LuX0r

By the generosity of Wahby and Gonj (thanks for the wake-up and thanks for the ride), I made it to Vegas and didn't even forget anything important. CES is going to be unbelievably huge, nay, ridiculously huge. American trade shows generally don't allow one to have women pole-dancing at an expo booth, throwing swag and merch down do the hordes below, and it shows. Yes, Virginia; even in Vegas, you can't use flesh to advertise. As a result, even the half-constructed booths are no less than visually assaulting. I mean stunning. I mean... it's like the booth runs over to you, grabs your face, rubs itself in your eyes and then scampers back, giggling, to it's actually static location. The power of Christ compels you to follow.

Now to make the scene complete, one only needs imagine these booths packed to ultimate density on a grid with 5' wide aisles stretching on for an area of twenty-eight (28!) football fields. Fill every inch of free space with an exhibitor or conference attendee and crank up the olfactory quotient because CES is attended by a queer mix of engineer, A/V geek and marketing staff. And musky weasels. Our marketing staff warned us that finance analysts and investors also try to grill the engineers and occasional product line manager under cover of the convention. I'm young and don't know very much, but I'm told that will make me a target for analysts and competitors. Maybe I should pack in some emergency tomato juice, just in case.

As soon as the rest of my now-backup demo arrives at the hotel, I'm headed over to the insanity-in-progress. Yesterday, they didn't have much for me to do. Today may be much of the same, although I'll at least get the skinny on the demo proper and will double-extra-test the demo bits I brought. We'll also blow a few breakers as we work the bugs out of the power handling system. Tomorrow through Sunday, I'll be working the booth and wandering around the Las Vegas Conference Center in a sensory stupor.

I'm going to see if I can get through the week without gambling. It's tempting, but then I see the crusty old dude smoking at a slot machine being served by a tired waitress in breast-popping attire (looking down to notice she's wearing the same pull-on sandles that I wore when working at a the Glass Haus, on my feet, for 8-12 hours a day in '99) and it suddenly loses its appeal. The lights would be glamorous, but they're really tacky compared to Frostbyte's work or even the relatively amateur pieces at Burning Man. I do appreciate, however, how the signs to things lead you through the greatest possible area of the casino floor. Still, I attest that gambling is a lot more fun when you're losing money to your friends at PokerNight or Casino. You certainly appreciate the waitress more when it's a girl you know who's drink-bitching for dollars and chips down her corset, shuttling booze between an angry Amittai bartending in the bathroom and the comparatively oppulent schmucks gambling in the kitchen. As a sweeping generalization, anonymity takes the fun out of everything -- it's better to debauch in good company.

Reporting from the 26th floor of the Luxor, with a birds-eye view of the Sphinx's ass: woz out.