Category Archives: latenight

rear view of Subaru Forester without a back window

Crawl On In

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As you may or may not know, I drive a car with no back windshield.  It only costs a few hundred dollars to replace; I can easily afford to replace it.  I don’t mind it being out.

rear view of Subaru Forester without a back window

Back window: unneeded.

It got knocked out by some drunk douchy 20-somethings in a Jeep. They were drinking coronas and headed for some velvet rope bar in Mid Town after asking the parking lot attendant at the Continental Club where it was. They projectile-disposed of their bottles and one took out my back window.  I was parallel parked on a side-street.

Anyway, I drive my 2000 Subaru Forester around without a back window.

I parked it overnight in upper Montrose last week.  A few blocks from Cecil’s bar.  In the morning it was clear that someone had “broken in”.  Not actually broken anything, but illegally entered my car by crawling in the back window.

Normally my back seats are folded down. They had been placed back up to better access the literal junk that’s in my car and needs to be thrown away.  All the junk (empty bottles and cans, junk mail, junk food wrappers, free newspapers, …) was nicely shuffled and aerated.

All my insurance and business cards were knocked off the sun visor. The manual was dutifully removed from the glovebox, as was the air pressure gauge and spare pen.  The drugs I had in the car (ibuprofen and Benadryl – both car cooked into unknown pharmaceutical forms) still remained.  The cash ($2) in my ash tray and checkbook remained behind.  There were several phone charging cables that remained.

I noticed the passenger door was unlocked, no doubt their egress.  I also noticed the eyeglass holder was empty.  My cheap sunglasses has been increasingly annoying me lately.  I have been meaning to replace them.  The annoyance of their catawampus alignment hadn’t quite co-incided with my presence at a place to replace them.  I dug through the detritus before leaving and could not find them.

That bastard had stollen my crappy sunglasses.  Good riddance, and thanks dumb ass bastard.  Did you really think I would have anything of value in an unlockable car?

I drove straight to the grocery store for some breakfast, some Dr Pepper, and some new $10 sunglasses that fit quite nicely.

SXSW Monday: Wetly Interactive

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I did not check the weather before I left Houston, so now on Tuesday morning I’m tossing my only pair of jeans into the washing machine.

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.