My time-zone shenanagains worked out in my favor. Living 2 hours in the future helps when you forget to properly set your alarm. The flight in and taxi was alright. I'm not one for theritz-to-the-excess and am thankfully immune to the bright and
loud skinner boxes that line every room. Seriosuly. There isn't an enterence or exit without a line of slots. Even the airport sported aa collection of em right at the gate.
Tangent. sorry. Back to Day 0.
well I have to rant a little more about Las Vegas first. Namely the mono-rail and the fact that it goes basically nowhere and costs $30 for 3 days. Spent almost anhour hunting down a single bus stop. Made a freind on the bus though that I ended up
following around for most of the day. Not really my fault he picked the same talks I wasnted to go to, it just worked out that way.
The badges are swanky this year! The whole theme is blackjack, because Defcon '21'. The four suits are the floppy, defcon skull, lock, and rotary phone. Each badge has a number sequence on that back that will translate into a phrase when run through
rot13 (Except phone!). Whoever wrote the phrases has a love for rush; part of one suit phrase was taken from Tom sawyer.
The first two talks were pretty good and I was able to get a good sense of the crowd, but we split up around the third talk to go wander about. I WAS going to see if the lockpick village was open, but found a crew of people chillaxin with some
plastic cases and blinky lights on the floor by some doors. Next thing I know I'm spending 45 minutes or so with a nano arduinobreaking down a basic program and learning how timed attacks work. I was about to get to the step where I hook into a fake
pin input to intercept the number when I ranback to the 4th talk. Stoped right outside though when someone asked me for the details of my badge. Think after that I spent a good 4 hours working with our randomly-compiled crew. Everything from
tracking people down with mising clues to sneaking off into secure areas to get deets from specialty badges. Honestly i had more fun working through the logic of the bage puzzle so far than Ive had sitting in talks in a lot of other conventions.
Ive had a lot of people who get surprised when they find out it's my first defcon. Surpried and excited. That's something I've found that I already adore in this community. Being noob isn;t a mark of shame. Instead it means people who know what
they're doing get to divulge what they know and talk about it to someone who hasn't heard it all before and is interested. Everyone has been welcoming. Not once have I gotten a stiff response or ego overdoes.
