When I was in the Army I had the opportunity to go to the Middle East for six months. There’s a whole litany of things you have to do to get ready for such a deployment — shots, paperwork, etc. One of those things was getting new dog tags.

One of the most interesting things about dog tags is that they include your religion on them. I was flirting with Atheism at the time and decided to get creative with what I put for my faith of choice.

Naturally, I put “CROM”. Crom is Conan’s God from Conan The Barbarian — one of the few movies that my buddy Tim and I watched hundreds of times during our high school years. These movies are burned into our souls. They define us.

I was quite sure I was going to get written up for putting “CROM” as my religion, but it never happened. They didn’t scoff when it wrote it on the form, and they happily pounded it into the little pieces of metal for me.

I was so proud of those damn dog tags, and from then on Conan became even more a part of my permanent personal culture. Anytime someone would put out an idea that I didn’t like I’d say:

Crom laughs at your four winds!

I quote from him regularly. The lamentation of the women…two snakes facing each other…etc, — it’s all classic stuff.

The pinnacle of the whole affair came in Egypt when I had these dog tags dipped in 18 carat gold. It was quite inexpensive, but it made the whole Conan thing even cooler in some lame yet cool way (see Manowar). Most of the gold came off of the tags over time; all that remained was the gold in the recessed protection of the lettering.

Good times.:

I’m in South Florida for a week long engagement. Blogging could be a bit light, depending on how the project goes.

If you know of any good Cuban or Puerto Rican food in Miami that I should try, do let me know.

So I’ve been at DEFCON in Vegas for the last few days. It’s been a rich experience and I’ve made a couple of observations.

DEFCON is a Social Networking Event DEFCON makes all of the audio and video content available (for a price) afterwards, meaning you can watch all of the presentations as if you were there anyway. What you can’t do is mill about and catching up with your with your friends and colleagues from all over the country (or make new friends and colleagues). That’s invaluable, and it should be the main reason for attending these types of events.

You Can Tell a Lot About a Person by the Shirt They Wear Most people wear regular shirts — polos, t-shirts, etc. — that have no writing on them. Those don’t count. What I’m speaking of is those who are trying to make a statement by calling attention to themselves with text or images on their shirts. Among those you can tell who is most skilled by the shirt they choose. Simple rule: if the shirt they choose represents an old meme that died a long time ago, they’re most likely followers with very little creative power. If the shirt they’re wearing is something really obscure, they’re likely leaders.

Examples: There were many guys walking around with the binary shirt — the one that starts with “There are only 10 kinds of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don’t.” This was a cool shirt. In fact it still is a cool shirt. But the only reason to wear writing on a shirt at a con is to have others read it. In other words you’re calling attention to yourself on purpose. And in the case of a hacker convention, the goal is to impress.

If your method of impressing a convention full of hackers is to support a joke that was old a few years ago, you’re not a thought leader. These people are likely to be followers who simply mimic others and do very little on their own. Not because they wear a shirt with an old joke on it, which is fine in other settings, but because they thought it would impress the DEFCON crowd three years later.

Now, contrast that to people like Dan Kaminsky and H.D. Moore. They both wore shirts that had cryptic icons or text on them. Unknown icons or text. In fact, there are likely to be very few people at the whole con who knew what those shirts meant — and that’s the way they like it. They’re trying to make a statement just like the guys with the binary shirt, but the difference is that they are actually succeeding by wearing something obscure and interesting. You would never catch any of these thought-leaders promoting a tired meme at a con.

In other words, the elite group create and promote new memes, while the followers are attracted to the well-established and therefore stale ones.

It’s like in the writing world. Good writers find new ways to say things while poor writers use cliches. The thing is, cliches are still good writing. The only reason they are bad choices is because they’ve been overused — just like the binary shirt meme.:

Picasa Gallery [With Locations]

First of all, just to clarify, sushi isn’t raw fish. In fact, all it has to include is rice; from there it can have a number of different toppings (including vegetables, cooked or uncooked meat, etc.) Sashimi is the delicacy consisting of various raw seafoods. As it turns out, this means that my first sushi experience wasn’t actually my first, as I’ve had sushi many times in Korean restaurants. It was, however, my first sashimi (raw seafood) experience, and it was quite the way to get started.

