> to Barnes and noble, grab a coffee, and plant myself on the bench in the periodical section to pour through every page of the latest 2600, desperately trying to commit to my memory as much as possible

I still go to my local Barnes & Noble, the last one remaining in Seattle, to get my 2600 (and a coffee!) every quarter. Why B&N? No other bookstore in the city sells 2600, at least not reliably.

It's been a quarterly ritual for quite some time, even though I could just get a "lifetime" subscription and have more Hacker Quarterly pages to read than I could do in an actual lifetime. I still enjoy going and getting a paper magazine and reading spill about central offices and script code injection.