A pair of drunk, Canadian techno DJs discuss the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. As best I could tell, it had something to do with "fly honeys" and t-shirts from obscure record labels.
Obese beats, courtesy of DJ LeFreak.
Carnage. This is a picture of the Machine Room whence devoid of people. Notice the endless rows of phallic computer hardware. It's both scary and beautiful at the same time. I'm just glad the hotel wasn't charging us for electricity.
A trio of black-shirted computer geeks enjoy a midnight screening of a pirated copy of the Chinese language version of The Matrix. If the chronology is correct, this would have to have been the 8th or 9th generation copy of that particular VCD by the time it got to them.
Some people walking around trying to look important. Note the gentleman in the far right side of the image. He's clearly balding, which is interesting because the median age for Rubi Con attendees was only 22 years old, so I'm not sure what his excuse was.
Can you spot yours truly in this grainy picture? I'm wedged somewhere in between Ron and a pile of Taco Bell 7-layer Burrito wrappers. Yes! Right there! Me!
I'm not sure what these guys were trying to do here, although I fear the worst. Because although I shouldn't really care, I'm the one not getting his security deposit on the hotel back. By the way, if you boost the black point on this image way the heck up, there's a secret message left on the screen of the lap top. Weird.
Pay phones, computers, piles of rainbow-colored wires. Yep, it really was a computer con.
Experience Rijilv and his piercing wit. Here he bears a sign inscribed with the message "Jesus Christ wants you to buy a t-shirt." It was funny at the time, to say the least, but next year there will be no references to Christianity. It's getting a little stale, and my GPA has been falling ever since I started that joke. I think God is punishing me.
A guy without sleeves tickers with something shiny. Just about as straight-forward as it gets, huh?
Behold Ron, in a slightly drunken state. He isn't usually this pasty looking, but he looked so damn happy, I didn't want to say anything.
Dangerous levels of sleep-deprivation, plus more stress than a brain surgeon on a deadline. I can understand what did it, but our friend Dave here just snapped. There was nothing we could do, and so we just left him to smoke cigarettes and laugh at the lighting fixtures. Note Ron and Joe "Dark Cube" Stanovitch in the background. I don't know what they were doing, but it probably wasn't helping.
The story behind the handicap parking sign is quite convoluted, and dubious at that. Some say a disgruntled CompUSA employee let con-goers take it. Some say a pack of guys wrenched it from the ground late one night. Either way, here it lays. And for all it may be worth, it still only boarders on elite.
Oh yeah, and girls too. She was asleep, and so some of the impact was probably lost. Nonetheless... there were girls there. I saw them with my own eyes.
Experience the power of Sony imaging products. Yes, if it's grainy, bury, noisy, low-contrast pictures you want, the Sony Mavica is the digital camera for you!
This is just a cool picture. DJ Somethingorother spins some "phat" music while bathed in an eerie magenta glow. It was probably something burning, but who am I to stop it? My credo has always been, "If it doesn't look good, don't even bother," and I suppose the opposite is also true.
Our Machine Room, and several clowns who inhabited it.
This kid holds the honor of being at the center of what was voted the Best Stupid Story of Rubi Con 1999. Such as it is, this fellow is only 15, and apparently had to beg his parents into letting him go to Rubi Con this year. He had a deal with them that he would be home on Saturday night at midnight, and he must have forgotten because at around 4:00 am his parents storm into the conference area desperately searching for there son. Your's truly was sleeping at the time, but enough people were still awake to launch a search of the hotel. I was soon roused and made an honest attempt to calm the parents, least they sue me or something equally silly. Anyway, an hour or so later a small pile of cloths in the corner of the Machine Room was poked and, low and behold, there he was. He had been asleep, curled up on the floor, not 10 yards from where his parents had been pacing and screaming the entire time. I snickered quietly to myself and went back to bed. He, it can be surmised, will probably not be back next year...
Favorite quote from Rubi Con 1999: "Look lady, there's lots of 15-year-old kids asleep in people's rooms."
Said by a certain Evil to one of the above-mentioned parents. I think he was trying to help.
And we even managed to pervert the Holiday Inn sign!
A close-up.
More Machine Room pictures. Since these are "hackers," we can assume that they were probably distributing bomb-making information or worshiping Satan.
See the evil "hackers." See the evil "hackers" do something illegal. See the evil "hackers" traffic kiddie-porn.
Yet more examples of the glory and power of Sony digital imaging devices. And I thought my Canon Pro70 produced good images...
Here we see one of our attendees as he single-handedly breaks into the NORAD missile-command mainframes ala "Wargames." Now, he didn't touch-off a nuclear war with his tinkering, because he is a benevolent hacker and he understands that billions and billions of dead people would be bad. But I though it was impressive enough to include a picture of anyway.
This picture was just too eerie to leave out. Here we see more computer geeks bathed in the subtle blue glow of LCD monitors as they tinker away at something unwholesome.