This was year 5 of volunteering my way to platinum. I have been on vacation for the past week and a half.  I didn’t even think about the day job until today when I was trying to figure out if I had to go back tomorrow (sadly, I do.  It keeps the lights on.).

This year I blogged my way through the event, thanks to my MSI Wind Netbook (full review later), so I am just going to write up a quick summary (You should go back and read the daily recaps.  I put this stuff out on the internet for you, little readers)

Total # of bands: ~35 (Flosstradamus, Asobi Seksu, Titus Andronicus, Chairlift, the DJs from the Hood Internet, Kanye West, Big Sean, GLC Consequence, Really Do, Tony Williams, Mr. Hudson, Kid Cudi, Common, Erykah Badu, Buck65, B.Dolan, Sleep, Sage Francis, the Obits, Handsome Furs, American Analog Set, the Rosebuds, Bishop Allen, Au Revoir Simone, These Arms are Snakes, Cursive,  Passion Pit,  the Soft Pack, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Matt and Kim, Amplive, Franki Chan and Curt from Flosstradamus, and Echo and the Bunnymen.)

Total # of movies: 7 (RIP: A Remix Manifesto,  500 days of Summer,  Died Young, Stayed Pretty, The Time of Their Lives, Yes Men Fix the World,  Alexander the Last, and  I Love You, Man.)

Total $ spent: ~$21.25. In comparison to last year, I spent less money but came home with less loot.

Things that vastly improved the SXSW experience:

• Being a shiftleader: (Thanks to the Real Jew) You get time and a half for a little added responsibility.  I only had to volunteer from Thursday night – Tuesday evening. The downside was that I didn’t get to see as many panels as I had in the past.  I had many rooms to look after.
• Living in Mexico-  I could save on gas and cabs by riding my bike or walking.  M and I bought groceries to save $$.
• New bike- super light.  I didn’t have to walk any hills this year.  Everything is bolt on so I didn’t have to pop off a tire to lock it up. Thanks once again to the dudes at The Peddler.
• MSI Wind Netbook: just a good thing to have around as a blogger and it helps to stay on top of all the social networking business.  Mexico has wireless internet now so there were more reasons to have a computer.
• sched.org-  for all of my sxsw scheduling needs (and Showlist Austin for making the .pdf version of the day party schedule.)

The day started off with a bike ride from “Mexico.”  It was the last day of volunteering on the third floor.  It was also the last day of sxswi  I finally got around to checking my twitter to see what the Canadian dude from last night had written.  The message was actually from someone else.

DailyMarauder@spinsta We have your arrow. Ransom to follow #sxsw

@DailyMarauder Your associate was unaware of the fact that he was supposed to hold the arrow for ransom. You should have words with him.

Nothing else after that. I skipped that core conversation.  I had plenty of work to be done.  10hdg and M thought that I should have scammed free food off of the dudes since they planned on checking out places to eat on Wednesday.

The day went by without a hitch (no more demons in room 10).  We managed to have everyone out of the panel rooms and have the laptops upstairs by 6:30.  I really wanted beer by then.  Unfortunately all the shift leaders had to hang back and have tribal counsel.  It was our turn to decide who would be coming back next year.

I headed back to my house to deal with the angry kitty and bring home some dirty clothes.  When I got back to Mexico I was starving and needed a nap.  I made dinner and passed out watching The Daily Show.  I woke up in time to get my FREE BEER and see Franki Chan spin twice (SXSWi closing party and PureVolume).

Cost of today: $1 for tip (FREE BEER)

Beer credits : 2

So, after Jen finally got twitter (ok so that was a few months ago..) I found this, actually someone posted this to my twitter today. Heh, ironic, right?

BTW: we are on twitter:

jen: @spinsta

em: @limorama

So today the internet gave us this lovely present…

The song originally started as a joke but now the creator has offered up an iphone to the person that creates the best music video.  The contest deadline is well after the conference so you have time to capture and assemble your footage.

So I have listened to the song a few times now and read the lyrics.  Here is my advice to you nerd boys who are fortunate enough to stumble on my blog in time…

You gonna need it if ya wanna get some hot ass
Fuck the panels, there ain’t one girl ta talk to…

…So hold up, wait, let me tell ya dudes
For every one girl here, they be a hundred yous…

There are a few girls to chat with in the panels (depending on the panels) .  Most of the girls in the convention center are actually volunteers.  The perk to making friends with them is because they are locals and they know their way around town (and they have cars). The best way to find a large assemblage of women is to hang out near the restrooms at one of the parties.  Even though SXSWi is as sausage fest, there is ALWAYS a line for the ladies room.  If you really want to meet chicks, you should upgrade that badge that work paid for and stay for the music festival.  The weather is usually perfect for tank tops and showin’ some leg.

…back to that video.  I would like to see what The Lonely Island would do with this song.  My guess is there would be cross dressing involved.  Why you ask?  Do to the lack of girls involved with the conference it would be much easier to have a boy dress up as a girl.

I think there should be extra bonus points if the video involves a montage.

But your not.

I’ve been going through the band list for sxsw and it’s taking way too fucking long.  Why you ask?  Because bands did a bad job of promoting themselves.  I am currently using the SXSW music page, last.fm and myspace to listen to the bands.  Since M and I use the 3 song rule to determine whether or not we will go to a show, the sxsw website isn’t so helpful with their streaming media option.  That one song may or may not be representative of the bands set list.

Bands,think about what info you  display on the sxsw website.  Don’t give out your own website if it is going to take me more than 2 clicks to listen to your music.  My biggest dissappointment is when I click a few times only to get a link to your myspace page.  Just put the link to the myspace page on the sxsw site.

