Last Updated: 18 July 1996
I did nothing special over the time period of spring 96 until Summercon '96 in Washington DC started, on June 15th. For this great trip we were in luck. The trip was short, DC is only about 4 hours away. We had confirmed rooms. We had equipment mostly ready. We left Thursday, where we expected most people to show up sometime during Friday.
The attendees for the trip out where the standard Pittsburgh crew of Wipeout, Dug, and I. Along with 1/2 of the Filet of Feedback people (Yek). Also attending where Perfect Tommy, and Worlock. Yek drove down from the land of the cows (Wisconsin), while Perfect Tommy pulled the long haul in from Iowa to rest no more than 4 hours to jump back in a car to drive out to DC. We had planned to also meet up with some friends of ours for this extravaganza, Kelly and Marcus, both of who were in DC for the summer.
For the trip (and for use at the hotel) we made some investments in hand held CB's, along with external antennas. These provided extended periods of chatter on the air for the drive out, "Stay on target, Stay on Target..." We only managed to make it two hours before needing to stop at the infamous Gateway Plaza in Breezewood, PA. This place has some of the more disgusting food available to man kind, including Ice Cream in the shape of a pizza, which Yek & Dug managed to consume in a dare. After the food consumption, the urge to explore the video games took over. We played some bad pinball games and some broken video games, until we found the ultimate in entertainment. A game where lights spin in a circle, and for a quarter, you could try to hit a button when the lights where centered over the button. For such a joyous ability you could be awarded tickets. After accumulating about 150 tickets, Wipeout and Yek decided to see what they could get with the tickets. Well, tickets had a value of $0.01 each.... We decided to get gas and leave this pit stop of hell.
We finished travelling to DC without any major incident. As planned we pulled into Kelly's house around 1am thursday night, and sat and bullshitted for awhile before calling it quits and sleeping in his basement.
Friday morning (around noon), we pulled out of Kelly's place to drive to the wonderful hotel where we had booked a couple of rooms. After stopping for food and other stuff, we pulled in around 3pm, and checked in. We were in luck, they managed to find us two adjacent rooms with a door connecting both rooms together. The plan was starting to come together.
Within a few minutes from pulling in we discovered some people we were looking for (Grave45, Bio, Nettwerk), and few people we didn't know (Jaeger, and a few others that I can't remember, but I always recognize). We talked to a few people, including Jaeger who's got an account on DHP. Then roped a few people into logging our equipment up to our room.
For equipment we decided to spare nothing. Worlock brought along with 17" monitor connected up to a nice Pentium 90 box. I managed to "borrow" a Pentium Pro 166 box along with another 17" monitor. Of course we had sound cards in each of them. So the construction of the ether connected C&C game machines went into effect relatively shortly after getting them into the room. We also had the pair of handheld CB units for communication, a mobile CB for the room if needed. A couple of nice scanners (Pro-43 & Bearcat XLT-2500). And an Alinco-560 transceiver for even more fun. Wipeout had brought a TV and a Playstation for more game enjoyment. After setting that up, we went and raided the Canadian's room for Bio's Playstation and got the linked "wipeout" game up and running.
We tested out the CB's and had them up and running, though it didn't look like anyone else had CB's, only Ham transceivers. We scoped around looking for people, and then went back to our room. Kelly had found some people he knew, that I only recognized, but again, don't know their name (recurring theme, I know). We made some noise and got these people all in a corner, and moved a king size bed into the "private" room, and took a couch from the private room and placed it in the "public" room. This put two couches in the "public" area, along with two beds for our private area. We suddenly had a lot more room for stuff in the main room. After this move we actually started hooking up the PC's that we had brought.
We were rounded up after this to go to the 2600 meeting that was taking place at the Pentagon City Mall. so we rounded up and drove out there. Things looked like they were almost closing up when we got there, so we scored some food, and took off. Other than a few strange looks, nothing much was going on.
Sometime around then Bishop showed up if I remember correctly. We had also found some other people at that time who were hanging out with us, Major and Edison. Bishop was wondering around scouting to see who he knew in the area. And chatted for a bit, then went on to find Bio and Nettwerk who were out somewhere.
Major and Edison had brought up some Motorola business band radios that we ended up using (many thanx), and we retired the CB's because we were the only ones using 'em (kinda strange that the $40 CB's no one had, and the $300 transceivers is what everyone else had...). We discovered that Stormbringer was around along with his Car (try to imagine what would happen if you took a porcupine and inflated it to the size of a car... I think we found 11 antenna's on it, not counting the default am/fm radio antenna.
Major, Edison, and Perfect Tommy went to go see if they could find any literature from local CO down the road. Though when they got to the CO, nothing was around, but an old homeless guy who mentioned they should go look in the recycle bin as opposed to the trash. After not finding the recycle bin, the guy mentioned that some people had been buy earlier and probably had completely removed the recycle bin, along with all the trash that was available... Makes you wonder, don't it?
