<![CDATA[Staying with Doc and Buzz]]>Last night I stayed in the Sin City Hostel with Paul Mooney, who has been posting pics and writing about his CES experience too. I was trying to save the company money, but found that it was a bit TOO sparse for my tastes. I need at least a power outlet!

Anyway, so I got Doc Searls a room in Ballys and tonight Buzz Bruggeman and I moved in with him which makes a much nicer room affordable. It helps getting approval for expense reports when you don’t kill the group’s budget.

Yeah, I care about expenses. I remember what it was like being a starving small company (when I worked at Winnov I drove down here and stayed in places that usually would rent by the hour if you get my drift).

Yes, Buzz, I did draw the short straw so get the small bed. Oh well. I got revenge, though, before Buzz got up here I took all the available power outlets. Let’s see. One for my cell phone. One for my Tablet PC. One for my Bluetooth headset. One for my shaver. One for my Channel 9 camcorder battery. Ahh, that leaves one for Doc’s laptop and wifi station. Buzz, I’ll trade you some power for your bed! 🙂

Anyway, I’ve been snapping an occassional picture with my ssssooooopppeeerrrr dddoooopppeeeerrr new SmartPhone and putting those up on my Flickr feed.

Bill Gates, as he looked on the projection screen at the Bellagio. Mike Hall, MSFTie, talking about embedded devices at the evening press event. Vongo sign. They opened their service which lets you download as many movies as you’d like for $9.99 a month. Walt Mossberg, of Wall Street Journal, spent some time in the Vonage booth talking with executives. Brian Livingston of Windows Secrets fame (his books sell a LOT of copies) came up and chatted. Oh, look, it’s the Engadgeteers! (Yes, that’s a good portion of the Engadget crew hanging around Jason Calacanis. Did you know that Engadget gets more than five million unique visitors a month? Damn!). Hey, what are those penguins doing? Heheh.

Maybe they were watching Engadget’s coverage of Bill Gates speech? 😉

Joe Wilcox over on Microsoft Monitor can always be counted on for lengthy analysis. Here’s his on Bill’s keynote.

I met Michael Gartenberg over in front of the Lenovo booth and I see he’s been writing up the happenings too, especially interested in the Vongo news.

Tomorrow? More balancing a plate in one hand while having conversations with geeks from around the world.

I’m not looking forward to shuttle bus lines and registration tomorrow. Yikes.

]]>