Passing through Heathrow T5 just after Xmas on my way to Bavaria for a meeting or two, I grabbed Charles Stross’ “The Jennifer Morgue” to read on the plane – and doubtless, in some airports too, since ground temperatures dropped to -20 practically while I was in the air.

Stross is definitely Our Kind Of Author, though I find he has that breathless Linux-Nerd way about his writing which immediately puts my teeth on edge (but doesn’t stop me reading). He clearly has some technology scars about his person and has done at least one book (Halting State) which suggests a high degree of familiarity with the online world and software development.

Anyway, at one point in “the Jennifer Morgue”, Stross stymies his heroes by having their transport crash – in software, not by running into something solid. As he no doubt intends, I had a nerdy chuckle at that while the Airbus 319 speared through the crystal-clear air across a Europe whiter then even the dreams of the BNP could make it.

Then I got in my hire car.

Every so often, I do these trips: fly or drive to Munich and then drive to St Moritz. It’s that last leg that turns the trip from a boring air-miles collection exercise, into one of Europe’s greatest drives. It’s also far better to drive it than to attempt a flight or other public transport. So, I’m in the habit of hiring a car at Munich Airport. Rather than learning the satnav (in German) in any one of 20 models suitable for winter driving, I take my all-Europe satnav with me. This saves a few quid by allowing me to pick non-satnav cars, and I can invest my brainpower in getting round the annoyances of just one device, instead of having to second-guess several devices (the Renault Scenic satnav, for instance, hadn’t achieved signal lock in the entire trip from Airport to Hotel – about 30 minutes worth).

This time I had my Garmin Nuvi 770 in my bag. it had been in a drawer for a bit, because my UK car has its own satnav, so when I fired it up in the renter I expected to have to wait for a while for signal acquisition and so forth.

What I didn’t expect was a message saying “The following maps are out of date: City Navigator North America[Capital G with a caret above it]CityMap” and an OK button bottom-right on the touchscreen. And that was it. The button did nothing: I could turn the unit off, and when it came back on it would industriously reload all its maps – and show the same un-dismissable alert.

Now, I didn’t buy or load the North America map set on my device: it seems it was there already. I’ve never used it in North America, so I’d rather remove that map than have to take care of updating it, but even when I follow the instructions on the error message and link the gadget to the net with the updating applet the message doesn’t go away.

As I was trudging down to the rental car desk in -18 Celsius to swap to a car with satnav, I suddenly remembered that implausible plot device in “The Jennifer Morgue”. Maybe Stross isn’t as far out as I first thought. Which, if he’s right about the other things in the book, should keep you awake at night!