Friday January 6, 2006 – Matt got pretty hungry at the convention yesterday so before we left the Plaza we made a quick stop at McDonalds for some breakfast. We parked at the Sahara valet parking today and although they did hassle us a bit we made much better time getting to the show today. Our primary area of concentration today was the South Hall. Most of the computer stuff is found on the second floor of the South Hall. Big booths here included nVidia, Creative, AMD, Palm, HP and others. The lower floor of the South Hall is primarily home automation and audio equipment. We did take a run through there as well but stayed mostly focused on the second floor. In the afternoon we split up for a while and I continued looking through booths in the Central Hall and made a stop at the DL.TV booth where I bumped into Vinny again. After watching the tail end of the DL.TV recording for the day Vinny and I continued through the Central Hall. Around four-thirty we started getting tired and met Matt at the Hilton. Vinny took part in “Star Trek the Experience” to recoup some of his parking money while Matt and I called another friend to find some good places to eat. Ed suggested we try the Rio if we were interested in a buffet. After last year’s less than stellar buffet experience at the Mirage I was a bit hesitant but Matt and I decided to give it a go. The biggest challenge was to locate the buffet once we got inside the Rio. Signage in Las Vegas casinos is notoriously lacking. Eventually we located the buffet and although it wasn’t a deal it was a much better experience than last year. I’d probably visit it again although I have heard the buffet at Steve Wynn’s new Wynn Casino is quite good as well. After eating ’till our heart’s content we returned to the Plaza. I did some catching up on the WiFi connection from down the street while Matt went out on Freemont Street.

Saturday January 7, 2006 – When I got up this morning Matt told me he was going to sleep in and get one of those famous cheap Las Vegas breakfasts so I headed down to the show by myself. I parked in the Stardust lot today and hiked over to the convention center. On the way over I noticed $5 parking in the LVCC lot so I think we’ll try parking there tomorrow. I spent the first part of my day in the Central Hall. Soon after I arrived (around 9:45) the power went out in the Microsoft booth for everything that was powered from the ceiling grid (mostly lighting). It’s the first time I’ve seen a power outage at CES so it was memorable. A bit later I found out that DL.TV was doing a taping in the early afternoon so I spent a little time looking at the international marketplace at the Hilton before heading over there. In the past year I’ve learned to be more interested in what is going on internationally with consumer electronics as a lot of what you see on retail store shelves is rebranded, imported electronics. You can find manufacturers of anything from alarm clocks to Ethernet switches to displays who are ready and willing to cut a deal for custom branding right at the Hilton. This is one of the ways I see what’s coming down the pipe a year ahead of schedule, it’s also one of the most under visited and under reported parts of the show. One of the other things you notice is that the weekend crowd can be quite different from the weekday crowd at the show. Many of the executives head home on Friday night or Saturday morning and you see more of the average public on the weekend, especially in the car audio area. After spending a bit of time looking over the international products at the Hilton I walked back to the DL.TV taping. I took a series of behind the scenes photos of the taping which will hopefully be picked up by the folks at DL.TV. After the taping concluded I hooked up with Matt and we cruised the South and Central Halls some more looking over the products coming out from the major players. Around 4:30 I headed off to church at the Las Vegas Cathedral and Matt drove back to the hotel to try and catch up on email. Matt picked me back up later and we drove out to the Orleans for dinner. This was another restaurant suggested by Ed but it wasn’t as big a hit as the Rio buffet, partly due to poor service and partly due to bland food but it was much less expensive. After dinner we drove down to the America Café in New York, New York where we had a slice of the New York Cheesecake (they have extra large slices here) for dessert. Once we got back to the hotel we packed up our second laptop and headed down to Freemont Street in search of a better internet connection. Matt did a little work while I watched the Freemont Street show and we topped it all off with a Krispy Kreme doughnut.

