I'm writing this on a flight home from Sydney. Two weeks ago I was there for a live hacking event and somewhere over the ocean I caught my own reflection on the little screen in front of me. Sun-tanned. Smiling. Salt still in my hair from a boat ride on the harbour the day before.
And I thought: none of this would have happened without that little green proxmark board. I had no idea what I was signing up for back then. I thought I was buying a tool. What I actually bought was a passport.
A passport to DEF CON nights fuelled by Hacker Juice at 3 AM, where everything that could go wrong did, and we figured it out anyway usually with someone shoving a laptop at me saying "try this."
To CCC Camp fields with what I will defend to my dying breath as the world's best WiFi and network the kind of infrastructure that makes you tear up a little, surrounded by tents and people who get it.
To Balccon, where the rakija flows and a stubborn tag becomes a six-person philosophical debate.
To karaoke nights where hardened reverse engineers belt out power ballads off-key and somehow that becomes one of your favourite memories of the year.
To live hacking events on the other side of the planet Sydney being just the latest stop on a list I never could have predicted.
I bought a tool, and I got a life. I've laughed until my face hurt.
I've watched contributors I'd only known as GitHub handles walk up and shake my hand, and felt that small miracle of oh, you're real, and you're wonderful.
I've seen cities I never would have visited. Sat in airports I never would have been in. Made jokes in languages I don't speak with people I now can't imagine my life without.
The skills came along for the ride. Career doors opened. I learned things about RFID and low-level hardware I never imagined I'd know.
But honestly? That's not the part I think about when I look back.
The part I think about is the people.
The ones who became collaborators, then friends, then chosen family. The ones who pushed code at midnight because they wanted to see the project succeed as much as I did.
The ones who handed me rakija, sang harmony badly, and showed up to every event with a hug and a hardware bug report
One purchase. A decade. A community. A life I genuinely love.
If past-me sitting somewhere with a credit card and a half-formed curiosity knew what that little green proxmark board would lead to, he would have not doubt it.
🧊 Stay frosty. And thank you. All of you. You know who you are