real life goes on

[Wazoo]

kid running with flashlight down a city street at about 0200 ... a ploice car pulls up to the next intersection .. the kid stops, does a 180, and starts running faster on that new direction .. polica car turns that way .. the kid jumps a fence and tries to run around a house, only to trip over some flower-garden ornamental fencing. Based on that activity, a few other police cars were contacted, area surrounded, and kid taken into custody. og course, the kid's story was that he was "not doing anything" ....

side issue, I received a phone call from the owners of the place that I have way too much crap in storage, Left a four-bedroom two story house with a two-car garage and am now living in a <800 sqaure-foot house .. not even space to pit up a table & chairs for the normal meal-eating experience ....

Anyway, motion sensors had been shot out, assumedly with a BB-gun or sling-shot, fence had a large hole cut through it ... ecidence shows that about 20 storage units were attempted, only four were successgilly broken into ... two units were empty, one was an electrical contractor's unit with thousands of dollars worth of tools and hardware, nothing touched ... however, one of my units was opened.

In these days of iPhones, iPods, MP3s, video games with realism galore, there's a bunch of folks scratching their heads .... 8-track tapes, 3 cases of 24 each were taken .... at least three plactic 'boxes' that held approximately 80 vinyl 33-1/3 albums are gone ... found near the opening in the fence were two boxes full of my old AFX Aurora HO-scale slot-car tracks, cars, and accessories ... I had two stacks of boxes that I used to have to move to get to boxes sitting on some metal bookshelves, and now there's clear floor-space in front of those metal shelves (no idea what was in the missing stacks, it's only been 11 years since they were placed there, and my only real recollection was having to move them at this point) .. even stranger than that, a dining room wooden chair is sitting there, but the actual seat is missing ...????

Situation now it seems is that the police hace some of the stuff (at least one case of 8-tracks) .. trying to pull off fingerprints in hopes that this time they can actually get the direct evidence needed to actually charge and convict this kid (and assumedly his cohorts) ....

Trying to work out the karma thing ..... I'm providing health/home care for several folks in the area, mow lawns for several folks in the area, all the computer work done for what ends up being no-charge, am currently working on moving the washer/dryer from the basement to the main floor of the folks' house, as neither one can easily negotiate the stairs anymore, and the load-carrying part of that exercise doesn't fit in with Mom's current back problems. On and on, but again, trying to work out just what the 'system' is that somehow directed some idiot kids to go to that much effort to get their hands on my 'ancient' crap ...????

[StevenUnderwood]

Wazoo,

I know you are not looking for sympathy but sorry. I'm also not trying to make light of the situation but I think your life would make an excellent sitcom. Or you need to write a book.... so many stories to tell.

[epgeek]

Wazoo, Sorry to hear about this turn of events. Have always respected your opinions even when I diagreed with them. Without your efforts spam Cop would flounder. See you are in Iowa, by any chance do you know another famous techie named "furo" who also lives/lived in Iowa?

[Wazoo]

I know you are not looking for sympathy but sorry.

No sympathy needed, bu tthanks .. this is just another one of those deals, absolutely nothing new for me. I lost the overpowering urge to get angry at getting ripped off during those wonderful years of divorce proceedings and activities. Me being informed that if I rook anything out the door, I'd go immediately to jail. Yet, I'd come home, find the doors wide open, in one case, after changing all the locks, the two back doors having the glass broken out, crowbar used, etc. and stuff missing. Police contact my dearlt beloved, who readliy admits to doing all of that .. but of course, we're not divorced yet, so the 50/50 crap is 'applicable' as far as the police are informed. I attempt to take her to court on 27 counts of breaking and entering, theft, etc., subpoened various other parties involved and as witnesses, only to find that I needed to have had a previous court date/hearing to 'show cause' to have established that there was enough data/proof/whatever ro then have scheduled this hearing .... yeah, like I was going to try again and get a dozen other folks to miss a day of work for the next attempt, never mind the cost involved in getting all that paperwork processed and served the first time ($35 each) ..... beleive me, I learned that getting upset didn't help <g>

I'm also not trying to make light of the situation but I think your life would make an excellent sitcom.

