Featured image by Bruno /Germany from Pixabay

A smart man would have put on his shoes and left, but I was really beat. There were two questions I could not answer.

  1. Did I have the strength to walk all the way out to where the hotels were?

  2. If someone jumped me, a distinct possibility in this neighborhood, did I have the energy and reflexive strength to do them in?

I didn’t have any apps on this phone. Even if I did, you weren’t getting a ride in this part of town. Even if I was wrong about the first two things, I didn’t want any electronic trail tying me to this area. Why have credit cards you ask? In case of emergency, besides, they who run this tend to message us with the location of a cash station and a PIN to get cash. We are even told what time to be there so the camera will be off. Do I know how they arrange for that? Why don’t you ask a much better question? Do I care? Every computer using a PC chip and a PC based operating system can be penetrated. If it has ever connected to the Internet for even a few minutes it has most likely been penetrated.

Don’t believe me? I don’t care. The Black Hat conference usually has an annual demonstration of the latest idiot phone skimming software. All you need is a free laptop/tablet someone tossed out after upgrading. I’m told the software will even run on those sub $100 2-in-1 computers sold at Walmart. Pull the software down off The Dark Web and it will pull the contents of pretty much every idiot phone within a 60 foot radius. Why do you think they’ve all been trying to come up with better encryption and went to a 3-failed-logins-reset-to-factory security policy?

Ask yourself this? When the FBI was demanding Apple help them unlock a terrorist’s phone and Apple set into motion a comedy of errors, do you really think the third party company who offered to help the FBI get the contents had some clairvoyant individual knew the correct password to risk the final attempt on? Nah, they skimmed it. Put the contents off on other media where the FBI/CIA/Homeland/insert-alphabet-soup-here decryption software could chew on it for as long as needed.

Personally I don’t visit The Dark Web. Not unless it is part of a job. No need to “meet” someone I will probably be sent for. I know there are new versions of it all the time. Older versions used to use some kind of Blue Tooth forced pairing like you used to see on that “Person of Interest” television show. More recent stuff tends to use a massive security hole known as the software update process for your phone.

I don’t know how the full data skim stuff works and I don’t want to. I won’t have this phone long enough to ever put anything on, not that I would consider using it for anything other than work. If I really need a phone I buy an old flip phone. No GPS, no Internet, no data and no texting. It’s there to make a phone call and nothing more. I told you, I used to be a geek who worked on real computers. I never trust anything on these little machines. The “i” in iPhone really probably stands for Idiot.

Guys are drawn to couches. Big comfy nappy couches. Maybe that’s why we choose to misbehave so often? We have to share a bed, put up with someone else snoring, hogging the covers and generally disturbing our sleep all night. We get the couch to ourselves though. Never buy a couch actually big enough for two people. You’ll lose the one place you really can sleep.

Sadly, if there are rug rats in the dwelling, the couch is a mine field. Between the cushions and near all the seems will be hidden tiny hard toys jabbing you unexpectedly. You think you have them all out then shift a bit and get stabbed again.

Dutifully I had set my alarm for 4am. I swear on whatever you wish that I had just set the last toy on the coffee table before the alarm went off. This night just kept getting better!

My brain screamed for caffeine. After a visit to the bathroom I turned the kitchen light on and search for some tea bags. Overjoyed at finding a pair I filled a soup pan with water and rinsed out my drive up window cup then filled it with ice, sprinkling a sweetener packet I saw on the counter over the top of the ice. When the water was good and hot I dunked the bags in it for a bit then set my glass in the sink and actually got most of the tea into it.

There is nothing like fresh brewed iced tea in the morning. Coffee is the beverage of the damned. Given what I do for a living, I ought to know.

Now came the mental debate.

  1. Dress and leave?

  2. Fold my clothes in the order I need to put them on and leave them on the couch?

  3. Set my clothes on her dresser and head once more into the breach?

The mental debate happened while I folded the blankets. I don’t know why. Training I guess. Leave as little trace of yourself as possible. Fat lot of good folding the blankets was going to do. A good lab could find traces of me all over this place and I doubt this couch received an intense weekly vacuuming. True, the thought is unkind but it was based on all of the toys now sitting on the coffee table which were in the couch before I tried to sleep.

Clothes balanced in one hand like a waiter with a tray and mega glass of iced tea in the other I opted to head once more into the breach.

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