Tea for one
By Mark Gross
rev. 12.28.10
Published by Mark Gross at Smashwords
Copyright 2010 Mark Gross
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Foreword
A number of folks have played parts in the development of this quandary that I find myself in. My dad was involved in a number of ways, although his role in total was early and minor. One portion was handing down his off kilter sense of humor to me. This has definitely helped me to appreciate this stranger-than-fiction story. One of my favorites among the many jokes he told me seems particularly appropriate:
A woman is walking down the street in the city. Up ahead, she notices a man stop, walk over to a building, and proceed to bash his head against the wall. As the woman makes her way, she gradually catches up to the head basher, who goes through his head bashing procedure several times before the woman eventually catches up with him. She does so, just as the head basher is completing another self-bashing. She walks up to him and addresses him, saying, excuse me sir, but I couldn’t help noticing that, as you walk along, you stop occasionally and bash your head. Why do you do that?
The head basher, with a dazed look and a slight smile, says, “Because it feels so good when I stop!”
I’m sure it would feel great, if only I could find a way - the author.
1: Shock and Awe
The old derelict trundled his shopping cart slowly through the September night toward downtown. He was wearing a sweat stained ball cap, a greasy pair of baggy jeans and a grimy wool blanket as a poncho. If you got within ten feet, you would hear that he was muttering quietly and you would also smell him, the stench of sweat, piss, and decrepitude surrounding him like fog. It was two in the morning on Tuesday after the Labor Day weekend and there was no one else on the streets.
He had first made his appearance wandering around the state capitol several weeks prior. The few cops that had noticed him at first no longer even saw him. He had already blended into the urban landscape, invisible to most. A couple of do-gooders from community organizations had tried to talk with him. They offered him a sermon, a cot and a meal, but no real communication had occurred and they had given him up as a lost soul.
As he made his way among the state office buildings, he stopped occasionally and took one or two aluminum pop cans from the bags in the cart. He set them on top of fiber optic utility panels and traffic light control boxes. At some of his stops, he pried open ground level water line access plates to set cans within them and he also set cans around a number of fire hydrants. Just before he left each of his stops he used a pocket sized torch to light the end of the fuse protruding from the top of each can. Briefly they flared bright, then dimmed as each fuse burned down into the flexible metal tube that separated the burning fuse from the thermite mixture in each can. Then he moved on down the street, methodically working his way through his planned list of targets on his first circuit through downtown. His route kept him out of the field of view of the security cameras.
Within a minute of each of the stops in his first round, the thermite in the cans ignited behind him and the superheated molten iron and aluminum oxide melted through the tops of the utility boxes. Hot liquid metal poured over the wiring and cables within and down into the conduits feeding the boxes from under the street. Traffic lights, telephone service and cable network service went out through blocks of the downtown state office district as he made his way. Water started spewing from the ground level access plates and fire hydrants, slowly flooding the streets.
As he quietly continued on his route, occasionally he would spend some time spreading dozens of steel caltrops around in particular intersections and thoroughfares. He had fabricated them himself, adapting the ancient Roman anti-cavalry weapon to his purpose, which was puncturing and rapidly deflating vehicle tires. He had painted them to blend with the color of the streets.
Completing his first round, he worked his way back. He started moving much more quickly, knowing that the responders would soon be on their way. On this circuit he used a custom made slingshot to lob a half dozen of his pop can thermite bombs onto the top of each of several state office buildings. He did this to ten buildings up to 5 stories tall. He also set several thermite bombs with longer fuses around natural gas lines feeding a few of the buildings. On the roofs of the buildings behind him, the thermite cans ignited and burned holes through the flat roof of each building. Superheated metal poured into the upper floors, melting and burning whatever was below. Some of the incendiary bombs successfully burned down through several of the upper floors of the buildings. Desks, file cabinets, carpets, and papers were ignited and the orange glow of the flames could soon be seen in upper level windows. The sprinkler systems did not function because the city water pressure had dropped to near zero as the streets below continued to flood.
Done with his direct assault on the downtown buildings and infrastructure, he grabbed the last thermite bomb from his shopping cart and then pushed the cart into some shrubs. He began moving more cautiously, using cover as he headed towards the bridge. He was watching and listening to avoid the first police cars and fire trucks that were scurrying towards the downtown area. On the way to the river, he stopped at a large propane tank beside a gas station. He set the thermite bomb he had been carrying on top of the tank. This bomb was 6 pop cans which were taped together with duct tape. It had 6 longer fuses that gave him time to jog away before they ignited, melted a hole in the top of the tank and blew a huge bright fireball into the night sky.
Shortly thereafter he reached the bridge that allowed drivers coming from the interstate access into the downtown area. He went down and disappeared into the brush on the riverbank for a few minutes. He took off the outer layer, his bum outfit, and put on running shoes and a new cap. Then he pulled a couple of large ceramic plant pots filled with thermite from his hiding place there. Working under the bridge, he set them on top of the two main steel load bearing girders which spanned the river. He lit the fuses, then climbed back up to the road and jogged onto the bridge heading away from downtown.