At around 12:30 Marcus showed up with 2 members of the opposite sex in tow (sister, and SO). At last, our net connection was here. After some fighting with the phone lines (the room we were in didn't want to call the dialup, but the "private" room didn't have a problem, and the front desk was of no help), we had the 28.8 /24 (class-c for people not quite up the new naming schedule) routing down to us. The thinnet was stretched, and we were in business. Due to the fact that Marcus's guests were bored out of their minds, he took off shortly thereafter.
Shortly after the machine was brought up Wipeout found "The Joker" on efnet looking for directions to the Hotel. This involved a multi step process, but last I knew he actually made it to the Con.
We talked to some more people and wandered around seeing who and what was alive, around, awake, and doing things. At some point we just quit for the night, probably around 3am or so (early, I know). While sitting around bullshitting with people in our room, we sat and listened to some moron telling hotel security to screw off and cause general bullshit, along with a few wiser messages that "don't harass 'em on Friday night, wait until Saturday night". Right before going to bed some wanker decided he wanted to see how many people he could get outside, so he pulled a fire alarm (he/she?). Being slackful as we were we watched people as they walked around outside. After awhile someone on the radio mentioned the word from the front desk was that "it was a false alarm, and feel free to stay in your room."
We also played C&C on the two PC's.
The next morning we had planned on eating breakfast with Major and Edison, but only about half of our room was prepared to actually leave at 11am when they left. So they went and ate without us. We finally went and grabbed food sometime around 12:30 (when Major and Edison where walking back in, giving us shit no less). There's gotta be something in the DC water that effects waiters. We got some of the worst service I've ever had while we were eating at some Mexican place. And it seems like this was a common occurrence among others also. Any DC locals care to expand on this?
Before going down to get food we discovered that the CON was using name tags and some black smudge on your hand to prove that you had paid the entrance fee. So on the the way back from food, we stopped in an office supply store and picked up a set of markers and some name tags that were identical to the ones being used at the con Also while walking back up we caught up with Marcus who was looking for us.
When we got back to the hotel we went to see what was up, since the Con had actually started. We ran into Strat and talked to him for a long time about what he was up to, and got a first hand demo of radiomail on an 200lx, pretty slick. After talking to him for a bit, and a few others I skipped out on the conference, and Wipeout hung out with Nettwerk for a bit.
Rumor was that DC Police where going to be present on every floor this evening (Saturday) due to the amount of crap that had gone one (including the radio stuff) on Friday. I didn't think much of it, and walked down to Georgetown to do some shopping.
On my way back I ran into Alex2000 who was sitting around and started walking back. About 2 blocks up, and another 6-8 to go I got notified via radio (thanx to Major and Edison for letting me use the Motorola HT) that the cops had entered our room. Of course my adrenalin was pushed up, but I was told nothing came of it on the radio. I was still pissed off that the cops had entered our room, but I wanted to find out exactly what was going on before getting upset about it. I continued walking up and came across a video store. Wanting to top the experience of the great White Room experience from the previous Summercon I stopped in, but was disappointed to only find your standard run of the mill type pornos. Oh well, time to go back and see what was up with my room.
When I got back to the hotel I found out that the DC Police were on every floor, enforcing some law about no more than 4-5 people per room. This sounded a lot like the bogus law in effect here in Pittsburgh where no more than 3 unrelated people can live in an apartment legally, it's selectively enforced of course. Dug had handled things fine by calling down and bitching a whole lot. Nothing more became of it, so I was satisfied.
We also played C&C on the two PC's.
Saturday night became more fun as I wondered around talking to people. I went down and talked to Stormbringer about equipment, including plans for working on paging decoding stuff (as both a project with the L0pht hardware, and by directly drawing off the pager). Hung out with Major and Edison discussing things that they had been working on, and finding out more stuff about radios that I wanted to know.
We also played C&C on the two PC's.
Strat managed to wander up to our room at some point and play playstation games, including the most disgusting thing know to mankind. A Teenage Girl fighting game (japanese only) called 120% burning fist. The thing is basically a bunch of high school characters that try to kill each other. It would have been a lot cooler if the game had them strip or something, but it's manufactured by a company called "Family Soft", so you can figure it out... (Bio will never forget the line, "rub the magic frog", ask him about it...)
We also played C&C on the two PC's.
While talking to people I was monitoring hotel security on the scanner. Long extended conversation from "Bubba" calling out to the security people. I really need to get ahold of my microrecorder to get some of the great stuff like this. After deal with this for too long, I ended up crashing. But not before taking down the network connection provided by Marcus.
The next morning we got up bright and early and moved all the furniture back, packed up our equipment and hauled ass to get all in cars before noon checkout. At around 11:55 I went down and paid for everything (no extra phone calls, no extra movies watched on the pay-per-view boxes, no room service, nothing, I was amazed). We checked out without incident, as compare to the previous checkout we had at Atlanta last year.
We made a detour out to IHOP for some breakfast food, Major and Edison, along with the whole group of us. We discussed some things, mostly what we needed to bring to Defcon that was going to happen in 5-6 weeks later.
After this wonderful consumption of products, we packed up, and had a trip back home (of course stopping at the Gateway Plaza to eye edibles and think about winning tickets).