LAVA BBQ, a vision quest and the complete failure to win anything

The LAVA BBQ at Scholz Garten was last night here at NI week.  I managed to score one of the last tickets and was offered the chance to catch a cab over to the venue.  I declined on the cab because I had been sitting in sessions all day and wanted the chance to stretch my legs.  The venue is only a mile away and I'm a city dweller - "how hard can it be?".  As it turns out, a lot harder than you might imagine as the high temperature on Tuesday was 107 degrees here in Austin.

At 100 yards in I think it might have been a mistake, at 1/4 mile in and I was definitely of the opinion that I had indeed made a mistake and by 1/2 mile I was well on my way to my own particular vision quest.  If you were wondering why the picture of "Sensational Susan" is attached to this, just go with it.  It doesn't have to make sense.

I arrived to a friendly crowd and beer where I tried Dos Equis for the first time.  I didn't get to the full required five beers the bartender assured me would make me into the most interesting man in the world so I will have to remain moderately interesting and acheive that goal another day.

After dinner, there was a raffle where some really cool prizes were given away.  A bottle of wine signed by Dr. T, an airplane ride with one of the NI engineers, a tablet computer and (my favorite) a USB stick with an emulator containing LabVIEW 1.0 on it.  My ticket number was 343.  They called 341, 342 and 344 so no awesome USB stick for me.

After saying my goodbyes and fortified with beer I chose to walk the mile back to Fado Irish Pub to meet up with the rest of the DMC team for drinks with some of the NI team.  It was hot but the evening was starting to cool down and I managed to avoid a second vision quest on the way back.