He was now wearing a jogging suit. From the middle of the bridge he threw a bundle, the old shoes wrapped in the bum rags, down into the river. They floated downstream on the surface of the swift dark current for a few moments before slowly sinking into the depths. About 2 minutes after he had jogged across the bridge towards his pickup, the thermite in the pots ignited and poured through the holes in the bottom of the pots onto the bridge beams. The steel beams weakened as they melted. Shortly thereafter, the bridge buckled and one end dropped into the river. The beams were no longer able to carry the load of the heavy, water laden fire truck that was the last vehicle to attempt to cross that bridge for a while.
As the buildings burned, police and firemen did their best to reach the downtown area and limit the damage. They were hampered by the loss of the bridge, the flooded streets and the lack of water pressure. Several fire trucks did make it into the downtown area only to have their tires punctured by the caltrops in the streets before they could reach the burning buildings. The 911 dispatchers had numerous communications problems. Their computer networks were not communicating, landline phones were down, the official radio frequencies and the cellular network were jammed with frantic message traffic.
Once he had jogged back to his pickup, his next destination was the primary power substation just on the edge of town. Arriving there, he lobbed a half dozen thermite bombs over the fence. Within moments after he drove off, the transformers began to burst and were arcing and sparking wildly. The power and cellular network went out over much of the downtown area for a few minutes, until the utility load switching system could reroute the downtown loads through a secondary substation on the other side of town. After he attacked that substation as well, the downtown power grid went out again.
Then he drove his pickup into the hills, watching the growing orange glow of the city that could be seen occasionally in his rearview mirror. After a 15 minute drive he reached the logging road that passed under the power transmission lines. He turned off a short distance up an overgrown side path and parked. He hiked the quarter mile up to the power transmission tower at the peak of the ridge. He located the two thermite bombs that he had hidden near the base of the tower and attached them to two of the four legs supporting the tower. He lit the fuses and hustled back down the hill towards his pickup.
Shortly before he made it back there, the thermite bombs ignited and melted through the two supports of the power line tower. As they buckled, the tower began to lean in the direction that the high tension lines were pulling the tower. The other two supports quickly failed where he had cut into them with the cordless reciprocating saw the previous night. The tower fell over, high voltage lines singing, arcing and snapping under the strain. The remaining lights of the valley surrounding the city went out, leaving only the orange glow of the flames. The falling high voltage lines started a forest fire in the hills, which were very dry after a long hot summer.
He drove back roads and logging roads around the rural outskirts of town, setting several more forest fires as he made his final circuit. Completing that, dawn was breaking as he drove his pickup away from the city awakening to a day of chaos. As he drove, he whistled idly to himself. He was looking forward to watching the news reports about his first nights work. He twitched suddenly and switched on the radio. The news radio announcers were already speculating wildly about his attacks. Driving towards his camp, back in the forested hills about 50 miles out of town, his idle whistling turned to chuckles. Now it was their turn to feel powerless!
Two
Somewhat by chance, I found an economic niche that I could fill in the early ‘90s. In the same time frame, my wife found me by placing an ad in the personals of the local alternative paper. It was a good match and probably the only way we might have found each other, as we are both painfully shy and socially inept. Locating the economic niche came about through a timely combination of events. First there was the purchase of my first computer in 1986. Then I acquired an AS degree in electronics in 1988. Finally there was Microsoft’s release of Windows. With this combination in place I was able to start making a little money working for myself starting in 1992. There was finally something people needed that I could provide.
I have a logical mind which is useful when troubleshooting computers. I can talk with people if I actually have something to talk about. I know how to explain technical subjects using common sense analogies and without a lot of jargon. Unlike many early computer techies, I also know how to keep my ego in check. On the other hand, social small talk is a waste of time, both for me and with me. I just can’t do it. I am a nerd, plain and simple. Prior to the early nineties people like me were objects of scorn and derision, considered weird and often outcast, only useful as a high school bullies source of lunch money.
I started advertising my services as a computer consultant in the classified service directory of the local paper in 1992. At that time, only about 10% of households contained a personal computer. My first computer was made by PC’s Limited (later to become Dell) and was a clone of IBM’s PC-AT. As it was delivered to me, it had an Intel 286 processor, 1 megabyte of RAM, a 1.2 megabyte floppy disk drive, a 20 megabyte hard drive and a 2400 baud telephone modem. Along with an IBM printer, the system cost me more than $4,000 hard earned 1986 dollars. In those days I was punching a clock in a factory as an electromechanical assembler, building bottling and packaging machinery, making about $10 per hour. That $4000 was the best money I ever spent.
As a result of that purchase in 1986, by 1992 I knew how DOS worked and knew how to use it. I was familiar with several varieties of software applications including word processing, spreadsheets and databases. I had communicated with other computer users on bulletin boards with my computer modem. The internet existed at that time, but internet usage was limited mostly to the military, government and academia. As a result of my electronics training, I understood DC electronics and digital/binary logic.
I was in the right place, at the right time and with the right skills and know-how. I was in my mid-30s and had my head on straight. I found myself with a loving and supportive wife who had a good job with good benefits. I grabbed hold of the tail of the tiger and held on for what turned out to be a wild ride.
