So the view of Rubicon from a con organizer... 0===- Wednesday: Yes it does begin here. I take work off early because I'm really bored. Get home too see my roommate Simon take off for Jim's house to help him setup and such. He is already dead tired. I expect this to last the rest of the weekend. Sometime later Rious shows up and we run around with some errands. Thursday Morning, 0330: Ring.....Ring...(the clowns are leaving)..Ring....Ring... answering machine picks up - "DUDE, WE'RE FUCKED!!! WE'RE GOING TO BE ARRESTED AAHHHHH!!!. . ... .. . .." it continues, I keep on sleeping, arrr why is he talking so long...finally I get up, find my legs don't work (as I had expected) and needless to say my mouth wasn't quite functional either. After about 10 mins on the fone having the other party trying to understand "So where are you" from me, I get an answer and they're on their way home, in no real danger. But then again, better to be proactive. I remember getting busted and I got bailed out without making a fone call, but then again people were in the know. Either way I was having a cool dream, and slightly more important I was getting some soon to be needed sleep. Thrusday 0800: Get up. Uhg, this was a terrible idea. Rious is still crashed out in the living room. We're off about 30mins late, but the rest of the crew for whatever reason thought I said we were leaving AT 0800, not getting up then. Oh well, I'm sure they can amuse themselves. 0930: Grab Mantus, and we're out of Grand Rapids for the glorious D. After some construction and guess work we're there. 1200: Check in, find the rooms to be small and not so great. Uhg, and how much did this cost? fear. loathing. angst. 1300: Eta and I head out to the D. we have some biz down there to take care of, er something.... We check to see if that sticker in the network room of last year is still there, and it is. 1500: We're back at the hotel, bahh nothing to do. oh look, a projector in a room all by itself right next to our room. It is a nice projector too, does 1024x768 and is very bright. Hey we have a movie to watch, so we do. Eating all of thier candy and drinking all thier water (we had already stolen most of the pop and donuts out of that room). Because we are nice people, we tell the hotel that it is probably a bad idea to leave that projector out. After what all happened, I probably should have taken it. Bastards. 1900: After rolling around the hotel noticing people show up, we bounce out to the Last Supper, at Jim's. Good food, plenty of people, a bit too many people for me but nothing Jim's dad couldn't handle. 2130: We jet out, got a network room to setup. 2300: wow, the network room is all setup. Hrm why isn't anyone setting up the network now that the tables and chairs are setup, and most of the drops ran (but not crimped, cause we didn't have a crimper, or something). 0===- Friday: 0000: Hrm drinking in the network room. 0600: Holy shit we made a HUGE mess. wow, the con hasn't even started. Hrm I should leave..... 1200: Not sure were I was up to this point, I remember yelling at Jim forn ot being there yet, as we already had a line. Holy shit, we have a line! damn. insanity begins 1500: Around this time the hotel starts to yell at us. Uhg, for what? They're pissed at what? oh shit, they want us to sign another contract that has a 20% fuck-us-in-the-ass-tax added to it, that they just wanted to charge us. 1700: the last two hours were fun. Er not. Now we're in the manager's office, and she is going off about EVERYTHING. Smoking. Trash. Stickers. Fuck them, I can't believe they are trying to push us around like this. What the hell. Are we going to be kicked out? Running bet is 4pm Saturday. After the meeting and having them go off about the scavenger hunt list, I'm thinking 20mins later we'll be history. We go back out, I ditch my black badge, as the hotel figured out the back badges ment we were in charge. Very bad. keynote: or lack there of. I forget what time this was. Yah thanks Defcon and Jeff Moss for FUCKING us. nice to let us know about 60 hours away from the keynote that he isn't going to make it. WHAT A JACK ASS DARKTAGENT IS. Anyhow I say some stuff, it goes ok, blah. Afterkeynote: I have a smoke with leah (prol my 4th pack by now) and leave her to stare at the laptop she forgot the powersupply for. Sleep is on my mind, and I get a nice comfy bed. 0===- Saturday: 0630: I awake after getting woken up so many times by a screaming Rios yelling about how I was sleeping. That bastard. Someone snags my bed almost before I'm even out of it. Eekk. Oh yeah Simprix and his buddy showed up, why are they in one room and there are 5 of us in this room? I have no idea. Go figure. I walk down to the network room to chill out. Something about the hotel trying to kill us all. Ekkk this hotel is ruining me. This hotel is ruining the Con, which pisses me off even more. I seem to remember telling that surkurity BITCH to bust the people who are causing "trouble" or whatever and deal with it, I have no desire to punish everyone for it. Oh I guess the network is down or something. 0740: Phrozen Napalm, Eta, and I leave for food. Somehow we end up 80% of the way to Jim's house at a Denny's. I fucking hate Denny's for as much as I eat there. Damnit!. 