Another good option for bands is to use sonicbids and upload your songs to their streaming device.  That way I can listen to the songs while I read your bio.

Last.fm has proved useful for the bands that actually put their music on there.  Its not cool when you click to a band’s page and find that you can only listen to bands like them, not their actual music.  I like using last.fm over myspace because the pages are tagged with similar artists, reviews, bios and often a list of upcoming gigs so I can get a feel for who they tour with.

Back to the myspace pages.  Think about what you put on there. Some band sites look like web 2.0 puked all over them.  If you have 80k widgets on your page, 1) it slows down page loading and 2) many bands have forgotten to disable the autoplay feature (meaning the user needs to turn the apps off or be bombarded with every tune the band put up on the site).

It is Saturday night and I am stuck inside.  Sick (damned allergies).  So, what is there to do but surf the internet.  Tonight’s google search led me to my past.  I had to go in search of an ex to find the pictures from my Hawaii vacation in 2003. I am bad at remembering to take pictures.  That job has always fallen to someone else (I really do appreciate the fact that M captures so much, even if it is my bad skin in Hi-def.)

The trip was supposed to be a girl’s vacation.  A trip to visit my best friend (and best roommate EVER).  He decided to crash the trip (yet another story). Anyways, in my internet trolling I found out that he is very much unlike me (hence the break up).  He didn’t erase all traces of me (I jettisoned almost all traces of the 2.5 years we were together).  The pictures are all there.  That meant I could find the pictures from that trip.

Recovered Hawaii vacation photo by an Ex-boyfriend. Hunama Bay- Jan 2003. This is the warning sign for the "Toilet Bowl"

But alas, with all internet trolling comes information.  I was reminded of the movie High Fidelity.  The part where John Cusak wants to look up all his exes.   I will admit that I do that periodically.    I think there is truth in the practice of looking back to move forward.

Does anyone besides me find that little heart icon annoying? MySpace was a little more stealth about the process (or atleast is was in the past, I haven’t been on there in a while).

For those of you living in a rock, this is what I am talking about…

This just happens to be a perfect example of someone who listed themselves in a relationship a little prematurely. Almost a full 11 hours. This one didn’t get to the point where the name of the person that you are in a relationship with gets posted.

A few people on the internet that have something to say about this Facebook trend. Check out a few examples here, here and here.

Please stop the insanity. Is it really that important to announce these details of your life to everyone? Learn how to disable that shit!

In the meantime, I will be figuring out how to not be alerted of relationship status changes.

I like pretty things, we all like pretty things, right?
Well my cousin did this on her blog, and I dig it. So I thought I’d do the same.

Rules:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into Big Huge Lab’s mosaic maker.

Questions:
1. What is your first name? Emily
2. What is your favorite food? Rice
3. What high school did you go to? Oak Park River Forest
4. What is your favorite color? Green
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Milo Ventimiglia
6. Favorite drink? Dr. Pepper
7. Dream vacation? Spain
8. Favorite dessert? Creme Brulee
9. What you want to be when you grow up? I don’t know
10. What do you love most in life? Diesel
11. One Word to describe you. Stubborn
12. Your flickr name. Limorama

1. BSS – Amy Millan, Emily Haines, Leslie Feist_1962, 2. Rice Paddy, 3. Red Eyes in Paradise, 4. c’mon, get me if you can…♫ a praying mantis from bali ♫, 5. Milo Ventimiglia, 6. Drink Dr. Pepper!, 7. Mallorca 2007 — Waiting for summer (Part 2), 8. Crème Brulée, 9. Perhentian Island, Terengganu, Malaysia (Poem – Clouds Amaze Me), 10. Tanke, 11. a stubborn guy, 12. Hello There: Emily Petersen

So I went a little crazy this week with the whole interweb stalking. When M and I get bored we send each other the M4W Craigslist postings. Since she has been on a hot streak recently I was a little jealous and decided to take action.

I responded to a ton of ads. The one response I got was from a super hot guy who was interested in me (or my legs). Unfortunately he posted his ad in the wrong city (he lives in CA). I moved on to the Chronicle’s personals. I was debating signing up for their service. Not sure I want to go there. There are a handful of interesting people.

In my craziness, I used the interweb for evil. I stalked a boy. I ran a few keywords in his profile through google. Then I located a name which I could run through the “friend finder” in MySpace and Facebook. Normally I stop myself at this point. But as I said before, “I WAS CRAZY”. So I sent this boy an email on Facebook. It felt a little “Dateline NBC: To Catch a Predator” but I did it anyways. I admitted to stalking him in the email. (IMHO Facebook is not really the place to be picking up dudes. That is a MySpace thing).

I sent the Arab a text message saying that I needed help. The first step to sobriety is admitting you have a problem. I got on the elliptical machine to for a bit. I can’t use the computer there. Later, I emailed M and Meg to let them know about the crazy and that I had put myself in time out. I was traveling for work and I was going to back away from the interweb. They were rather amused.

At this point in time I can say that crazy paid off. Stay tuned.

Do you really want to know who your ex has moved on to? Do you want to know why they chose that person? What do they have that you didn’t? Or better yet, did your ex settle for something less? Maybe something a little more manageable? A little less challenging?

On occasion I have found myself checking out the MySpace profile of my replacement. I don’t really want to meet them in person. I prefer to use the army’s approach of “don’t ask, don’t tell” but if it’s on the internet, it is fair game.

She was plain. A little less controversial. Someone you could take home to mom (Not that you couldn’t take me home to mom, I clean up well. It’s just that the brown on my skin doesn’t come off in the shower). She may even want to have a million of your babies.

She was definitely not me. In a way I feel better, knowing that she isn’t me. Why accept an imitation when you can have the real thing.