So, my buddy took me to Sushi Sennin in Manhattan, which turns out to be the fourth best sushi restaurant in the world, and the best in New York. I had many foods that were firsts for me, including kobe beef, octopus, eel, caviar (beluga), and what I believed to be wasabi.

In what turned out to be yet another bit of interesting trivia, very few people in the world have ever had wasabi. The vast majority (if not all) restaurants in both the United States and Japan serve fake wasabi to those that order it. This is even true in the very best restaurants such as the one that I was in. The only way to get real wasabi to 1) be in a very high class sushi place, and 2) ask for “fresh wasabi”. If you haven’t satisfied those two requirements you’ve likely never had wasabi at all.

Anyway, we ordered two chef specials that included around a dozen pieces of sashimi, octopus, ginger slices, a couple of sushi rolls, a kobe beef appetizer, and a bottle of excellent saki. My buddy is doing quite well and picked up the bill for right under $600. It was a great way to get try sushi sashimi for the first time. Very cool indeed.

Last night was metal (that’s good). We went to a place called the Playwright in Manhattan (they have Irish accents) to watch GSP fight Hughes and it was completely insane. I knew GSP was going to win; I think he’s a way better fighter overall, but I was very worried that Hughes was going to bust out with some kind of super-human (he’s part god) deathslam or something. That didn’t happen; he was systematically destroyed, and very quickly. I’m very happy for GSP; he deserves to be on top.

I also picked Monson to win over Tim. That one didn’t come to pass, however. I was very impressed with Tim’s ground game; he was amazing. Then I remembered who trains him — the sickest grappler ever, and my all-time favorite fighter — Jeremy Horn.

So then we exited the place at like 1:30am to find ourselves right in Times Square. It was live. If you haven’t been to this place you need to do so. The place is lit up like it’s daylight, and every building has a giant digital display or billboard of some sort. It’s really a shock to the senses.

The coolest thing was that the place was right in the middle of the Wii launch, and there were thousands of people in this one line waiting to get one. These giant screens were playing the full trailers and they even had people dressed up in Wii costumes. There was so much energy. You combine that with like 25 leathered-out, “don’t make me rock you” NYPD officers and you have a definite scene.

[EDIT: I Was Here]

Very cool stuff — can’t wait to show my girlfriend when she gets here.

The apartment leaves much to be desired; I dislike the headache associated with managing trash, laundry, cleaning, etc. I’d especially rather not have to deal with these things while trying to focus on a project.

And that’s why I would have preferred to stay in the hotel. I really enjoy the simple, sterile environment that a new hotel gives you. Oh well, lesson learned. At least this way we’re right in the city — literally a few blocks from the Empire State Building.

I got to see something really cool the other day. Some guy was being paid to hand out fliers at a mobile phone store here in Queens and the guy running the place saw what he believed to be the guy wasting time talking to friends.

So he moves out to where he’s in line of site of the guy (while still in the store, which had customers in it) and he opens his arms all the way out. “Hey! What I am payin’ you foah…” (think Sopranos). The guy, as if scripted, comes back with, “Why you bustin’ my balls?” (Sopranos) And he’s yelling this. Again, in front of customers.

People barely noticed, except for me. It was awesome.

So I am staying in Queens, which is markedly not New York City. I thought it was virtually the same, but it’s not. Not even virtually.

Well things are about to change. Our main contact up here got us a wicked cool place in uptown Manhattan. We’re right by central park and the Mac store, and we are getting everything taken care of. Laundry, expenses, tons of nice dinners, etc. This guy is hooking us up.

So the days of being stranded in the outskirts of the city are done. For the next two months I’m going to be in the thick of it. Taking the subway to work, being a stone’s throw from everything in the city, and absorbing the energy the way it was intended. Life is good.

I rode the subway into Manhattan today. It was like BART, only dirtier and louder. Also, nobody smiles in New York. I’m sure there’s a city ordinance or something.

I ate at a place in the lower east side called Chipotle. This place is what Moe’s is trying to be, but isn’t. I had a burrito that I will remember for quite some time.

I also bought some clothes while in town. Actually, that’s what I went there for in the first place; it turns out that “business-casual” doesn’t exist in New York, so my single dress outfit was not cutting it. Dropping a quick $400 stopped the bleeding a bit.

So it was a good day. I changed my room to one with functioning wireless Internet (hence this post from bed), got to do the Manhattan thing, and took the Subway expedition off the list of things to do.

And tomorrow is another day…