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On my way back from Vegas, I took a dog-leg hop over to Austin to visit Rich and Melissa, and their new +1, Sophia. Only 10 days old, now. She’s such a cutiepie. I’ve been here since Thursday night, and I’ve had a grand time just chillin’, talking and even watching a couple of movies on the couch.

This afternoon, Rich said, “Sorry we’re so low-key…”

And then it struck me how little they had actually changed. They’re the exact same people I left here two years ago. The new addition to their lives changes very little of what they are. I’ve seen many couples who became frothing doting caricatures of the overbearing superprotective American ultraparent, and I just don’t see that with them. Sophie is a beautiful addition to the finest people I know.

Have there been changes? Most certainly yes, but fundamentally, it’s like time stood still for them and me. I came in and sat down my first day here, and it was like I had never left.

It’s rare to have friends like that, and I count myself exceptionally lucky.

So, the good news is, CES, for me, was wildly successful. I found a strong collection of new products that I’m ready to order. I shook lots of hands, made a lot of friends, repaired one personal relationship, and strengthened others. It was highly awesome.

The downside to all that super productivity was I had nearly no time to myself. I was able to take a couple of hours here and there, but since I don’t drink much, and don’t gamble, stuff I wanted to do was across town and took me half my time just getting there and back. For example, I went to Caesar’s Palace specifically to pick up some Bacon Chocolate at Vosges, but they had run out. That whole venture sucked two hours out of my day. Boo.

Tuesday, though, I went to the Hilton and checked out the Star Trek Experience. Now that was a show! The new 3d Borg encounter was amazing! I could write an entire post on that. If you’re in Vegas, and you’re a trekkie, do yourself a favor, man. Seriously.

What’s more, the Luxor had absolutely TERRIBLE internet access. Intermittently connecting and slow, I could barely download my email. In fact, I had far more success getting my email on my iPhone than on my laptop. It was finally solid this morning, as I was packing to leave. Boo, again.

Still, Vegas is an incredibly cool city. I’d love to come back. It’s so expensive, though. If I do come back, I will have to close my eyes as I’m signing the checks. It’s painful.

Officially, CES doesn’t open the show floor until Monday morning, the 8th of January. All the insanity won’t officially start until then. However, travelling has always had its own ridiculousness that is worth mentioning.

I awoke blearily from a dream involving unicorns or pitched space-battles or some such. It was 5:30, and Heather and I groaned as we rolled out of bed and staggered, in perfect zombie fashion, into the shower. Clean and slightly awake, we loaded up Heathers car, “Neo”, stopped for our pre-flight-ritualistic coffee and donut at Dunkin, and made good time to Dulles.

The terminal was packed. Checkin took no time, but the security line seemed awash with the unwashed. We said our tearful goodbyes, and I boogied off to my gate, where I would sit for another hour.

Soaking up the free wi-fi, I reached for my ear-buds only to find them broken. I shrugged, in a positive mood. That won’t get me down! I plodded off to buy a cheap pair from the shop. Not nearly as good as my old ones, but they would do.

The flight to my connection was normal, but the captain announced proudly that we were to land 10 minutes early! Hooray! Unfortunately, nobody told the plane that was sitting in our spot at the gate, so we sat on the tarmac for 10 minutes. Hoo-ray.

I’ve been throught he DFW airport many times, so it was easy to find my way to my destination gate. I sat patiently, waiting for my boarding time when the PA crackled to life. The staff informed us that the flight that was carrying our flight crew was late, so we’d have to wait for them. We ended up waiting for an hour. Hoo-ray.

Once on the plane, an hour late, we pushed back from the gate, paused, and rolled back to the gate. The captain told us that we had a fuel pump light on that, he thought, was an error, but we had to have a maintenance crew go check it out. So, we sat again for another 20 minutes until we could push back again.

So, here I sit in 27C, next to some very sweet people just back from a Christian convention, Hoo-ray, waiting to make it back to Sin City. This has been a bad start so far. I’m hoping things will improve. I read poor reviews of my hotel last night, so I’m expecting to be disappointed there as well.

Cross your fingers for me.

UPDATE: Hotel’s beautiful, room is great, Wi-Fi sucks. Pics here.

I’ve had so much going on these past few weeks, I’m suffering from Information Paralysis – a condition where I’ve just locked up blogging about anything due to a fear that too much information would be ignored. That happens to me quite a lot, and that’s something I hope to get over.

So let’s get caught up a little bit, shall we?

Christmas has come and gone, and it was a very satisfying Christmas! Gift-wise, it wasn’t as strong as other years, but I guess that, as I get older, that matters less and less. I had a great time hanging out with my and Heather’s families, chatting and eating.

My mom, in particular, made a spectacular meal just after Thanksgiving. Heather and I just hunkered down in the living room with plates filled to near overflowing with turkey, venison, stuffing, greenbean casserole, corn, and piles of pie pie pie.

For my birthday, she bought me two tickets to see Spamalot, which we saw a few days after Christmas. Let me tell you, I wasn’t expecting much, but that show was spectacular. Funny, even for Heather who hasn’t yet seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail!

Tomorrow (Sunday) I leave for Las Vegas to go to the Consumer Electronics Show. It may sound like fun, but I can tell you it’s going to be a lot of work. There’s lots to see, and not much time to do it. Thursday, I’ll shoot down to Austin to visit my good friends Rich and Melissa, and their new baby Sophia. I’ll try and blog and shoot pictures and video like crazy in both places.

Nearly one year ago, I had a comprehensive set of predictions that I had reason to believe would come true. Some predictions were correct, others were almost correct, and some were just about as wrong as you could get. Here’s the breakdown…

Bush won’t be impeached

I was dead on here.

Presidential Nominees

I was wrong about Vilsack – he hasn’t been heard from in a while. Oddly enough, Dennis Kusinich is energizing the base, but there is still no clear democratic front-runner. I was dead on about the Republicans splintering with the religious right split currently between Romney and Huckabee. It will be an interesting show.

I also mentioned a McCain-like but not McCain candidate will take the candidacy, and it’s interesting watching Ron Paul’s support. It’s hard to tell if his support is real or virtual. Time will tell.

Iraq

Iraq is quieting down, overall. The year is still marked as the bloodiest on record, but the last few months have been happily quieter.

HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray

No clear winner yet. Warner is now printing in HD-DVD, but there’s still 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney, Lions Gate, and MGM still exclusively on Blu-Ray.

Microsoft

XP is still shipping, but will cease this summer, so I was a little off there. XP is still dominant. OS X is picking up steam with the increase of laptop sales by Apple. I predicted beating 6% market share, they’re currently at 7.3%.

Apple

Wrong on the ultraportable MacBook. Wrong on the quadcore iMac. Wrong on the full-screen iPod. Wrong on the 20 gigabyte iPod Mini, and perhaps half-wrong on the iTV/AppleTV. Basically, I can’t predict what Apple’s going to do for shit!

My Car

Wrong here. Sparky gave me an opportunity to upgrade, so I took it.

My Laptop

I was right here. Typing on my new MacBook Pro.

All in all, I did pretty good with my predictions, with the exception of my Apple predictions. Take those out, and I scored pretty high!