Friday, January 18, 2008

Details emerge...

Ok, I guess I can tell you.

BJ works in aerospace, so there are people in countries that aren't this one who would want to know what he knows. When I got home Tuesday night, there was a suspicious car in front of the house. When I opened my door he drove away, but he did it stupidly - driving into two dead ends before I lost sight of him. We've been told by a certain federal agency which shall remain nameless but its initials are F. B. and I. that if anything hinky ever happens (like we feel like someone might be trying to take some of what we know and do nefarious things with it) we need to call them. If BJ ever loses his laptop, for example, the first call we make is to the nameless agency. So, when I saw this guy in this car, acting squirrelly, I asked my friend who is a cop to run his plate.

It turned out that he's from a non-US-friendly nation with 1 billion citizens, and that he has a background in aerospace (she googled him and found his resume), and that his house is exactly 200 feet from our old office. Too many coincidences there for me, so I called the feds and they said, "We'll be right over."

(My theory is that he was trying to hack into our wireless network to see if he could find anything good. After all, if you were going to hack into someone's wireless, wouldn't you send someone who would know what he was looking for?)

They really meant it - they were at my office in 15 minutes and I told them the whole story (complete with 8 x 10 color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back describing each one). They said that I was "very observant" and that it was a "good catch" and that they "like my style" (my dad was there, and he can vouch for it that I'm not making any of that up). It was just like a movie - they called me "ma'am" and showed me their credentials and the whole bit. Very cloak and dagger.

They're going to put the guy on a list and keep an eye on him. They'll tell me if we're in any danger. They're not going to go to his house and say, "Hey, Amy said you were acting weird..." That would be way too obvious.

It was just a really odd thing to do on a Thursday. How often does my to-do list read:
  1. pick up sitter
  2. talk to FBI
  3. go to lunch meeting
you know?

So now I feel very important - or at least like I'm married to someone very important. And if something shows up in that other country with our name on it, at least I'm on record as having reported it to the proper authorities, so they know we didn't give it to them!

OH! I was telling this story to our friends at the office down the hall and one lady said, "Isn't your wireless network encrypted?" and I said, "Well, yeah, but that's sort of like wearing a condom. It works most of the time, but when it doesn't..." and everyone cracked up.

Maybe you had to be there...

But really, don't worry about it. We're safe. Max won't let anything bad happen.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

WOW..how absolutely scary and crazy. I am so glad you were paying attention....the good 'ole Air Force has always tried to instill that kind of thinking; always be on the look out for suspicious things. Now no one will question you in the future if they do find any dirt on this guy....

I think you should delete this article from your blog. It is always better to be safe than sorry.