from one Austin House to another

by Eli

so, i’m here! i don’t have any pictures right now because my camera doesn’t have a memory card. i’m hopefully getting a new one tomorrow and then i’ll be getting all kinds of mother fucking pictures up here! UHH!

while i was in salt lake city last night (that’s where my flight connected) i sat down with a guy who was also on his way to austin/sxsw (as a video podcaster) and we talked all about zinedistro and all kinds of good stuff. it felt really good to get some solid nerdery that early in to the whole thing and not even be in austin yet. the guy’s name was bre.

i finally made it in last night and landed at about 11:45pm and my ears didn’t freaking clear until about 12:30am. it was ridiculous. every single time i’ve ever flown in my life my ears have cleared steadily as we take off and land. but on the way into austin my ears decided not to clear (because of my cursed sickness) and it was one of the most painful experiences of my life (but not to make my life seem generally pain free). it started in my ears and shifted to my head and then to my eyes and then to my jaw. it was awful. i was swallowing and chewing and drinking water and yawning and poking my ears and seriously doing everything possible, and it wasn’t working. i started talking to the guy next to me and he said that that is what happens everytime he flies. i couldn’t believe it! eventually my ears did pop as i was nearing the baggage claim, but they still haven’t cleared all the way and everytime i swallow i feel it in my ears. absolutely ridiculous.

from there, i was picked up at the airport by our house friend coleman. he is a very nice kid with a beard, and we went back to his place and hung out for about 2 hours before shane and the rest of the crew (emily, brooke, and bookis) showed up. we ate some mangos and talked about our lives. it was good. i brought up the interesting fact that i live in the austin house in seattle and then i came to austin and then there is another austin house that was where the real world was filmed. weird, huh?

the rest of the kids showed up at about 2:30am and we loaded the crap in and hung out some more and then went to sleep around 4am. we woke around 11am and went to eat and then went to register. it was pretty painless, but the webcams they used to take our pictures for our badges were horrible and you can’t even tell who the hell the person is and it sorta defeats the purpose of a badge. anyhoo…

we were walking around trying to find something to do and then we found a shit load of legos in this one area and sat down for about 3 hours and played with legos. we got quite a few people to join in and started a trend of trying to separate the legos into the different pieces. we found all of the normal height 2×6 red pieces and made huge towers. then we encouraged other people to help separate other pieces with this weird bogus story and people believed it. then bre stopped by and helped out for a bit too, and that was cool. i’m already meeting people and then seeing them again.

from there we went to the “interactive registrant lounge” and gave away our free beer cards to our friend “no neck noel” (he helped with the legos) and got a shit load of free cliff bars to tide ourselves over for the week.

so, after that we walked around downtown austin a lot more and i found out that it is a much bigger city than i once thought. right now we are back at our place and totally chillin’ out and nerding and writing blog entries and listening to music and really enjoying ourselves. austin really is a music town. i mean, the place that we are staying has 7 people living in it and just about everyone of them is in a band or plays music of somesort. and they are having a band from the netherlands stay with them during sxsw. and it’s awesome.

tomorrow is the real beginnings of the nerdery and the “panel discussions” and the events and the all around good time. there are daytime events and evening events. movies and discussions and parties with open bars sponsored by google (?!?). can you imagine a room full of web nerds all getting wasted on google’s tab? absolutely ridiculous. one of the movies i’m especially gonna see is called High Score, and it’s about a guy who wants beat the Missle Command high score of 80 million by playing the game for about 2 days straight on ONE quarter. Amazing!

i’m sorry this post is sorta rambly and crazy, but i don’t have a lot of time, and i needed to get the first one out of the way and get the ball rolling. more later!