games /vad'ing/ (From VAD, a permutation of ADV,
i.e.
ADVENT, used to avoid a particular
admin's continual
search-and-destroy sweeps for the game) A leisure-time
activity of certain hackers involving the covert exploration
of the "secret" parts of large buildings - basements, roofs,
freight elevators, maintenance crawlways, steam tunnels, and
the like. A few go so far as to learn locksmithing in order
to synthesise vadding keys. The verb is "to vad" (compare
the late 1970s, before which such activity was simply called
"hacking"; the older usage is still prevalent at
MIT.
Vadding (pronounced /vay'ding/) was also popular
CMU, at
least as early as 1986. People who did it every night were
called the "vaders," possibly after "elevator," which was one
of the things they played with, or "invader," or "Darth
Vader". This game was usually played along with
no-holds-barred hide-and-seek. CMU grad students were the
known to pry open the inner doors of elevators between floors
to see the graffiti on the inside of the outer doors.
The most extreme and dangerous form of vadding is "elevator
rodeo", also known as "elevator surfing", a sport played by
wrasslin' down a thousand-pound elevator car with a 3-foot
piece of string, and then exploiting this mastery in various
stimulating ways (such as elevator hopping, shaft exploration,
rat-racing, and the ever-popular drop experiments). Kids,
don't try this at home!
(1996-01-07)