3: Anger Management Therapy
After his first major attack on the state capital, he spent a month in the hills, returning to the herbicide spraying project which he had been working on through most of the summer. Wherever he found a steep hillside above a major road, railroad tracks or a flood water diversion culvert, he used either a backpack sprayer or a pressure washer to spray a powerful herbicide cocktail to kill the grass and brush. The root systems of these plants held the hillsides together during the heavy winter rains, but not so much during the upcoming winter.
The previous couple of months he had spent working on this project most weekday mornings. He had not been noticed as he traveled the roads in the vicinity of the capital city.. His pickup had been purchased several years before at a BLM auction. He dressed appropriately to the role of a road maintenance worker. No one had ever stopped to question him about what he was doing. During this time, he spent his afternoons, evenings and weekends in town, wearing the smelly old bum persona and finalizing plans for his upcoming attack on the city.
After that attack, he continued with the herbicide spraying project. Working now in the rural hills somewhat further away from the capital, he successfully remained invisible. After a month, things in the capital had started to settle down a bit. The power was back on, the bridge repairs were nearly complete and the forest fires were out. The populace had started to calm down, although the news media pundits were still milking the story for as much airtime as they could. Of course the state police, the FBI and Homeland security teams were hard at work on the case. The currently favored theory was that the attacks were the work of a cell of eco-terrorists or anarchists. Suspected activists of many flavors were getting a lot more grief than usual from law enforcement. Several letters had been received claiming responsibility and thousands of tips had flooded in.
All of this amused him considerably. After the way that he had been treated, after what he had lost and what had been taken from him, he was ready, willing and able to get payback. He also intended to keep getting it until he was too old to continue, or they started to close in on him, whichever came first. Unlike the poor bastard that had flown his light plane into the IRS building about 15 years earlier, he had a plan for a sustained campaign. He would not make one dramatic and futile suicidal attack, instead he would unleash hell on the state in as many ways as he could for as long as he could.
He had spent more than 10 years planning and preparing. They had thoroughly ruined his life and denied him the niche that had taken him so long to find and develop. He took some pride in the fact that through it all he had never squealed like a pig. He was not a pig, in his mind he was a free citizen and as such, it was his duty to take them to school. He was determined to teach the state government a lesson the people of the state would make them remember, or die trying. They had denied him his constitutional rights and the pursuit of happiness, depriving him of the essentials of liberty. He was not going to roll over and die in defeat, no way. Too many had suffered and sacrificed too much to earn freedom from tyranny, it would not be right to surrender that precious hard won freedom without a fight.
Four
By the time the spring of 1995 arrived, I had a database of several hundred regularly repeating customers, approximately 60% early home users and 40% small businesses. At that time, I would estimate that somewhere between 15 to 20% of households contained computers. Windows 3.11 had been user-friendly, reliable and stable enough and the price of clone PC’s had declined sufficiently to fuel the growth of a fledgling industry.
Late in the spring of ’95, my father’s wife called me for help. He was very ill with cancer spreading through his internal organs. She wanted me to come east in late July to help care for him during a couple of months that she had unavoidable business obligations. She was an event planner, with several large corporations as clients, so it was necessary to meet her obligations if her business was to survive. I talked with my brother and he agreed to spell me after the first month or so, so I let her know that I could and would come east and help for at least a month. I started working out how I might continue to operate my computer support business and maintain the customer base from a distance.
At that time my business phone was an early cell phone, a Motorola bag phone. It weighed about 3 pounds and I carried it everywhere with me. Most folks who had them did not carry them, instead they mounted them in their cars. In fact, they were commonly known as car phones. Anyway, my cell provider at that time provided unlimited call forwarding service with no airtime charge, but I would have to pay long distance charges for forwarding calls to another area code.
I decided that I could thereby forward my incoming business calls to a secondary phone line in my dad’s home, and that’s what I did. Then I just needed someone to pass the calls to, someone to provide computer services to my customer base while I was out of state. This was a trickier problem to solve, but I came up with a plan that worked fairly well and also turned out to be useful in the longer term.
I advertised in the help wanted section of the local papers classifieds – seeking independent computer technicians. Over several weeks, I had about 20 responses from prospects. Ten of these seemed sufficiently skilled and experienced that they might be able to provide the necessary computer support services. Most were technicians with full time jobs who were seeking to supplement their income by working in the moonlight. Three were available during the day, interested in pursuing the possibility of working entirely for themselves, as I did. I told them that I did not have enough work to keep them all as busy as they wanted to be, but that I would initially be distributing work to them equally. This would provide them with the opportunity to prove their skills in action. Based upon customer feedback, the most proficient would end up with the largest share of the work. They all understood and accepted this arrangement, so I had found a team to cover for me.
My business had been growing steadily, so I knew that once I returned, I would likely still have extra work to share with the technicians who had done the best work for the customers. I also knew that by sharing my customer base among 10 different techs, it was unlikely that one or two, who might try to continue working for previously referred customers after I returned, could subtract much from the customer base I had been building up. I didn’t have a written contract with these techs, I just laid out the referral fee structure and had an old fashioned handshake agreement with them, based upon the honor system.
