mmm Cheesecake

My brother is staying at my place since he’s in town getting my grandmother’s car fixed at the dealership here. For doing the favor, my dad offered to pay for our dinner tonight, and of course we went through a lengthy decision process of choosing a restaurant. Finally, we decided on The Cheesecake Factory just a few minutes away at the Arboretum. Despite being a Tuesday night, the place was packed and we ended up having to wait about 30 minutes for a table.

While we were waiting, I called my cousin Haley, who had called me a few weeks ago trying desperately to get plane tickets to Boise to see her new love interest for Spring Break. Just as I had experienced (and what ultimately tipped the scale towards staying in Austin this spring break), all the flights were either full or were charging like $800 per ticket. I suggested that she go on eBay or Craigslist and buy a Southwest Rapid Rewards voucher for someone, usually at around $300, to get a seat on the plane. She said everything worked out and she had her reservations, so hopefully I’ll hear back next week on how her crazy skiing and cross-country trip went.

We finally sat down, ordered, and ate. I had some sort of chicken with marinera sauce pasta which was fine but overpriced. Neither my brother nor I had the appetite for cheesecake, so we ordered some to go anyway. I tried out the caramel turtle, which, just as all their cheesecakes, is wonderful. I haven’t been to the Cheesecake Factory many times since it’s really not a very good value, but if someone else is paying, why not?!

SXSW Interactive Day 2

Today was probably the coolest of any of the days.

First we had to get up early, like at 8:30 so we could make the panels starting at 10:00.

The first panel we attended was “What’s Hot in Web Applications” which was basically a demo of the panelists’ sites.
YackPack – A cool ‘audio email’ kind of system. Check it out.
Meebo – Web based instant messaging that I’ve been using for around 8 months so far.
Zimbra – Web based Outlook type application that allows for an insane amount of plugins

Next we sampled “Smaller, Faster, Lighter” and “How to make the most of maps” but both were pretty uninteresting. We ran into Justin Abbott of BlogAds coming out of another panel and chatted with him for a while. We decided to just go to lunch early. Unfortunately it was Sunday so Stubb’s was having a brunch thing, then Ironworks was closed, so we ate at the restaurant in the Hilton which was pretty decent.

The next event was a keynote by Jason Kottke and Heather Armstrong. They discussed the various revenue models for blogs, how the micropatron system worked for kottke.org, and various blog/life balance topics. They seemed to have pretty good chemistry and the banter made the keynote entertaining.

After that, we attended the “Running Your New Media Business” panel, which was fine. All the panelists seemed to have an inside joke or something…they were all pretty much from the same street in San Francisco. The basic jist was to get everything on paper before you start something. They all basically told about how they got started and their philosophy on taking or not taking money. One of the panelists was one of the founders of Blogger who sold to Google and is now working on Odeo. Most of the others were web designers or developers.

The last panel was “Standardzella vs Tabellela” which first described some concepts of accessibility and usability and then reviewed several sites for both. It did help to understand what details and standards should be used in design and how to make a web site more usable.

Magnolia Cafe Review

If you aren’t from Austin, Magnolia Cafe is probably one of the two most popular restaurants to eat at late at night. They are open 24 hours, have two locations, and boast a diverse menu from Mexican food to breakfast. Every time I have been to this place, the parking lot is always full and the dining rooms are packed — even at 2am. The food is decent, the service has something to be desired, but the prices are great and the atmosphere is quintessentially Austin. One rant I have is that it was so loud in there that I could barely hear the friend I went there with. I had the chicken enchiladas which were decent, but nothing too great. If you have to choose between Kerbey Lane and Magnolia, I’d say Kerbey is the better bet.