She's Baaaaaaaack

You may have noticed I’ve been a bit quiet lately. It’s ‘cause of the munchkins. Since the little monkeys arrived, the last 18 months just blew by like an election promise. I was also a little short on material. But, a little Christmas treat has come down my chimney and I feel the need to share.

Susans Trippin is maintaining the rage – not just with a comment on the previous blog post, but with an email to me, as well. So, for those that haven’t caught up, read the previous post Don’t Trip Yourself Up, Susan, and her comment on it that arrived last night. 

Then, let’s bask in the warm glow of her crazy.

Note: I’m not going to comment on grammar, punctuation, spelling or any of those other things (much) that help communication make sense. That’s just shooting comatose fish in a tiny, dry barrel. I’ll let the breathtaking stupidity speak for itself. 

But, she did start this crap and then writes, “Not my problem” - but is quite happy to make it my problem. At that point, Susan forfeited any rights to a sympathetic hearing from me.

The email she sent first, this morning:

Fbi and fcc already are on u sorry I guess they email ****@** is
still tracing back to u.
Not my problem if ur not this hacker he's using your identity via email.
I'm not some dumb bitch. I been tracking this person for 3 months.
Goodluck

I would love to overhear the imaginary phone conversation when the FBI call the AFP and ask to start a joint, international taskforce on behalf of someone who thinks that because a word appears in two different addresses, they must be the same address. 

Again, Susan, just because 'greyarea' appears as part of the address line, it does not mean it is the same address. Stop huffing paint thinner for a second, get your brother/husband out of bed and get him to help you read the below three lines, out loud if it helps.

[Scene opens with an ambulance officer leaning over a recently recovered Susan.]

[Susan] – You gave me the AIDS. I be getting the police on you!

[Ambulance Officer] – No, you took yet another drug overdose and I gave you 
first aid. That’s not the same thing as AIDS.

[Susan] – Doesn’t matter. Them words sound almost the same so it is the same. Gimme my syringe back.

End Scene.

I promise I have not tampered with the last line of her email. She actually wrote, “I’m not some dumb bitch. I been tracking..”

Ahuh. 

If you can’t see what’s wrong with that, Susan, I can’t explain - and it’s taken you three months to arrive at the wrong address and now that you’re at that address, you consider the best approach is to kick the door in and shout a lot.

That's not enough for our Susan, though. About an hour later, the comment on yesterday's post arrives. I have not edited or played with it in any way:


Seriously I'm 36. Yep have a past doesn't everyone. The fcc and fbi can clear you I just googled the base address and your blog pops up. Thanks for all your pleasant comments. That was uncalled for. I stated I hope this wasn't you but you reply in this manner? OK well its SUSANS TRIPP IN as in trips, concerns, and a V log name suppose to be funny not as you took it. 
Thanks for publicly replying. I am not perfect. Who is. 
I shouldn't have stated my comment so crudely but what's happening to my family is no joke and it lead to your blog. So I'm sorry nick. What would u have done? 
I'd appreciate u deleting my 1st comment and your reply. And this one. I'll let the authority's address you more professionally and leave it there. Btw my junk mail email IS ROMAN NUMERALS. MERRY CHRISTMAS


Seriously, you’re 36? You shouldn’t publicise that. It's not helping. You sound, at best, like a petulant teenager.

As for having some history – no, that’s a particular sort of past. It's the sort of past that usually comes with a theme song that goes, "Bad boys, bad boys, watcha gonna do?" You can actually measure how much everyone else doesn’t have that kind of past.

If three months of tracking consists of you Googling the words 'grey area' and deciding I was the guy, then I guess I should applaud you. Too often we don’t recognise the true heroes among us. It’s the little, ordinary people who manage to go about their lives, despite crippling brain injuries, who really deserve our appreciation and praise. Well done.

As for my previous “pleasant comments” – If you cast your mind all the way back to Wednesday, it was you who started things, by publicly calling me a sick fucker and a paedophile. People who live in glass houses shouldn’t turn tricks on the carpet, Susan. What would I have done? Probably looked at who it was a bit better.

I did take your name as funny. Susan Strippin’ was one of the other variations that occurred to me.

Your apologies come a little late in the scheme of things – and it becomes obvious that you really haven’t understood or even properly read my first reply. A “base address” doesn’t lead to my blog. Go and learn about domain names if you’re going to be your own detective. They're important. All you’ve done is associate similar words.

And Susan, after going for a little sympathy, you don’t disappoint. You finish up your delightful message by capitalising (shouting) yet another bone-headed stupidity. I get that your disposable email address is roman numerals. That’s why I wondered, in the previous post, if it meant the 29-October-2002 and then wondered if you were an 11-year-old (see, ‘cause if that was your birthday you would… oh, never mind). Americans tend to write dates with month first, then the day of the month and then the year. The only combination in the American format that can be a date with your numerals, is the 29th of October.

So, seeing how much you have not understood, I have little hope for the following making any sense to you, but here’s my guess at what’s happened.

1) My blog comes up in a Google search for the words “grey area” because that’s the NAME of the blog - "A Grey Area". With the unusual (in the USA) English spelling.

2) The ADDRESS for the blog is “largegreyarea”. Not “greyarea”. Please try and hold on to that fact.

