chicago 2600 is moving, to where i do not know...i kind of saw this coming, but i still don't want t

does anyone know a good place for a bunch of geeks to hang out and chat, hack, give talks, and pick locks one friday night a month?

it looks as though chicago 2600 won't be able to meet at the boys and girls club anymore after our march meeting. i'm not quite sure about the entire story, although i've heard that the one interim director who really liked us was not given a permanent position, and another person associated with the boys and girls club wasn't interested in coordinating our meetings anymore. whatever the reason behind it, the point is the same...we need a new space.

this makes me sad...the boys and girls club is a great venue. there weren't any kids activities going on anymore by 7pm when our meetings started, and we could hang out there as late as we wanted. there were several rooms we could use, including a computer room with a wireless network. this made our meeting kind of an anomaly...most 2600 meetings meet in a public place around 5pm, and either hang out until they close, or run around from place to place after the rendezvous. the fact that we meet and stay in one place gives our meeting an interesting character, since we can bring our projects there with us and not have to carry them around from to different locations. the meeting always felt like a sort of late-night clubhouse for geeks.

i guess all good things must come to an end, and it's not productive for me to continue this eulogy. this is only the end of an era; it will not be the end of chicago 2600. we just need a new location.

one year, already?

it was a year ago today when i stumbled across phone losers of america.

the way i found it was random enough: i was bored one night, and clicking my way through wikipedia. one of the random articles i stumbled across had something to do with telecom, and one of the links on that article pointed to the wikipedia page on phone phreaking. i had no idea what phone phreaking was, but had been idly wondering ever since i read jonathan lee riches ©'s brilliant lawsuit against 50 cent. in that lawsuit, jlr© claims that old fitty stole his lyric, "a phone phreaker, comin out your home speakerz." so, i clicked the link, read about what a phone phreaker was, and saw the links at the end. one of them was to phone losers, i clicked on the link, and i was up until 4am the next morning listening to prank calls on the site. i blogged it the next morning, and then stayed up absurdly late the next night listening to even more of the calls and reading the content on the site.

at first, i was hesitant to do any more than just listen to the stuff. i knew it was hilarious, but this phone phreaking stuff sounded a little dangerous. i was a third-year law student at the time, about ready to go through the background check from hell, and the last thing i needed was the character and fitness examination finding out that i'm active on some hacker board and deciding that was good cause to deny me a law license. i kept reading the website and listening to the calls. i even started reading the forums, but i didn't dare make an account or post there.

this resolve lasted all of about four days. i decided i had enough junk on the internet about me. i had a blog called the last refuge of the persecuted crack smoker, and even though i was no longer a regular poster on xoxohth/autoadmit, i had been an extremely-not-anonymous regular there for most of my second year of law school and that summer between second and third year. there was enough junk on the internet that could sink me, what was one more site? i made myself an account on the forums, started posting, and then started hanging out in the irc chat room.

i had no idea at the time what a good call that was.

( cactus? )

the long and short of it is...my life's a lot cooler now that it was before i stumbled across phone losers a year ago. thanks.