On the road again: CES, Las Vegas, day 3

I know I've been shortchanging you with these mini blog entries, but, wow, have I had bandwidth troubles.  My excuse for today is simple fatigue:  I went to bed a little after 12:30 a.m. and got up at 3:30 a.m. to begin the process of traveling home.

Where I am now, thank goodness.  I'll be traveling more of this month than I'll be home, so it's good to get to be home.  Even though I'm exhausted, I'm happy because I'm no longer in a plane or an airport.

Now that I have real bandwidth, I can share a few happy snaps from the show.

The Sony booth was huge, a giant circus of electronics surrounded by a wall on which the firm was projecting a huge number of images.

Click on an image to see a larger version.

In a convention center full of viswalls, the LG booth sported what I believe was the largest, one that was, from some angles, sporting 3D images.

Ever wondered what that hot BMW i8 hybrid looks like in person?  I certainly did, which made seeing it a lot of fun. 

It is a beauty, though not quite as quick as my Tesla (sorry, but I couldn't resist the comparison). 

I mentioned in an earlier post that I got to ride in the BMW i3 electric car while Bill did a test drive.  Here's Bill behind the wheel of a demo version of what may well be his next ride.

The car is in the so-homely-it's-cute category.

Now, back to work. 

I'm out.

On the road again: CES, Las Vegas, day 2

The bandwidth, she is a cruel mistress.  Blogging is pain.  Web browsing is impossible.  So, today we talked, walked, looked, and did more of those.  Many interesting devices, though nothing earth-shattering.

Wake-up is at 3:30 a.m. for a 6:00 a.m. flight.  Oh, goody!

On the road again: CES, Las Vegas, day 1

I'm going to keep this way shorter than I'd planned because the bandwidth in my hotel room has turned so bad that I cannot maintain an email connection or download a Web page in anything resembling reasonable time.  (Example:  I tried to open Amazon's home page and gave up after 15 minutes of no progress.) 

The short form is that Bill and I spent the day meeting and discussing many different topics and walking the CES show floor.  In the course of all of that, we also had the chance to see and drive (Bill) and ride (me) in BMW's new electric car, the i3.  It's a weird-looking but fun and quite peppy little car. 

I hope to have pictures and more to say tomorrow, when perhaps some of my many fellow bandwidth-hungry CES attendees will have gone home.

On the road again: CES, Las Vegas, day 0

Today, we traveled to Las Vegas.  Our first flight didn't take off until the late morning, so I didn't have to head to the airport until a little before 10:00 a.m.  Our plane took off on schedule, and I spent too much time working in the Admirals' Club, so I ended up waiting until DFW to get any food.  Fortunately, we had enough time there that I could eat.

For the next flight, we boarded quickly and on time, and then...we waited.  After a half-hour delay, we headed to Las Vegas.  I learned that a plane full of people heading to CES can overload an airplane's bandwidth so much that every single email message is a pain to receive.  Still, I managed to finish a lot of work.

Once we arrived, we took our carry-on bags and joined the day's first long line.

Click on an image to see a larger version.

This one was to get our CES badges, so we could avoid the even crazier lines tomorrow. 

We then headed into the longer taxi line, a winding crowd of people waiting for a ride to the sparkling city. 

We were due to land at 4:25.  We hit our hotel rooms at 6:25.

For dinner, we grabbed a taxi to the Cosmopolitan and headed to the third level to Jose Andres' Jaleo.  The various tapas dishes we tasted were, as always, delicious.

On the way down and out of the hotel, we happened upon one of Liberace's cars.

Maybe my Tesla needs some rhinestones....

Tomorrow, we hit the CES show floor!

Catch me at CES next week

My business partner, Bill, and I are heading to Las Vegas tomorrow for the biggest U.S. trade show of our industry, CES.  We'll be spending two days walking the floor, handing out golden tickets (follow PT's Twitter feed for details) to some vendors of mobile devices, and checking out the many interesting products on offer.

I have no dinner or show reservations; the focus this trip is all work.  Still, I hope we get to eat somewhere interesting at least once.  I know we'll get to spend time talking and planning for our business future, and such time is always fruitful. 

I haven't been to CES in a few years, so I'm quite looking forward to checking out the show.  Bill and I should be easy to spot, so if you see us, come up and say hello.

On the road again: Las Vegas/CES, day 5

I'm safely home after a long day of travel. For the first time on a trip to Las Vegas, I did not gamble at all. I had hoped to spend some time at a poker table, but each night when I had to choose between poker and sleep, I opted for sleep. I hate that choice, but I'm determined to improve my health, and sleep is a vital part of that improvement.

I'm quite frustrated by the fact that I'm not ready yet to write Children No More, nor am I ready to start typing up an outline, but so it goes; I will get there.

Given the hour, the unpacking still to go, and my fatigue, I'm going to sign off early and get back to it.