Actually, those that know me / knew me at various parts of my life tended to point to The Twilight Zone as so many things were just so hard to beleive.

Or you need to write a book.... so many stories to tell.

Back to that divorce thing .. I used to run something akin to a diary, just to keep track of things. Maybe six years into it, someone referred me to another guy that had gone through one that had taken something like seven years .. made an appointment to meet at the restaraunt of a Howard Johnson's hotel, that half-way between our abodes ..... I walked in with my breifcse, a sack containing the last printout of that diary thing (too thivk to fir into the breifcase) .... he looked at it, told me he knew what it was, and proceeded to tell me that it was a waste of time. Nobody wanted to read it, it was worthless as any kind of court documentation, on and on .... made sense, so I stopped updating it. Of course, then I started running into issues of just when something had happened .. so had to go back to keeping it up to date just for my own 'head' .....

But, just as with soime of the 'war' stories, it's hard to conceive of anyone actually stopping at a shelf and actually buying the book .... technically, it would be over in the non-fiction side of the store, but .... who'd believe most of the stuff written about <g>

Dealy beloved's plan (documented) was to have me thrown out of the house, a crew was to have been hired a coupkle of days later, and everything to be loaded into trucks and away she'd go. Step #1 .. she's upstairs asleep (or was when I was last upstairs) .. I'm downstairs in 'my' room (all the computers and such) ... somewhere around 0300, local police break down the front door and come chatging in .. very surprised to find me sitting in front of a keyboard .... they were there for maybe 45 minutes trying to piece things together ... and this was a timeframe when anytime they responded to a domestic issue, someone went to jail ... but, they left without dragging me off .... my darling decided to leave the house, so she disappeared. The nect morning, I find a subpoena on my front door, inviting me to an 'emergency' hearing at the local courthouse the following Monday .... novel, you try to find a lawyer to represent you on a Friday evening for a Monday morning court appearance. (actually, unfortunately, I did ...quite another whole story ...)

Anyway, show up in court and find out .... I had come home drunk, took my clothes off just inside the front door, found her sleeping in a chair, (while worried and waiting for me to make it home) .. and then I tried to have me way with her. Threw her down the stais at least three times, attempted to nail her when I threw a guitar amp at her, on and on .... and this is where the responding police had an issue, I wasn't drunk, she showed no signs of physical abise, her hair wasn't mussed up, etc. etc. etc. ...

my belief is that the presiding judge saw through her game plan .... gave her the house during the day, 0800-1700 .. basically while I was at work ... then she went to whereever she was staying and I had the house the rest of the time. (there was a business involved that was being run out of the house) ... so that next day, as usual, I didn't get out of work till after dark, came home, flipped the switch to turn on the lights. Nothing happened. Went down the split foyer stairs, tried the swich in the bathroom at the bottom of the stairs ... nothing .... all the lughtbulbs in the house had been removed .... repeated three days/nights in a row ..... things went downhill after that ... <g>

Bacaise of the allegation about me 'coming home drunk' I was referred to a drug/alchohol abuse office for evaluation. I stated that I had quite drinking back in the 70's, determining that I had a problem. When asked what plan, group, treatment I'd received to quit, she got a bit testy when I said that I had made the determination on my own and simply quit drinking. During the following 'debate' about whether I could have stopped so easily after suggesting that I was an alcoholic, she then made the suggestioin that I attend a men's anger working group.

So basically, every Monday evening, I was learning about 'anger' issues .. for the next four years. I finally asked why so many other folks seemed to come for a while, then disappeared (some returning after a while, due to their next actions that got them referred <g>) ... Some were referred for say 6 months, others were referred for 100 hours, etc. I contacted the abuse office .. the lady that had 'referred' me had actually died a couple of months prior ... wrapped her car around a tree, driving while intoxicated ... the guy I ended up talking to was still trying to work through her case-load. Bottom line, I was never 'referred' .. it was just a 'suggestion' she included in her report to the courts, that included "no abuse situation involved" ... thusly, there wasn't a 'time' associated with my 'referral' .... I remember pointing out that it was a good thing that I'd been attending these meetings for so long, as a normal person would probably be pretty ticked off <g>

