By coincidence, our friends the Gs were also in Vegas. BG had a big birthday, so they came out for the weekend. I treated them to a night on the town starting with the Skybar in the new Waldorf Astoria. After one round of cocktails there, my wallet was thinner. That was it for me.
BG & CG
Afterwards, we caught a local live band and sang and danced.
I was fortunate enough to be able to go to the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) again this year. It's one of Las Vegas' largest shows and it's truly mindboggling.
I stayed at the Luxor at the south end of the strip. I love the Egyptian theme there.
There were a couple of VR flying squirrel simulators. This one even has a fan to blow wind in your face. I don't get it.
Flexible screen for your tablets & phones.
Electromechanical version of Pong. The knob moves a physical paddle and the ball is a little cube that slides around.
Cat food dispensers that use facial recognition to dispense food in order to keep the dog from eating the cat food.
Tiny sensor chip to the right of a sewing needle eye.
Deere brought in a complete harvester with head.
This had Grampa written all over it. There's even a southern Utah backdrop! It's a 4-rotor personal death machine.
There were drones of every shape and size. This one snaps into a phone case. Pop it out, unfold it, and it will fly a few feet away from you and take your selfie.
This was the most ridiculous thing I saw at the show (and I saw a lot of ridiculous things!). It's a personal submarine/jet boat shaped like a sailfish. It has enough power that it can jump clear out of the water. I suppose if you were 5, it would be the coolest thing ever.
Here's a video of it in action:
AI (Artificial Intelligence) is really taking off. Nvidia has traditionally made video cards for video gaming. These have thousands of processors all running in parallel and are well-suited for solving complex problems like those used in AI. Now Nvidia is making AI-specific hardware that is being used in autonomous cars. Without video games, we wouldn't have this.
JP wants one of these. It's a suitcase with kitty ears. When you scratch it between the ears, they wiggle.
This is a sensor that is currently on the market. It's less that 1/4" square and it contains a 3-axis gyro, a 3-axis accelerometer, and a hyper-sensitive barometric pressure sensor that can detect elevation changes of less than one foot. It's being used for fitness trackers to count stairs climbed.
These are some directional speakers. They are made of an array of ultrasonic speakers that create a spatial sound that can only be heard in one spot. If you're not in that spot, they're completely silent. Move into that spot, and they sound like normal speakers.
This is a proposed commercial death machine put out by Bell Helicopters. It's a six-rotor VTOL aircraft that can hold a few people.
There were quite a few companies selling STEM educational things. This is a set of smart Legos that can be used to create circuits and programmed with an iPad using a simple graphical programming language. It's pretty cool to think that grade school kids are learning this!
Fully automatic kitty litter box. After the cat exits, the drum rotates 360° and separates the litter from the clumps and dumps into a plastic bag. It looked like a very solid design that would work well. Only $500.
What do you do on January 5th when it's warm, sunny, and not windy? Sit outside, of course!
Every weekend we pick up Cam for the weekend and take him back on Sunday afternoon. Sometimes we can't pass up a lunch at our favorite place in the Haymarket: Leadbelly.
In addition to our old neighbors from IL, we also had our old neighbors from across the street and the boys each had a friend over to celebrate the arrival of 2019.
We spent X-Mas day @ Nana's in IL. For the past three months, the boys have been talking about what they will do when they pool their resources and get a Nintendo Switch (the latest gaming system). Without their knowledge, we got them the system, two games, and an extra pair of controllers. JP gave them an extra game and the controllers to open. At first they were ecstatic when they saw the Nintendo logos, but then they realized that 1. They controllers were useless without a main system, and 2. the game they opened was not the one that they had been talking incessantly about for the last three months. They both feigned happiness and said Thanks.
Then JP gave them the boxes with the main system and the right game.
Much of the day was spent playing Super Smash Bros. on the new game system.
Since we were going to go to IL for X-Mas day, and we didn't want to drag a carload of gifts, we opened some at home on the 23rd. W is a good helper when it comes to keeping empty boxes from blowing away.
This was pretty much our X-Mas at home. Very mellow all day.
This has been the ultimate retail shopping season for Lincoln. Thanksgiving was early, so we have an extra week, and the weather has been perfect every weekend.
This is S's new friend from up the street. He comes over once a week to play. He weighs about a pound and is made of nothing but fluff and sharp puppy teeth. He looks cute as a button, but he's still a puppy and he like to chew on EVERYTHING.
We were blessed with a couple of relatively warm days for X-Mas light installation. JP went to town and did it all. Our little skinny Alberta Spruce is now as tall as the house. I wasn't there to help, so I imagine she acted out a scene from Christmas Vacation while trying to get lights to the top of the tree.
