Musings...

November 03, 2020

Musings...

Just what a term that is... and it can mean a few things as well.

For purposes of this update, musing will be looking back on the past on a specific time... and place. That time and place was November 2002. I was very fortunate that a dear family friend, mentor and role model offered to take me along to Comdex.

We drove to Las Vegas, and stayed with some friend's of his during the trip. At the time, I was a freshman in high school, and it was insanely difficult to convince the administration to allow me to go. Years later in hindsight they admitted it was a good thing as I was a student technician for the school for my junior and senior years.

We get to Vegas, a place I've never been to in my life at that point. Lots to see, lots to take in; and I'm not even talking about Comdex yet!

We spent the 17th exploring Vegas seeing the strip and the different hotels. Finally we got to the Hilton, and man... I was SO excited, finally the Star Trek Experience.... we walked in.... but then the alarm on our watches went off... it was time to go see Bill Gates... At the time, I was SOOOOO mad, I only got to walk into the door of the hilton and see the entrance to the experience.... who cared about Bill Gates! Pft LOL. In hindsight, I honestly had such a blast at the keynote, I wouldn't trade it for anything. But I do regret never seeing more of the STE...

The exhibits were phenomenal. Douglas had made business cards for us both for this trip. DTeck Computer Systems... a name I was able to get later on in life, but that is for another day.

At one point Douglas ran out of cards so he asked me to give the vendor one of mine. Not a problem as they only had the shop phone number on them. Fast forward about a year, and Douglas tells me he got yet another call at the shop from a vendor asking to speak with "Tim the owner" and his response was something along the lines of "Oh I'm sorry, he is in class still at high school, can I take as message for him?"

Douglas has the most wonderful sense of humor... It's one of the small things I picked up over the years and have tried to adapt to my personality. Finding good in all things.

Vendors from pretty much every part of the PC world were present.... save Apple.

The closest thing to Comdex today is CES... but it's not quite the same. Comdex was specifically for the PC industry. CES is for all things electronic, including video games. It was a great chance to meet different vendors and see what products they were going to be releasing the upcoming year. Viewsonic for example, back in 2002, they were hard to beat for monitors in the market they competed in. Price/quality etc. Palm was there... Microsoft of course, Dell, Compaq, HP, Gateway... the list goes on...

Side note... Comdex is no more... the year I went was a year of much publicity and issues between companies like IBM and the host for Comdex... you can read about it here or on way back machine if the link goes dead here.

NOTE: Photos below are not ones taken by me... I'm just sharing them from a google search on today's date.... I wasn't the smartest back then in terms of thinking ahead and bringing a camera... I was there to experience what Comdex was.... and in retrospect... I really miss those years....