0900: Look the speakers are supposta be going. I think one or more of them accually happens. I try to aviod the hotel staff and do a bit of damage control. Also shadow Jim as much as possible to help intervien if the hotel starts to talk to him, you know moral support and such. They're really after him. I think they're confused about me as I'm not wearing the badge, I look so irresponsible, and I kept on telling them different names. But they are bastards. Time passes. More chaos insues. The rest of my crew wakes up, and we go looking for glitch, after awhile we find him and party like crazy up in our room. Kickass. At some point I bounce up to the Mob's room, they're all in there drinking and smokin', those bastards didn't let me smoke in there thursday night. Ha, I still have their Bell hat anyhow, infact I'm wearing it right now... 2100: That JACKASS in the RED COAT is trying to kill jim. I'm at Jim's side as soon as I can be, Jim does this pretty good job of "Led and Follow" then I bounce in with bad cop: "Look we told your boss to kick those who were causing problems out. The hotel guests are YOUR responsibility, not OURS. So I don't want to hear you telling us what they are doing alright?" he leaves, last time I saw him. That fucknut. Then again I think I flipped out (still a bit messed up from that party) so I was probably drooling and foaming at the mouth....ya know, mission from god mode and all... 2300: pnd demo. I hate explaning things I know to people. I never do a good job. Mostly because I figure if I understand it, everyone else should. Trying to explain the boot sequence of linux to other ... bah... that and months of not prepairing. Atleast we did it. 0===- Sunday: 0000: I chill in the network room. 0100: I go to bed. 0830: BEEP BEEEP .... fuck ... fire alarm is going off. Eta runs across my bed and rips the fucker off the wall, only to find that it wasn't the one making the noise, it is that small box to the left that I had taken apart earlier (those screws in there are fucking long and take forever to get out). its stops for a min, then continues for a bit and stops again. I start to hear rumors about Police and K9 units. Fuuuuck. Something about the hottub being owned.. Cool. How the two are related I leave to the reader. 0900: after avoiding it for a bit, I go down stairs. This should be pleasant. I just assume someone pulled the fire alarm. Oh no, apparently a whole stairway is destroyed. Brian and Eta are talking to a PIG. Joy. I see the PIG get Brian's info, and Eta takes me aside, apparently the PIG is grabbing ID, so I toss mine to Eta and head back out avoiding the PIG. As the PIG is leaving I see the man himself, Richiard Theime grab the PIG and take him aside. For a second I try to remember exactly where I dug that hole, then I realize that Theime probably isn't going to drop that PIG. I assume Richiard is trying to do damage control slightly better than what I saw the apathedic and sometimes militant Brian do (not that I would have done better). Oh well. Jim shows up sometime later. Then Denis (or was he awake to begin with? I have no idea) Chaos. Who knows what happens now. some people are interested in the speakers, I'm thinking of getting the fuck out of dodge right now. if you left right then you are wise. Rious and I trash the other room I rented as it was totally clean, while the room I was staying in had crap lying all around and cig butts all over the floor. 1200: Waiting for this to all end. The network is getting cleaned up, the hotel staff is a fucking cunt. should have bitch slapped her. Soon the closing cermonise are here. 1500: We start this off as we normally do, nothing to special. People aren't talking about what they did, obviously the PIG factor is an issue. Jim takes the mic, we give out some shirts, one of the hotel bitches walks in. Fucking cunt. Jim is doing the scavenger hunt, and listing off the stuff we have. This is going far worse than it even did the first year. Somehow I end up on the mic, after much bitching about THE MOTHERFUCK WHO STOLE THE SOUND COMPUTER. if you know who did that, get that box back to us. Either way, Denis is about done with the other team, and I start getting all sorts of whispers and such from people slightly outside the room about there being cops...and how we need to leave. I start saying things like "Hey, the cops are here.. no seriously, Romulus' finest is over there" (aplause for PIGS? wtf { I don't cry when the police die cuz they probably deserved it. Run around with a badge and a gun, and they goddamned fuck with everyone. Enforce rules made by fools, violence and fear their tools They dress to oppress with the laws they arrest and they leave us powerless. -Corporate Avenger } ), anyhow I start suggesting that people LEAVE RIGHT NOW. After the 3rd or fourth time people start to get the idea, then all of a sudden as I'm about to create a riot I wuss out (life goal missed, damnit) and listened to someone from the door yelling "only about groups of 5 at a time" so I repeate "They only want people in groups of about 5 at a time, and keep your hands where they can see them." I caught someone's eye at that moment who looked like a sheep. The four people I know who had shit on them didn't hear that last line, it somehow translated to "get rid of yo shit foo". I just remember once before figuring out these bitches were undercovers when they obsessed over where my hands where. Guess that is a univerial clue. And good job those who got passed the dogs with shit on them. The PIGS did sorts act as fif tall of this was a joke, but FUCK THEM. After all that is done, everyone splits. Not such a bad way to end really. The core goes to meet at Jim's pad. After some time everyone is there, and we divy up what is left and are on our merry way. Looks like I wasn't able to leave the Core Group, even though I'll be two thousand miles away, if I can work it, I'll be back. See how this works.. See you next year. 0===- Shouts: Rubicon Attendants: without you, there is nothing. Rubicon Speakers: Thanks to those who showed up The Mob, Glitch and crew, that cute redhead chick who was in the network room, FTC, and how could I forget the PLA and RBCP? 0===- Disrespect: Dark Tangent The fucker who stole the sound guy's computer. That little kid that got his ass kicked by Leah. 0===- Notes and such: Hotel was assholes Didn't seem simon hardly at all Leah got a new job! Rubicon Core is so going to be sued over this year Jamez is a pussy for not showing up