Sunday January 8, 2006 – Today is the last day of the show. We stopped at McDonalds on the way out of the hotel again to pick up a quick breakfast. I decided to go for the $5 parking across from the LVCC today which worked out quite nicely. We spent most of the day (which ends at 4:00) today playing games and attending product demonstrations in search of the elusive swag. I did end up winning a Creative Zen Micro/Photo digital media player along with a number of T-Shirts and hats although the total amount of swag given away continued to decline this year. One interesting product I did see today was a Bluetooth cordless phone from Uniden. The unique thing about this phone was that it would allow you to not only use a Bluetooth headset, but you could connect in your cell phone via Bluetooth and use it as a second line from any of the handsets. I think this product would be of interest to a lot of people with unlimited nights and weekends on their cell phones if Uniden could find a way to get the price down some more. After leaving the show Matt and I drove out to Metro Pizza which is supposed to be the local pizza joint in Las Vegas. The prices were great and our pizza had a wonderful crust if only a mediocre sauce. I would recommend trying Metro Pizza as an alternative to the many chains and casino restaurants found in Vegas. After finishing dinner we drove back to the hotel and headed down to Freemont Street to see if we could get an internet connection and some “deep fried Oreos” that Matt had been eyeing all week. The Oreos were interesting and novel if not especially tasty. Along the way we encountered some rather poignant Christian protesters in the middle of Freemont Street. I wonder how much this negative attitude actually works, especially with the street crowd in Las Vegas who didn’t take too kindly to the message of doom and gloom.

Wednesday January 4, 2006 – After a brief and uneventful drive into Las Vegas we made a stop at Fry’s Electronics. This perennial favorite is probably the most interesting and best stocked brick and mortar electronics retailer in the United States. Known for their deals, Matt was able to pick up a five port Ethernet switch for $5 while I looked over the current prices and stock. Following our visit to Fry’s we drove back up the strip to the Sahara where we had lunch at the Nascar Café. I’ve eaten here before but I was distinctly unimpressed with the food this time and would probably not go back again. After lunch we walked over to the Hilton to pick up our show badge holders. The line was quite short and we had no trouble getting this done. By this time I thought our hotel room might be ready so we drove to downtown Las Vegas and checked into the Plaza hotel at the intersection of Main and Freemont. We ended up with a Freemont facing room on the 14th (really the 13th) floor providing a great view of all the action downtown. After finding an open access point and a brief email check we drove back to the Sahara where we parked and walked to the Hilton for Bill Gates’ pre-show keynote. Because we did not have tickets we ended up sitting upstairs in a ballroom watching via monitor but this is where I have always ended up watching it so that wasn’t a big disappointment. After a demonstration of what Microsoft’s view of a future day might look like we got to see the most extensive demonstration of Windows Vista to date. When Bill wrapped up we were pretty hungry so we drove down to New York, New York and had a late dinner at the America Restaurant. When we got back to the Plaza I went down to Freemont Street and watched two of the shows on the giant screen covering the street before returning to the hotel and getting some sleep to prepare for the first day of the show.

Thursday January 5, 2006 – The plan this morning was to park at Sahara around 9:15 and hike to the convention center but for the first time Sahara was monitoring their parking and wanted people to park in a $20 a day dirt lot across the street. Instead of doing that we drove to New York, New York which is an official show hotel and attempted to take the provided shuttle bus to the show. Unfortunately, we read the sign incorrectly and waited for almost an hour before finding the correct door and a bus came by. We finally made it to the show around 10:45. Last year I had a good time looking through the future technologies in the “Innovations Plus” area so after finding the DL.TV booth and my local friend Vinny we went off in search of that. Instead of the usual home in the parking lot tents Innovations has grown large enough to warrant an additional venue, the Sands convention center. This brings the total number of CES venues to four, the Hilton, LVCC, Sands and Alexis Park. We waited in a short line for shuttle to the Sands and spent the rest of the day canvassing the exhibits there. After returning to LVCC Vinny drove us down to Caesar’s and we had dinner at the Cheesecake Factory before Vinny drove us back to our car at NY, NY. Once we got back to the Plaza Matt went down to Freemont Street to watch the show and I caught up on some email and information from the first day of the show before heading to bed.

