I woke up early this morning and made last minute preparations
for my
trip to
South Plainfield, NJ to visit
vees. I am here
this weekend so that vees can have a date to his friend's wedding.
Before I left I explored e2 a bit more, and had the opportunity, finally,
to speak with
nine9. It turns out we have mutual acquaintances and
friends, which is hilarious as I picked him out at random from his
handle, then enjoyed his
writeups, then thought he was
cute. The
reason we have mutual friends is because I studied
abroad at
Edinburgh Uni my junior year in college.
Anyhow, the
appointed hour came, and I set off, dodging crazy NJ drivers,
including
traffic weaving trucks!
Finally, I arrived at his place and vees was washing some cars.
I went on
irc.slashnet.org on
#playadelfuego for a bit, and pet
some
cats and listened to his loud,
mentally disturbed cockatoo
for a bit. I was also surprised by another bird who could whistle the theme
from the
Andy Griffith Show. Then we were off to the
Trenton Computer Festival.
(which incidentally was in
Edison and not
Trenton,
but I digress).
We browsed about when there and I got 3 games for 5 bucks:
a
Deep Space Nine game
Monty Python's complete
waste of time
Some weird shoot em up with
bizarre art and
industrial music
We went to see his
ARRL friends, then went on the the keynote speaker,
Emmanuel Goldstein of
2600 fame. He was an awesome speaker. He
gave a colorful detailed account of his early days as a
hacker and
the dangerous trends in society and government that have been happening
of late. He spoke in particular about the
DeCSS script. His main point
about the
paranoia going on now was that instead of making laws
against
exposing security flaws, the
exposed in question should
take the time to make themselves more secure. Restricting information
as in the case of the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act and treating
encryption programs like
munitions would only seek to stop the
progress of greater security measures and inhibit
freedom for individuals.
He of course put it more
eloquently that that with some amusing
anecdotes. For instance he told of his questioning and trial for
figuring out that the password for several sensitive
government
areas and account was the letter "
A" back in the
Reagan years.
That gave me a
guffaw to say the least.
He also spoke of sadder incidents of people getting arrested for
telling others about hacking incidents that they didn't even do.
Talk about
paranoid.
Anyhow, this talk was very enlightening and made the show. I got to
meet vees' friend Andy as well. One
weird show incident was seeing
a
goat in the flea market outdoor area. That was funny.
We were highly thrilled at one point to see
jonlasser's book,
Think Unix sitting out on a table among other
neato
puter books. And just as I has surmised, we found a
link in his
index and glossary to
beer. I do have his book at home, it's just that
I hadn't scrutinized it that deeply until right then.
We came back here after the show, had some
pizza and
Rita's water ice,
then went out so I could get a
black strapless bra for the wedding
tomorrow, as I lost mine. I always lose these sort of bras and end up
having to buy
more.
On the way back from
the mall, we were talking and I found out
for the first time, that vees' dad is a
minister. I still haven't
decided whether or not I'll go to
church tomorrow. It kinda weirds me
out. I guess with a
Dunkin Donuts across the street from here and numerous
stores about right near here, I could walk around for a while tomorrow
instead. I wonder if there are
blue laws here. That would
suck.
Maybe I'll see some more
Jersey girls. I find them amusing.
We are waiting now for
vees' parents so we can go to a
diner. Today
I've been to a mall, a
convention center, and a diner (soon). What a
Jersey day.
Just a little over a month until I become a
Baltimoron. Yay!