My wife stayed in town working her own job. In her spare time, she helped me out by handling the business mail, banking and bills while I was gone. This included depositing the referral fees and tracking the job statement copies from the techs. I was gone for a little more than a month and it all worked out fairly well. Some time after I returned, I learned that a couple of the techs had indeed tried to continue working with some customers outside of the referral system. Between them they cooked up a new partnership venture, which did not work out for long. Most of the customers they had been working with returned to calling me for their computer support needs. So I did learn a number of valuable lessons from the month long experiment.
From the original ten, there were three that had the necessary traits to continue sharing work and customers with. They were honest and honorable, they were technically qualified and they had good communication skills. All three had full time jobs, so the pressure was off me to keep them busy. This did not turn out to be a problem since there was also sufficient new call volume to share with them. While I was out of the state in August, the much hyped release of Windows 95 caused another jump in home and business computer acquisition and use.
Through no fault of my own, I once again found myself to be well positioned, business wise. I had an existing customer base in a fast growing previously non-existent industry with little competition yet. I had a workable, fine-tunable business model and the beginnings of a team to handle growing call volume. I was back in town, ready to go back to work and I did so. In 1996 I personally went out on more than 900 on-site computer support appointments and shared several hundred with other techs as well.
From my direct experience, 1996 was the beginning of the fastest acceleration of growth of the PC industry. It was boom time and the boom lasted for about 5 years. Growth in the industry continued thereafter, but it has not shown the acceleration that it did during that time. By 2001, at least 60% of households contained computers and there were few small businesses that did not use computers in some way.
Don’t misunderstand my situation. Although I was in the right place at the right time, I wasn’t on easy street. On-site computer user support and computer troubleshooting are not easy. They are also not rocket science. It takes organization and time management skills, an understanding and application of the scientific method, good technical instincts and an incredible amount of patience. If I could get back all the time I’ve spent watching computers reboot, I would have time for a third childhood. And the time spent working on computers is the easy part.
Working with people, computer users, can be maddening. Many are their own and their computers worst enemy. In my experience the average computer user does more damage to their own computers than all the damage done by viruses, malware, cheap hardware and poorly debugged software, combined. Yet somehow, the user frequently remains oblivious and will usually blame the messenger, the computer, anyone but themselves. They just don’t get it. For computer technicians working in user support, the loss of the ability to maintain patience with those computer users who are psychologically blocked and mentally lazy is the primary cause of burnout.
From my experience, computer support requires a union of art and science. As my skills developed, it became a Zen like holistic exercise. When I was at the peak of my skills, I spent occasional entire days in the zone. The computers were responding to my guesswork about their issues. The users were giving me relevant information about their computer problems and we were communicating well. When in the zone, I was working on the computer and the user as a single entity. A computer is a multi-faceted, multi-purpose tool designed for use by the mind. At my peak, the customer learned that and learned how to use their computer as an extension of their mind.
5: His Golden Years
He had fairly well accomplished the objectives of his first attacks without leaving the authorities many clues at all. In Mid-October he decided it was time to let things cool for a bit and head south for the winter. He left the BLM pickup with a full tank of gas in a truck stop with the keys in it. He knew someone would get good use out of it and that it would end up stripped down in a yard somewhere. Then he adopted his Swiss eco-tourist alter ego, complete with fake passport, expensive touring bicycle with panniers and trailer, all-weather cycling outfit and heavily Swiss accented English. He rode to the coast and headed south, taking his time. He spent his nights in motels and campgrounds and paid cash for everything he needed. Within a few weeks he was far enough south to bask in the warm sun once again.
Meanwhile, the winter storms had started lining up and delivering their loads on the capital city and surrounding hills. Shortly thereafter, news reports began to contain items about numerous mudslides blocking highways and railroad tracks. Flooding in the hills was undermining and washing out roads around the capital city. These reports continued throughout the winter. Eventually the authorities could not avoid noticing the trend. The state road department budget for such problems for the winter was depleted within the first few weeks of the arrival of the rains.
Just before the first of the year, he stopped shaving and spent a few nights drinking instead of sleeping. Then he bought some new clothes for a derelict and kept the malodorous old rags that the bum had been wearing. Double bagging the smelly outfit in a daypack, he took the long bus ride back north to the capital city, arriving on a Saturday afternoon. He changed into the bums clothes in the restroom of the bus station and put his own clothes and the daypack into a storage locker. Then he walked over to the city library. Using one of the free public access computers, he hacked into several websites of large corporations headquartered in and around the capital city. He also hacked into the website of a local TV station as well as two local newspapers, including the alternative rag.
As a result of his work, for a few hours each of their front web pages offered a download of an electronic document file. This file was a manifesto he had concocted to incite anarchists to devise their own attacks, to take up and continue his war of attrition and sabotage. Written as if it originated from a group instead of an individual, his manifesto urged activists and anarchists to design their attacks to raise the cost of doing business in general. It also urged them to specifically target government bureaucracies and bureaucrats, as well as unethical corporations that spread foulness where we all have to eat, drink, breathe, and live.
