Ever think that college profs were out to get you?  They are.  They want to break you emotionally, financially, and have you second guessing your own sanity.  But to what end?  I have my own paranoid theories on that, but let me share an experience I had in college as a case study.

I'll call him Dr. Larry.  Dr. Larry was by far my favorite educator.  I make a distinction between professors and educators.  Professors teach because it's a contractual obligation and a necessary evil in their career.  Educators are professors that enjoy and excel at teaching.  Anyway, I had taken a few courses with Dr. Larry and this time he was teaching Operating Systems.  Dr. Larry's teaching style was very engaging.  It consisted of covering the curriculum through anecdotal experiences he had throughout his lengthy career.

We came to a chapter on benchmarking.  Dr. Larry then explained on the various types and techniques of benchmarking a computer regardless of the platform.  One such tool for was called SpecInt.  Our homework assignment was to acquire the source code for SpecInt and identify the different subroutines and algorithms used to quantify the performance of the machine.  Assignment was due in two days.  That sounded like a pretty cool assignment.  Up to that point I had never heard of SpecInt and I suspected it was some public domain program that was available at some university.

Just a little bit of background information.  Back then, the internet was not what it is now.  This was in the days when ARPANET was transitioning to what we know today.  It was before Google, Netscape was king, and IE didn't exist yet.  We used things like Alta Vista, Archie, and Gopher to perform in depth searches.  After those options were exhausted we turned to the Usenet and started asking questions.  Since this topic was very specific, I found a benchmark subgroup on the comp.* hierarchy.  And I decided to ask the professionals about where to find the source code for SpecInt.  I was not prepared for the answer.

If you're not familiar with Usenet at that time, it was like a text based forum in which the topics were sorted into topics and subtopics.  Anyone can post without a membership of any kind, but you had no choice but to leave your email address and some information about your connection.  My question was simple enough, "Does anyone know where I can download a copy of the SpecInt source code?"  The replies were quite emphatic.  "SpecInt is a proprietary software suite.  I doubt the source code is available anywhere public."  That was one of the more kinder replies.  It escalated from there that the source had been leaked, and many asked if I had found it.  Upon further study, many of these questions were coming from SpecInt Corporation.  Whoa, this is corporate software?  Does Dr. Larry know this?  Turns out that SpecInt is an industry standard and part of a very expensive software suite.  It was a highly protected intellectual property and had several patents on it.  I did not respond to any of the replies I received and decided that was enough homework for that afternoon.  Maybe I'd ask Dr. Larry about it during his office hours the next day.

If that had been the end of it, I wouldn't be writing this story.  Later that evening I received a phone call.  It was the director of Intellectual Property from SpecInt Corporation.  He had gone through the effort of tracing my access information back to the University, found my exact personal data and looked up my phone number.  (Internet Security was also not what it is now.)  He was very emphatic about learning who I was and what I wanted with the source code.  I tried to stay as calm as possible, was very forthright with information and explained the situation.  I was a student, we were issued a homework assignment, and that's it.  No industrial espionage going on here.  I was polite and very apologetic.  The SpecInt guy seemed satiated, but still a little grumpy.  Dr. Larry was definitely going to be hearing from me.

If that had been the end of it, I would have been glad.  The next morning I was getting ready for school at around 9:00a.  The phone rang.  The man on the other end introduced himself as Agent Carter from the FBI.  He was investigating the allegation that I was interested in purchasing stolen merchandise in form of computer code that had been leaked from it's producing company.  Holy blown out of proportions Batman!  This was getting out of hand!  I again explained to the agent what was going on, that I had not received any code or information on how to get it.  Furthermore, I was no longer interested in getting it, and was contemplating my interest in even finishing my education.  The agent tried to calm me down a little and explained that he was only trying to verify information that he had received on a possible leak of Intellectual Property.  I was not calm.  I gave the agent everything I knew and more.  After the call ended, I paced around my apartment for a while.  Screw Dr. Larry, I grabbed my backpack and made a bee line for the Dean's office.

