Make sure to check out [L=http://rand0m.org/gallery.php?gid=19]my pics[/L] as well as the official [L=http://www.defconpics.org]DefconPics Site[/L]. Do keep in mind that not many people like having their photo taken at Defcon, and carrying a camera while partying sucks. OK so we decide that we’re going to defcon the week before it actually happens. I call up Jack and make sure it’s cool that Keen and I crash with him. 5×5. So we’re going to leave Thursday night. OK so Thursday night comes and we start on our way to Las Vegas for defcon13. We’re cruising, it’s good. Pull into a gas station in Silverthorne to fuel up, see this ducati strapped to the back of a truck. Take some photos, chat with the guys. Leave silverthorne, then proceed to bust ass to Grand Junction. I was haulin … keen was asleep, so I was doing 90-100mph most of the way through the mountains. Hella good time. Pull into Grand Junction, get some gas, and right before we leave … boom, Ford explorer with the ducati rolls in. We talk to the guys in the explorer with a duck for a minute, turns out one of ’em is going to defcon. Wicked. Chat it up, then decide to bust ass to Vegas. Stop in the middle of nowhere to look at the stars, which was fun. By the way, when you hit Arizona in the morning, you can feel the temperature jump 40 degrees as the sun comes up. Other than that, relatively uninteresting, minus the insta-gambling as soon as you hit Nevada and the purple mountains / skyline. Very pretty. OK so we roll into vegas at 8:30am after ~12 hours of driving. Turns out that thanks to MDT vs PDT, it’s actually 7:30am. Shit. Head to the Luxor, eat some breakfast, then call up Jack (8:30am). Turns out Jack is hungover like a bitch, and is at Caesar’s, not Luxor. WTF? So we kill some time walking the strip (note: Caesar’s `Forums` are HUGE. Bigger than a mall) until Jack can check out of Caesar’s then check in at the Lux. Cool. Chill for a while more, hit the room and I pass out for an hour or so. Eventually we meet up with Keen’s friend Melissa, who is supah-hot, very smart and very friendly. Ate at Gordan Beirsch with her, then were like PEACE OUT as we were going to Defcon to get our drink on and our party on. Head over to Defcon, roll up with the badges and everything. Not too much is going on, but it’s early yet. Catch a conference on the win32 network stack and infiltration of the winsock api/sdi. Good talk. Anyways, we catch up with Keen’s buddy warlord, his g/f heather, and Patty, a chick keen also knows. Head over to Warlord’s place, then shit starts warming up. So we all start milling around the pools and the hotels, talking to random folks about random things, blah blah blah. We lose track of Patty somewhere, and I have to pee, so we go inside. As I head out of the bano, I run into [L=http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/catalog/view/au/1374]Brian[/L]. We chat for a minute, turns out that he writes the rules for [L=http://www.snort.org]Snort[/L], an intrustion detection system package that I use every day. We only find that out as the conversation is finishing up. WOw, speaking with high profile peeps is cool. Anyways, head out and Patty reappears in no time with Bruce, the founder of [L=http://www.shmoo.com/]The Shmoo Group[/L]. Turns out that Brian is also part of TSG, so we hit it off great. Bruce decides to show us a good time, and takes us to the Party. The [L=http://www.hackerpimps.com]hackerpimps[/L] party is nuts. We get carded, get our arm bands, and all hell breaks loose. I got to talking to sysman (sysmin?) about it, and it turns out that they had a stripper, but she was there for like 45 minutes then left (with a defcon $$$ attendee?). Shit. I look up, and POW another stripper, only this stripper is a girl I’d seen around before, Kirsten. So I go up to the bar and the drinks are free! Fuck yea! So I start hammering down, and Keen and Patty go outside to burn one, and I decide I’m going to check out the stripper. Who is really hot. I mean, really hot. WOw. Well, like 5 hours later, I’m totally hammered and having a helluva time. I am SO drunk, though, that I can barely see. I get ready to head outside, and there is Keen! Hey Keen! Where the hell have you and Patty been!? 😉 😉 😉 So we go outside, and I’m hanging over the edge of the balcony, trying not to puke. Randomly start talking to this dude named Beetle and his buddy Wes. Beetle works for Mitre alongside my pal, so we talk and talk and it’s a good time. Around 3:30am – a total guess – I’m so fucking plowed that I can barely stand. I remember getting into the cab, but that’s it. Next morning, wake up at 9:30am cuz Jack is making noise. I’m still freakin ripped. Trashed. I head to the bathroom, throw up and feel much better. Cut to 1pm. Wake up, v2.0. Everybody decides to get some grub, so we head down to the Luxor Buffet, eat, then head over to Defcon. Catch a couple good talks, especially the [L=http://www.asterisk.org]Asterisk[/L] info, mill around, meet some folks. I feel like hell. Run into warlord & heather again, head over to their room, start drinking. I start and finish with a vodka+mt.dew. I taste it and feel like throwing up. My body just wasn’t ready to continue ingesting alcohol, so it took almost 2 hours for me to down one drink. Went to hacker jeapordy, the black and white ball, saw a handful of talks, was a decent Saturday. We lost track of Keen again, as he was out partying/sexing/having a good time, but Jack and I decided to head out around midnight. Keen gave me shit about not partying, yada yada, but the thought of drinking again made me hurt. So we went home. At 7am, the hotel door opens up and whoa, there’s Keen. Just coming home. He says that he had the best fucking hamburger ever, and then proceeds to black out. Jack wakes up a little later and gets his shit ready to go to head back to the springs (he left Sunday, we stayed till Monday). We get the accomodations all worked out, and he departs. I head back to the room, hang out, go eat, hang out, do not much until ~12:30pm, then head off to Defcon. I caught a couple good talks, including one on Russian internetworking, another on Documenting Hackerdom, one on linguistic programming, and a few other misc shows. Defcon started to wind down, so I caught the awards ceremony, which was a good time. I called up Keen right around 6:30pm, as we were supposed to be having dinner with Melissa? I woke his hungoverpartyingass up, scheduled to meet with Melissa, and headed back to the hotel. Kene, Melissa and I went out to Marrakesh, a Matam Fez style Moroccan place, complete with finger food and a very talented belly dancer. Props to the pro butt shaking. Melissa had some other shiz planned, so we all headed out around 9pm or so. Keen and I decided we’d make a night of it and hit the strip, but only after a short nap. We walked around for a while, hitup all the major casinos – which, btw, are really luxury resorts with every thing you could ever want. Ended up at some hole in the wall with $2 craps. Keen said this is the place, so around 11:30pm, we started playing. I mean, he started playing, and I watched, because I had no idea how to play craps. Time went on and I caught on pretty well during Keen’s first $20. So I put in $20 and he put in $20, and we were both broke within an hour 🙁 … so I put in another $20 ($40 from each of us) and proceeded to play until almost 3:30am. Free drinks the whole time, of course. It got late, and we had to drive home, so Keen pulled me away from the table … I was at $33 when I left, so I lost a whopping $7 for 4 hours of entertainment + drinks. Good times. Then we came home. We somehow got home faster than we got out to Vegas, even though we drove during the day and it was hot as fuck the whole way – barring the torrential rains we got to enjoy in the moutains near Frisco, CO. All in all, it was a ridiculously good time. It felt good to just let loose and recharge my batteries in the city of sin.