BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

Continued From:

Who Is This, And How Did You Get In My Computer? PART 1…

The modem had finally negotiated a compatible communications protocol and was “speaking” to another device somewhere. For all I knew, that somewhere was halfway around the world, or just right next door – remember, Caller ID was just an idea from the land of Sci-Fi back then…

I waited impatiently for what was going to happen next… Having seen Wargames more than once – I did work at a video store, after all – I was pretty much bracing myself for some idiot to type in “SHALL WE PLAY A GAME?” then tell me his name was Joshua and that he controlled all of the nuclear missiles in the country. If that happened, I was going to be even less happy than I already was.

The screen cleared and the phosphor green cursor winked at me from the upper left corner of the monitor. I sat watching, my hands in my lap and one eyebrow raised as I waited for something more to appear. After what seemed like a full thirty seconds had passed, the cursor dropped down two lines on the screen of its own accord, as if some phantom had just hit the enter key twice.

A second or two later, one laborious letter at a time, the word “hello” appeared.

I was still perturbed, but now I was also slightly curious. Obviously I had a live person at the other end, and I was assuming they were aware that they had one too. After all, they had just kept calling and calling until they managed a connection, so this apparently fit into their plan somewhere along the line.

Of course, I did have one thing going through my mind. BBS’s (Bulletin Board Systems – a precursor to the Internet) were seriously gaining popularity around this time. I, myself, frequented several, and while I ended up actually hosting and running one a few months after this incident, I wasn’t doing so at that moment. Of course, someone with a number close to mine could have been, and this could all be a matter of a mis-dial. This would mean the person at the other end might be just as confused as me right now since there was no welcome screen or login prompt being displayed.

I stared at the glowing word on the screen a moment longer. The thing was, BBS popularity was big among the 11-14 year old crowd, so I really needed to avoid typing back a string of expletives damning this person for interrupting my night, lest it be some tween with a Commodore 64 who would go running to mommy and daddy screaming that some guy at XXX-XXXX telephone number was cussing at him.

Keeping this in mind, I rested my fingers on the keys. “Hello,” I typed back, much faster than my mystery caller had. Of course, I typed around 85wpm back then. Now, it’s more like 60wpm. Arthritis seriously sucks… But, I digress…

The person at the other end slowly typed again, “hello”.

I rolled my eyes. It seemed I didn’t have a rocket scientist calling me, so the likelihood of it being a tween with a hastily – and incorrectly – scrawled BBS number from a buddy at school instantly grew.

I set my fingers flying across the keyboard once again. “Sorry, but this number isn’t a BBS. It’s the number for a private individual.”

I waited for a response.

It came. “ya so”

Apparently the mystery tween was also a smartass who didn’t have a shift key or a grasp of punctuation. The latter two, while irritating, I could forgive. The first one, not so much… So, not really having patience for that sort of thing – I was young, remember…not that I have all that much patience for it now either, but I was much worse back then – I control-keyed myself over to the command menu and disconnected the call without bothering to type an answer.

Now, the thing about modems is this – they only do what they have been told to do. And, back then (even today for that matter, though it is far more transparent than it was in the good ol’ days) you would generally tell them to do something with what was called an “AT” command. Why? Because all commands started with the letters “AT” of course, which more or less stood for “ATTENTION”… So, it was pretty much “Attention modem, do this” – although it took the form of commands like ATA (Attention modem: Answer) or ATS13=0 (Attention modem: set bit on register 13 to zero – essentially “off”… binary and all that jazz…)

My point here is that with the exception of telling the modem to disconnect the annoying a$$wipe kid who was connected, the last thing I had told the device to do was initialize in the Auto Answer mode. Since I had not “reset” any registers, as far as it was concerned, it was going to answer the phone.

So, when the phone inevitably rang again, it did what it was intent on doing.

I suppose I could have picked up the phone, or  quickly entered a re-init code before the third ring had sounded, but I didn’t. I just muttered, “Little f*cking bastard,” and sat there as the system connected and warbled through a fresh protocol negotiation.

The screen cleared and I was faced with “hello” once again.

I keyed in, “Don’t you have anything better to do?”

“no” was the response.

I typed back, “Some of us have to go to work in the morning.”

“ya me to,” my mystery caller laboriously returned. (BTW, I am misspelling my mystery caller’s entries as close to the way they were misspelled as I can remember.)

