Defcon baby, yeah that's the ticket, hackers, computer security consultants, feds, kooks, surveillance geeks, and a whole slew of other weird ass spooky mother fuckers, get drunk, go to titty bars, talk about crypto and network security, fucking with the media, blowing shit up in the desert and generally have a great fucking time in the city of sin all under the guise of a computer security convention. And if they are lucky or sneaky paid for by their respective bosses. I am neither lucky or sneaky so I'm paying for this out of my own pocket, which by the way sucks. But I'm ready the tickets are bought the gear is packed. I have fortified myself for this trip, with a bowl of corn flakes, a cache of CDs, and a hangover. I dry swallow two Alleve as I step out the door.

The 3 hour bus ride to the airport was about as exciting as a 3 hour a bus ride can be. In other words deathly boring. But the headache is gone. I'm at the airport lounge, drinking a L.I.T and trying to figure out if 7 buck is to much to pay for a burger. Airports are about the most boring places to be stranded for any length of time as well. The televisions only show 2 things, golf or 5 minute news reels. The food is generic and expensive. And there is no fucking place to check my e-mail. Only another 4 hours till my plane leaves. The Plane: It's a sign when 12 mothers carrying screaming babies get on the flight. We hit the worst turbulence I have ever seen or felt. [the guy beside just used his barf bag for it's intend purpose]. I can see it now the wings snap off and barrrroooooooom! I'm just another flight statistic. Wouldn't that just be the rats asshole to die on the way to Detroit.

[Note at this point this article goes into short hand mode, there was just to much happening to quickly for me to mention, remember or talk about]

From this point on things be come an insane blur of meeting new people and getting things done. I arrive 3 hours late to the hotel, the people I'm staying with had a hell of a time checking in and I'm exhausted , I have a glass of water and go to bed. Friday First day of con I get up, get dressed and eat some breakfast all by 7:00. To do my part by gooning at the con. Big mistake It's a mad rush after that, from getting a goon badge to working on pre-registration. The List for registration is great except that it's not in any order. So I GREP the whole list a couple of hundred times during the con. I check people in all day long. By the end of the day I know almost everyone at con who is on the list. Naked people count for Friday: 1 guy gets up on a table and strips down to his G-string, 2 naked fat guys jog around the vendor area for free t-shirts 1 babe hops up and a table and gives everybody a show of her tits. I love Vegas. The day is hectic and long. I'm exhaust by the time I sit down at 7:17 to write this before heading out to the MGM grand for some dinner. Vegas is a weird as ass place. New York New York the most disturbing of all. The fake graffiti, the fake manhole cover with fake steam, all in fake NYC it is not right I was just waiting for a fake mugging in a fake dark and dirty alley. After getting back to the hotel I collapsed on the bed.

Slept a hard 8 hours last night, got up and help register people, mad craziness more people then you could possibly images. All of them young white males. Checked out the DJ action, saw my ghetto hacker buddies The DataAngel and Jester 47 spin some mad tunes to Ninja Scroll video. The CDC show rocked ass. Total mayhem, with a revival theme, it doesn't get much better then this. Things slowed down a bit. Checked press badge for the After CDC presentation in the media suite. Went up and talked with some media types. Got to see what the media is like in action. I expected to hear some really probing question that were well researched and insightful. They weren't, nuff said. Finally got to chill about 7 or 8 helped set up for the root suite party. Went back to my room changed and got booze, went back to the root suite and proceed to drop a complete bottle of tequila on the floor. Saturday night Mad partying in the root suite Saturday night. I played bartender for most of the night, pouring DoC beers, serving punch and mixing drinks. Dis Org Crew beer was great. The Strawberry SYN Flood was smooth and sweet, the Brown Box Barley Wine was strong as hell, and the FireWire Stout which is fortified with caffeine is the perfect hacker beer. Congrats to HCF, Wyatt Earp, Pete Shipley and the rest of the DoC who helped for a great beer. Caezar defiantly knows how to throw a party. Towards the end of the night I was getting help from Jennifer Grannick. Left about 4 or 5 went back to the room and slept like the dead. Slept for 2 hours and got back up. I had a English muffin for breakfast it was good.

By Sunday the kinks had been somewhat worked out and things were finally running reasonable smoothly, I helped with this and that. Sold shirt and mugs for the better part of the morning, some guy wanted to trade a rental car for a t-shirt, I told him to get permission from Priest. He ended up trading us some porno passes for a shirt instead. Finally had lunch with some cool people's one of which was with the NSA. After lunch I'm up in the media/goon lounge resting and eating some fruit with Major Malfunction when his radio goes off, "all goons to the NOC" and then "Carolyn is being kicked out" Needless to say Carolyn got kicked out of con.. I'm sure that she will write all about it on her web site. I'm sure she will paint herself as the victim, either way I don't care, she is an adult and she should have known better. After word I wandered around some more. Said good-bye to all the people I could find. Went back to the hotel grabbed my bag want got on a plane fell asleep. Switch planes fell asleep. got off plane got on bus fell asleep, switch busses fell asleep. got off bus got home fell asleep. ....till next year.

A short conversation I had with some newbie kid who wandered into the root party.

"My son did his first hack at age 7, I was so proud." Major Malfunction.

Who Agent X is a slacker. The views, commentary and ideas expressed in this article are not those of Hacker News Network, it's Editors or the Defcon Organizers. I own my own words.

Defcon 7