After he was done distributing his manifesto, he walked back to the bus station, retrieved his daypack from the storage locker and changed back into his usual attire. Then he took a bus back south. At one of the buses scheduled food and restroom stops, he left the daypack and the bag with the bums clothing behind. A little more than two days after he had left it, he returned to his rented room in the sunny locale to the south. He had a shave and a shower and then he headed out to find a cold beer and see what the talking heads had to say about his manifesto.
Before the rains left in the spring, the state legislature had to make 3 additional emergency appropriations to fund the clearing and repair of roads. In the early spring, the authorities finally put it together. There had been nearly 7 times as many mudslides and washouts around the capital city than during an average year. It was soon determined that most of the hillsides that had slid out had been treated with herbicides. Shortly thereafter, it was reported that this was likely the work of the same terrorists that had attacked the city after Labor Day. The news pundits tried to figure up the direct costs of the attacks to the state, and the indirect costs to the local and state economies. The numbers they pulled from the air were impressive, even when corrected for the hyperbolic spin of news reportage.
Meanwhile, he spent a quiet winter, getting regular exercise and eating well, enjoying the sunshine. He kept tabs on news reporting from up north, watching closely for any sign that they might have a clue about him. Occasionally, a pundit would speculate that the attacks might have been the work of someone with a grudge against the state or its government, but no one seemed to be looking back far enough to recognize that it might be him. He had deliberately moved out of state and dropped out of sight after the Sheriffs seizure and auction sale of his home more than 10 years previously. The upper level bureaucrats who had persecuted him back then had since retired. They had never showed signs of having enough on the ball to put two and two together anyway.
Also, the release of his manifesto had been effective in a couple of ways. First, it fueled the pursuit of the theory that the attacks had been the work of an organized secret anarchist terror cell. Second, anarchists and activists began to respond with attacks of their own. Some of these were both creative and effective, as he had suggested they should come up with a list of one hundred attacks. From these they should choose the best ten, plan them carefully and then carry them out quickly within the span of a few days for maximum impact. He was also happy to see that his manifesto was now readily and easily available on the internet, having spread to so many underground sites that there was no way the government could prevent or contain its ongoing distribution.
While he waited out the winter, for fun, he enjoyed hanging out in gentlemen’s clubs. He liked to drink a couple of beers in the late afternoon and enjoyed the company of women, especially the somewhat older dancers with some road miles. Like him, they were warriors fighting an ancient, ongoing conflict. The dancers waged the battle of the sexes while he was at war with mindless bureaucracy. He was much older than they, but he treated them with respect. Most of them responded to this with appreciation and respected him in return. He tipped them generously for their time, but never bought lap dances nor did he try to grab or fondle them. He listened to them and was genuinely sympathetic to their difficulties, fabricated or real, it made no difference to him.
For money, he did computer support and web site work. The strippers were often customers for his services and also helped him with word of mouth advertising. Whenever they referred a customer to him, he paid them 10% of what he made on the job. As always, he had more work offered to him than he had the time or inclination to do, so he picked and chose the jobs that interested him in some way.
He always took his time with the customers, carefully explained what he was doing, showing them how they might do things themselves the next time. They had the most powerful and far-reaching multi-purpose tool yet devised by man on their desks. He had a working understanding of how that tool worked and how they might apply it. He also had the time, so he gave customers who paid attention and seemed willing to learn the extra effort it took to share some of his understanding with them. He only worked for cash, never gave receipts and kept no records. He figured that, when and if they finally caught up with him, tax evasion would not be an issue. His somewhat off-kilter sense of humor found that to be especially ironic.
Anyway, his winter computer work helped him pass the time and provided sufficient cash for his needs and purposes. In late May, he got on a train and headed back north. He re-adopted his Swiss tourist guise for the trip, with a load of special goodies in his touring backpack for the upcoming summer campaign.
Six
Late in the spring of 1999, I fulfilled over 15 years of dreaming and 3 years of saving, planning and preparation and broke ground on what was to become our home in the country. My wife and I were DINKs, which stands for double income no kids. My wife is very frugal, me not so much. We had been saving for several years and also had some equity in a condo in town. The business was growing, the economy was good and we both had steady incomes, so we went for it. We already owned the land. I had purchased it when I first arrived in the area in the late 80’s. Our plan was to spread construction out over 2 or 3 years and self-finance. I did as much of the construction work as I could, on weekends and during slow business times. When I got involved in a particular house project that I could not put on hold to help my own computer customers, I passed their calls to other techs in the group.
It isn’t a big house when compared to the McMansions that were being built nearly all over the country at that time – about 1500 square feet. It was a rustic pole frame cabin design, which was unusual enough that it required a structural engineers stamp on the architectural drawings. This design allowed for an elevated living floor which was necessary to acquire a building permit on our 1.5 acre parcel located in the hundred year floodplain. Using a pole frame also saved us some money on foundation costs. The rustic nature of the design allowed me to avoid finish carpentry, which is not my strong suit.
