Birth of a hackor

Yep, I'm bored at the monthly Defcon and 2600 meeting again. Just me as usual. I know that some people wonder why I bother if nobody shows up. I keep telling my self that it's the reason some people leave the light on in the windows. It may be to show people that there are people like that are around. It might be to welcome the like minded in to a welcoming environment. I may be a beacon for what I think Hawaii needs. That would be an influx of technology minded people that not only hack/mod because it's career related; but because we are passionate about it.

By definition that was given to my by Hellfire; I've been hacking since I was knee high and boot kickable and well before I even knew what hacking was. From taking apart.... pretty much damn near anything I could get my hands on. First it was one of those old school metal power multiplexer (MPM); these days they're called "surge protectors". But, this one was so old it didn't have surge protection. I took that thing apart because I was told to get it. When I grabbed the MPM it was plugged in and it shocked me when my fingers touch the bottom. Naturally, I unplugged it and started to wonder what that feeling was and how it happened. Whipping out my toolkit; a regretful Christmas present from my parents, I opened it up. I noticed that a wire was frayed just after the power cable went into the metal housing. It had been touching the bottom metal plate which induced the shocks. Not knowing what to do after that, I showed it to my Dad. Who then just taped it off with some electrical tape. In retrospect, taping it probably was not the best idea. After that it was VCR's.

My house is literally in the boondags of the Big Island. We were considered lucky to have lines for electric and phone coming in. No cable TV because Oceanic Cable didn't see it cost effective to run any that far out; I'm talking about Hawaii Ocean View Estates. Too far out for Over-The-Air T.V., not that it mattered since most times it was only four channels that were as static as hell. Satellite TV didn't even have coverage in the area at the time. All we had in our house to watch was VHS tapes; and we had a big library of them. The VHS players frequently broke down due to "High Usage" and the dusty environment. After my parents kept taking it to repair shops for godly repair prices they decided to try and do some Preventive Maintenance and do what they could to fix it on their own. That consisted of VHS head cleaner tapes and the occasional opening of the player to blow the dust out and swab the reader head with a q-tip and rubbing alcohol. I got quite used to doing when one day the player decided to eat a tape. It was one of Mom's favorite Shirley Temple tapes. Instead of making due the other 15 she had, we tried to remove the tape carefully. Instead of just ripping it out like usual. In the process I learned that there were little arms and gears that lifted the edge of the cassette to expose the tape. Another set of arms gently pulled the tape to make contact with the reader head; a metal cylinder type thing in the middle. After sliding the tape up and over the arms to release it I noticed what happens in the insert and eject process. I also noticed that recording head was some how connected to a pole or tab on the side. that would be for the write-protect tab. I also noticed small components on the board. Later after some research, I learned that the board is called Printed Circuit Board (PCB) and the components I was looking at were capacitors, resistors, motors, and chips. Thus teaching me to what a "computer" was. This was the early 90's by the way; yes, I lived under a rock.

My first computer was a fifth-hand-me-down. It was a Hewlett-Packard. Yes, it was before they became "HP". I can't remember the model for the life of me. I got this when I was a freshman in High School. Thankfully, my aunts and uncles all told my parents that I will "NEED" a computer for school. If it wasn't for the "NEED", I probably would have never got it. In High School, I signed up for the Cisco Lab. At that time I didn't know what Cisco was. I just heard that I get to spend an entire period in a computer lab and I would constantly be on the computer. The class was for the Cisco Networking Academy; I took all four years of it. I didn't really care about the class at the time. I just did the work; which was easy, and played Starcraft and Counter Strike all day. My teacher; Mr. Fuller, had this habit of formatting all the drives at the end of the year and disassembling the workstations as much as possible. He also removed the configs on the switches and routers for the classroom as well and cutting off the ends of the cables. He knew that all we do was play computer games all day. His reasoning was that he would let us play with out complaint or restriction as longs as we could. That would mean reassembling everything, installing all the software, configuring the routers and switches, and still be able to hide the game server. ;) After the third year I learned something. Ghost the machines and TFTP the router and switch configs to a disk. What normally took us three months to do I was able to get us to do in three days. It was one of those "I'm scouring at you, but I'm also patting you on the back" moments. After that he selected me as the King Geek on campus