All good things come to an end --which must surely mean that, as well, all bad things chug happily along into the forever. But we're not in hell, of this we all can be sure. Why am I so sure? Because I don't see Fransico Goya peeking from around my vacuitous plywood door, nor do I feel anyone's salivary nibblings on my soul. The Earthly existence of most 18-year-old males, girlfriendless, no car, living at home, with too much work to do and no interesting tasks to do first will often *seem* like hell. But be sure, your quintessential form floats in a purgatorial ether at *best.* But inch your mouse cursor as close to the little "close" box as you dare, for my worn keyboard marches us all in lock step formation closer and closer to the ultimate perdition. And this, gentle reader, is not merely what *seems* like hell. For under the ministrations of some wicked black magik, IT has returned. Resurrected and given unholy life, the Rubi Con Newsletter has been awakened from its 1000 year sleep. It is now free from its bonds, and able to the crush souls of the innocent as well as the damned. The horror it will now unleash onto the world can not be comfortably imagined. Entire cities will vanish from the face of the Earth. The pious and the pure will suffer under its wrath. Great nations will cower in its wake. The beast Beelzebub himself would be proud. [Que. lightening, fearsome dogs, maniacal laughter, et all.] As I'm sure all of you will painfully recall, this is the the virtual soap box of a certain Jim Tantalo, of whom tangential verbosity is only one of his many distinguishing qualities. He also happens to be an excellent dresser, and a powerful man with generous biceps. Chicks dig him, he is fluent in a dozen languages, and his dog is in absolute awe of him. The document currently undergoing your scrutiny is, as has already been established in the tedious prologue, the undead reincarnation of the Rubi Con Newsletter. This copy was ferreted off to your own inbox because, long ago, you subscribed to the once proud and bedazzling Rubi Con Volunteer Newsletter. Your email address was cryogenically frozen with the hope that future generations might thaw them out and, perhaps, offer them a warm, tasty beverage in the frightening event that the newsletter was ever reanimated. That day has come, and thanks to the miracle that is 18 months without a serious harddrive failure, here you are. Just like old times, the brave among you can sign their name to Hades's Book of the Dead and pollute their inbox with my mad ranting. Achieve those ends by sending an email to rubicon-list-owner@umich.edu. Alternatively, those who fail to find my esoteric perturbations the least bit witty may rid themselves of their shackles by sending yet another email to rubicon-list-owner@umich.edu, and a sacrificial offering (around $20.00) to Jim Tantalo, 1087 William, Plymouth MI, 48170. For those of you who are still reading, it is time to steel yourself for what lies ahead. The frightened or the weak of heart may wish to close their eyes or grasp the hand of a loved one as we dive headlong into the great abyss of... of... ACTUAL CONTENT! 1. Rex Mortuus, Dui Vivo Rex (The King is Dead, Long Live the King) Any American who completed high school before 1955 will immediately recognize the frailty and ineptitude of my Latin. I'm the first to admit it. I only wield the Caliburn saber that is the Latin language when I really need to impress someone or really need to confuse someone. Also, chicks dig it. But the point is that I rarely get a chance to exercise my limited grasp of the classical language, and it's a little rusty, to say the least. However, none of you knew what it said either, so you really have no reason to argue. Well, anyway, the point here is that Ron Ulko, one of the founding members of the Rubi Con Dynasty, made a decision recently to walk away from this endeavor. He leaves because, as he would put it, there were serious personality conflicts and disagreements in the direction and focus of Rubi Con. A mutual conclusion is that he had no choice. This comes after months of dwindling support for his positions and policies, and gradual devaluation of his contributions. Admittedly, there are some hard feelings between the two sides of this situation, but it is the opinion of this writer (or this pretend writer, as the case my be) that he made a respectable decision, and that it is too bad he was driven to it. Nonetheless, the ÔCon will continue unabated despite the loss of an important founding member. We have been working with a group of very dedicated and intelligent people who are committed to making this event happen no matter what. Fear not, brave soldiers, for next April 28 there will be a hacker conference in Detroit. One might say that the reigns of power now rest in my semi-capable hands, although that would not be totally accurate. Ron never had as much control over this event as many people (including himself) were lead to believe. At best, control has been spread out over more people, and that is not likely to be a bad thing. 2. Joe McCarthy Would Not be Amused. Or: Join the Communist Party On Line! Some of you may still recall the excessive Christianity jokes from last year. From "Jesus Christ wants you to go to Rubi Con," to "we need a priest to bless the Ôcon." It got really tedious after a while, but then again, that was half the fun. Anywho, our new run-on joke seems to revolve around communism, Stalin, and references to the old Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War. I think I've already managed to beat it death, which means we're really just getting started. And if you think it's funny now, just wait a few months for everyone to get REALLY sick of it. THAT'S when it gets good. Anyway, I think I started off trying to talk about our new volunteer system, but managed to get stuck in one of my cumbersome tangents. I apologize. I could just rewrite the entire section, but just grafting more circuitous verbiage on top creates a more interesting effect. And besides, I may come back to it later. You see, one of the ideas here is to try to totally overwhelm the reader with oblique tangents that don't actually go anywhere. In the end they either give up in disgust, or are forced to quit their jobs for a few days in order to wade through it all. Much like how dogs, tigers and other large carnivores will catch small animals in their mouths and then shake