{"id":14817,"date":"2014-03-23T07:53:09","date_gmt":"2014-03-23T12:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/?p=14817"},"modified":"2021-11-30T07:31:33","modified_gmt":"2021-11-30T12:31:33","slug":"starting-points","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/starting-points\/","title":{"rendered":"Starting Points"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Preparing for a quick out-of-town jaunt to visit with friends living in the Twelve Mile Circle, the actual geographic quirk in Delaware<\/a> for which this site was named, prompted me to plot a course designed to avoid the dreaded Delaware Border Tax<\/a>. I succeeded in that goal by the way although that wasn’t germane to the story. Rather, this was more about the starting point (singular) although in actuality it became a matter of starting points (plural).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For some odd reason I won’t type my home address into any of the online mapping programs. Maybe I harbor an unrealistic expectation that somehow those all-powerful corporate or government entities can’t find me or track my movements if I take that one simple step.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I know. Fit me for a tinfoil hat. I realize it’s completely delusional and irrational from an intellectual standpoint even though that doesn’t change my behavior. That’s why I found myself dropping a rather generic “Washington, DC” into several mapping programs. I wanted to find an optimal route and noticed that each site defined that simple starting point differently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Not the Point<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I’m going to go down a tangent for a moment. So, it reminded me of a day many years ago during the infancy of online mapping applications. I was taking a walk and noticed a woman driving through the neighborhood visibly lost. Finally she stopped to ask for directions after passing me three or four times. She wanted to find a very specific apartment building several miles away. She’d simply designated “Arlington, Virginia” in (I think it was) Mapquest which directed her to a point two blocks due north of my house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, I thought, what kind of idiot would put the name of a 26 square mile county into a mapping site and expect it to bring her to the exact spot she needed; and second, hey it was pretty cool that I lived so close to the value the map returned. Don’t bother attempting that trick today. Mapquest changed the starting point for Arlington to the much more logical county courthouse site years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back to the present, either intellectual curiosity or boredom — it could have been both — led me to examine Washington, DC as defined by several mapping sites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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OpenStreetMap<\/h2>\n\n\n\n