Weekend

Defcon weekend was a blur. Didn't drink, but ate much food, played much computar, hung out with friends and wifey, and enjoyed the people watching.

I really, actually, totally enjoy the people watching the most while at Defcon, the girls in cute or bizarre outfits, the various t-shirts, hair styles, shoes/boots. This year, I dunno, I spent much of the con in Scrim's AP hotel room watching the seminars comfortably, so I wasn't out as much. But, at night, it seemed there were less people in total out and about, and far less quantity of unique people or freaks out. Huh. I wonder if Defcon is fading a bit from the outlandish. Which is fine, but notable.

So yeah, there was the CiscoGate Blackhat Briefings thing to create some drama, and that one group of kids did a fucking amazing 125 mile 11megabit/second un-amplified 802.11b wifi connection, but I didn't think there were any revolutionary presentations, nothing craaaazy or wild. Richard Thieme's keynote was great, I wish it coulda gone another hour. He's totally fascinating. Dan Kaminsky's "blackops" talk was fun, always good to see in person, and gizmo and I love to argue over the merits of his projects. Like, seriously, is doing blah-de-blah via DNS recursive queries applicable in the real world, what if others were doing it at the same time on the same gated LAN, server loads, practicality, etc. But that was it, just those two hour-long blocks. Due to Defcon's scheduling changes, I didn't get to see any damn EFF presentations, which pissed me off, but ah well. Paul Vixie's presentation included describing the mistakes of the Internet's development with examples from Hitler and Homer. Ooookay. Deviant (lockpicker guy) spoke well, very affable, took extra care to demonstrate his actions to the camera on his desk, etc. Huge props to him. Sunday's talks were bizarro-pointless, except for the BBS Documentary guy, who was funny when he went off on rants.

I dunno, maybe it was being "sheltered" within our hotel room and in front of the TV, but the Con's dial knob was set to like half volume this weekend.

The various "DJ"'s around the property were entertaining... People "mixing" tunes off their laptops or iPods through home-stereo speakers. I mean, there's no doubt that the ambient music throughout the entire con is great, but its humerous that, with the exception of B&W Ball's chick/dude/drummachine band thing, Grew and his friend, and Jackalope, there were no vinyl records anywhere. But, again, yay for music, and yay for people regardless of what they did, they fucking did something. I really dig it when people do shit, I mean, pranks or whatever, but like, creative shit with electronics and computers, which really makes Defcon cool. There wasn't nearly as much neat shit like previous years, so when anyone did do anything other than just attend, I appreciated it more, even though they were all weak efforts. I mean, I admit, I didn't contribute anything except for winamp Giess displayed on a couple of walls, a single blinkie light, and some sound reenforcement. But, fuck, if more people did something, anything, it'd so much add to Defcon's mystique and uniqueness. And I think its that which is fading so much over the last few years.

On the other hand, Scrim's Saturday-night room party was great. Grew from IRC and his buddy brought in tables and mixer and spun records, I had projectors and speakers powering the room and outside wall, and 60 people cruised in and out over the 5 hour event. Scrim was cute, he was playing club manager, keeping people liquored up, cleaning up the room, keeping people engaged, etc. Clearly he needs to answer his calling: NightClub Manager.

A cool suprise was the increased buddy status with Kevin, "Bacas". Roman god of intoxication. HAH! I didn't connect with him last year at all, but dude, he's pretty fucking cool. I was mistaken when I kinda ignored him last year and this past Friday, because the guy's smart as hell and fucking funny.

Now I'm back at work monday morning, tired, and I'll bitch about it in a non-public entry later.