I have no patience with the incurious.  What can they learn about life and what can anyone know without learning. -Sylvester Milner in The House of a Thousand Lanterns, by Victoria Holt, 1974

Though I took a long rest, I was still feeling beat down, the remnants from a brief cold.  I’ve heard from others it can linger for weeks.  Not having done much fore-scouting for the music portion of SXSW, I thought I’d head to Waterloo Records and start from there.

Meanwhile, the people I knew that were here for SXSWi were catching their last lectures and mostly heading out of town.

It’s been two years since I’ve been to Waterloo and the neighboring ice house is no longer.  In its place is the 24 Diner.  I sat down and had a Dr Pepper to sooth the throat.  I was also offered a taste of the Avery Hog Heaven.  It was a very hoppy barley wine, and if I was feeling well it would have complemented my meal excellently.

I had a stuffed chard on a bed of wheat berries.  After having 4 slices of bacon with breakfast, the vegetarian option sounded good.  And it was.

I stopped by Waterloo.  It was a sedate shadow of what it will be over the next few days with a different band playing in-store every hour (including Cheap Trick Wednesday at 6!).  There were no copies of the weekly Austin Chronicle, and no dailies starting until Wednesday.

I briefly tried to catch up with Bill C. again, but he hopped out of town, exhausted after his daily lectures following minimal sleep.  Will killing time at The Ginger Man, trying two beers (Independence Oatmeal Stout was a delicious desert for my lunch), I pulled a book off the shelf (quoted above).  I read it there and have been continuing it.  Hopefully I can finish and re-shelve it before I leave town.

I headed back to my crash pad and got in some extra rest knowing I’ll need it over the next few days.

I don’t have a jacket or any rain gear with me either.  It will be a bit nippy tonight, and raining all day.

Yesterday, after I got settled into my cousin’s place, and did some grocery shopping, I headed into town.  I parked across MOPAC from Zilker Park and rode my bicycle into town.  It was a nice day for it, and gave me a chance to get used to some of the routes that might be useful later in the week.

I locked up the bike, almost left my pannier, but thought better of it, and found some lunch.  Darwin’s Pub had a nice Chicken Shawarma, though their beer selection was minimal.  Around 4pm, I headed over to Buffalo Billiards (even thinner, though larger, selection).  There was an informal iPhone Developers Meet-up.  It ended up having about a dozen people, about half had done development work.  So, I spent some time chatting and getting to know some people, mostly from Texas, though the organizer was from the UK.

One who I met was Jacqueline, and happened to attend the same high school as I did.  This happens more often than you might think.

After that I headed to the west side for a Houston organized party (Houstonians got free drink tickets, and a friend bought me another).  I saw quite a few Houston friends.  JR was camped out with a video camera.  (Ex Houston) Mayor Bill White showed up and had a brief chat.  He’s running for Governor.  I wish he was still our mayor, and will definitely vote for him for Governor.

Jacqueline had checked in on another party and then stopped by the Houston one.  We chatted for a while and suggested we try the FourSquare party.

FourSquare, Twitter, Gowalla, and (to a less extent) FaceBook are ALL OVER the SXSWi part of the conference.  So much that there are lots of anti-SXSW whiners on-line and #fakesxsw humor from the non-attendees.

We swang by the FourSquare and it had a line out the front, we tried out the BeerCamp at Emo’s.  Their Beer Pong tournament was over but free beer was still available for the waiting in line.  The rain started, we chatted under a tent with some young strangers (Austinites schooling in Lubbock, off for the spring break).

My iPod had died by this point, and I totally missed hooking up with my good friend Bill C.  I totally should have borrowed a phone and called (sorry Bill!).  Jacqueline suggested we try out Beauty Bar (a new one, I was unfamiliar with) as the rain continued.  I stayed there for a while, but decided I needed to get back to my car and/or bike, so I left her to stay out for the rest of the night (and I think she did).

I started walking to find a cab, to get to my car.  I was planning on abandoning my well locked bike.  But I got all the way to the bike and after consulting with the pedi-cab drivers decided that that I needed to come back and retrieve the bike.  Then I decided that I was already soaking wet and warm from the walk, so decided to ride to the car.  I got home about 12:30, had to strip clean to get dry and warm.

I was of course soaked to the bone and a bit muddy from the ride.  Thus the need to wash and dry my only pair of pants this morning.  Sounds like they’re ready for the dryer.

