Upon arriving at Defcon, I embarked on a "side quest" that would last the entire con. After settling into my hotel room, I was greeted with a shot of malort and introduced to my suite mates. The trip to Vegas had been long, and I needed some time to rest and gather myself, so I stayed in the hotel room for a couple of hours to decompress.
After lounging around for a bit and watching my friend socialize with complete strangers, the party began. I needed a badge for the pool party but didn't have one. Despite this, I still managed to attend the pool party—go figure. I had a great time and went all out, fully expecting to be greeted by my air mattress plopped in the corner when I returned to the room.
However, upon entering my hotel room, Ghriz turned to me and said, "Oh, by the way, we're not sleeping tonight." In front of me on the table in the living room was a pile of pink shrink-wrapped SAOs waiting to be soldered. We had two soldering irons and a hot plate, but one iron was so built up with carbon that we dared not use it for fear of setting off the fire alarm.
With just a white Monster energy drink, I stayed up until 5 AM testing boards with a multimeter and wafting the smoke out the door with the cardboard box from the air mattress. I only took a break for an order of Taco Bell (all the pizza places were closed at the time). I can't seem to avoid Taco Bell, but that's a story for another day.
The next day was a mad dash to finish the rest of the SAOs and wrap up the CTF and website. We were saved at the last minute by Alex Lynd and his portable USB-C soldering irons. It's worth noting that my suite mates didn't have enough money to buy a Defcon badge and were banking heavily on Hackimon.
My next run-in with this ongoing side quest was at the Toxic Barbecue, where our SAOs were touted by my suite mate Billie, whom we coined our "Working Girl." Ghriz, with Billie in tow, went around selling the promise of the Hackimon badge and handing out stickers. I swear, that man could sell ice to an Eskimo.
That night, we sold the entire stock we brought out and gained a whole lot of mindshare. Many people were excited to see a new emerging business venture in the midst of its grassroots campaign.
I'm still working with the Hackimon crew and the Internet Cafe to make Hackimon great, notably through the website hackimon.com. Hopefully, this goes somewhere. It was a whole lot of fun seeing Hackimon grow into something popular and working alongside and meeting the folks at the Internet Cafe.