The CES is over-the-top. Overwhelming. Exciting. I’ve been to one other huge trade show before, the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston. I thought that was impressive, but when Ed told me this was that times 100, I didn’t really understand that until I got there. The thing is huge. We walked over seven miles in one day. I pulled a hamstring.

A large vendor like LG, Samsung or Microsoft has a “booth” that is a structure that is larger than a mansion. Ed’s customer’s CFO said they spend almost half a million on theirs every year just to look bigger than they are (they are not an LG, Samsung or Microsoft) to about 14 of their customers (big box stores). And it’s gaudy. And loud. But there is a lot to see, a lot to play with. And a lot of things that are silly, stupid, or puzzling.

Highlights:

• A porn star called me “honey” (not in a condescending way, she thought I need another piece of swag from the booth where she was signing posters of herself.
• After looking at a “no-glasses” 3D television, I was interviewed by a Houston TV station about my opinion of it.
• I got to look through a 600mm fast lens at the Canon booth.
• I got to play some cool Gibson electric guitars at the Gibson booth.
• I got to see Lou Holtz talking about ESPN 3D. Also a couple of football players I had never heard of before.
• Watched a taping of “The Week in Tech” with Leo Laporte.
• Saw a guy in the Monster cables booth riding a gold plated Segway.
• Also a car from Tron
• Also a car from the Green Hornet (Ed sat in the driver’s seat).
• Also a couple of cool Audi concept cars.
• Watched a guy volunteer to be tased at the Taser International booth (this was actually a regularly scheduled thing where people could volunteer, and I found it disturbing).
• Used an OLPC (One Laptop Per Child)
• I got a demo of AmpKit, which is iPad software that you can use in combination with a small piece of hardware to mimic lots of different amps, filters and effects pedals for an electric guitar. Here is a video that is pretty much the same demo I got (same guy). I own two other iPad apps from the same company and was glad to run across this.
• We went to the Woot! booth to get some screaming monkeys. I told Ed that we needed to be there at 3 for that. I could tell he was not convinced, even though I told him these are famous monkeys, but he humored me. We stood there with about 50 other geeks, Ed looking pretty out of place and awkward. But when we got our monkeys, and especially when we got to use them (they are kind of like slingshot finger puppets, that scream), he was very happy we went. He laughs every time he plays with them, which is every day.
• Breakdancers!
• Ooooh….foot massagers….aaaahhhh….just in time!
• Oh, Woot! reminded me, I tried on the TV Hat! Wow!

The thing that impressed me most about the whole show, though was the elephant in the room. Apple does not go to CES; they do their own “shows”, and that serves them very well as they don’t share the spotlight with anybody. But at CES, every time I turned a corner, I was blasted by a wall of iPad cases, or an iPhone or iPad knockoff prototype, or whole booths that looked exactly like an Apple store (including the font and colors), or vendors using iPads for sales or to take notes. And especially spokesmen on stage talking about how their tablet was the “iPad killer”. Apple was everywhere, without even spending a penny.

I have a lot more to say about the tablets and phones that we saw, but I’m going to save that for my next post so I can get this one up.

I would love to see a database where information about houses that are damaged are burned is collected, better protocol for things like Google Maps, real-time updates on government sites, and better presentation of all information so it’s easy to find and, most importantly, can be processed and translated by machines. It can happen. I understand why it hasn’t happened yet, but it can happen.

As I started writing this I came across this blog post, which ties in well with what I’ve been thinking. Imagine an iPhone or other mobile app that could collect all this information. People who have evacuated could have everything they need at their fingertips, including the status of their house. This can only happen with well structured information and coordination. I hope some thought is put into this.

First some immediate negatives to the service:

• - It’s Windows only. At first this really annoyed me, both because I would rather watch the movies on my laptop, which I can easily hook into the tv, and also because I think that new technology ideas miss the boat by skipping Macintosh, as Mac users are usually the ones who latch onto things like this and advertise them for free on their blogs. I’ve since found references to the fact that this is a technical issue with Apples’ proprietary DRM, and that Netflix is working on it, but when I first tried it on my laptop it suggested I try a different operating system (friendlier message now, I just checked).
• - It’s Internet Explorer only. I assume that this will change if they’re opening up to Macs, but for now, it’s really grating to have to use IE for this, when I haven’t used that browser for years. Again, they may be catering to a large user base who uses the browser their computer came with, but those aren’t the evangelists.
• - The plugin installation was meant to be seamless for Windows XP vanilla or (presumably) Vista, but I use XP 64-bit, and clicking on the install link gave me the runaround. I eventually tricked it into letting me install, and went to Microsoft’s site to upgrade Windows Media Player manually (something Netflix told me my OS wouldn’t support). Now, the average user probably wouldn’t have to deal with this, but still it was completely a problem with Netflix’ install process that would be easy to fix.