I raised an eyebrow… Okay, either I had an adult or a lying tween. I was leaning toward lying tween, but one never knew. You still don’t these days. Susie Silky Thighs in the hot sex chat room could be a 52 year old drunk guy sitting there in his underwear pulling his pud for all you know. I think there was even a viral video out on the net where someone used that idea for a commercial or something… Yeah, I know… Oh look, a chicken… (I really, really do think that chicken thing is friggin’ hilarious…) Oh, and BTW, I don’t hang out in hot sex chatrooms… I’m married to E K, so why would I bother? My ex-boss did, however, and probably still does… yeah, ‘nother blog.

So, anyway, mystery caller says he/she has to go to work in the morning too.

“Okay, so don’t you think it’s bedtime?” I typed back.

“not yet,” was the reply. “what ar you dooing”

“Getting annoyed,” I replied.

“ya”

I decided to ask the obvious question. “Who is this?”

“you no” came across the screen.

I replied, “Obviously I don’t or I wouldn’t have asked.”

By way of a response I got, “pool open yet”

This one gave me pause. Obviously this was someone who knew me, or  at the very least knew I had a pool. If it was one of my friends then they already knew whether or not the pool was open, so I couldn’t imagine them asking such a question. I turned in my seat to look around at my windows. The blinds were drawn so I didn’t figure I was being watched, unless this whack job on the other end had X-ray vision or something. I allowed my gaze to linger for a moment on the headboard of the bed where I had my loaded .357 magnum stashed. I considered getting it out and laying it beside the keyboard, but thought maybe that was being just a bit too paranoid.

“Who is this?” I typed again, none to excited about the creepy stalker feeling I was now getting.

“i see you tammarow” was the only answer I received before the modem clicked and the call disconnected.

I sat for nearly an hour waiting for another call, but it never came.

Before finally climbing back into bed I saw to it that I checked the load on my pistol and shifted it to be within reaching distance if something awakened me unexpectedly… You know, like a psycho killer stalker or something, know what I mean?

The next morning I was still ruminating over the whole incident, and doing a lot of looking over my shoulder as well. I called all my friends with computer equipment and asked them if they were screwing with me, to which I received believable answers to the negative. I told my co-workers about it and even a couple of my regular customers who had become slightly more than acquaintances but not quite good friends. They all agreed that it was a bit weird, and one even suggested I contact the police. Of course, even then I knew better than to believe the cops would do anything about it. I mean, after all, what could they do other than take a report? That way there would be a paper trail when my corpse was found hanging from a swing set in the park with my hands chopped off, or some oddball crap like that.

Yeah… big help…

It was sometime after lunch – mid afternoon as I recall – when Scott Ruddle wandered into the store and listened to me tell the story.  (In case you are new here, or don’t remember previous references to Scott, he ended up being my best man when E K and I married. He’s also the person upon whom the character Detective Benjamin Storm, from the RGI novels, is based… Yeah, that Scott Ruddle…) So, anyway, this was well prior to the beer can tossing… (see: There I was, Just Sitting By The Pool…) In fact, we had only just recently met and the friendship we eventually developed hadn’t even officially been launched just yet. At this point he was one of those “pretty good acquaintance – semi almost friend” types. As he stood there nodding his head and adding an occasional “no sh*t?” to let me know he really was listening, it suddenly dawned on me.

I stopped mid sentence and stared at him, then started shaking my head. “You friggin’ bastard,” I said.

No longer able to contain himself he started laughing.

And, so began my psyche damaging, sometimes very odd, but lasting and incredibly true friendship with Sergeant Scott Ruddle and his wife.

Now you know why I’m just a bit addled in the head…

And, yeah… Now he’s a cop. Like I’ve said before, welcome to my world…

More to come…

Murv

Part 5 of 12

Continued from: Mahwage: So I Have This Idea…

…And I’m, gonna get maie air air reed…

Okay, old song reference, I know. I’ll stop singing now.

Unfortunately, Tom Hanks wasn’t available for my bachelor party… He was busy building his career as I was preparing to embark upon this odyssey.  But, that really didn’t matter. Given that at that point in history we weren’t on speaking terms – and we aren’t right now either, for that matter ,(probably because we’ve never met), I figured I’d just find someone else to arrange the entertainment.

But, let me back up a second…

In the last blog, E K finally said yes to the big question. While you would think that I would have jumped up and run around the room screaming, “She said YES! She said YES! WooHoo, she said YES!” – a very logical assumption given the circumstances, mind you – the reality is, I didn’t. Truth be told, it took something on the order of 30 seconds, maybe even a full minute for it to sink in that she had given me an answer that was vastly different, and diametrically opposed to the one she had been giving me to date.

