Well, I have been back from DEFCON 18 now for almost a week and I figured I should finally write something about it.  I had fun and wore myself out in the process.  I didn’t really learn anything new except how easy it is to hack an ATM, lol!  I did find the presentations I attended to be interesting and informative, and it was fun to watch the reactions of some people to the information they presented.

The Hardware Hacking Village and the Lock Picking Village were probably the most interesting part of the whole thing.  I learned quite a few things in the LPV and even obtained my first set of lock picks.  I haven’t really tested them out on any locks yet, but, I understand the basics of how to use them now.

I got a chance to try out my new camera during a couple of the presentations.  The pictures turned out ok, and the video looks pretty good, however, the sound wasn’t very good because I only had the built-in microphones on the camera to record with.  They tended to pick up more of the noises closer to the camera instead of the actually speaker.  It worked well unless there was a lot of movement or talking next to the camera.  I will have to remember that from now on and try to work around it.

During my visit, I found quite a few interesting tidbits lying around on the ground that people either lost or decided they no longer needed.  I am planning on creating a gallery to display pictures of the items that were acquired.  Most of it was just business cards and advertisements, but I found them all interesting none the less.  I will post a link here once I have that completed.

We were also able to obtain all seven unique door cards from the Riviera Hotel and Casino that were specifically made for DEFCON 18.  They are copies of the various badges that were available.  I will add pictures of those there as well.

As I stated before, this was not only my first time at DEFCON, but, it was also my first time in Las Vegas.  Staying at the Riviera gave me a chance to play some of the slot machines and experience playing a live game of Blackjack as well.  We also visited several of the other hotels/casinos that were in the area.  I got a chance to see the Palazzo, the Venetian, the Flamingo, and Caesars Palace from the inside.

As a matter of fact, I signed up for the players club at Caesars Palace and got a free $5 coupon to play on the slot machines.  I then turned that $5 in to $46 in under 15 minutes!  That is the most money I had ever won up to that point in my life.  I decided it would be best to cash that out and head back to the Riviera where I added $20 of my own money to the pot and played some Blackjack.

I played at a Blackjack table that only used a single deck, which meant it was a little more predictable, but it was loads of fun.  I think I had gotten up to around $200 before the game started heading south and by the time I was done, I was out $20!  Not bad for my first time playing live Blackjack.  It’s WAY different than playing some video game.  I think that in total we had spent about 10 hours playing and I finally went to bed at 4am.

I think next year, Shaun and I are going to try and go again.  He says he might try to become a speaker and do a presentation.  I’m not so sure how that will turn out but we will see.  Who knows, I may even assist him in putting the talk together, or try to do one myself.  It would be nice to get a speaker badge out of it and hopefully educate, and entertain, some people.

Then again, there was talk of not ever going back to Vegas after what happened on our flight back.  Even though we have been through several trips to and from airports with Shaun’s wheelchair and the various other items he has to bring along in order to survive, we have never been hassled by the TSA like we were when leaving Vegas.  I think we were at the TSA checkpoint for at least 30 minutes if not longer because one of the agents decided they didn’t like the fact that she didn’t know what were in the ice packs that Shaun had on his wheelchair to keep him cool.  After completely stripping all items of his wheelchair, out of his carry-on, and completely re-checking all of the items on me and in my carry-on, they decided that we still needed to be cleared by their manager.  They called him over; he takes one quick glance at the ice packs, and says “Yeah, I’ve seen those before.  That’s no problem, send them on their way”!!!!  In case you weren’t keeping track, that’s 30-45 minutes that could have been totally avoided had they just called the manager over in the first place.

Oh well, one bad experience out of 5 days of vacation isn’t bad.