After about two and a half years we had the final construction inspection in mid-November and moved in on Thanksgiving Day, 2001. There was still a lot of finish work to be done, but the house was livable and we were ready to rough it as folks living the country lifestyle do. Things had pretty much gone according to plan. However, construction projects almost always end up costing more than anticipated. As a result, we had to borrow $20k from my wife’s twin sister. I got that paid off by early 2003 and we owned it, such as it was, free and clear. At the housewarming, I told everyone “don’t laugh, it’s paid for”, and asked them to overlook both the unfinished and amateurish elements for that reason.
In hindsight, due to the recent and ongoing pop of the real estate bubble, the self-financing of construction was among the best ideas I had. Not only did we cut way down on costs by saving on construction financing, mortgage loan fees and interest, we also completely missed out on the entire 2008 mortgage debacle. Even after the bubble burst and home sale values plummeted, we still have less invested than the post-bubble valuation of our home. Being frugal saved us, big time.
Despite those advantages, DIY (do-it-yourself) still translated into a hell of a lot of work. It was also stressful at times. The most stressful point was at the end of the first fall. After the intensive first 5 months we had it all framed up, sheathed in, roofed and sealed with weather wrap barrier. At that point I suddenly came to appreciate how much work I had set myself up for. I felt completely trapped, “hoist by my own petard”, if you will. It was a “be careful what you wish for” type of personal revelation.
Another unexpected result was that, in the process of building the house I learned a great deal more about both construction and design. In the midst of construction, I was able to modify the design quite a bit on the fly. In the final analysis, the house I built did not turn out to be the idealized design that I had in mind, because the ideal changed in the process. However, I also learned enough to know there was no way I would ever consider building another one. In spite of some inevitable compromises we have both come to appreciate our house in the quiet, peaceful countryside. My wife has done what she always does, she made this new house into our home and we have been happy living here.
7: The Summer of Love begins
Shortly after his arrival back in the capital city area, he purchased a pickup truck from a young kid. To conceal his identity during the purchase, he used a fake name and wore one of his favorite disguises. He became a white shoed old duffer, complete with bad hairpiece and checked polyester sport coat. He told the kid he was buying the pickup as a graduation gift for his nephew and paid the full asking price in cash. With no intention of filing the title transfer forms with the DMV, he deliberately and immediately “lost” them. By the time the authorities finally talked to the young fellow about his pickup, the description the kid gave from his memory of the old duffer was completely useless. The resulting widely published artists drawing looked like Don Rickles wearing a hairpiece and bore little resemblance to him, even when he was wearing the old duffer disguise.
The spring rains, although diminishing, usually persist up to and through July 4th in the state. Many tourists drive the scenic coast highway on bicycles, cars and RV’s starting in June. His first attacks were designed to scare the tourist trade away from the state that summer. With the upcoming weather report favorable to his plans, late one Thursday evening in June he started driving his newly acquired pickup south from the northern end of the coast road.
He had found an old canopy for the truck and had rigged up six 50 gallon drums in the back, along with a 12 volt air compressor, a compressed air reservoir tank and two pneumatic pumps. In three of the drums was a light oil, in the other three was a thick industrial soap. As he drove along, the pneumatic pumps combined the two fluids together into an emulsion, which was piped over to two pneumatic sprayers, one poking out unobtrusively on each side of the truck bed. Operating the 12 volt controls for the sprayers as he drove, he sprayed the oil and soap mixture on the uphill side of many curves of the coast road. That night he drove the highways entire distance along the states coastline, several hundred miles. He only stopped twice, to switch the pump intakes from emptied barrels to full ones.
Late the next morning, Friday, the rain that had been predicted arrived on the coast in a band moving from north to south. By mid-afternoon, reports of multiple traffic accidents started to come in to the state police. By the early evening, as the rush of weekend coast visitors began in earnest, the accident numbers had climbed from dozens to hundreds. The authorities were forced to close entire length of the now slick and dangerous highway. It stayed closed throughout the weekend as road crews pressure washed the soap and oil off the road.
He went to the movies on Saturday, the day after his long coast road trip, starting with the first matinees and continuing all weekend. He didn’t stay to watch anything for long. Over the course of the weekend, he released hundreds of black widow spiders. He had hunted and captured these during the last month he had spent down south. As a result, dozens of theatergoers received painful bites before the authorities forced the theater owners to close and bring in exterminators. Shortly thereafter, news reports led the headlines that the state was once again under attack.
As the weekend of the 4th approached, he removed the canopy from the pickup. From one of his buried caches, he dug up and assembled his custom designed super slingshot, made with multiple long elastic bands that were attached to a tough plastic bowl. The whole contraption was rigidly mounted in the bed of the truck, creating a motorized short range mortar. He also had several spherical thermite mortar bombs from the cache. These bombs were precisely made to weigh exactly 1 kilogram – about 2.2 pounds each and had an aluminum foil outer shell. He had embedded and bound powerful magnets into the outer layer, so they would roll towards and firmly attach themselves to ferromagnetic surfaces.