The receptionist at the Dean's office was less than cordial and gave me the standard about the Dean being a busy man and might have some time later in the week.  "Look Miss (Whatever her name was), this is important.  I need to see the Dean RIGHT NOW!"  She looked at me for the first time and saw the look of earnest panic on my face.  She escorted me to his office.  I had never met the Dean prior to this so I didn't know what to expect.  I explained the situation as calmly as I could.  I described the phone calls I had received and asked if the University could do anything in terms of legal support should I need any.

The Dean just sat back, smiled and began to chuckle a little.  "I wouldn't worry about it.  This isn't the first time something like this has happened", he replied.  "Let's take care of this right now."  He turned around to his PC and invited me to look over his shoulder as he constructed a new email.

"Dear Dr. Larry,

"It has come to my attention that you are trying to get your students arrested by assigning them illegal homework.  It is not this University's policy to intentionally add to the criminal record of our students.  Please stop.  If you would like to discuss the matter further, feel free to call."

Regards,

The Dean

"That aught to get his attention." the Dean chuckled again.  He assured me that this was nothing to worry about and he would take care of everything.

The next day, I showed up to Dr Larry's class.  He showed up a few minutes early, put down his backpack walked directly up to me.  "I'm surprised you're here.  If one of my professors had tried to get me arrested I would be for dropping the course," he joked.  "Yeah, what's up with that?" I replied.  He then got pretty serious.  He had no idea the code was patented and was shocked that the FBI had got involved at all, let alone on how fast they responded.  Apparently the FBI had similar phone calls to him and the Dean to verify my story.  It freaked him out just about as much as it freaked me out.

Class started.  Dr. Larry started out discussing the homework.  "I understand that there was some trouble doing the homework.  For that reason, I'm going to cancel it.  If you completed it, I don't want to know about it.  Please get rid any information you have regarding it."  He then went on to explain the concept of Intellectual Property and how it's enforced in industry.  For some reason he had a lot of recent information on it.

As indicated above, I'm currently reading "Looking for Alaska" by John Green. I'm about half way into it and I'm finding it hard to put down.  But, based on certain forshadowing comments, I have a feeling I'm not going to like the ending.

Anyway, I was thinking on how is it that I am reading this book?  I don't read for pleasure, ever.  What circumstances have led me to me going out and purchasing a book I would never in a million years think to buy and actually read?  That's an interesting story.

It all started with the comics section of the newspaper.  I had a daily ritual of sitting down at breakfast with a bagel and the newspaper and read the comics.  I began to realize that with the retirement of "Calvin and Hobbes" there just weren't any quality comic strips out there.  I was also amazed at how absolutely moronic the old comics were.  These were the serial strips like Mary Worth, Apartment 3G, Judge Parker, etc.  How completely lame these strips are!  I just could not see any entertainment value in them at all.  How this tripe is even syndicated astounds me.  This led me to the internet and eventually to the site of The Comics Curmudgeon.

The Comics Curmudgeon - aka Josh Fruhlinger - has a daily blog that basically makes fun of the lameness of these serial strips as well as the artwork, dialog, and overall storyline.  This in and of itself is entertaining.  The comments by Josh and his regular readers have given me a new perspective on how to read the comics and appreciate them for their attributes or lack thereof.  The Comics Curmudgeon also allows others to comment on the comics and their take on them.  This takes us to the next step of the journey. The Magic Mel.

Themagicmel also reads The Comics Curmudgeon and used to post comments frequently.  Her comments were exceptionally whitty one day and it led me to her personal blog.  Themagicmel is a casual blogger that is meant to keep family and friends in touch with her life. In this case it attracted the attention of a perfect stranger.  Mel's comments on life were rather witty and after subscribing to her site for a few months eventually inspired me to start this blog.  I began to post comments on her blog that I thought were innocous and in good spirit.  I guess this freaked her out a little 'cause she doesn't blog much anymore.  I also noticed that a frequent commenter on Themagicmel, Twowritehands, began to read my blog.

