I attended my first day of class last Monday and lo and behold my second favorite TAO showed up. It certainly was a blast from the past. J is an interesting character. I'll call him Jamie for the purposes of anonimity. Jamie who manages to not only irritate me but also my near and dear friend Steve (which takes quite a lot of work because he's a pretty tolerant guy). Jamie has been in and out of classes with me for the past four years of my two year program.
He's a tall, lanky guy who saunters in wearing a faded and holey "I am root " t-shirt (for you non geeks out there root = all powerful ). This shirt is complemented by his two sizes two big baggy jeans and his Shaggy from Scooby Doo beard type thing on his angular face. He always talks fast. So fast that you have to really pay attention to actually hear every word. It's like he's in a race to out talk you before you have a chance to get a word in edgewise. He looks like a meth addict or an auto-body shop reject because his fingers are permanently grimy.
Our instructor ... is more than a match for him with his verbal judo skills so I'm not too worried when the lecture starts. I am more worried about how much lecture I will get to hear since Jamie spotted me and oriented himself in front of me in the crowded classroom.
Jamie knows everything, has done it better, smarter, faster or more dangerously than you have. Our instructor is outlining what we will be doing in class "We will be utilizing network protocol analyzers to see if we can observe and capture packets thereby obtaining information to prevent someone from accessing our network." The non geek version of that sentence loosely translates to" we're gonna stick this program on your computer that grabs what you send out over the internet. we're gonna sort through it to find out jucy bits of information."
Jamie turns around and launches into a conversation about how they make these new wireless access points that are dual configured. One side is to be for a public wifi (say like at Panera Bread) and one side set to private (like you lived in an apartment above your Panera Bread franchise). Then he blathers on about how you can take that and use a program called Hakkey (sp I haven't checked this out) and reprogram both sides of this device and make a wireless tap and see everything on the network once you get it physically in range of our fake Panera's network.
I can see the two guys that sit next to me. Their eyes glaze over and they furtively glance around him desperately trying to hear Pope's assessment of the rest of the course matrix. I smile and nod and he shuts up.
We get a bit of a break to do some review questions out of our first chapter. Jamie turns around to ask me about how I am and to further entertain me. "Man it's good to be back. I got so bored in the auto-body program. It was just too easy to fix stuff. " I smiled .. this guy drives a rusted out 1979 brown and tan Chevy pickup with a dent in the door. He keeps talking not letting me acknowledge his last statement . I keep writing I've already done these questions but it makes me look busy. " So how's Scuba ? he asks raising an eyebrow "You all still hangin' out all the time? before I can answer him he adds "Yeah I miss him working for me here. I still have his number in my phone I really need to get a hold of ole' Scuba."
Inside I laugh and think I bet he wishes you'd lose his number ... Jamie held no position of responsibility and he got fired from the job. I only manage to get in a "Yep we talk all the time." before Jamie launched into another series of prattling about how he is going to buy a house and how he can get a loan from a bank without having a credit check. He doesn't shut up the rest of the hour making comments about how he's done everything on the course matrix and so this should be easy. He also gives me unsolicited advice on how to get a boyfriend by finding a guy and feeding him.
I smile this should at the very least be entertaining... I think.
YES.
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