Anyway, I got it installed last week, and despite the annoyances, the service itself actually shows a lot of promise. I was worried about performance given that I don’t have the speediest internet connection (DSL grade). The quality will adjust depending on connection speed, but apparently I get the highest quality. There are never any skips, buffering, lags, dropouts, etc. I watch at fullscreen on my 21-inch widescreen monitor, and it looks great. More impressive to me (who watches a lot of streaming video of various forms) was the fact that I could pause the video, sometimes for DAYS in standby mode, and come back and it would pick right up where I stopped it.

From a practical standpoint, I wasn’t sure if I would use this much, especially if I am tied to my desktop. The selection is very small; think what you might see on HBO outside of primetime. A lot of old classics, a lot of documentaries, TV shows. Still, there are a lot of things I’ve missed, and a few things in my queue are available online, so unless they’re something Ed wants to see, I’ll watch them online. I have a futon in my office, a nice monitor, and am in the middle of an office-painting project, so it works out.

If Netflix works out the Mac thing (which I think they will), and the selection thing (which I think they will), I’ll call it a win. I don’t want to rent movies from Apple given their pricing model and expiration date policy, but this method works for me.

• 10. Skiing at Winter Park in Colorado It had been years since Ed and I had been skiing, so this partially work-funded trip was a real treat. It didn’t take long to get the legs back, and we really enjoyed this resort for the sheer size of it, and the fact that many of the slopes were groomed on one side only, leaving the other side to develop excellent mogul fields. This allowed us to ski together more (me on the mogul side, Ed on the smooth). A bonus event was when Ed put a pizza, still in box, in the oven of our condo and started a kitchen fire, then ran outside while I put the fire out.
• 9. Getting my road bike Ed has been riding roadies for years, but I had turned more toward mountain biking. I finally got a good bike, my first since my heavy Schwinn bought in about 1979. We started riding regularly in the countryside near Houston, and had an especially nice ride on rented bikes in the Santa Ynez valley while visiting Steeles. We also did our first race ride, a 55-miler called the Tour de Donut.
• 8. Riding Segways My first time on a Segway made my “Best of” list for 2003, but that was really just a short ride in a mall store. During our summer 2006 trip to Santa Barbara, Ed and I took the Old Santa Barbara Segway tour. I will just say here that riding Segways is really, really fun. We enjoyed it so much that the other day when Linda mentioned that this Segway dealership is for sale, Ed actually read through the details of the offer and was thinking about where he would work while I ran it, and where we would live.
• 7. Ed’s transfer to Dallas While the actual move didn’t take place until 2007, the event was set into motion in 2006 and occupied much of our mental and physical energy for the second half of the year.
• 6. Car chases At Caprock, one of our lunchtime haunts was a Tex-Mex dive which always seemed to be showing car chases on its big screen TV. I think it was Fox News; I don’t usually watch that channel, but they seem to have the car chase thing covered. One Friday afternoon back at the office, my friend John Robert IM’ed me from New York City that he was watching a car chase in Pearland (where our office was) on the screen in Times Square. I found a local news station covering the chase, and before long the entire office (plus John Robert in New York) was watching as a driver in a white pickup pulled stuntman moves past many familiar landmarks (including the aforementioned Tex-Mex dive) with dozens of helicopters and squad cars in tow. He drove through the golf course by the Vietnamese restaurant and headed to the intersection with the tollway that would take him past our building. We all crossed our fingers, but no, he passed through the intersection and headed toward downtown Houston. Somehow sensing his mistake, he drove through the massive median and U-turned back toward Pearland and … would he? would he? YES! he turned east on the tollway right toward Caprock. And the entire workforce ran to the front of the building to watch. Helicopters, motorcycles, cars, all chasing a lone Ford F150. After the show passed, we all went back to our desks and watched as spikes were thrown in the highway and the now tireless truck rode through several more towns, sometimes hopping curbs ON ITS RIMS, near-miss after near-miss, finally plopping into a bayou and sinking. The driver was rescued and miraculously no one was hurt in the whole 2-hour chase. Apparently the reason behind the whole thing was the guy had stopped taking his depression medication and held up a dry cleaner for a pittance. Now, you might think that was the end of the car chase entry for 2006, but no. This car chase ended on our block later in the year.
• 5. Dynamo soccer Houston got a major league soccer team in 2006, and it was wildly successful. Both the fan participation and the team’s performance were stellar. The games were the most fun professional sports games I’ve ever been to, due in part to the insane soccer fans with their drums, streamers, wigs, flags, brass instruments, cowbells and smoke bombs. The team made it to the MLS championship game in Dallas. Ed and I drove up to watch the Houston Dynamo beat the New England Revolution in overtime. And the 2007 update is that this year, the Dynamo beat the Revolution for the championship AGAIN, this time in Washington D.C. Attendance at the games in Houston remains strong and loud. Let’s Go Dynamo!
• 4. Meeting Kyle Chandler I met Ed’s cousin Kyle for the first time when he drove to Houston from Austin, where he was filming a TV show, to join his brothers and cousins for a Buffalo Bills game. What a nice guy! He climbed a grapefruit tree in his brother’s backyard in his socks to make me juice for a cocktail.
• 3. Getting a high-tech crown I did write about this when it happened, but here it is on my top 10 list; it was just that cool. On a sad note, my dentist of seven years who did the crown committed suicide a few months ago.
• 2. Jury Duty Well this is an odd choice for a top 10 list (not that the crown isn’t), and at number 2 no less! But serving on this jury is still one of the most fascinating things I’ve done. The dynamics of deliberations (including watching one woman have a meltdown under the pressure to come to a verdict), the interaction between the jurors (two of whom discovered that they had lived in the same house in different decades) and the case itself were all interesting. Best of all was having the judge, prosecutor and defense attorney visit the jury following the trial to answer questions and discuss evidence and testimony which was not admitted for the trial itself. I hope to get the chance to do this again (but not for traffic court, that is boring).
• 1. Two Gallants show at Walter’s on Washington Being a first-hand witness at the concert in Houston where an HPD officer stormed to the stage and knocked down the guitarist of a band while he was playing tops out my list. First of all, it was national news (well, national music news). I’ve talked to people here in Dallas who know all about it. Second, it definitely changed how I think about law enforcement. I still respect the police, but from the reading I’ve done since and the anecdotal evidence I’ve gathered from friends who are outside of my (somewhat privileged) demographic, I now realize how many problem officers there are. Third, it was a lesson in how the power of the internet. If not for the YouTube videos and the forums and the online coverage, the charges against the band members would not have been dropped. Fourth, I was able to contribute to the effort to see justice done by giving a statement to HPD Internal Affairs and by giving a statement to the bands’ defense lawyers. And finally fifth, because I was interviewed by the local alternative weekly, so I got to show my friends, but they spelled my name wrong, so future employers can’t Google it.