On the road again: Las Vegas/CES, day 3

Today's rhythm was the same as yesterday's: work, CES, work, out, work. We hit the South Hall of LVCC today and saw a fair amount of cool stuff, though nothing that really blew us away. We hit our first netbooks, and our take is decidedly mixed. We tried multiple Asus offerings, and after typing on them for several seconds, we both concluded there was no way we'd personally want them. The HP Mini family, by contrast, was interesting, in large part due to its keyboard's larger size and more sensible layout. We also found the HP Media Server of interest.

Dinner tonight was flat-out great, courtesy of Robuchon, where we had the special tasting menu featuring black truffles. Every dish was a winner. Wow.

After the meal, we worked a bit and then headed to the Bellagio to see O. I've seen this Cirque du Soleil show five or six times now, and tonight, like every other time, it was magical.

I wish I could afford to take all my friends and loved ones to Vegas so they could eat this meal and see this show.

If in my books I can provide moments of magic anywhere near as powerful as those in O, I will have achieved a very great deal indeed.

On the road again: Las Vegas/CES, day two

Morning was work, then an early lunch, and then off to the Sands to see the exhibits that couldn't afford the main halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center. We hit the Sands on the first day of the show because most people are at the main areas; avoiding crowds to the greatest degree reasonably possible is a good thing.

Two years ago, the Sands had many interesting tech products. Today, we saw very, very little of real interest. One of the oddest and most memorable products was a fairly old one: the Paro robotic therapeutic seal. Unlike this correspondent, we were not particularly charmed by this thing. When we heard the sales weasel proclaim its price tag in the U.S. was a hefty $6K, what little charm it had held for us evaporated quickly.

The most amusing thing I saw at the Sands was the set of AVN Adult Entertainment Expo information booths that the AVN show organizers had sprinkled right in the pathways of the CES attendees. The CES crowd thus had to walk by scantily clad women offering information about the AVN show. Great move by the AVN folks for their show, which is running concurrently with CES.

Late afternoon brought another work session, after which we headed to the Wynn to see La Reve, a show by former Cirque producer Dragone. This was my second time seeing this show, and I enjoyed it quite a bit, though it just isn't as magical as a Cirque production.

Afterward, I remembered that Bill is a fan of seafood, so we strolled over to Barolotta, a restaurant in the Wynn that just happens to be one of the best seafood places in the country. We were able to get a table immediately, and we then enjoyed a tasting menu whose highlight, for me, was an appetizer portion (just two bites) of mackerel that completely redefined for me how good that fish could taste.

We haven't hit the main CES hall yet, but so far everything I've seen reeks of a bad economy and a smaller CES than usual: casinos running at less than half their usual crowds, sparse attendance at the Sands part of CES, an instant table at a major restaurant, almost no cab lines, and so on. Not good signs for Sin City.

On the road again: Las Vegas/CES, day 1

So it's 10:10 p.m. local time, which your body believes is really 1:10 a.m. where it woke up after three hours and fifteen minutes of sleep, you're in Las Vegas, you've been working solid for a good while, and you're staring at a big lump of work still awaiting your attention. What do you do?

Why, go out for pie, of course.

Not just any pie, mind you; oh, no. This is very special pie, and you can find it in your hotel, the MGM Grand, only a couple of blocks walk (no exaggeration) from your room. This is the Emeril's version of banana cream pie, and it is the best BCP on the planet.

It is from this very line of fine reasoning that I found myself sitting at the bar of the Emeril's restaurant here savoring a piece of this most delightful pie and sipping a cold glass of water as a trio of seriously drunk, CES-bound, marketing women a few stools away provided free entertainment. The cute Indian woman with the British accent rarely spoke as the pale, paunchy blonde and the trim brunette fought for the coveted Mary role in front of three geeks they would never have noticed had they not been so far into the bottle. People-watching is at its best in Vegas.

Having moved my tired self across the country, spent way too many hours on a plane, had a good dinner at Fix, and done a ton of work, I think it's time for me to finish the final pending tasks and fall into my bed.

Tomorrow, Bill and I begin our walking tour of CES.

Heading to CES

Tomorrow, I hit the road again, this time to CES in Las Vegas. I'm quite looking forward to the show, both to see some of our clients and just to bask in the uber-geekiness of hundreds of thousands of square feet of tech on display. I'm particularly interested in seeing the many varieties of netbooks, because I'm still not sold on this computing category. It feels to me like an awkward middle ground between a three-pounder, such as an Air or a Lenovo T3100, and a smart phone, such as my iPhone. I'll report my opinion after I've checked out a lot of them on the show floor.

In unrelated news, as you would expect, I am chipping away at the plot of Children No More. I understand it at a macro level and have for some time, but I now must work out the details so I can write an outline and get busy on the book. This one will in many ways be darker than any of the others, but I'm still looking forward to getting back to writing; everything up until the point at which I'm putting down text always feels a bit like cheating.

While I'm in Vegas, I'll eat at least a few really good meals, see three shows, and if time permits, grab a few hours at a poker table (though this last is definitely lowest on my priority list). Stay tuned over the next five days for my report.