Getting Around in L.A. with the TomTom GO 930

I don't usually don't write any kind of product endorsement, but I have fallen in love with GPS. For Father's Day, my wife and son gave me the new TomTom GO 930. Which has already proven incredibly useful, and of all things, relaxing.

For one, the Bluetooth phone hands-free feature is great, given that California has a no-talking-while-holding-phone law that went into effect on July 1st. I can't figure out how to get the Blackberry Curve voice-dial to work through the TomTom, though, so I'm trying to dial on the TomTom's touch-screen while driving, which has already left me drifting wildly across lanes.

It was especially useful on my recent trip home to Raleigh, when I drove in the city I'm not too familiar with, and back and forth to New Bern, and I have used it to figure out where to find specific businesses, like a Starbucks. Those, I suppose, are the sort of things you should take for granted in a GPS navigation unit, but I'll just add that the user interface is pretty good, too.

I think my favorite thing about the unit, in Los Angeles where I already know my way around, is that the TomTom calculates the arrival time. And the result of that isn't so much time management for me, as it is the realization that speeding, aggravation and stress while driving in L.A. are all pointless, because the TomTom does not lie. You can lane change, speed, honk, run red lights; whatever. After only a few trips, you'll notice that at the most, the TomTom grants you a minute or two in time shaved off the trip. Road rage is stress, and stress kills. So, I consider the biggest value of the GO 930 to be its zen-like technology, constantly reassuring me of my arrival time, and the stress-free, laid back listening to tunes on the radio driving experience I get, knowing that I don't have to freak out in traffic to try to get where I'm going. I'll get there safer.

If I'm not trying to dial the phone, that is.

Chicago! Yeah, Lake View.

I'm at a work training session in Chicago and the office got me a sick rate at the Four Seasons. I don't know what kind of corporate hoo-haw is going on here, but I can tell you that I'm paying less per night to stay in the Four Seasons than I was to stay a night at the Comfort Inn in New Bern, North Carolina. Go figure.

Tonight we had dinner at Gibson's, where I narrowly avoided going into diabetic shock after eating a pound of blue cheese dressing (on a salad), followed by a twice-baked franken-potato and a side of grilled cow. Then we had a gallon of ice cream. for dessert. On the walk home my heart was racing in an attempt to both burn off some of the 5,000 calories I must have consumed whilst pumping the cholesterol laden blood through my choked arteries. The temperature had fallen into the low 40s, but I couldn't tell since my body had become a heat-laden engine in its attempt to shed the caloric intake. Don't get me wrong; I loved every second of it. Croaking from a heart attack in front of my corporate colleagues would be a pathetic way to go, and I'm guessing it wouldn't even make a sidebar in AdWeek.

That's the John Hancock Center taking up the view in the right side of the window. Not sure what that building directly across the street is.

World AIDS Day

Today is World AIDS Day. This is a video project I just completed for PRODUCT (RED). Thanks to everyone at (RED) and the Global Fund, all of whom work so hard and so diligently to work towards the eradication of HIV/AIDS. Find out more at JOINRED.COM.



Thanks to Karen, Rich, Carole, Damion, and everyone at (RED), Tribal DDB, DDB, Spotwelders, Machine Head, Lime Studios, but special thanks to Colette and Bich Ngoc who had the vision to make this project happen.