After watching Randy Pausch’s lecture, I rather regret that. The topic of the lecture was “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”. If you haven’t seen it, it’s quite touching, especially the ending.

Erica and I did go see Ratatouille last night, though. I didn’t think it was quite as funny as The Incredibles, but it had a good story and really phenomenal animation and modeling. The restaurant/kitchen scenes were especially amazing. If you didn’t know any better, you would assume some of it was animation overlaid on a real-life background. The food actually made me hungry. I would actually see it again (or buy the DVD) just for that. I can’t imagine how realistic CG animation will be in just a few years.

My dentist has started doing crowns with a CAD-CAM machine right in the office. This means that

1. I did not need a full crown, where I would have before (because of the better precision). In fact, I kept most of the outside of the tooth. The result is stronger than my original tooth.
2. No impressions, so no goopy gacky stuff.
3. No temporary crown.
4. I was home within two hours chewing gum, with a tooth that feels exactly like the old one. In fact, with my tongue I really can’t tell which tooth it is. The fit is perfect.

All of that is pretty nifty, but even better was watching the process. First he used a very small camera to take 3D “before” pictures. Then he did the drilling (including some with a laser). Then he took “after” pictures. The pictures were pulled into a CAD program where the technician could model the crown using the two sets of photos. It looked like working with Blender or other 3D design tool. It showed her areas that might be too thin to mill, and let her check to make sure there was enough room to floss, but not too large a gap. Then the data was sent to the machining tool. I went to watch it (drooling). It looked like a printer, but with two robotic drills that first measured the stock, then drilled the piece under sprays of water. At the end the finished crown fell into the water. The dentist cleaned it off, installed it, and I was done.