Back in my college days, Gabe and I were pretty good buddies. DeathNET was going strong, and we were having fun running it. You heard the legend of his downloading of 1.3TB of data, which got his internet disconnected in his dorm room.
As a result of this, Gabe decided he was out to get the DCC, our computing department, which is portrayed as the Evil Department of Computing Syndicate in the following short I helped film:
As you can see, I have a couple minor roles (playing cards and the exciting finale scene). Good times. Around that time we also constructed a 802.11b antenna from a dish Gabe bought from FAB-Corp, a bunch of packing tape, and my musical horse, Alpo:
He then dropped out and started his own business, called OvernightPC (I still have one of the CDs they passed out at a LAN party). They would come to your dorm room or home or business and fix your machines. The business did alright for a while, but eventually failed. Gabe moved to Portland, OR.
I went to OSCON in the summer of 2006, and stayed with Gabe. He had started running a web proxy service under various different names, like VTunnel. Wanting to expand his business (he was already pulling 6 figures in advertising revenue at that time), he flew a kid from England to Oregon to work on a new idea: Pay VPN service for anonymity. I’m not sure how this ended up working out.
I left after the conference, and the next thing I heard about him was that he moved to Florida and was loving it. Now, he’s at the center of the entire Sarah Palin Email Account Scandal. His service was apparently used to do the email password hacking deed. I’ll have to give him a call and see what he thinks about all this.
Update
I talked to Gabe on the phone today, and he told me he had done a video interview with Fox. It sounds like he’s doing well.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like if no one ever upgraded to Web 2.0? I mean, really, what have we gained. Here’s a list of things that I personally find really stupid about the phenomenon…
Samsung SH-S202J is a great new burner from Samsung. It is quiet, fast, and the tray operates smoothly. It works seamlessly with K3B in Linux, burning 4.2GB of data in 6 minutes including session closing.
The first one of these I bought came DOA, but I just let NewEgg know about it, and they shipped me a new working one for free. Brilliant! I highly recommend you pick one up if you’re in the market.
Media Tested
One of the reasons I bought a new burner was the 200 discs I currently have that my old burner is incompatible with. I know now that at least 100 of those will work, since I sampled from a previosly non-working stack for the results above.
I’m not doing this to decrease my “carbon footprint,” decrease dependence on foreign oil, or for any other political gain. I’m doing this because it is a healthy thing for any human to do once in a while. Taking a break from the highest levels of technology is good for the brain and the soul. Readers, please join me!
I'm a computer programmer from Ellicott City, MD.
I go to OSCON often, write random code, and blag about it here.
I enjoy cooking,
reviewing beer, hiking, kayaking, and watching movies and television shows. I am a licensed HAM Radio operator (KB3RXM), and am on my way to becoming a licensed private pilot.
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