This piece is satire. It is written entirely for you entertainment. Statements are exaggerated. Content has been infused with humor. Genuine, honest to goodness information has been sacrificed in an attempt to get a laugh, a smile, at least a smirk from the reader. Do not take this seriously.

Overwhelmed. If I had to sum up my experience at day 1 of the 2007 International CES in Las Vegas in one word, overwhelmed would be my word of choice. Very early estimates have the number of attendees this year slated somewhere around 160,000. If I was absolutely forced to toss a number out there, I would discard that modest 160k estimate and propose something more along the lines of 50 billion. We woke up before the break of dawn, stood by idly as about 3 hours past by with little fanfare, at which point we took a lovely little tour of Las Vegas. I like to reminisce on that tour, and when I do I refer to it as the “Thomas, Stu and Tara Wandering Disoriented Around Various Hotels”.

If I were to be chronologically precise, we actually paid a visit to the Antec Suite in the Bellagio prior to our little escapade. We saw some pretty cool stuff during that meeting, all of which you should be able to check out somewhere in our coverage. The thing I would most like to convey is that when we left, Antec handed us a jar full of Antec colored M&M’s. If that is not commitment to quality, please tell me what is. Anyways, after wandering around the Bellagio, Caesar’s Palace, and the Las Vegas strip, we were able to catch a taxi cab to the Las Vegas Convention Center. Oh I can see how you want me to recount my adventures on the CES show floor. I can see how you want me to relay in vivid detail all of my talks with various companies and show you pictures of unreleased motherboards and video cards. Well, too bad. You can find a taste of that elsewhere in our coverage. This is a blog, and as such, the blogging will continue where we left off: getting in the taxi. Normal taxi rides are as bland as one of those dry, nasty baked potatoes, this one however, oh yeah, this one was a bit different. When “Rick”, I read his name as Charles, but go figure, blurted out his first comment, we knew we were in for a ride. A good 25 minutes and 1.5 miles later, he had us rofling.

Anyways, when we got to the LVCC, we went off in search of the press room, which we found a good 25 minutes later, not because we didn’t know where it was, but because that is how long it took to get there. The place is huge. If you do a googlemaps search for the Las Vegas Convention Center, you get this thing that looks about twice the size of a nearby hotel. Twice the size of a hotel would be fairly small in any other part of the world, but in Las Vegas, where a hotel is about the size of a small planet, twice the size of a hotel is like… really big. Since this is our first CES, we are going through the traditional beginner’s woes. Like, we forgot to plan out our day… At E3, planning was not totally necessary for us, because in terms of hardware, E3 is not that huge of an event. CES on the other hand? Yeah, we underestimated by a factor of at least 26. After a period of what I have affectionately dubbed “Extreme Wandering”, we called it a day in terms of coverage (We captured at least 4 million pictures). I then headed off towards the WSVG booth to check out the Counter-Strike All-Star match action and meet up with GotFrag’s Editor in Chief, Mark Cheben. We watched those noobs play Counter-Forces for a while, then we took off to the DirecTV ballroom thing in Caesar’s Palace. There is an interesting back story I could tell you at this point, but I think that is up to Mr. Cheben to indulge.

The cool thing about DirecTV is they always have food. If you’ve ever been so fortunate as to attend a DirecTV CGI or similar event as a member of the press, a player, or staff, then you know what I’m talking about. This isn’t your normal or’deveurues spread either. We’re talking garlic roasted shrimp with some fancy white dip stuff, skewered gourmet sandwiches, fine cheeses, and super good desert things. This is the kind of food you would pay like 50 bucks for as a starter at some fancy restaurant. Needless to say, I took full advantage of this feast and could be seen stuffing my face with fine dining from a mile away. I then tagged along with the Chebster as he checked into his room. When we got up to the room I was delighted to see that it was at least twice the size of my room. Oh cruel world. Well in all fairness, his hotel does not have statues of knights in full battle armor strewn about in every nook and cranny. So this is where I am going to end this blog. You see, I haven’t started writing the aforementioned “coverage” quite yet, so I should probably get around to doing that. After knocking that out, I do believe some sort of nighttime fun is in order. Whoever writes the next blog will have to fill you in on what happened tonight. My feet hurt.

Update: Turns out I was wrong in that second to last statement there. I ended up being alright to write after the night (rhymes). We were invited to the Verizon FiOS party at the Hard Rock hotel here in Vegas for the night. The lovely Stuart Grubbs suggested that we walk to the Hard Rock, because according to his lovely little BS pamphlet map, the place was just a block away. At this time I would like to go on the record saying that I undisputedly said I did not trust that map because it was not to scale and that we should use google maps instead. Turns out the hotel is a good 3 miles from our hotel, and yeah, we walked the whole way. We got to the party with 10 whole minutes to spare. Without getting into too much detail, 10 minutes is enough time for a lot of things to happen. The party was cool because a lot of the PMS Clan girls were there, and Fatal1ty was there as well. We took some weird really weaksauce shots with Craig Levine of Team3D fame and then went to eat at the Hard Rock. It was the first worthy meal we had had since arriving in the town. I still have not finished writing the coverage article for day 1, but it is well underway. If I don’t pass out before finishing tonight, I promise it will be there. Otherwise, tomorrow. Galleries should be expected soon as well. Anyways, peace out, a-town.

-shoes