Geek Pride Festival.
Date: Tue Apr 4 15:22:23 EDT 2000
Last Saturday, April fools day, was the
Geek Pride
Festival, in Boston Massachusetts. A 5.75 hour drive from my house that I didn't feel
like making alone. I posted to a couple mailing lists to see if anyone was interested, and
as of Friday morning, I'd gotten no response, and was not planning on going. Then I got a
call from an old friend I have only been somewhat in contact with recently - N-tropy. He
called to ask if I wanted to go with him & Cyron (another old friend of ours that I've been
less in contact with) to the geekfest. This sounded like a most excellent idea, so I said
yes. We decided to meet at my house, since it was closest to our destination. At some
point Erratica (Cyron's fiance, and ex gf to both myself and N-tropy) decided to come along.
N-tropy, Cyron, Loopy, trEmolo and myself all met at a community college, in the computer
labs. We had a lot of fun, and learned a lot more than they taught in class. Cyron drew
a picture.
So we packed all our stuff into Erratica's car, since it had the most capacity, and headed
up, around 8:30pm on Saturday. I wouldn't say it was a particularly eventful trip. I
managed to loose page 2 of the 4 pages of mapquest directions along the way. We stopped at
a hotel at about 3am. Cyron drove the whole way. I had offered to drive some.
I think we got our wakeup calls at around 8am. We probably left around 9. We arrived
around 10:30am, about half an hour early. I don't know if the official entrance was
actually open, but we got in through the loading ramp that they were still bringing stuff in
on.
There were lots of free video games. I was most impressed with asteroids. No scanlines, no
individual pixels. The.. bullets were very bright. It was drawn the way laser shows are
drawn -- specifically the lines in the picture. I'm sure everybody who played video games
regularly when it came out is aware of that, but I found it very cool.
They had a bunch of Linux boxes -- VALinux, running RedHat, 6.0 I think. They were all
supposed to have internet access, but none even had a functioning network connection when we
started playing with them. Cyron & N-tropy had both brought their laptops, and had plugged
a hub into the network, and were trying to figure out what was wrong, while I was doing the
same on a VALinux box. Of course, I had to root it to do so. The
LinuxCare Business Card CD that Cyron
brought was very useful. At some point Cyron noticed that the hub/router thing under our
table, which every other computer was indirectly plugged into, was off. An announcement was
made requesting that nobody bring the network down. This is amusing to think back on,
since the network was completely down when they said that. Cyron & I were hesitant to turn
the hub thing on, thinking that somebody responsible for the network had turned it off
intentionally, and they knew what was going on. We found out we were incorrect when N-tropy
finally crawled under the table and plugged the thing back into a power outlet, and the
whole network started working. Except for the computer I had in front of me (and, I believe,
another one on the same table). It had never been set up for DHCP, which the rest were
using, and had invalid static IP settings. Another guy wandering buy (who's address I
unfortunately did not write down) suggested I try running "pump". I still haven't looked
into this program, but it did the trick -- made DHCP go.
So yes, I rooted the box. But we made it work, when it hadn't before.
While I was peacefully browsing the web on this now functioning computer, the machine
started its shutdown sequence. When it rebooted, I changed the guest password, and started
checking logs. All the computers were setup with a login:guest/pw:guest, to be used by
everybody. I eventually realized that the guest account was allowed to run shutdown, and
figured that's how it had been done. Eventually we found out it was a guy at the next
table. It was amusing.
We went wandering in search of food around 2pm, and ended up in a radio shack. When we
left, the guy there directed us to a burger king 2 blocks away. There were lots and lots of
beautiful women in that city. We got food, and went back.
People talked. I was distracted a lot. What I heard of
ESR's talk was cool. Rob Malda (
Slashdot) got up on stage and sputtered & rambled a bit. My
distractions were the computers, and the chess games I was playing with N-tropy. I love
chess. Don't play it nearly enough. We had a couple people come over & say "how the hell
did you 2 get in that position?", one of whom was root@andover.net. That was neat.
There was a matrix related game where you put on sunglasses and tried to dodge nurf
bullets. I didn't play.
There was one of those big inflated moonwalk things. I did play. It was lots of fun.
And extremely exhausting.
I asked ESR if I could go
shooting with him sometime. He said
sure, and told me to email him. Hold on, I have to go do that.... okay taken care of. So
sometime I'm going to go shooting with the Geeks With Guns guy. I think that's pretty cool.
Our trip back home was almost as uneventful as the trip out. Except I was driving.
The early part when I wasn't driving, N-tropy & I started watching
Mystery Men on Cyron's
laptop. At the scene where they were attacking the limo, it decided to switch to French.
Not real long after that I started driving. At one point, because of my driving, Erratica's
head smacked into the wall of the car, eliciting a scream. I really hate when that happens.
Since I was driving N-tropy was reading the map. I think he secretly wanted to go to Ohio
or something, but we pulled over, I got a good look at the map, and got back on course.
We all got back at N-tropy's house around.. 5am, and all crashed there. I was woken up
around 11am to the sound of gunshots. N-tropy & Cyron were watching the Matrix, starting at
the lobby scene, on DVD. Erratica didn't manage to stay unconscious long after that either.
More friends of N-tropy's came over, Doug, Barry, and Barry's SO (yes, I've had contact
with people with real names). We went to Denny's for food. We managed not to get kicked
out. Half of us watched
Beast Machines on N-tropy's
laptop. When we got back to N-tropy's house, his gf Krystal was there, irate, because he'd
apparently locked some part of the door she couldn't unlock. Cyron & Erratica went home,
and the rest of us pulled out our remote control cars and headed over to a large parking
lot.
I had my old Tamiya Blackfoot that I hadn't used probably in years. N-tropy had coerced me
to bring it. It was probably one of the earlier trucks its size. N-tropy & Krystal both
had neat new gas powered cars. Doug had a F1 racer. Barry had a really fast racing car.
Barry's SO also had a Blackfoot (rather odd coincidence). We drove them around, flipped
them over each other, and had fun.
Doug, Barry, and Barry's SO left, me, N-tropy & Krystal went back to their house.
N-tropy showed off his new
Dreamcast for a while.
Then I heard screams coming from the bedroom... and found out that
The Sims game that I'd seen mentioned
on
User
Friendly was actually real. Krystal was playing it. So I watched them both torture and
kill family members for a while. Then N-tropy drove me home, and I passed out.
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