BTW, I’m at the South By Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) thing again this year. W00t for me.
I woke up at 5am to make my way to the airport. I flew Southwest to Austin by way of Dallas. Unlike everyone else who flew the day before, I had 0 problems. I’m quite happy about that. I hopped a ride in the nicest cab I’ve ever ridden in. It was a brand new, taxicab-yellow Dodge Charger. I also conversed with the most interesting cab driver I’ve ever met. We talked about his troubles interfacing his website with a mysql backend. It was fun to be knowledgeable. If you are going to make a new website then make sure you get a dedicated server.
I’m at the Raddison again this year. While it is a little further away from the convention center, it’s not nearly as far away as the La Quinta that I stayed at my first year. Never doing that again, let me tell you. I checked in early, they thankfully had a room already available, even though it was 11:30ish when I checked in and normal check in is 3pm. Yay for that.
I hadn’t eaten lunch yet, so I checked in with Jeffy and met him and some other folks – Nathan, Christian, Sara, and for a short time Sarah. I had a so-so caesar burger with waffle fries. Oh, and roughly 5 Negra Modellos and a White Russian. Tasty. This was the first and second time I heard Jeff’s story about Ariel Waldman.
After that, I headed down to the convention center to pick up my badge. This process, according to everyone else I talked to, was to be a very quick process. In fact, it was to be “the fastest it’s ever been.” Those people are fucking liars. I believe from when I joined the line to when I got my actual badge in hand, it was about an hour.
Afterwards, I headed back to the hotel to grab a quick nap before the nights festivities. There is an annual initial party called ‘Mix at Six,’ which is held at a bar called Six. I got there around 6:20ish. The line was around the block. Quite different from previous years. I caught up with a bunch of folks and we headed down to the always popular Iron Cactus for some dinner. By the time we got there, it became known that Mike Davidson wasn’t going to make it down to SXSW. In accordance with this, everyone had to do a Jager shot in his honor. I hate this Devil liquid. Dinner was quite good though: chicken burrito with white cream sauce with beans and spanish rice. Rice could have been cooked a little longer, but c’est la vie. Also: two Negra Modellos. Mmm. Also, this is where Jeff met the previously mentioned Ariel and told his story to her. He also told it to our table – so it was my third time hearing it that day.
After dinner, it was time to drink. So, we headed down to the Ginger Man. The Ginger Man is a lot like Barley’s Brewhouse in KC, only with not quite as many taps. I had a New Belgium 1554 and a Paulaner Hefe-Weizen which was too orangey. I also played in a team pool game with Christian, Jon, and Josh. We lost, I was kind of drunk.
At some point we decided we needed to go to the previously mentioned Six. I had a delicious Red Stripe downstairs and then we headed up to the upstairs balcony. The funniest part of this section of the evening was Josh trying to talk. See his twitter around that time for further explanation.
Around 11 I bounced and headed to bed, called the wife, and fell asleep in the 800-pillow bed.
