparison: Smart
Phone vs. Standalone Part 1
Continued from page 1
of the ESD’s “current operating
funds.”
Chief Jones told his coun-
cil and the ESD board that a
dedication ceremony for the new
truck would be held at the East
Tawakoni Fire Station soon after
the truck arrives.
No mention was made Thurs-
day about how the truck would be
titled, to the ESD or the ETVFD;
however, in earlier negotiations
with another financial institution,
discussion among board members
indicated the title would be in the
ESD’s name.
Discussion of consolidating
truck and station loans of the vari-
ous fire departments was tabled
until more precise balances, pay-
off figures and other data are
known.
Rules of Procedure
The board adopted an adapta-
tion of the commissioners court’s
rules of procedure, conduct and
decorum.
The following are excerpts of
the rules to be observed:
I. The meetings will be con-
ducted in accordance with the
Texas Open Meetings Act.
II. Regular, special and emer-
gency meetings are open to the
public. Executive sessions are
closed to the public.
III. Regular meetings are held
the second Thursday of each
month. Agenda items may only
be placed through and approved
by the president of the board.
IV. The public may speak in
open forum by written request,
limited to five minutes. The time
limit may be shortened or length-
ened by a vote of the board. A
member of the public may be
removed.
V. The president is a fully par-
ticipating member of the board.
VII. Special rules for citizens,
the press and media with cameras
or recording equipment of any
type:
• May not be closer than 15
feet from the meeting table.
• May not disrupt the meet-
ing when setting up or removing
equipment. May not block the
view of the public.
• No interviews during meet-
ings.
• Interviews conducted outside
should not disrupt the meeting.
VIII. The rules apply to public
hearings and additional rules may
be adopted to supplement these
rules for such meetings.
IX. Workshops are to work on
district business and public input
will only be permitted by the pre-
siding officer.
X. The rules are effective
immediately.
Payment of Accounts
While tallies on the fire depart-
ment reimbursement affida-
vits were not available to the
board, the following checks were
approved and disbursed to the
service providers:
Champion EMS: $10,000.00
Emory VFD: $9,431.54
Point VFD: $4,813.32
East Tawakoni VFD: $3,668.82
The board approved all other
payments including the quarter-
ly payment to the Rains County
Appraisal Dist. of $11,877.72.
Approval of the fire depart-
ment’s reimbursement affidavits
was tabled for further work-up and
tallying by the district’s office.
Other Action
In other action, the board:
• Approved the treasurer’s
monthly report showing a begin-
ning balance of $241,240.00 and
an ending balance of $234,631.57.
Treasurer Jerome McDonald also
reported that all CD balances
remain the same. (This report
was presented before the action to
cash two CDs to meet the down
payment on the ETVFD pumper.)
• Approved the petty cash
report showing a beginning
balance of $85.44, expenses, a
$200.00 deposit from the ESD
checking account and an ending
balance of $256.56.
• Approved the minutes of the
May 12, June 6 and June 12
meetings.
• Took reports as presented by
Champion EMS, East Tawakoni
VFD, Emory VFD and Point
VFD.
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The Library extends a very special “Thank You” to our
sponsors who have generously donated discount
coupons and passes for the 2011 Summer
Reading Program. With their contributions, we are
able to offer wonderful prize incentives to encourage
children to read throughout the summer months.
Please show your support for these businesses
with your continued patronage. Our summer reading
program would not be the same without them.
THANK YOU!
Rains County Public Library Staff
Alliance
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By JOHN KELLY
Rains County Leader Guest Columnist
Last week I talked about the
legacy of GPS (Global Position-
ing System) as used on consumer
navigation systems. This week and
next week I’ll do a comparison
using a recent trip where I used
a standalone handheld GPS unit I
bought in 2007 and a smart phone
GPS application on a 1,200-mile
trip in a rental moving truck. My
move in June was the first time
that I actually had a chance to see
how both devices behaved on a
fairly long trip.
