Yahoo hack Day continued

The day has been full of very interesting workshops. For the most part, they've been YahoO! centric, but not all of them have been completely so. My favorite events have been the hands-on workshops. The hands-on part hasn't been building anything huge, but it has been enough to kick start the use of the various APIs.

At the beginning of one of the hands-on workshops, one where the presenter provides files for the attendees to update and modify, following along with the presentation, a guy three or four people away from me asks the presenter to pause, he lost his wifi connection. The presenter immediately offered to copy files from his USB card to the attendees computer, if only he could find the fob. He started looking around, when the attendee offered to use his USB drive. The presenter said sure, and proceeded to plug in the device.

This exchange struck me as quite entertaining, mostly due to Windows viruses that can be transmitted via USB fobs, some more insiduous than others. The whole event smacked me as a clever social engineering hack attempt by the attendee to get access to the presenter's system.

Later in the day, during Cal's presenation, I noticed an artist drawing Cal. The picture itself was quite good, though the angle I had meant I couldn't really see if the likeness was strong. Later in the evening, after dinner, but before the Beck concert, the artist approached me and asked if he could draw me. Wow, I thought. Of all the people here he could draw, many of whom I think are more interesting than I, he chose to draw me. Cool!

A photographer took a picture over his shoulder of me, and then asked the artist his name and email. David Newman is his name, we'll see how the picture turns out. After looking at his website, I need to provide the disclaimer, I was fully clothed when he drew my picture, thinking, don't move, stay still, give him something real to draw. That, and don't stare back at him.

During the day, I saw Terry Chay, who I went to college with, wandering around. I've seen him here and at his presentation at OSCON last month. Vernon from VA Software (four years ago!) recognized me and said hello. He has an 18 month old boy, still lives in San Francisco.

I've been thrilled that there are more women here than most technical events. I suspect it's because there are actually women here at the company, making the number at the event greater. Not all of them are programmers, but that matters little to me: they're here, that matters.

Now, if only I could figure out a non-ultimate related hack.