While on the way to Area 51...

I saw a Ferengi in Vegas!

Actually, I was at the Star Trek Experience because my friend Michelle wanted to go, and while there I snapped a picture with an alien lifeform ;) And if you are wondering, YES, the Star Trek Experience is like going to a Star Trek convention except a lot more expensive. I don't think it is worth the money unless you are a huge Star Trek fan.

For other pictures from Vegas and Death Valley, click here.

My new GPS Toy

I have been eyeing GPS systems for the past few months, but could never convince myself to spend the money on one since I have a pretty good compass in my head and rarely get lost. But I still liked looking at them because several models have a real-time traffic monitor and anybody who commutes in L.A. can appreciate this feature!

When I first moved to L.A. I subscribed to sigalert.com and would access this info from my phone. In the end, I canceled my service because I was paying a lot for cellphone internet that I rarely used and just checked the sigalert maps (free) before I left the house or work.

My sister noticed that I was eyeing GPS systems and has heard me complain about traffic a lot, so she bought me a Navigon 7100 for my Christmas/birthday present. It came in the mail yesterday and I was very surprised to get it!

I was not familiar with the Navigon since I had been eyeing Garmin Nuvi's and some TomTom systems. The Navigon 7100 is about the size of a PDA and has some nice features like FREE lifetime realtime traffic monitoring, and freeway lane recognition. The commute this morning was my first trial of the Navigon. It did a good job telling me there was an accident on the 101 and that I should take the next exit afterwards to avoid the traffic. However, it did not have information on slow/heavy traffic (just accidents) so it didn't swing me around the traffic. Instead, I drove around it myself onto side streets and this is where the Navigon did a good job and a bad job. It recognized small streets really well and had no problems telling me the shortest route (distance wise). On the other hand, it had me doing frustrating traffic things like turning left onto really busy roads and driving down roads with a lot of stoplights.

In general, I like it so far. Let's see what the evening commute is like...

Uncle Leo!

I went to a screening of 'A Mighty Heart' at the Directors Guild in Hollywood last night (my sister got the invite and took me as a guest) and the place was relatively empty since it was Halloween. But I did see one recognizable actor-- Uncle Leo from Seinfeld! His real name is Len Lesser. He looked a little more elderly than he looks on t.v., but otherwise, he's very recognizable.

The movie, BTW, was not really worth my time. I came out of it annoyed because it didn't provide me anything really educational or new-- just a barrage of moving pictures and people rushing around and yelling to induce a feeling of drama. It was disjointed (in a bad way) and I got BORED (and I like long and slow foreign films). For me it was entirely unsuccessful and felt like I was watching 2 hours of the t.v. news.

I know that Angelina Jolie is probably trying for some sort of award nomination from this movie. But I feel like the movie was just trying wayyyyyy tooooo hard and because of it I didn't feel as much of a connection to Angelina Jolie's character as I know that I could have.

On the plus side, I did see another 'celebrity' to add to my list ;)