Okay, Friday was an absolute blast. It is Friday, isn't it? I'm losing track a bit. We slept in this morning and headed down to the conference around noon. The science panel started at 1:30. After some initial technical difficulties, everything went great. Speech was well received. After the speech, I went to the blogger's lounge to catch up on some posts for the next few days.

Tonight I had dinner with the group from the Center for Independent Media. Got to meet some folks from the New Mexico group, which was cool. Dinner was at Manuel's and the food was fabulous (really good Mexican food). After that, a few of us headed over to the Huffington Post/GQ party (by invitation only; I got in by pretending to be my editor, Rayne). Nothing much going on there, so I headed out.

And this is where things get interesting. I had gotten an email on Thursday night from a reader named John. He said he was, in addition to being an engineer, a jazz guitarist and he was playing in Austin Friday night. I didn't think I'd have time to find the little club he was playing at, so I didn't look up where it was. So I leave the HuffPo party and I'm walking back to the hotel and I walk past this club with some really good Brazilian jazz wafting out from it. I look up and, lo and behold, it's that same club! So I ducked in and took in a few songs, got to meet him and talk for a few minutes. Very cool. The music was great.

I left there and headed up to a party being thrown by Markos at a club called Maggie Maes. DarkSyd and a friend were manning the door for a while, then we all went upstairs to the real party on the roof. The band was phenomenal, a New Orleans zydeco band whose name I forget. But they absolutely rocked the place. And I ended up getting hit right on the head with a huge bundle of Mardi Gras beads.

After that, guess what I found? A poker game. We commandeered a small ballroom, bribed a janitor $20 to bring us a table and chairs and turn the lights on for us and had a little tournament. The players included the infamous Mike Rogers of BlogActive and Raw Story, who was hilarious to talk to. Oh, and I won the tournament. And now I'm going to bed. Cheers!