At 3:30 am that Sunday night he drove this rig, the mortar mounted in the bed covered with a tarp, to his point of attack. This was a frontage road along railroad tracks within a quarter mile of a large fuel tank farm located south of the capital city. Arriving there in a spot he had carefully mapped out to be at the mathematically proper firing distance, he set up quickly. In rapid succession, he lit each bombs fuse and then used the custom slingshot rig and his own weight to launch the aluminum spheres in high arcs. They all landed on the slightly rounded top surface of the tanks he aimed them at. All but one bounced and then rolled to a stop on the steel tank tops. Within 5 minutes of his arrival at the spot, he was done with the attack and had quickly re-covered the slingshot mortar with the tarp. He jumped back in the truck and sped away to the north.
Very soon after he left the launch site, the fuses started to ignite the thermite and all kinds of hell began to break loose in his rear view mirror! As they ignited, the bombs melted through the tops of the tanks and dropped superheated burning metal into the huge quantities of fuel and vapor within. Burning fuel vapor spewed skyward in long fiery jets out of the holes in the top of the tanks. One of the bombs, which had bounced and then rolled off the top of the tank that he had aimed it at, had rolled on the ground and attached itself to the side of a tank full of diesel fuel. When it ignited, it melted through the side wall of the tank and burning diesel fuel began to spew out under pressure. It flooded the tank farm with flaming and smoking fuel from below, while several other tanks spewed fire from their tops! Two of the tanks full of gasoline soon superheated and boiling gasoline exploded the tanks under pressure, sending huge fireballs high into the night sky! Before the first responding fire truck approached the scene, the entire tank farm was ablaze!
He drove high up into the mountains and watched the bright distant blaze with binoculars until well after the sunrise illuminated the carnage he had created in the valley below. Well satisfied with the results of his initial strikes of the summer, he drove back to his camp, cooked some eggs and bacon for breakfast and then took a long morning nap. He needed his rest, because he had busy nights planned for the next several months.
Eight
By 2004, I was too busy dealing with incoming call volume to be able to concentrate sufficiently to do computer support work myself. The team of freelance technicians to whom I passed work had grown considerably. My income from their referral fees, although less than what I had earned myself previously, was growing steadily. I found that I could back off from offering computer services myself and concentrate instead on dispatching and managing the business. As the incoming call volume continued to grow, my role went through a natural shift. I went from providing computer services to providing other services to the team of affiliated technicians. The change in my role was necessary if I was going to adapt to the continued growth of the business.
My new role, although less frustrating than working with computer users can be, did have some downsides. For one thing, some nerds tend towards egomania, which can make them difficult to reason with. It can be difficult for a technician who has convinced himself that the sun shines from his own butt to accept that a dis-satisfied customer may have a valid complaint about the quality of his work. This attitude is also frequently detrimental to developing a rapport with customers.
People don’t respond well to being made to feel that a technician, supposedly there to help them solve problems, seems to believe that they are idiots and treats them with obvious disdain. Such technicians don’t get many repeat calls asking for their help by name and also generate frequent customer complaints about their work. Those two factors tend to limit the number of calls they get passed during the occasional times of slower call volume. Eventually they move on to something else, hopefully to learn humility somewhere.
The affiliation agreement I had with each member of the team had evolved to include an 8 page guidelines document. This contained details of the referral fee structure and conditions under which I would continue to provide ongoing promotional, organizational, dispatch and management services to them. Most of these conditions were “customer-centric”, an industry buzzword of the time which basically meant that they were related to customer service. It was basically common sense stuff. I found through hard won experience that it was best to spell these details out clearly from the beginning. The guidelines were in a printed document each affiliated technician could keep and review when needed.
I would characterize the business relationship that I had with the team of techs as sort of a round table of nerds. The business model had evolved into something very similar to the shareware concept used by free-thinking software developers. I worked for and was paid by the affiliated technicians to make my best efforts to keep them as busy as they wanted to be. In return, they paid me referral fees and were to strive to provide the best possible service to referred customers. By doing so, they often gained the repeat business of loyal customers who would call requesting a particular technician by name, most often those techs that had learned to make the effort to establish a rapport. That is my part of our honor system agreement. I give my word that whenever a customer calls requesting a particular technician by name, that technician will always be referred that call, basically receiving the right of first refusal on that call from that customer.
Over time, good technicians would build up a repeat customer base and would need fewer new customer calls to keep them as busy as they wanted to be. As part of our business relationship, the affiliated technicians gained the backing of an organization which allowed them to take vacations or get ill without necessarily losing their repeat customer base. In my dispatcher role covering the phones, I would pass customer calls asking for them to other techs in the group, who would cover for them while they were not available.
Under the affiliation agreement as it had evolved, the technicians agreed to pay me accumulated referral fees twice a month. After the third time that the total exceeded $200, then they paid me $200 plus half of the total that exceeded $200. I called this the profit sharing plan, which I arranged so that the techs who worked a lot received a discount on the cost of my services. If an affiliated technician stopped paying me accumulated referral fees, of course I stopped passing them calls.
