Whats nuts is that my middle school Lake Tahoe Bus Station sold MONDO - and for a middle schooler, it was pretty expensive... I Think it was ~$7 or maybe $5.99 - regardless, it was NUTS in 1989/1990 F I cant even recall the time...

But the sold it in LAKE TAHOE. IN 1990-ish!

UHM, was also a subsccriber of 2600 and a total phreak (built blue/black boxes that fit into film canisters, and had an official captain crunch cereal whistle when it was released)

We used to troll 411 (in the early US, you could call "411" for "information" and it would connect you to operator who you then ask "Connect me with [BUSINESS] or [WHAT IS THE TELEPHONE NUMBER WITH PERSON X IN CITY Y]

So we wou;d have contests on how long we could keep the 411 OP online, and social engineer where they live, where work, how big call center, etc... we were like 14 years old and just doing this for laughs in 1988 or such.

I also pulled the famous 'packing tape on dollar bill' hack (theft) to play video games ;

So there was this 'hack' where you put a strip of packing tape (folded over itself such that the sticky parts are together) - you put them on a $1 or $5 bill\

You put the dollar into a vending machine at the post office to buy stamps.

You buy the cheapest amount of stamps, then you YANK the dollar-in-packing-tape from the machine...

You receive the stamps, the change from the yanked bill, take the change to the Safeway (grocery store) next door and you play the video games they had in them ; Defender and Contra.

It took us $25 in stolen quarters from the post office machine vuln to this attack to beat contra.

My buddy who I did this with is now EVP at Blizzard.