You sense a geekfest just by reading the title of today's blog, don't you? I'm afraid I won't disappoint you, other than being unable to think of a suitable theme song except perhaps Eiffel 65's "Blue" song (yes, I had to look up the name of the group).
We changed to daylight savings time this past weekend. While I am excited to welcome more daylight, I have to admit it was nice only being a six hour time difference from Chicago instead of the usual seven. But I kept forgetting to change the clock on Bonnie and, quite frankly, wasn't sure how to do it. There's a digital clock in the heads up display as well as another one in the navigation panel, but there were no buttons or dials near the heads up to use to set the clock. Hmmm....
So this morning before I was on my way, I tried my luck at the navigation interface. My menu choices were Navigation, Entertainment, Climate and Communication. What about plain ol' settings? So I chose Communication, since I was attempting to communicate with the car about the change in time. It was the wrong choice, of course, and some stuff popped up about BMW service and, um, Bluetooth. Did someone just say, "BFF of CrackBerry?" And all along I had assumed that Bonnie was a minimalist BMW (I think she might be offended if I called her "stripped down").
Now, I have had mixed success with Bluetooth setup. Sometimes it's really easy. Sometimes, not so much. And that's when I'm reading directions in English. But I figured it couldn't hurt to try, even if I had to do so using the evil BMW iDrive system (no relation to iPod, as far as I can tell). So I clicked on a button that I assume meant setup, and it gave a long paragraph of instructions that I didn't particularly understand, but I clicked what seemed to be the "next" button anyway and put my CrackBerry in pairing mode. Then it asked me to put in my PIN for the BMW. Uhhh.... How many digits in that PIN? Where would I find said PIN? Hmmm....
I decided to enter 0000, which I thought was a PIN I had used with other Bluetooth devices, crossed my fingers, and hit "next" again. The BlackBerry then asked me to enter my PIN. 0000 was again a winner, and then asked if I would accept a Bluetooth connection from BMW 9609.
"Is that your real name, Bonnie?" I was reminded of Star Trek and Seven of Nine's designation (7 of 9). I felt honored to be let into her little world. It was almost like she was willing to accept me as her friend on BMW Facebook when she displayed on the nav screen, "Schwarz" (the name of my BB here -- you had to know it would have a name, right?).
So, connection complete, I decided to try it out. Which seemed to require entering the phone number using iDrive. Shoot me. Given that this was occurring at 7:45 AM CET, I figured most of the people reading this blog would not be so excited to receive a call from me, so I called voice mail at home. Imagine my surprise (I'd not established a Bluetooth connection with a car before this, Tori operating on 2001 technology), when, after I entered my number, it said it was calling "Preuscher - Home," which is the label I had given my home number in the CrackBerry. Sure enough, when I went to the A-Z listing, it was pulling up all my contacts from the CrackBerry. I was rather impressed and excited, yet still managed to refrain from calling you in the middle of the night. Which is probably also good because it took me a while how to hang up the phone short of picking up the CrackBerry as nothing in iDrive seemed to work. (The answer, as it turned out, was to click on the phone button on the steering wheel. Oh.)
All in all, good times. I'm new to pairing with a car -- I name them, but this seemed somewhat unnatural -- but I feel like Bonnie and I have truly bonded. And that I have underestimated her all this time. Much as I'm anxiously awaiting the arrival of Hudson in May, I think I'm gonna miss her.
P.S. I did finally figure out how to change the time. While you're at the main menu on the navigation panel, you simply click rather than clicking on one of the options. Stinkin' iDrive. However, changing the nav clock also changed the more digital-looking one in the heads up. Simple yet elegant design. Nothing but the best for my minimalist ride.
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