I am so excited! Almost doing a happy dance! Okay, I am doing a happy dance! But I am not even packed yet…ack! After I finish this post I will, seriously!

Monday morning I’ll be boarding the first plane to Las Vegas to attend CES. Right after I throw my bags in the room and freshen up, I’ll be off to Lunch at Piero’s. After lunch come several one-on-one manufacturer meetings, but at some point I’ll need to sneak to the Press Room to get my badge holder and kit so I don’t get kicked off the show floor!

Vincent is meeting me at Piero’s, and we’re leaving together so we can do a dual Gennum nXZEN interview. Speaking of which, he has already posted pictures of the just announced & tiny nX6000.

Vincent has a crew of eight people on the floor and he is really getting some great up-to-the-minute reporting done at CES. Be sure to check out SlashGear if you haven’t already, because they are working the show while UK based Chris Davies holds down the fort and continues to release the daily news – including writing one of the most entertaining descriptions of me I have ever read. Read it – but make sure you don’t have anything in your mouth when you do. You have been warned…

After the meetings are done, I’ll have a little bit of time to walk the floor before I need to go to Showstoppers – the next big Press event. After checking out as many tables and exhibitors’ offerings as is humanly possible, Vincent, Matt (palmsolo) & I are going to head to the Neuros Technology dinner at Mortons’. I’ll need a big juicy steak after that crazy day.

Tuesday starts off bright and early with several one-on-one manufacturer meetings, and then a break for lunch with my elephant-riding buddy. More manufacturer meetings in the afternoon, with a bit of time to walk the floor in between. I’m going to need a foot massage at some point…I already can feel the ache. That night is a Mobius meet-up from 7 – 10, and then…if I am not completely dead, I have been invited to the Zune after-party from midnight to 3am. OMG; they aren’t kidding when they say that Las Vegas never sleeps! But I will need to…

Wednesday morning I have more one-on-one manufacturer meetings, with a break for lunch at Quark’s Bar with John Phillips from Astraware and (I believe) Jack Cook of Mobility Site and Experience Mobility will be there, too. I left myself time after lunch to wander the floor until my final meeting at 4:00, so I should be able to see all sorts of fun things to photograph and write about later.

I have to keep reminding myself that Gear Diary is a review site, and not necessarily a breaking news site. I would so love to update every 10 minutes with all of the wonderful things I’ll be seeing, but alas, that would be physically and logistically impossible; I’ll leave it to the pros and their teams to bring the breaking news, but I will try to post each night with some of the things I have seen, as well as updating the pictures in my Flickr. Right now I have purposefully left Wednesday night open; I am not sure if I will catch a show or spend the evening in my jammies updating the site – probably the latter!

Thursday I have some time to wander the floor a bit more (if I can crawl out of bed), and then…home to recover.

Vincent and I have plans to do some videos together during meetings and possibly from the floor. We’ll see how that goes – CES is so huge that meeting up to do the more candid stuff may be a pipe dream. But we’ll see. Next year I am bringing along a dedicated camera man! Ha!

I’ve also been recruited by my pal G-A to get candid CES photos for his site. He has allotted me one terabyte on his server…I don’t think I have taken that many photographs in my entire life. Somehow I doubt I will do anywhere near that many this week – but I can try! Now I am really regretting that I held off getting a better camera. I can hear Jerry chanting “30D, 30D” under his breath as he reads this.

Now, I need to go pack…