Archive for the 'austin' Category

Random Personal News

Lefty March 12th, 2007

It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve written on here, since I’ve been super swamped with school and work. Here’s a post that qualifies as “random personal news” if there ever was one:

- Materialite, my team’s entry into the Stern business plan contest, just got passed through to the next round. We’ve just got three other teams to beat out now in order to win the $100,000 first prize.

- I had a great poker night at Michael Malice’s on Friday. I was the third to get knocked out (out of six players), but the company, Chex mix, and Modelo Especial were a big hit. I also walked out the door with a brand new copy of the Batman: Year One graphic novel, courtesy of Scott.

- Guitar Hero 2 rules. My love for karaoke now has a serious rival.

- Emily, Champ, and I are heading up to the Catskills this weekend (specifically Roxbury, NY in Delaware County). I’ll post some Flickr shots of our planned snowtubing outing when I return. (link to Googlemap)

- We finally hooked up our Netflix subscription a few weeks back. I was skeptical about signing up for a long time, but now I’m totally sold on the service. They make it so much easier to watch and rent films. Movies rented so far: Dog Day Afternoon, Grey Gardens, The Departed, and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Up next I have about 30 Japanese samurai movies, starting with Shogun Assassin!

- My ice hockey team, the Tanya Hardings, upset the #2 team in the league in our first round playoff game by a score of 3-2. Semi-finals, here we come. (I was also fortunate enough to score a goal in the game, the credit for which I give entirely to my hard-nosed, never-say-die teammates.)

- Gotham Girls Roller Derby finally got a new practice space - it’s a big warehouse in Astoria. I haven’t been up there yet, but I hear it’s looking pretty good. The plan is for the season to start up again in the spring sometime.

- No SXSW this year for me. My entrepreneurial finance class was on Sunday, and I really didn’t want to skip it (since it’s the best class I’ve taken yet at Stern.) I’m hoping to hear some good stories of A-Town adventures upon people’s return to NYC.

That’s about it for now. I’ll write something more tech/entrepreneurship/nyc related next time, I promise.

Austin, TX

Lefty February 17th, 2007

sxsw

I lived in Austin, TX for most of the early 90’s, and in fact got my undergraduate degree from the UT Austin. I tend to make it down there once every year or two to visit old friends and eat massive quantities of Mexican food.

When I lived in Austin, South by Southwest was only a couple of years old, and it was only a music conference. Of course, now it’s much, much bigger, and also has a huge film and interactive media component. Just about everyone has heard of it, and just about everyone has been there at least once. And has the festival has grown, so has Austin’s reputation. I remember when I first moved down there, people I told would like at me like I was crazy and say something like, “You’re moving to TEXAS?!? They lynch Yankees like you down there?” Now when I tell people I lived in Austin they invariably say, “Austin is so cool - I was down there for SXSW two years ago and ate at this awesome restaurant/saw some amazing band/had a wonderful time.”

Anyway, in all my subsequent visits to Austin I’ve always avoided going down there during SXSW time. I wanted to avoid the crowds and craziness, and I wanted to experience the mellow Austin that I remembered. But this year I’m thinking really seriously about heading down to SXSW Interactive on March 9th-March 13th. Has anyone out there been to the Interactive event before? Or is anyone planning on going? Send me an email to “lefty” at this domain, or hook me up with a comment.