Similar to the shareware concept, the technicians paid me referral fees for the services I provided to them for as long as they found them to be valuable. We had a handshake agreement that, when we parted company, they would not subsequently contact or provide computer services to the customers with whom they had worked during the time the affiliation agreement was in effect.
As you might expect, over time there have been a number of technicians for whom the value of the customer base they had developed while affiliated became greater than the importance they placed on honoring their end of the handshake agreement with me. When this happened, while not happy about it, I looked at it as one of the unavoidable costs associated with operating under this business model. I never tried to enforce the handshake agreement except to plead with such techs to keep their word.
As it happened, the technicians who took this route often did not keep the customer base that they had developed while affiliated. The combination of the technician’s greed and ethical limitations would become evident. Sooner or later the customers would return to calling for computer help from the honorable and ethical technicians who remained on my team of affiliated independents.
It turned out that the team usually included several technicians who had been affiliated with my business for years, continually paying me for the services I provided to them. I found it to be personally rewarding to work with honorable and ethical technicians who appreciated the value of the services I provided to them. Among other things, the services I provided allowed them to concentrate on working on computers. Also, during occasional periods of slow call volume, I carried the advertising and promotional expenses, so they had very few expenses of their own unless they were working and simultaneously generating income.
In early 2004, a previously affiliated technician filed an unemployment benefits claim against me. I got a call from the state Employment department about the claim. I called back and talked with an Employment Department employee about the case. During that phone conversation I explained first: that I did not consider the affiliated technicians to be employees because they were paid directly by the customers to whom they provided computer service. Second; I also explained that the technicians paid me referral fees. Lastly; I said that I had stopped passing the unemployment claimant customer calls because he had stopped paying me referral fees. After that brief conversation I did not hear anything further from the state Employment Department. I assume that they denied the unemployment benefits claim against me because it was obvious to them that the technicians and I did not have an employer-employee relationship.
9: Small ball
He was well aware that his attack on the tank farm had gotten the full and undivided attention of the authorities. Knowing that the heat was on, he switched his game plan to small ball for a while. Infrastructure was his target once again, but this time spread throughout the state. He planned steady and continuous attacks meant to make things difficult and when possible, timed them for maximum effect.
The first of these was directed at all the bridges along a thirty mile stretch of the long winding river that runs through the capital city. Early one moonlit evening, he started kayaking downstream about 15 miles up from the city. At almost every bridge, there were conduits under or alongside the bridge carrying cables from one side of the river to the other. He stopped his kayak at all of these bridges that night. He attacked the cable conduits on both sides of each bridge, where the pipes came up from underground to connect with the bridge. His pop can incendiary bombs once again did their work, melting through the conduit walls and pouring hot liquid metal down inside the pipes, destroying lengths of the wiring within. Fiber optics, telephone and network connections went out all along both sides of the river that night and those connections were not easily nor quickly repaired.
One Monday night he similarly attacked all the traffic boxes controlling major intersections in a city to the north of the capital. Traffic did not return to normal for more than a week and there were dozens of accidents. These resulted from the failure of impatient drivers to work together to overcome the lack of street controls of the many intersections effected. The introduction of one chaotic element into an organized system tends to breed further chaos.
One Thursday night he attacked all the cable TV and internet boxes in another town, wiping out TV and internet service to thousands of households. Many had nothing to do through the seemingly longer than usual weekend but talk to each other, read a book, or go out for a drink. Another night he attacked several remote cell phone towers, lobbing his thermite bombs onto their power supply systems.
On another evening he wiped out a power transformer feeding a minor league baseball stadium, darkening the stadium in the middle of the seventh inning stretch. Then, one unusually hot night in late July, he was inspired and got busy. First, he attacked four power substations inside of just under an hour. This shut down air conditioning systems for thousands of wealthier citizens who could afford air conditioning in a state that only occasionally got warm enough for them to feel the need for it. Within the blacked out area, he then attacked the water supply system of one of the oldest towns in the state, draining the water pressure onto the streets. Then he set the quaint historic tourist trap heart of the town ablaze with his incendiaries.
With his ongoing activities in the news, the reports renewed interest in his manifesto among anarchists and activists. Their re-inspired efforts began to multiply as an army of one became an army of ten, then fifty. His activities began to blend in with those of others he had inspired, making it more difficult for law enforcement to discern his attacks from others. He made concerted efforts to vary his materials and methods to further hide his own trail.
As the states longest summer wore on, he and the anarchists and activists were all doing their damnedest to screw up the system. The state’s tourist oriented businesses were going bust. Things were frequently not working, communications were often difficult, the cost of everything was rising steadily, gasoline and diesel fuel was outrageously expensive and were in short supply. People started leaving the state in droves, either to vacation or to move elsewhere where things were more peaceful, safer, less frustrating. Everyone remaining in the state was on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
By the time Labor Day arrived, the well oiled engine of business was having real trouble operating in an increasing difficult environment. Chaos and hysteria seemed ascendant and something had to be done. The state chamber of commerce offered a million dollar reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the ringleaders of the terrorist cell responsible. The law enforcement authorities were flooded with tens of thousands of worthless tips. Small ball can be a beautiful game when played right.
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