Austin part 1
I took a trip to Austin this week for NI Week, the conference/trade show put on by National Instruments, which makes the software and some of the hardware I use to run my experiment. I have several thoughts about the trip, which I'll share over the next couple of days. First, all of the fun Austin things I did.
I flew in Sunday and had the afternoon basically to myself. On the bus from the airport, I chatted with a banjo player who clued me in on a good place to go for music on Tuesday night. Grant, a friend from college who works for NI, was nice enough to let me stay with him. He was doing some work at the convention center on Sunday, and we met up for lunch, and for me to put my stuff in his car. Then I walked out to Barton Springs, a huge, spring-fed swimming pool with a natural bottom. This was just about my favorite thing ever. If I lived there, I'd swim there every day.
I took the bus back to downtown and went shopping. My goal was to find CDs and books I probably wouldn't have discovered if I wasn't in Austin, and also to get some things for my dad's and brother's upcoming birthdays. I found a cool local CD store (Waterloo) and bookstore (Book People), and picked up some CDs and books. Probably my favorite thing I found was a CD called "Everything you love will be taken away" by a singer named Slaid Cleaves. I had a rental car for part of the trip, and I listened to it the whole time I was in the car.
When Grant was done, he drove me back to his place, which is out in the suburbs, and we stopped along the way at an awesomely delicious barbecue place called Rudy's.
Later in the week, I snuck in a few more Austin experiences. Monday evening, I found some other graduate students to hang out with, and we watched the country's largest urban bat colony come out for the night. 1.5 million bats live under this bridge, and they all come out at once, which is a pretty awesome sight. And I didn't meet a single mosquito the whole time I was in Austin. Then we walked to Amy's ice cream, which is apparently an Austin favorite, and went back to 6th street, where all the bars are. The fact that almost every bar had a decent-sounding live band was impressive, but none of them particularly caught my attention, and I was tired, so I didn't spend too much time there.
On Tuesday, I checked out the music suggested by the banjo player on the bus. It was at a coffeeshop/bar (everything in Austin is "something/bar") called Flipnotics, and the musician, who has a regular Tuesday gig there, is named Erik Hokkanen. He played some country standards, some surf music, some swing, some cajun fiddle, and probably some genres I'm forgetting, all in the same show. I was duly impressed. The venue itself was really sweet, with a several-tiered deck up the side of a limestone hill.
I flew in Sunday and had the afternoon basically to myself. On the bus from the airport, I chatted with a banjo player who clued me in on a good place to go for music on Tuesday night. Grant, a friend from college who works for NI, was nice enough to let me stay with him. He was doing some work at the convention center on Sunday, and we met up for lunch, and for me to put my stuff in his car. Then I walked out to Barton Springs, a huge, spring-fed swimming pool with a natural bottom. This was just about my favorite thing ever. If I lived there, I'd swim there every day.
I took the bus back to downtown and went shopping. My goal was to find CDs and books I probably wouldn't have discovered if I wasn't in Austin, and also to get some things for my dad's and brother's upcoming birthdays. I found a cool local CD store (Waterloo) and bookstore (Book People), and picked up some CDs and books. Probably my favorite thing I found was a CD called "Everything you love will be taken away" by a singer named Slaid Cleaves. I had a rental car for part of the trip, and I listened to it the whole time I was in the car.
When Grant was done, he drove me back to his place, which is out in the suburbs, and we stopped along the way at an awesomely delicious barbecue place called Rudy's.
Later in the week, I snuck in a few more Austin experiences. Monday evening, I found some other graduate students to hang out with, and we watched the country's largest urban bat colony come out for the night. 1.5 million bats live under this bridge, and they all come out at once, which is a pretty awesome sight. And I didn't meet a single mosquito the whole time I was in Austin. Then we walked to Amy's ice cream, which is apparently an Austin favorite, and went back to 6th street, where all the bars are. The fact that almost every bar had a decent-sounding live band was impressive, but none of them particularly caught my attention, and I was tired, so I didn't spend too much time there.
On Tuesday, I checked out the music suggested by the banjo player on the bus. It was at a coffeeshop/bar (everything in Austin is "something/bar") called Flipnotics, and the musician, who has a regular Tuesday gig there, is named Erik Hokkanen. He played some country standards, some surf music, some swing, some cajun fiddle, and probably some genres I'm forgetting, all in the same show. I was duly impressed. The venue itself was really sweet, with a several-tiered deck up the side of a limestone hill.