Now I had a problem. No ring. Yeah, back when I had originally broached the subject I didn’t have one either… I had just been winging it. Given the answers I had been getting, I hadn’t been in a hurry to go purchase one either… Fortunately, my frugal live-in girlfriend turned fiancee didn’t mind. I think that just for grins we ended up using a cable tie, or piece of string, or something innocuous that was laying around the shop at the time. I doubt she even has it anymore because she’s nowhere near as sentimental as me, but watch her read this blog and prove me wrong. If she does, I’ll be sure to let everyone know…

(Just as an aside, for the record, a few years later when things were no longer so tight, I saw to it that she received a full blown engagement/wedding set with as much gold and as many sparkly rocks as I could manage in a tasteful ring…)

At any rate, now a snowball began rolling downhill, and it just kept growing…

For one thing, we made arrangements to take E K’s parents to dinner, whereupon I asked her father if it would be okay for me to marry his daughter. Yeah, I know, old fashioned, but even though it seemed to surprise him I think he appreciated the gesture.

Then, we were in the middle of buying the house, which as noted in the first of this blog series, was a fixer-upper from hell. I suppose we were just in such a hurry to get out of the duplex – not because it was a bad place, mind you. Not at all. In fact, it was actually very nice, and the landlord was a great guy too. You see, it’s just that the lease had a “verbal-handshake” rider saying no pets.

I can see the question marks now… Yeah, Kathy’s cats… explain that one, Murv…

Well, you see, we had signed the lease on the duplex and were in the middle of shaking hands when the landlord said, “Oh, I forgot to ask, you don’t have any pets do you? Because, they aren’t allowed…”

At this point, E K and I simply looked at one another then turned to him and lied through our teeth. We had been looking for an apartment for what seemed like forever, and this was the first one in our price range that hadn’t rejected our application due to my rocky credit history and hers as well – you see, she wasn’t delinquent on anything, but having been married and at that point not officially divorced just yet, her name was tied to her ex-husband’s debts, which made it look like she owed way too much to way too many folks to be able to afford an apartment.

So, re-acquiring the earlier thread – we bought ourselves a fixer upper. Being twenty-somethings, giddy in love, and in a hurry to get out of an apartment before we had to sign another year long lease, we probably didn’t inspect things quite as closely as we should – and, by the same token, probably paid far more for the house than it was worth, which is most likely why they accepted our offer immediately with no qualms whatsoever… But, oh well, live and learn…

Here’s the thing – we had set the date for our wedding to be October 31. Halloween. Samhain. Not the traditional sort of date, but hey, given that on that night the veil between the worlds is said to be at its thinnest, relatives and friends who had already gone over to the other side (i.e. croaked) would find it much easier to attend… Hey, works for me.

At this point, all manner of things were in motion – for one, we were beginning to wonder if we were going to have to postpone the wedding for legal reasons. It seems the attorney handling E K’s divorce had been ditzing about, and while it was one of those uncontested, sign on the dotted line, thank you very much, goodbye sort of divorces, the legal eagle had been postponing and postponing getting the paperwork filed. She seemed to have a bit of a procrastination issue. Rule number 1, never use an attorney who advertises in the TV guide. Yeah, I’m not kidding… But, in this case it wasn’t EK’s “frugalness” to blame, it was the ex-husband’s militant stinginess. There’s a huge difference… But, I digress… The thing here being, in the state of Missouri you have to be  legally divorced for X number of days, (I can’t remember the actual number), before you can remarry. Or at least at that time, (back in the dark ages), that’s the way it was. I’m not sure what the statutes are these days.

Fortunately, the procrastinating mouthpiece finally got off the pot , or sh*t, or whatever she needed to do that she had actually already been paid to do.   The old marriage was dissolved and we ended up meeting the deadline with something on the order of 3 days to spare. So, that was all good.

Now came the new money issues… Obviously, since Kathy had been married before her parents weren’t going to pop for a wedding, even if they could have afforded it, so it was all on us. And, we had just bought a house, so we weren’t exactly flush with excess cash. We looked at halls, and even hotel suites, to rent for a reception but just couldn’t hammer them into our budget, no matter how hard we tried or which corners we cut. So, we finally made a decision… We would pour our limited funds into fixing up the house as best we could in the interim, buy some food, and have the wedding right there in the living room…

Yeah. Stupid eh? Well, we were young. Give us a break.