I was quickly reminded that the AirPort Extreme Base Station by default protects me from the wilds of the Internet and to get the torrent running you have to bypass to ports and directly map them to your inside computer.

I found an old write-up to tell me how to do it, but it’s very out of date. I figured it out from there, but anyone who’s non-technical likely couldn’t.  

I’m not going to take the time right now to explain the details again.  But you should be able to follow his text and my screen shots to get the gritty work done and allow you to bypass your default firewall with the current 5.4.1 Airport Utility.

A few days from now I’ll have more music than I need and it will likely take me months to sift through it all.  But I do have a new, big media drive just waiting.

So, here are the screen shots, if you have any questions, let me know!

4p

We missed a band last night called Dressy Bessy, they seemed good, so we went to check them out at Waterloo Records in-store. It was decent, but something missing. Very cute red-haired chick singer, gigantic guitar player. Perhaps because they didn’t have much room in the record store, but they didn’t seem to have much excitement.

Michelle and I stepped next door for some lunch. I had the chicken fried stake, and I have to say it was the worst chicken friend steak i’ve had in i-can’t-remember-how-long. There’s musicians coming from all over the world to the music store, I sure hope they’re not eating there and judging it.

6p

The Town Lake stage opened up on thursday night. It’s open with various acts thu-sat, free to non-conference goers. Tonight is tejano/latin night. The first act, Del Castillo from Austin, was very good. We were there mostly to hang out, chill out, and check out the venue. I later found out that they won the band of the year award wednesday night.

The second band was not so hot. Stampede from Dallas was so bad we were headed toward the exit within one minute of them taking the stage, trying desperately to finish the beer before the exit.

8p

We were meeting up with others, the working stiffs, at Opal Divine’s Freehouse. Teye & Viva El Flamenco, listed from Austin but obviously from elsewhere originally. We caught the first half or so of their set which was quite excellent.

We stepped across the street to Mother Egan’s to see Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter. Unexpectedly, Jesse was a female singer heading the band of alt-country. They included a stand-up bass and a violin with accoustic and electric guitars.

9p

The next band we went to see was a pick of Bill Fergerson. He chose it almost entirely because they were labeled “Donkey Punk”. From Aarhus, Denmark, that was as apt a description as any. PowerSolo was reasonably good and loud thrash punk, and provided the quote of the night. this one goes out to grandma,… it’s called ‘Stupid Little Bitch’. After the first half (that really was enough) we left.

Bob wanted to catch a guitar player (currently his favorite) at Pecan St. Ale House for Cory Branan. It was reasonably full, and quite warm. We found the coldest place is the upper deck where all the vents are. He had some fun singer/songwriter stuff, and claims Memphis as home. this is the dumbest song i ever wrote

10p

The next stop was Palmyra Delran at the Lounge. Who ever is managing this place should be fired. The bathrooms were entirely unmarked and everyone asked where they were. They had gone to the trouble, since wednesday night, of having signs on the other side of the doors telling the bathroom users (from the restaurant, open during the day) that the doors led to SXSW access.
The layout of the bar was horrible, but i suspect that may have been due to the branded showcase. The room was covered entirely with lounging chairs and tables, which fit very few people and was entirely inappropriate for the first band. The room seemed mostly to be lounged about by people who had been there before the bands and were likely familiar with the showcase sponsor.
The band was good with female vocal, surf type music, but needed a room full of people enjoying themselves.

We stopped by Halcyon coffee house for some food and a beer. It was mediocre food, mediocre service.

11p

Headed around to see many, many lines. Antones, 40+; Mother Egan’s, 60+; Opals, a band we’d seen. We tried Momo’s around 10:25. They had The Jealous Sound from Los Angeles. They were a very good, straightforward rock, 00-pop (coldplay-ish) band. And very tight. Also I finally realized that all the other bands that evening hadn’t had very solid secondary vocals, and this band did.

12m

We went to see happylife from London play at the Speakeasy. The band was good, struck me as a band that should be on something like a lollapaloosa lineup. The Speakeasy has a horrible layout and there were a lot of drunks stumbling around. It seemed quite odd, the band with a very large sound, staring up as if into a stadium crowd, with a wall 30 feet in front of his face.

1a

The extra loud, and extra drunks, and extra lines, and extra long day helped us decided to go home and get some sleep.

This night there were a whole lot of cameras in the venues, and they often seemed annoyed that there were people there in their way while they were trying to photograph. It was a bit disconcerting that there were no lively crowds at any shows that night.
-b