HOPE

Wired reminded me that this weekend is H2K2, Hackers on Planet Earth 2002. I was tempted to attend just for the sake of nostalgia but the lawn needs mowing and I feel too old and out of the loop anymore.

I attended the first HOPE in 1994 since I was on my way to Rockport, MA that week anyway and I had a lot of friends from the NYC BBS MindVox, a.k.a. phantom.com, whom I could hang out with and enjoy a rollicking weekend of hacking, drinking and "spot the fed".

The best moment in the conference was when a drunken Charles Platt, writer for Wired and sci-fi author, screamed "WHERE'S THE CRIME?!" in the back of the MetroCard hacking talk. Charles was a regular on MindVox and we were all amused by that. Nick Jarecki, a.k.a. Razor, a rather precocious and horny little 14 year-old boy followed me around for days hoping to have his way with me in spite of my increasingly hostile rejections. NPR interviewed him so he thought he was famous and therefore worthy of some female groupies. I wonder where he is now.

My volvo got towed while I was at HOPE and getting it out of the impound was quite the adventure. Since the system was unable to verify an out of state plate and VIN on Sunday [ no, I still don't get that either ], I had to call the Missouri State Highway Patrol to get them to talk to the guy behind the counter to convince him to let me have my car back for a mere $175 that Charles Platt had leant to me [ they didn't take credit either ]. That's the last time I trust a doorman to tell me if parking is valid and to watch my car for $20.

J.C. Herz wrote Surfing on the Internet which largely featured our small corner of the Internet back in the good old days. I should wear my HOPE Staff shirt to work tomorrow :)

voidmstr's law(tm): bandwidth expands to fit the waste available