their heads vigorously back and fourth. The heads of the captured animal flails about violently until the neck snaps, killing it instantly. That's EXACTLY how I see my writing. But where was I? Oh yeah, volunteers... We recently reinstated our much beloved Rubi Con volunteer system. This year christened, the "Rubi Con Volunteer Korps," or just, the "Korps," for short. Again this year we have a real use for warm bodies that we can place in dangerous situations or assign all the tedious, repetitive assignments. Sort of like all the nameless, faceless guys in the yellow uniforms on Star Trek. Only our volunteers won't be doing anything NEARLY as sexy as realigning plasma inverters or whatever the hell they always do to save the day. No, think "digging trenches," "working as human foot stools," "expendable cannon fodder," "subjects of cruel laboratory experiments," and on and on. But hey, chicks dig it. Our volunteer operation is being handled this year by someone with one of those cool hacker-esq handles... "RijilV" oohhh... Just bask in the pure white glow of a true hacker nickname. I never had the initiative to create one of those cool handles. I was always satisfied with one of my five or six alternate identities. There's the drug addicted yet cool and trendy Mark Summers. Or the insane yet cool and hip artist, Bill Weiland. Or the cool chick magnet with his own car, Jim Nieken. Not that any of these people would accurately describe my real life (especially that part about being "cool"), but they were there. Handles were just a pale imitation of a real, psychologically unhealthy, alternate personality. But anyway, I think I was talking about volunteers... We have some stuff set up on the website for volunteering this year. If you are interested, just fill out the forms and send in the DNA sample and you'll be all set. And we promise that we won't force any of this year's volunteers to help us put on next year's Ôcon. Cross my heart and hope to die. 3. Jim Fucking Tantalo While I'm on the subject of joining things (...wait for it...), there is also the issue of our cool new public mailing list (okay... *now!* *Go!*). But before I get too far into it, I would like to point out the elegant and purposeful segue we just witnessed. Planned literally thousands of words in advance, we moved effortlessly and tastefully from "joining our Volunteer Korps" to "joining our cool new public mailing list." Superb. Some of you may recall my love of a good segue in a piece of writing, but I just though I might point it out for those of you who may not have been paying attention. Anywho, we were talking about the rebirth of our public mailing list. We did this last year, but for some reason the boys down at TDYC! couldn't keep it operational. We've instead enlisted the email kung fu of a certain Nick Farr. The actual list is at rubicon-crap@umich.edu, but to subscribe send something to rubicon-crap-owner@umich.edu. As I'm sure everyone already realizes, this list was set up as a sorbett to the Rubi Con Newsletter (you're reading the Rubi Con Newsletter right now, for those of you just joining us). It's a public forum, so you can bounce insults and spelling corrections off it all day long. Join today and begin long, bitter, tangential arguments and endless flame wars. This is what made the Internet great, and I'm just proud to be carrying on the tradition. 4. Fools With Nice Carpeting: We Have a Hotel For This Year. I'm sure most of you recall the debacle with our hotel last year. The Official Rubi Con Legal Vultures have advised me not to discuss the situation with anyone, but suffice it to say there were some precarious financial issues on our end, and some major legal errors on their end. Considering the ramifications of the compromise (they had to pound their heads against the wall for several minutes, and I have to keep at least 1,000 feet away from anything owned or operated by Holiday Inn for the rest of my life), I'm rather surprised we secured another hotel this year. Yet, this is what has happened. Almost without doubt (although a contract has yet to be signed), we will be hosting Rubi Con 2000 at the Romulus Marriott near, but not in, Detroit Metro Airport. This location has a number of interesting advantages. It has spectacular highway access, it is within walking distance to another dozen hotels and at least 2 million restaurants, and it lies *directly* under the flight path of the North East runways. Plans literaly scrape the top of the building as they swoop in for landings. Amazing. We're planning on getting less space this year, so things could get crowded. But we plan on setting up the network in the same fashion as last year, and hope to have some serious bandwidth piped in. Anyone who feels like donating a couple of spare OC12 circuits to The Cause can give me an email at tantalo@rubi-con.org. But we will have a huge room just for the network, plus another big room for some speakers, movies, games, and other large events, as well as a classroom for smaller group stuff. "r33+," as the kids say. We'll have enough space to launch plenty of dumb contests too, so when you come be sure to bring your copy of Cibo Mato's "Stero Type A" (an item on this year's scavenger hunt). 5. Just Because You Go to the Renaissance Festival Doesn't Make You Goth. Speaking of games and contests (oh look at that... another segue!), we have started putting together all the filler and wacky distractions for this year's Ôcon. By popular demand, we will be doing another twisted scavenger hunt consisting of hundreds of unattainable items with dubious connections to computers *or* conferences. We'll also be doing a team trivia game so you can get together with some friends on stage and compete for fabulous prizes and adoring groupies. But beware: I am writing the questions this year, so you'd better brush up on your Jung knowledge and Portishead references. For network games, we also hope to include a capture-the-flag game and a huge red-team versus blue-team game of attackers and defenders. With any luck, we'll also be doing a Quake tournament or something equally bloody. If you have any ideas for games, contact me at tantalo@rubi-con.org. Also, if you want to write some trivia questions or some items for the scavenger hunt, the lines are open. SORRY, NOTHING ELSE TO SAY TODAY. COME BACK NEXT TIME FOR MORE INANE RAMBLINGS. Jim Tantalo The Guy With the Keyboard Rubi Con 1999, 2000