Picnic Day 2004

[nibot]

Every year on some day in April, UC Berkeley and UC Davis have their open houses. Why they're on the same day remains a mystery, but this year we managed to go to both! At Cal Day I got some snazzy new T-shirts to flesh out my collection of UC Berkeley / Hacker Conference / Physics t-shirts and then we headed out to UC Davis for their famous Picnic Day, an event that attracts 10,000+ people and is even a local bank holiday.

This is the same event where in 1999 we found the sex+math poster, and where jake 2000 first got to meet other robots. It's also the one-year anniversary of meeting kennyjensen and dolinski. (Check out this picture of kenny and me in Switzerland!)

Now Davis is an Ag school if there ever was one, and the hilight of the Picnic Day trip was frolicking with all the various animals. In one freaky coincidence they had a goat petting zoo on one side of a room and a meat taste-testing booth on the other. Yikes! Diane and Michelle picked out a cat to adopt, and we all ogled the fistulated cow.



Picnic Day ends promptly at 4pm (eh??) and it seems that everybody pours out into the city for post-picnic-parties. Davis' answer to Game Day? There's still fun to be had over in the arboretum, where Battle of The Bands is just getting started. Here the marching bands from all of the University of California campuses and a few upstarts such as Humboldt State and that junior university across the bay and down the peninsula gather to play songs and produce general merriment — until they give up or expire.







If the Cal Band looks a little pedestrian by comparison — don't worry, they're just getting started. They have at least six hours to go!

Comments

[nibot.livejournal.com]

ah.. the memories!

i'm the kid in the front right side of this picture (just the back of my head!)

http://www.defcon.org/images/graphics/PICTURES/JEOPAR-1.JPG

Variation on a DefCon

By Bucket Man

My own personal DefCon story began two years ago. I had been
invited to DefCon I by a girl I met at the Continuation High
School I had ended up at through circumstances we won't go into.
A few days after the convention, she mentioned that we wouldn't
be going after all. When DefCon II came around I made
reservations at the Sahara and introduced some friends of mine
to hack/phreak in a big hurry so that I would have someone to
share the bill with. On our way out the door, our designated
driver's mother decided to commandeer the car, and as none of us
were 25, we were unable to rent one. Fortunately we only had to
pay for one of the two nights reserved. Then, along comes DefCon
III. I never thought I would get there, but owing many thanks to
my fellow party members, Light Ray and Squibb, as well as a wack
on the side of the head to the low life who canceled on us the
day before... I not only made it to Vegas, I even lived through
the experience.

Day One was mostly spent exploring the hotel and sharing
drive-up horror stories. We did manage to attach "Fred," our
laptop, to an outside line in the convention room. (An amusing
fact, since apparently Dark Tangent had requested that the hotel
disconnect the phones for that very reason.) We tore off a wall
plate and explored through the roofing above the hallway leading
to the convention room. Jarik talked the hotel staff into
bringing us water. It was shortly after this that we swore that
we would go the whole weekend without once paying for food,
alcohol, or women. We were partially successful: We paid for
food twice, I supplied free drinks, and didn't get any women.
After the first meal, however, I did discover the fastest way to
clear a path through a crowd. Wear a black trenchcoat in 100+
degree weather, and have someone behind you yell, "Look out!
He's got a gun!"