I felt obligated to return the favor and began reading TwoWriteHands.  This was serendipitous to say the least.  TwoWriteHands - aka Emily - is an excellent writer.  Extremely entertaining and immediately captured my attention.  I began to read her blog on a daily basis.  In these daily blogs there was more than a few references to a guy named John Green.  One day, my curiosity piqued and I Googled him.  Turns out he's an author of some apparently good books but not too widely distributed.

So now I knew about John Green, or so I thought.  It wasn't till a few months later that I found out the real story when I ran across a link to John Green, his brother Hank, their video blog of Brotherhood 2.0 and the whole Nerdfighter movement.  These guys are funny!  Nerdfighters - Made of Awesome, fighting against world suck.  (How cool is that?)  John, I have come to believe, is the reincarnation of David Letterman on meth.  He has this endearing and sometimes annoying habit of enumerating everything.  I came to the conclusion that if this guy is this entertaining in person, it made me more curious about his books.  So, I bought one of each.  "Looking for Alaska", "An Abundance of Katherines", and his newest, "Paper Towns".

That's how I came to 'Look for Alaska' myself.  I should finish the book in the next couple days and I might post my final opinion of it.  So far, I like it.  The story line is interesting and the characters very developed.  Something tells me though it's going to go horribly wrong.

Sometimes in life you encounter a situation that reminds you that there are a lot of people in the world with completely different lifestyles than your own.  This happened to me a few years ago when I got hit by a tweaker.

I live in Southwestern Idaho. The climate here is classified as high altitude desert.  It's either summer or winter with very little transition time between the two.  Summers are dry and stupid hot.  Winters are dry (most of the time) and dang-blammety cold.  My tweaker encounter occurred on one of those cold winter mornings.  The sun was up, but the only way you would know is because you didn't need your headlights to see very far.  I kiss of light fog was still sticking to the ground.  I was driving to work like I always do along the same farm road with hardly any traffic around.  I came upon my usual intersection to turn left and slowed to let a single oncoming car pass before I actually made the turn.

Out of the corner of my eye I caught motion on the street I was turning onto.  I watched as a small hatchback approaching the intersection crested the small hill and begin a perilous slide downhill across a thick sheet of black ice and into the intersection.  By this time, I had come to a full stop.  It was clear that the hatchback was out of control and was going to miss the stop sign.  The oncoming car passed in a blur just in front of the hatchback.  All I could do was sit and wait for the impact.  All I could think was, "This is going to hurt!"

Something uncommon happened then. It wasn't a conscious effort made or thought generated, nor reasoning or risk analysis.  It was more like my body came up with an idea, my head didn't.  My foot moved from the brake and slammed down on the gas.  In the split second before impact my little Toyota pickup moved maybe five feet forward or so, just enough to change the impending T-bone into rear clipping.

The hatchback had some momentum.  It spun me 90 degrees in the direction I wanted to turn and continued across the intersection and onto the shoulder.  I completed the turn and pulled off the road.  I got out and assessed the situation.  I wasn't hurt.  That was good news.  I ran across the street to check on the hatchback.  The guy inside was struggling with the door.  The impact had shoved the front fender to cover the door hinge making the door stick shut.  I helped pry open the door and asked if he was okay.  It was clear that he was shaken, very nervous, but otherwise unharmed.

We went back across the road to look at my truck.  Not much damage.  He was still very upset and trying to figure out what happened exactly.  In an attempt to calm him down I offered a seat on the tailgate.  I explained that this was pure accident there's nothing he or I could have done differently.  Then, as an emphasis to the point, an empty school bus crested the same hill and slid down the same patch of black ice, through the stop sign and into the intersection.  No oncoming traffic in sight.  The driver peeled a hand off the wheel, shifted into first and proceeded across the intersection.  I looked at the nervous hatchback driver and said, "Why don't we do something about that black ice before something really bad happens?"  I motioned toward the contents of my truck bed.  I was carrying a half dozen sandbags to add weight to the back end of my lightweight truck.  (A little trick you learn if you drive in the snow and ice a lot).  We unloaded the sandbags onto the ice and knifed them open spreading the sand out as best we could.  There wasn't enough to cover the whole patch, but enough to give traction.

