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My trip to Comdex from November 10 to November 14, 2002 was not only my first
ever Comdex trip, but also the first time I ever went to Las Vegas. And what a
city it is! I highly recommend that everyone visit it at least once in their
lives, though preferebly after you've reached the age of 21 (the legal gambling
age). But even at 18, I still had a blast.
Saturday (the 10th) me and my dad flew from Tampa on a direct flight to Vegas.
Unfortunatly I forgot scissors were banned on flights, so I got my scissors
confisicated out of my backpack. Other than that the flight was uneventful. Even
in the airport terminal there were slot machines and neon lights. We then went
to our hotel, a tiny La Quinta next to the HUGE New York, New York hotel. We
then went to register for Comdex, get tickets to Bill Gate's speech on Sunday,
and pick up some information about the show. For the rest of the day we went
sight-seeing, and is there ever a lot of sites to see. Las Vegas has a ton of
Bemania machines, so I got to play Para Para Paradise, DDR 4th, 5th, and 6th
mixes, Dance Freaks, and Beatmania all for the very first time. I was in
videogame heaven :) We also went through several of the GIGANTIC casino hotels
up and down the Strip, and it's absolutly amazing how many gambling tables and
slot machines they can fit in these places. Plus there is shopping galore and
some extremely nice "malls" located in the casino's. It's a shoppers dream come
true. We also went downtown to Freedmont Street, where the original casino's
operate. They have a HUGE screen over the street (which is now closed off to
vehicles) and have "shows" on it every 15 minutes. It's really cool looking. And
after all of that, we went to the Stratosphere so I could ride the world's
highest rollercoaster: The Hi Roller. It's a really crappy rollercoaster, but
it's worth it just for the view and the thought that "I'm strapped to a
rollercoaster 900 feet in the air". They also have the "Big Shot" on top which
shoots you up about 100 feet. It would have been a lot cooler if they let me
keep my glasses on! Instead all I got was a view of blurry lights. Luckly the
observation deck had some spectacular views of the Las Vegas night skyline.
We finally then got back to the hotel room after being up over 24 hours
straight.
The next day was some more sight seeing, and also Bill Gates keynote speech. It
was sorta interesting, and he introduced the tablet PC there. They also gave
away some XBox's.
Monday was the first day of the show. It's chock full of business people and
geeks alike. The size of some of the display's were incredible, and the sheer
size of the show is mind blowing. Microsoft had the biggest show presence, with
a huge "booth" right at the entrance. There was also about 20 XBox kiosk
machines outside the show enterance, which was my first time with the XBox since
it was to be released the week after Comdex. I also got to play a Gamecube at
ATI's booth since they did the graphics chip for Nintendo. Other notable things
about the show were the amount of tshirts you could get from companies. It was't
quite as much as previous years according to my dad (where you could get one
just talking to someone for a minute) but they were still fairly easy to come
by. Microsoft had a "chip" gimmick going where you talk to about 8 of their
"partner" companys, and they'd give you chips. Then you redeem those chips in
for tshirts. What people will do for a cheap company logo tshirt...... In the
end I think we ended up with about 30 or so shirts between the two of
us.
One other notable thing was I walked within about 2 feet of Steve Ballmer, the
CEO of Microsoft. I was walking in one door, and he was walking out the other.
He was the only "big" famous person I saw there though that I
recognized.
Tuesday and Wednesday were also pretty much the same as the first day, just more
looking at booths and talking to people. I picked up all kinds of trinklets over
the three days, including pens, buttons, stress squeezy toys, candy, mints,
frisbees, mini-basketball hoops, a giant blow up hammer, and whatever else
companies would hand out. Oh, and I should mention the cheap food of Las Vegas.
Buffets with every kind of food imaginable almost are only about $8. They'd
rather you spend your money on gambling. I also didnt' catch any shows while at
Las Vegas, but there are a ton of them. They're fairly expensive though.
I flew out of Vegas Wednesday afternoon, because I had to get back to school
since I had a test on Thursday in my Pesticides and Pills class. Unfortunatly my
dad locked my airline ticket in the safety deposit box and then lost the key, so
we had to get a locksmith to open it up. End result was I finally got to the
airport with about 5 minutes till my flight was supposed to leave. Thank
goodness it isn't crowded on a Wednesday afternoon, and since my dad was still
gonna stay another two days I could leave my check in luggage with him. So I
literaly sprinted about half a mile through the terminals to try and catch my
plane before it left. I barely made it, and when I sat down I was wheezing like
a madman, but at least I got on my flight. Spent the night at my house, and then
Thursday morning went back up to Gainesville to study and take my test.
Anyways Comdex is really cool, and Las Vegas is an incredible city. It's
definitly a place everyone needs to visit at least once.
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