My story of getting into a Microsoft event: in late 2000, Microsoft was rebranding MSN with the butterfly logo and they paid groups of inline skaters in NYC to dress up in custom purple velour body suits with wings to skate around Manhattan and generate buzz (heh) about the new MSN.

Well, there happened to be a computer show at the Javits Center so we skated there, convinced a security guard we were with Microsoft (hey, eight skaters in velour MSN body suits must be with Microsoft, right?), and skated onto the show floor. About fifteen minutes later security figured out we weren't part of the show and kicked us out. (We weren't supposed to keep the butterfly outfits but some people did. I didn't keep mine, but I do have photos that prove it really happened.)

Late 80s, it was fairly easy to get into Apple's developer program. I wrote up a "business plan" describing an Apple ][ program I wrote (which was real) and laid out the plans to port it to the Mac (which was not real).

In return you got a mountain of documentation and CDs, and the magic carbon-paper form that let you buy one Apple device a year at a 50% discount. That's how I got my MacSE for college.

I did feel bad because for a few years afterward my mom was routinely contacted by Cupertino asking how the program was coming along.

It was also incredibly easy to crash the Consumer Electronics Show. Probably still is. Just a fake business card printed up and mailed in. I was there for the Newton intro, that was something.

This is much better than my approach of acquiring obsolete versions of competitors' software to qualify for then-generous "competitive upgrades" that were often themselves available at steep discounts when the next version dropped.

For instance, there was not much of a market for the PCjr version of Lotus 1-2-3 in the early '90s when I used it to qualify for the $20 competitive upgrade to Excel 4.0 I found in the bargain bin at a local electronics retailer after Excel 5.0 released, which of course qualified me for even less expensive (not than $20) version upgrades in the future, not only to Excel, but to the full Office suite.

Fun, reminds me of high schoolers on the Win95 beta: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6145147

The real hack wasn't registering as an OEM builder. It was discovering that a cardboard sign and a little persistence could get you Windows 2000 for $20

of course not you are describing something that cant be more millenial, the mix of technical knowledge, hacking and social hacking, the group heist mentality the NEED to bypass microsoft security...

I loved beaming stuff between Newtons as a kid.

I love thinking about the idea of sending uber low bitrate memes during some boring meeting.

I was a bit older, but it was a great feature pre-WiFi. PDA transfers over IRDA, too!

I used to transfer files (photos mainly) by IrDA with my classmates between our phones in the mid-00s.

Honestly, it's such a weird statement to make. I'd guess that most of his audience remembers infrared file sharing.

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> but the iPhone runs its LIDAR on IR for autofocus and just taking a photo of this process kills the transfer

I think you could just use the front facing camera.

You write it down and if you don’t remember you just make up something plausible.

I have what I like to call a semiphotographic memory. I can abstractly remember the positions, shapes, colors and numbers of things extremely well. I can remember sequences of words very well. I can strongly associate it with sensory memories.

But I have some weaknesses with it, like temporal trouble. It's hard to natively remember dates and sequences of events. I can strongly remember what the pieced together moments were like, but it's difficult to recall "Did that happen before X or Y?"

With things like that I need to remember, I visualize a timeline or a graph in my head or draw it out and take a mental snapshot of that. I've also found that's why I'm a "visual" person when it comes to things like project management.

I've imagined a lot of memory management for others must be like that: You find your innate abilities of mental organization, and use it to map the world outside to the world inside. I imagine it looks very different for everyone.

But you must remember at least some events from a long time ago with a lot of details.

And if you wrote a blog, these would be the events you would write about. You obviously won't write a blog post about events you don't remember.

It is selection bias, it is not indicative of the ability of Raymond Chen to remember all little details.

I wonder if he tells these stories to people outside of the blog.

There are a few events in my life that merit the story being told to people; friends at the pub, during conversations with colleagues at lunch, etc, because they're amusing or unbelievable or whatever.

After a while, you may not remember the event so much, but you do remember the story.

He has at least several years worth of articles queued up, some of the details could be made up, selection bias and more.

Myself and a friend treated ourselves to a bunch of Marylin Manson shows early in 1997 because we were into that. Sometimes, we'd have assigned seats. Once or twice, we elected to sit on the balcony by ourselves and watch everything from afar. One time, in Harrisburg, I wanted to be in the pit but I did not have a ticket for that.

I decided I was going to sneak onto the floor anyway.

So I positioned myself to be ready for the lights to drop as the opener, Rasputina, finished up and I hopped over the bar and tried to disappear into the crowd on the floor below.

It didn't work. I was instantly spotlighted by a man with a flashlight. Someone else grabbed my shoulder and corrected me by indicating rather forcefully that my intended destination was not the mosh pit, but was instead the entrance gate at the back of the arena.

They didn't kick me out, but once we got back to that quieter area I was informed that since I didn't have a ticket to be in the pit, then I was definitely not going to be in the pit. I was further made aware that I would not be trying this kind of thing again.

So I sauntered back to the assigned seat that I started from and watched the show from there, where some usher became increasingly livid at the despondent teenagers who were smoking cigarettes at a rock show in the 1990s (but who was apparently powerless to do anything about it).

The show was good. I'd seen it before, and I would also see it again.

---

That was almost 30 years ago. Certainly, some aspects have been lost to time.

Was it Harrisburg? Maybe it was Pittsburgh. It probably wasn't Wheeling -- that show was differently-memorable because I had Gideon's bible in my pocket and people were getting arrested for throwing snowballs at the Christians who were holding a vigil across the street, with candles, as they prayed for our souls. It might have been Wheeling anyway.

And the usher? I definitely remember issues between smokers and an usher. But maybe that guy was at a show somewhere in Ohio instead.

Did I make my move during Rasputina, or maybe it was some other opener? Was Rasputina even at that show? (Maybe it was unrelated to the opening act?)

I do know that I hopped over a barrier and immediately got sent to the back, and that's the important part of the story that I wanted to convey. The rest is just context.

And the trick is to just fill in enough believable details about that context that the story works. (It's even easier if you believe those details yourself.)

I mean, I can't remember what I had for dinner 6 months ago, but if I snuck into a presentation and anyone famous was announced as the surprise guest, I think I would remember that! I would assume most people do not recall everything with this much detail, just the (ha) memorable things.

Careful. Consider that many of Raymond's writings are actually unverifiable.

Sharing ringtones via IR was The Thing To Do back in the late 90s/00s, before copyright issues began making their noise.

I recall being dismayed that BT was so unreliable for so long that it was often STILL better to send files via IR.

Huh, now I remember a 90's or early 00's watch that has data, and the way to upload data onto it was by running a special Windows program that would flicker an area of the screen black and white. You'd point the face of your watch to it and the flickering had data encoded onto it.

Since it's 2026, googling brings me nothing... had to ask Gemini: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCHHzw4s5W4

I loved IR contact/note sharing! It was easy, fast, and reliable. It also worked across different types of phones.

There's still nothing comparable :(

I mostly remember infrared transfers in the context of beaming contacts between PalmPilots. It was pretty fast for that, and actually, much more reliable than modern AirDrop.

I don't know if it's the same technology, but I had a microcontroller toy as a little kid where you'd 1) write the programs on your computer (or in my case, type them in from the tutorial book, without actually comprehending any of it) and then 2) transfer the compiled program to the device itself via (IIRC) this little puck-shaped thing with a blinking red light. It was pretty cool, I wonder if I still have it stashed away anywhere.

I remember IR printing, it was nifty! Had some fun with random public printers and my little HP palmtop…