The problem we faced now is that by the time we reached this decision and had officially closed on the house, we only had about 30 days to make this happen. Somehow we did… (Remind me to tell you sometime about running a floor sander for hours on end…)

Of course, in the pictures you will see over the next few installments, it is obvious that things are woefully unfinished – no baseboards, partially sanded woodwork, and don’t even get me started on the kitchen, which remained untouched as far as remodeling for a few years. We were concentrating on the living room and dining room, since that was where things were to take place. The rest was, unfortunately, temporary storage for the time being…

So, where did this leave us? Obviously planning a wedding and reception, but it also left us being our own caterers as well. And, being the eclectic, bizarre folks we are, we didn’t want all the traditional wedding food one has , in Saint Louis, at least.  That being tasteless roast beef, baked mostaccioli, and green beans almandine. No, we just had to be different. Therefore, our menu ended up consisting of a spiral cut Honey Baked Ham® from none other than the Honey Baked Ham® company themselves. In addition, we also served veal parmigiana, and apple-rice curry. Erin, remember Erin from ComputerTrend, the busty blonde? Well, Erin’s husband was actually a restaurant manager at a local country club so he loaned us some extra chafing dishes they had laying about, which was a huge help. With that, we were almost finished with the menu save for several large boxes of assorted heat and serve hors d’oeuvres, also purchased from HBH… When we placed that order the guy at the counter called into the back, “I need x y number of boxes of Whores Duh-Vores…” E K had plenty of fun with that…

We ordered up a keg of beer,  and I even picked up everything I needed to make sauce for the veal patties. We should have been set, but we weren’t…

My dad dropped by for a visit and asked how things were going. Beaming, we told him all was good, and outlined the menu choices. He nodded, grunted, then asked, “So what kind of cake are you getting?”

Kathy and I looked at one another. Then we looked at him. Then we looked at one another again.

I said, “Uhm…uhh…”

Kathy said, “I guess we aren’t. We can’t afford one.”

My father raised an eyebrow, then snorted and said, “Bullshit. You can’t get married without a cake.”

With that, he reached into his wallet and withdrew a 100 dollar bill and handed it to Kat while adding, “Let me know if it costs more.”

And so, we went “cake shopping”… This was new to me. Even with all my experience with restaurants and diners, (on my mother’s side of the family) , I had never been all about the baking end of things… So, I did what any self-respecting man should do… I gave in to whatever E K wanted, listened closely so that if she needed help making a decision I chose whatever it sounded like she was leaning toward, and voila… We had a cake…

At this point all of the guys reading this are probably doing a rundown – “Lemme see… ya’ got ham, ya’ got beer, ya’ got cake… Yep, we’re good.”

If I had to guess, however, I’d say you women readers are most likely all pretty antsy at this point. I suspect – though I may be wrong – that you’re probably dancing around in your seats, shaking your fingers at the screen, and muttering, “But… but… but… what about… but…“

Do you mean, “What about The Dress?”

Yeah, I figured as much.

So, yeah… We also had to go wedding dress shopping. Yet another new experience for me, especially since I was wholly unaware that the groom was in any way involved in the selection of the dress.

Okay… We’ve established that this wasn’t Kat’s first rodeo. In addition to that, our house isn’t all that big, (i.e. no room for a 90 foot long train), and we were out of money. Also, while she can be as girly girl as the next woman, she isn’t all about too much foo-feraw…

And so, we went wedding dress shopping at… wait for it… Kmart®. Yeah, “Definitely Kmart, definitely definitely definitely Kmart…” I think I might have even picked up a 3 pack of tighty-whities while we were there.

Now, before you ladies get together a mob to come after me, it wasn’t my idea. It was Kathy’s. But, let me tell you something, she picked out an incredible dress and couldn’t have looked any better in my opinion, and it came in at around 40 bucks. She already had a brand new pair of white heels, so no new shoes were needed in her estimation. See what I mean about her being frugal? Yeah… it amazes me too…

So… Now were were set. She had a dress, we had a menu, the polyurethane was dry on the newly refinished hardwood floors, and we even had rings… we’ll get to those in a bit. My best buddy, Scott Ruddle, (after whom Detective Benjamin Storm in the RGI novels is modeled), was tapped to be my best man, and Erin (remember Erin?) was to be Kathy’s Matron of Honor. We had a license, and we even had a preacher – Kathy’s father, who is a Baptist Minister…

The day was fast approaching, and little did we know all hell was about to break loose…

More to come…

Murv

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