Let’s look at some aspects of
GPS navigation and see how each
device fared. Note that my stand-
alone GPS unit was designed for
use by drivers, bicyclists, hikers,
joggers and mariners. Because of
that amazing flexibility, it may
have some drawbacks when used
strictly for driving, but still is very
applicable for that use. It is not the
same as many consumer units sold
today by big box retailers designed
strictly for vehicular use.
Notification capability: The
smart phone clearly wins this one
because it communicates verbal-
ly whereas my standalone GPS
model can only beep and indi-
cate the instructions on the small
color screen. If you are using the
smart phone for navigation and
not other uses while driving, its
voice instructions do allow you to
navigate without having to look
at a screen. That can be very
helpful in urban traffic when you
need to be most alert to the road
and traffic. The woman’s voice is
generally clear and street names
are pronounced with surprising
accuracy. “Turn right on Jones
Avenue in 800 feet” is clear and
very helpful when navigating in
urban or heavy traffic.
Thankfully, both units are very
forgiving when you miss a turn,
and will give you instructions on
how to get back on track. You
can set the quality of route gen-
eration on the standalone GPS, so
occasionally it may take 20 or 30
seconds to recompute your route
to get you back on track.
Changes on-the-fly: In many
ways the standalone GPS sur-
passed in this area because I was
able to make changes or check
distances and see what lay ahead
on the map fairly easily. The small
color screen is clear and crisp and
the joystick on the unit is easier
to use when you are bouncing
around in a large truck than the
touch screen on the smart phone.
The smart phone was tricky to
use while driving because with
the highly sensitive touch screen,
I had to see what I was doing as
I bounced around in the big mov-
ing truck that has yet to discover
this invention called springs. I
made several mistakes and that
only made fixing them more time
consuming and dangerous as dis-
tractions. Several times I just put
down the smart phone and said I
would mess with it after I got into
lighter traffic, relying on the stand-
alone GPS to carry the moment.
Accuracy of instructions:
Both the standalone unit and the
smart phone had clear maps that
appeared complete and helpful.
Both devices were always able
to tell me whereby I was at any
moment. The standalone unit has a
nice feature where I can set a num-
ber of desired fields to display on
the screen, such as speed, direc-
tion, distance to next waypoint,
and time to destination. That fea-
ture helped me in the rental truck
to know the exact speed I was
going, not trusting the speedom-
eter and not wishing to get a ticket
along the way.
Typically, a GPS unit of any
kind will be plus or minus one
mile per hour of speed accuracy if
it has reasonable access to the sky
to see the satellites. The first thing
I do when renting a car is check
the car speedometer against my
standalone GPS to make sure the
indicated speed is close to accu-
rate to avoid getting speeding tick-
ets due to a faulty speedometer.
Timeliness of the maps: The
maps in the standalone GPS do
not update themselves with new
data. While the smart phone is
not perfect, there is a much bet-
ter chance that the gas stations
and restaurants that it shows you
will actually be correct because
it gets its data from a remote
database that should be reason-
ably up to date. I can manually
update my standalone unit with
new maps, but choose not to spend
that money since the old data is
sufficient.
Traffic flow: My particular
standalone GPS model does not
have real time road and traffic
updating and on a prior trip to
Kansas City before I had the smart
phone, I found it very frustrating
that many routes it directed me to
were actually streets temporarily
closed for construction. A smart
phone with real time traffic would
hopefully not route one toward
streets that are closed. I have typi-
cally lived in areas where there are
no traffic jams, so have not had
much experience with that capa-
bility. But clearly a smart phone
with dynamic traffic and accident
data could be a huge time saver for
commuters.
Next week I will continue the
comparison between the two types
of GPS units in other important
aspects. (John can be contacted at
mytakeontech@ gmail. com.)
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Hill, Earl Clyde, Jr. Rains County Leader (Emory, Tex.), Vol. 125, No. 7, Ed. 1 Tuesday, July 26, 2011, newspaper, July 26, 2011; Emory, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth822911/m1/3/: accessed April 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Rains County Library.