19 July 2004 - 16:00

A week ago last Wednesday, Pseudomammal and I got all spontaneous, and decided to drive to New York the next day.

The funny thing is, it worked. We got up Thursday morning and walked to a certain car rental agency. After a great deal of needless bureaucracy and a monumental favor from a certain Pairodox, we had temporarily in our possession a powder blue Hyundai Accent. It was adorable. As nearly all of my loyal readers must know, I don't drive and am really quite down on the entire automotive tradition in the United States. This was the first time I have had a sense of ownership in a car, and it was a lot of fun. I've mostly gotten used to what trappings of adulthood I have acquired (I live on my own? I'm a college graduate? I have a house and a full time job? And a cat? When did all this happen?!), but "having" a car felt like playing dress up again. Teehee.

We piled things into the car to take with us, just because we could. Headed out around noon and ... drove. For 16 hours. Up through Florida and Georgia, following the freeway through sunshowers and real downpours. We passed a rainbow and I felt like the star of my own feel-good 80s flick.

Although we were going on a whim, we were going with a purpose – HOPE V, 2600's own biennial hacking conference. I'm no groupie, but I'm not above loving nigh every flavor of computer geek culture. Kraftwerk, Information Society, and "I'm going on a trip and I'm bringing ... (shell commands)" passed the time admirably and appropriately. When darkness fell we found a Walmart and loaded up on Doritos and brie, donuts and pears. And coffee. Mmmm, coffee. MapQuest guided us true, and at an early hour of the morning, we pulled into a hotel in West Virginia and met up with our friend Pellik.

The next day's drive was a bit harder, as, well, we'd been doing it a bit, but we all schemed and joked and took a valuable Frisbee break. Cellphone service was touch and go, but we eventually got in touch with MrFish and Cloudyvision, who were delighted to offer us hospitality and made a noble effort of giving us directions to their apartment in Astoria. To our credit, we didn't worry particularly much before that was all settled. New Jersey smells awful, and is an alarming gray-brown sprawl, just as I'd always heard. Approaching New York City at night was pretty and strange, after so many hours of interstates curving through trees. Large cities scare me to varying degrees, because I do not, as a rule, particularly care for Other People. In fact, I find people, in general, rather confusing and scary. (I adore a great many particular people, though, probably including you if you're reading this.) So evidence of many, many people all together rather disturbs me.

On the other hand, I like culture and technology, entertainment and convenience as much as the next person. Despite the good directions, we got lost in Queens. Fortunately, we still had Pellik's cellphone, and MrFish painstakingly guided us through traffic and randomly named, slanted one-way streets and right to his doorstep, assuring us that "everyone gets lost the first time". It was such a pleasure to see them. They have a pretty, comfortable ground-floor apartment with purple walls. They share it with Malraux, of whom I had heard much.That day had actually been the first day of the conference, and of course we missed it for driving there, but that was well within the spontaneous spirit of things. MrFish and Cloudyvision escorted us to Manhattan on Saturday. We gaped up at the Empire state building (yep, it's tall) and drooled all over Jim Hanley's Universe. We forked over cash in the hotel lobby, got armbands to identify us as conference-goers, and stumbled in to listen to Woz tell adorable hacking stories.

HOPE was, overall, delightfully atmospheric, entertaining, and even informative. There was a gradient of clothing colors as one approached the hotel, bright primaries fading into black and khaki. Everything had extra cargo pockets and zippers and ironic logos.I'll go ahead and be candid. The mass of conference goers were the highest density large group of attractive males I've been exposed to. The mel:fem ratio was 9:1 (New College is roughly 4:6. I think camp is around that as well). And I have a thing for computer people. The eyecandy alone was worth the cover price.

Other highlights of the conference included listening to Kevin Mitnick do some performance social engineering, an inspiring discussion of urban exploration, a very professional presentation on network traffic analysis of anonymous networks, entertaining and useful advice on talking to reporters, and a cute introduction to AS/400.

At one point we took a break in the 24-hour movie room, holed up in a corner and alternately kicked ass at UT.

Our last night with Cloudyvision and MrFish, we ordered out pizza and sushi, they had some friends over and we watched The Wizard of Speed and Time. Mmmmmmyeah. Cloudy and Fish are the best hosts ever. Pseudomammal and I proceeded to stay up until sunrise talking, sleep very briefly, and treat everyone to a decadent brunch at a cafe down the street. Then we drove for 25 hours. Five of those were with Pellik, who we bid farewell in a flooded city in Pennsylvania. The remainder were an intimate, overnight haze, slick with caffeine and music, about which little more can be said.

HOPE V was fun and cheering. The panel on 'women in the scene' was that thing gender discussions always are. More interesting, to me, is the quiet but surprisingly distinct schism between the 'hacker' and the open source communities. Slashdot readers/posters make fun of 2600, and 2600 readers/posters make fun of slashdot, and while it's easy to make fun of both ~publications, I think they have more in common than not. 'Hacker' is, to me, still an epithet to take pride in ... but at the conference (and indeed, in the esteemed publication), hacking seemed more heavily weighted toward its deconstruction aspects than its creation aspects. In generally, I identify as a geek who creates things. A general concept of design is what I most want to share with a community that could so facilely apply it.

But those are writings for another day. I have work to do.