"I suppose we should do the whole insurance thing I guess."  I mentioned as we stood admiring our work.  "I kinda don't have any paperwork with me.  It's my girlfriend's car." he replied.  "Do you think we could keep the cops out of this?"

Red flag!  Technical Foul!  My suspicious dude meter pegged and I reached for my cell phone.  "Let me call my insurance company and get their advice on the matter." I dialed 911.  I explained calmly to the dispatcher what had happened, where we were and advice on how to handle his lack of paperwork.  The dispatcher told me to take down his plate number and try to keep him there until the sheriff arrived.

"They're going to send out a claims expert. I explained.  The office is just down the street a couple of miles so it will only take a few minutes."  With a bit of relief, totally gullible hatchback dude sat back down on the tailgate, relaxed a little and asked to borrow the cell phone to call his boss.  He worked construction and it was clear from the tone in which he apologetically explained his tardiness, his job was tenuous at best.  This guy wasn't a bad guy, he was just young, inexperienced and trying to make a life for himself.  It hadn't been too long ago that I was in the same situation working three dirty jobs, 60 hours a week just to pay the rent and keep food on the table.

To be on the safe side, I managed to snap a picture of his plate as he handed the cell phone back to me.  I took a seat in the drivers seat with the door open.  As we waited for the "claims expert" to arrive, I noticed his nervous fidgeting with the contents of his coat pocket.  We were engaged in small talk when my "claims expert" arrived in the form of County sheriff K9 unit.

This guy's day just went to absolute hell from that point on.  It was almost like being on COPS.  The officer stepped out expecting a routine traffic incident.  He approached the both of us pleasantly enough, but when he got within a couple of paces of hatchback dude he stopped abruptly, his face went from routine boredom to concern as if alerted to some unseen danger.  He looked directly at hatchback dude, smiled and told him this will only take a few minutes.  He came close to me and blocked our line of sight.  "You're going to want to stay in your car with the door closed."  I pulled my legs inside and the officer closed the door.

I watched curiously as the officer instructed the guy to stand.  I cracked the window so I could hear the exchange.  The officer explained that he had detected the strong smell of methamphetamine when he approached and asked permission to search his person.  I could see the fight or flight response appear on the guy's face.  He chose unwisely.  The guy bolted across the farmers field we were parked at heading for a nearby tree line.  The officer just watched him go, shook his head and went back to his squad car.  He opened the back door.  What emerged was the biggest, knarliest, meanest looking dog you ever saw.

"Raider!  Fetch!"  The Giant Schnauzer maybe touched the ground two or three times before catching up and clamping down on the poor tweaker's thigh.  He screamed in pain and began to wrestle with the dog.  Raider had the weight advantage though and pinned the guy to the ground.  The officer half heartedly jogged over to the fracas, cuffed the guy, and hauled him back to his squad car. 

The subsequent search of the guy and his car found numerous infractions of the controlled substance and paraphernalia laws.  Multiple squad cars had arrived by that time to process the scene.  The original officer came back to my window with a smile on his face.  "Well I guess you weren't expecting that one today were you?"  He joked.  He then took down my perspective of things including the accident.  He even thanked me for putting down the sand.  "I'm afraid this guy doesn't have insurance, so you'll be stuck with your deductible."

"You know what?  I'm not so concerned about that anymore." I replied, as I got back in my truck and continued on with my commute.  As I arrived at work, I felt my cell phone in my pocket.  I paused to take it out and look at it.  I fingered the redial button and was connected to a construction company.  I asked for the same guy the tweaker did and was transferred.

"You know your employee that called in a little while ago with the traffic accident?  Well, he's going to be a lot more than late today...."