1. that SIC was happening at all. Seriously guys, I'm surrounded by geeky techie engineer people every day and not one of them even knew this 3-day conference was happening in our own city.

2. that the Showbox SODO was so caverous. It's like a hangar big enough to house several crashed UFOs.

3. that our MC for the evening would be John Roderick, lead raconteur of The Long Winters.

4. that the judge's panel would include Sir Mix-A-Lot. Okay.

5. that the Showbox ran such a tight ship. A separate stagehand just for monitors? Sign me up.

6. that all the "geek" bands would be so great. My personal highlight of the night was Stay Tuned's mashup of the Gilligan's Island them and Iron Maiden's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" lead by a keytar. Perfection. Notable plaudits also to Clutch Douglass, who not only stole the show (and my heart) with their laptop-and-bass-guitar electropop, but should have gotten additional nerd cred for experiencing a "CPU overload error" in the middle of a tune.

7. that the headliner of the evening following the band battle would be The Presidents of the United States of America, who are still great. So now I can say I opened for PUSA, although technically all of the bands playing that night can say they opened for PUSA.

8. that I'd get yelled at by a stagehand for turning my amp down. That's a first.

9. that Kirby Krackle would take first place! Hooray!

Watch Kyle bust some moves and possibly an ankle:

(Watch this video at YouTube.)

Here's a nice writeup of the event at GeekWire.

Nate Watters has a great photoset of the night here.