To balance that, I will admit that I did learn a lot. There's no way I would have believed that there were people like that, doing those things in reality .... scary .... the 'Admin' of the group loked to have me talk last, as again, those that arrived at the meeting thinking they had issues, were generally bowled over by some of the stuff I was going thoygh. Funny now to think back and remember how many offers I had to 'take care of my problem, I know people" .. <g>

But, as I stated above, who'd believe such stuff??? I recall an elderly couple that I basically thought of a a second set of parents, they'd done so much for us every time we'd been assigned to Vitginia. They were having some real hard issues in understanding what was going on, but ... 'she' told me one day that they had pretty much sorted it out, based on that when I told the same story twice, it came out the same way, the facts remained the same. When my dearly beloved told the same story twice, it kept getting worse, more details, etc. etc. .... Example being a car accident, where my darling hit the steering wheel with her jaw, caising a TMJ issue (jaw joint problems) .. that story ended up being that her required orthodontal tretments were due to me hitting her and breaking her jaw in eight places ....

on and on .. and most definitely, more than what anyone wants to read here .... again, who'd believe this kind of crap?

[Wazoo]

Wazoo, Sorry to hear about this turn of events. Have always respected your opinions even when I diagreed with them.

Thanks .. admitting that I do have that tendency to puch my point of view <g>

Without your efforts spam Cop would flounder.

Don't think I could take any credit for the spamcop.net system at all .... but thanks for the thought ...

See you are in Iowa, by any chance do you know another famous techie named "furo" who also lives/lived in Iowa?

I do recall a "furo-tech" guy .. but it's been a few years ago ....

Those 'names' really tend to hurt a bit. The last time in Virginia, I ran an Apple-II base BBS. A giy that worked for me gave a ride home to the wife of another Sysadmin (known as 'Horse') of a C-64 based BBS ... who I 'talked' to on-line quite often. Turns out, he lived like 6 houses down on the same development I lived in. A few nights later, I was talking (on-line) to the Sysadmin of a PC-based BBS, joking that I'd just found out where 'Horse' lived and it was just down the street ... it turns out that this guy lived about two blocks behind me ..... for all the barbeques, river-runs, etc. that happened for those years, I don't believe I ever got around to learning their 'real' names ... and thisly, have no idea how to contact them these days ... I do know that both of them have moced, one to Maine, but .....?????

I found out that there's a number of places 'here' that only know me by Wazoo .... a couple of ISPs, some stores that sell computer stuff .... onlu an e-mail address for contact ..... ran into that when I sent someone out to pick up something I'd already handled over the phine, but she walked in and used my real name, and no one knew what she was talking about .. then she mentioned 'Wazoo' <g>

[Merlyn]

Sorry to hear all that.

But on the brighter side it would make a great Master Card commercial.

Getting all my stuff back -- Priceless!

[Farelf]

Sorry to hear of your latest travails and troubles.

... I will admit that I did learn a lot. There's no way I would have believed that there were people like that, doing those things in reality .... scary .... the 'Admin' of the group loked to have me talk last, as again, those that arrived at the meeting thinking they had issues, were generally bowled over by some of the stuff I was going thoygh. Funny now to think back and remember how many offers I had to 'take care of my problem, I know people" .. <g> ...

Yeah systems are dumb, that's why sessions are run by highly remunerated mental health professionals who are meant to ensure the process gets to be smart . Putting a bunch of highly vulnerable/visibly affected people together to share their slender resources is a plan, I guess. Just one likely to have unintended outcomes. Glad you survived that and came out of the period (if not the process) stronger. But not bulletproof, never forget - you push yourself too hard, trust me.

You mentioned karma at the beginning - IIUC that's all about "the next life", doesn't work to ameliorate the vicissitudes of the present one, quite the opposite in a sense. Regardless of actual beliefs, that's not a bad model to work with - it being all too apparent that reward in the present has very little to do with pure merit (how fortunate for those who served that the military provides such excellent "instruction" in the reality of the merit and reward thing).

Yeah, I would read your book. Buy it even . If you wrote it on a keyboard which actually has labels on the keys . Except the really interesting parts are probably still embargoed (and I think the 30-year 'rule' is a myth?).