The product management team is off to Austin for the South by Southwest Interactive conference tomorrow morning. For half the team, it'll be their first time in Austin so in addition to the conference, we'll be hitting up 6th street, eating at Salt Lick, and riding mechanical bulls at Midnight Rodeo.

If you're a web 2.0 startup and you're looking for an address book to mash up with, we'd love to make your acquaintance. And if you're a Plaxo user, we've been busy working on a lot of cool new stuff over the past few months. Find us at SXSW and we can give you a sneak peek of what's coming. Drop me an e-mail or IM and we'll meet up at the trade show or one of the panels. I think y'all will be quite impressed :)

-- Mark Jen
Product Line Manager

I didn't think it was possible to see the entire San Diego Zoo in less than 3 hours. I didn't think I would enjoy seeing elephants, hippos, and dik-diks going by in a blur. I didn't think we would ever make it out of Los Angeles. But over the last 18 hours, all of those things happened.

We drove up the beautiful coast of California, marveling at the vineyards...then just looking at the vineyards...then praying to never see a vineyard, grape, or raisin again in our lives. Even though it was a long day, the end was in sight. Midnight brought relief to the HipCal team when we saw our house in Los Altos, despite the fact that our beds would be the bare floors in the unfurnished 5 bedroom, 3.5 bath, quaintly appointed estate seated on 1.2 acres (I'm also going into real estate). We all had a great time on the trip, but we're looking forward to settling in and getting to work at Plaxo (whom we'd like to thank for bankrolling this operation, which included paying Silent Chris' bail after that incident in Nebraska).

Our new digs in Los Altos

-- Pete Curley, Product Manager

With the $29/night deal at the South Coast hotel, we decided to splurge and get two rooms this time around. Pete and I decided to take it back to freshman year and share a room, while Glenn, Garret and S. Chris took the other.

We started off our day in Vegas with an early dosage of the slot machines while we waited for the Lunch Buffet to open up. While the slot machines entertained Silent Chris and Pete by doubling the money they put in and then slowly taking it away from them, Garret and I sat and kept pulling on the lever as it just kept eating away at whatever we fed it. Glenn was still recovering from the money he lost the night before in Poker.

After the buffet, we hopped onto the complimentary shuttle and went into the famous Las Vegas strip. While the Bellagio, Caesars, and Mandalay were great, we ended up sitting down at the Barbary Coast to enjoy their $2 drink specials and experience in first hand Elvis reincarnated as a 300 lbs man, otherwise known as Fat Elvis.

Half way through the show, we decided to move on and start heading back to the hotel to cool off in the pool, the weather outside was a beading 109 degrees. Although we initially planned to go back to the strip to check everything out at night, we decided to grab dinner and catch a movie (also part of the hotel+casino) instead and leave the night-time exploration for the following night.

P.S. Does anyone know of a good car carrier that can ship my car from New York to Mountain View? So far, the only company that has offered to ship it in a timely manner has over 200 complaints with the Better Business Bureau.

--Tawheed Kader, Product Manager

Salt Lake City was a welcome stop after the tedious, 8-hour, drive from Sidney, Nebraska which consisted almost entirely of the state of Wyoming. When checking into our hotel we were told that no pets over 45lbs were allowed so Silent Chris had to stay in the car (we made sure to leave the windows open a crack). While heading up to our rooms we came across an elevator which continued moving down after the doors had already opened, so we decided to take the stairs.

According to Wikipedia the capital of Utah is said to contain over 1,500 people per square mile, but every street, sidewalk and store seemed entirely deserted. We began to wonder if we’d missed an important evacuation notice on the way in. The fact that every building had been rebuilt four years ago for the Olympics added to the awkward feeling we had while walking around. Since an indoor pool and hot tub were waiting for us back at the hotel, we quickly ate and hurried back. Unfortunately, a very grumpy man kicked us out after 20 minutes so he could lock up.

Tomorrow we head to Vegas to test our self control...

-- Garret Heaton, Software Engineer

After waking up at 9am and purchasing our hearty Dunkin’ Donuts breakfast, we began our trek from Chicago to Nebraska – easily the most boring 12 hours of our trip. Once we were through the bizarre tolls of Iowa and Illinois, paying 80 cents every 10 minutes, the long, long journey truly began. Halfway through Iowa, we made a quick stop at the “Largest Truckstop in the World” before grudgingly returning to our cars for the next 400 miles.

For dinner, our target was a dine-in Sonic located in Grand Island, Nebraska. Although we have been subjected to Sonic’s national advertising for several years, we have never had an opportunity to actually eat at one, since the nearest one to Troy is hundreds of miles away. The stop was well worth it: push-button ordering, prompt service, easy debit card payment, and dozens of drink options made our experience one to remember. Unfortunately, the next five hours spent on I-80 to Sidney, NE was perhaps the most uneventful, mind-numbing drive in the whole trip. Upon arriving in Sidney, we promptly checked in at a local Holiday Inn (four to a single room) and fell asleep to prepare for tomorrow's trip to Salt Lake City. Even though the trip is fun, we can’t wait to get to Plaxo.

-- Chris Rivers, Server Engineer

We spent the second day of our trip in Chicago. We started the day by walking down the "Magnificient Mile". There were lots of cool things to see, especially this crazy thing:

I'll tell ya, we had a hard time tearing Silent Chris away from the image of himself. Once we got "Silent Narcissus" out of his trance we went to this mall thing where the only interesting thing was the Lego store and found this:

Then we visited the Navy Pier:

At this point we were pretty tired from walking around all day so we went back to the hotel for a bit. We all ended up taking a nap except for Garret who used this free time as an opportunity to iron his entire wardrobe. When we woke up, we were in the mood for some authentic Chicago cuisine. That was all too expensive so we went to Bennigan's instead.

-- Glenn Dixon, Server Engineer

After loading our meager possessions (a Ron Popeil food dehydrator included) onto the moving truck and saying goodbye to our 3-legged kitty Wobbles …we set off on our voyage to Plaxo in Mountain View, California. Our first day of driving would be 13 hours to Chicago. We went to the RPI student union to spend what was left of the money in my student account (it turns out that I had zero). When we walked out to our cars, Garret and I found freshly written parking tickets on our windshields. Not a great way to start off the first 5 minutes of our trip ☺. The drive was mostly uneventful until around 10pm somewhere in Ohio. In the road was what was left of a deer who had had an unfortunate accident with a previous motorist. But that didn’t stop Chris “Deer Slayer” Rivers. Thump Thump. That deer just couldn’t catch a break. The Slayer denies any hostility towards our woodland creatures but we’ll make sure nothing like that happens again.

We drove into Chicago and found our Best Western on East Ohio Street. After parking and trying to check in, we were told that we were at the wrong Best Western…ours was 5 blocks down the street. I’m not sure how there could possibly be two Western’s that have been considered the “Best” in the same city but I have alerted the company and I’m sure the error will be fixed. We got to our rooms and did something we had always wanted, watched Law & Order in a different timezone. Cross that off the lifelong to-do list. Tomorrow we’ll be spending the day in Chicago before heading off across the Midwest.

-- Pete Curley, Product Manager