Monday January 2, 2006 – Longtime readers will know that for the past several years I’ve been attending the Consumer Electronics Show held every January in Las Vegas. This year is no exception. A few changes are in store. For the first time I’ve been able to talk someone else into coming along with me so Matt, a friend and owner of the St. Paul based Fast Computer Service Company, will be accompanying me on the journey. Observant readers will also note that instead of the usual quick fly in, fly out we’ve decided to make a road trip out of it. I’ve also tacked on a few days at the Grand Canyon on the way home which should be a fantastic experience. Of course I’ve had the room in Las Vegas booked since September and the room at the Grand Canyon booked since October, other than that we’ll be playing it by ear. When I got up this morning at 7:00 I saw that we had freezing rain in the Twin Cities which is not a great way to start a January road trip. Not to be deterred I headed over to St. Paul to pick up Matt and get some breakfast before leaving town. Thanks in part to it being a legal holiday traffic was very manageable even on the slippery roads. By about 9:15 we finished breakfast and headed south on Interstate 35. Once we got out of the metro area the roads actually got much better and Matt drifted off to sleep as I entered Iowa. With little fanfare we passed through Des Moines and turned West on Interstate 80. As both Matt and myself are licensed amateur radio operators we tried to find locals to talk to or someone who could direct us to an Echolink repeater from which we could connect back to a system in St. Paul and talk to people there. Unfortunately we were unable to find anyone in Iowa but were able to make contact with a local and connect back to St. Paul from Lincoln, NE. I continued driving until we got to Fort Kearny, NE where we stopped for dinner. I had a great Nebraska ribeye steak at the Whisky Creek Steak Restaurant. After dinner Matt took over the driving and being well rested from his mid-morning nap we continued farther west than I had originally planned all the way to Fort Morgan, CO. We soon found a hotel room at the Days Inn that included both a continental breakfast and an internet connection. The breakfast turned out to be a bit disappointing but the internet worked just fine and allowed me to tie up a few things that I hadn’t been able to before leaving town. Final mileage for the day was 851 miles, not a bad drive at all.

Tuesday January 3, 2006 – Matt seemed to have a little trouble getting the time change right this morning and ended up setting his alarm for two hours earlier than he needed to which I found a bit amusing. After a small breakfast at the hotel I drove us west along Interstate 76 and into Denver, CO where we continued along Interstate 70. While in Denver we were able to contact a fantastic local amateur radio operator who directed us towards an Echolink repeater and allowed us to connect back to St. Paul and talk with another friend back there. As far as Denver it had been very dry and our local contact explained to us that they had even been told to water their lawns and trees to prevent them from drying out and dying before spring. We were told to take a look at the snow in the mountains though where they had received 200% of normal snowfall. Matt enjoyed going through the tunnels and aside from some mildly slippery roads and low visibility we had no real problems. Once we got through the Colorado Rockies things dried up as we descended towards the Utah border. With the decrease in snow cover and the increase in sun the beautiful copper colored mountains began to show and I did stop at two scenic view turnoffs in eastern Utah to snap a few photos. Continuing through Utah I rediscovered just how far apart things are out here as I got a bit lower on gas than I’m comfortable with when traveling in remote areas. Eventually we stopped for dinner in Richfield, UT and Matt again did the evening shift bringing us even closer to Las Vegas than I had planned. Right now we’re settling in to the Coronada Suites in St. George, UT where we again got a decent room at a good rate with a continental breakfast and internet access included. Tomorrow we should be just a few hours from Las Vegas which will conclude the road trip section of the trip until Monday when we continue on to the Grand Canyon. The plan right now is to pickup our badge holders once we hit Vegas then check into the hotel and scope out the crowds until Bill Gates’ keynote at 6:30pm. Stay tuned for photos as internet connections allow.