Reunited...

Look! It's my old friend Stanley (you know, the DARPA Grand Challenge-winning, fully autonomous, biodiesel-running Volkswagen Grand Touareg that was entered in the challenge by the Stanford team). It's embarrassing how attached I got to that little car. Sorry about the picture, the only time I left the stage yesterday was to run from the South Hall to the Hilton for the Bill Gates keynote, and from there to the Digital Focus party at the Bellagio. It's not about the parties, folks. It's about the food. A girl's gotta eat.

Gates? He talked a lot about Windows Vista--you can get the news rundown here--but the most interesting part of the keynote experience was watching the news this morning, bleary-eyed and ironing, seeing the crawl across the screen that said, "Gates kicked off the show last night," and thinking, "He got kicked off?! What did I miss?" How embarrassing.

In other news, as auto tech just keeps on getting bigger, CES is starting to look like a very different show. Witness this stretch Prowler (I think) I stumbled upon last night. I don't think it even has much in the way of aftermarket accoutrements. It's just a supersweet and crazy car. Price tag, in case you're interested, is only around $250,000.

The show opens today, and the masses are starting to pour in. Let the insanity begin (some more)!