You got my email address, from the blog. nickgreyarea@gmail.com. And again, that is not the same as "greyarea@gmail.com" please try and understand that, too.

You found it with a search because I am enormously popular, very sweet, tall, handsome, engagingly modest and have readers in the US who are able to cope with the subtle difference between address and name. (Have a look into that. I bet that's why a lot of your welfare and alimony cheques aren't arriving.) I bet my readers, like me, are not used to having trailer-trash poking their heads out from under piles of empty beer cans, to point with their chewed fingernails and start shouting “paedophile”.

If I am the 'super hacker' that you accuse me of being, don't you think it would be unlikely that someone like you would be able to find someone like me? Do you really think that you're bringing down an international identity thief by writing straight to a gmail address that can be found on the front page of a five-year-old blog?

I was going to write, "Now disappear back into your squalor, you fucking moron," about here, but I thought it was a bit harsh.

Merry Christmas.

Don't Trip Yourself Up, Susan

This is good.

A comment was left on my previous blog, it reads:

“You need to stop coding me and my family u sick fucker”

… and it’s from someone who trades under the completely trustworthy name of Susans Trippin.

Spam, I think to myself, and don’t do anything more than wonder what's with the email address she supplies: xxxixmmii@gmail.com.

If you look at it the way an American would write a date, it might be the 29th of October, 2002. Judging by the overall grammar and language, it’s just possible that Susan is 11-years-old. I don't think so, though. Her presence all over the net makes her look like a schizophrenic, out of work, ex-semi-glamour model with a few names and a few more arrest warrants to her sheet.

Forget about it, Nick, I say to myself. I've got better things to do, like curl my nasal hairs.

Then, a little later, an email arrives from the eloquent Susan, it reads:

Is this just a assumed email?
I have tracker a supercoder, Hacker, & Pedo using it. 
I'd hate to see u in trouble but seems I've Google that email and its leading to your blog
I'd stay clear using greyarea@gmail.com if your not involved but the fbi and fcc will have ur blog in the morning
You realize this is no joke. 
Xo

Then, a little later again, a second copy of the above email arrives, this time with secrurity@apache.org cc’d on the correspondence. I am now officially intrigued and will do a little investigation.

But, in case you do come back to A Grey Area, Susan, let's nip this in the bud. I'm a busy bloke and don't really have time for your brand of misguided, righteous anger.

Let’s start with your gambit. (You might need to look that word up. I’ll wait here.)

“You need to stop coding me and my family you sick fucker.” I’m not certain what coding your family means. Can you elaborate? Does it involve me inserting them into a game of The Sims or something?

Your email:

First, I need to congratulate you on making an error on every line. I didn’t even know that was possible but you seem to have invented new ways to hurt the language.

I’d love to know, or meet a “supercoder”. Do supercoders and hackers divide into different sub-groups at parties and fight over who would be a better Sith Lord? Why does “Pedo” get a capital letter? (I’ll assume that’s not a pedometer. I don’t want people using my blog to track their exercise. Ewwwwwww!)

I do realise it’s no joke and here's the bit you need to understand. 

I don’t use greyarea@gmail.com as an address. It's not my address. Address - not mine. As far as addresses and me are concerned, this address and I are not together. We've never met.

I use nick.greyarea@gmail.com – see there? See that whole other word there in the address? It’s sort of like adding another word to a sentence that changes how the sentence works. Here’s an example: 

You're so smart. 

Then, you add a whole other word, like “not” and it changes the sentence. 

It’s like magic except completely not.

Susan, don’t even start me on “your” versus “you’re” – and then in the same sentence you lapse into “ur”. Total madness.

But, while we’re on that sentence, you see how you are threatening me with the FBI and FCC? (I’d capitalise them, what with being initials and all) Let’s look back at my email address. There’s a huge clue in it that you should pick up, considering the amount of time you’ve allegedly spent “trackering” it. 

That’s the English spelling of Grey. Not the American spelling. That spelling alone would indicate that I neither care about, nor am I under the jurisdiction of, the FBI or FCC. You’ve now got a couple of choices on where I am most likely from, but I haven’t made it too hard for you, Susan – it’s in my blog profile. A profile that also indicates a couple of other things.

1) I’ve been blogging since mid-2008, so it’s the most elaborate front for a Pedo-super-hacker known to man, considering there are hundreds of hours of golden, hand-tooled turns-of-phrase in there (ahem).

2) My pet themes are whimsy, ethics, humour, culture, anti-religion and scepticism. That’s almost a Wikipedia entry for someone not interested in ‘coding’ inbred, illiterate hicks from Bumfuck, North Carolina.

Now, a question of manners or sanity – you sign off with kiss/hug after threatening me. I think you need to see someone and talk things out a little. That's not normal. 

Calm down and look at who you’re yelling at. I don’t even really know what “coding” is, let alone do it. My address has greyarea in it, yes, but that’s not my address. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be “tracking” and as for your Google+ account that you've led me to... I think I might add you to my circles. 

You’re hilarious.

P.S. My mate Smurfy says you've got some really bad Ebay feedback for not sending stuff, too.

Just Wait For My Sauna Design

My bathroom is poorly named. There’s no bath.

There was once, judging by what is left in the room. There’s a bathy sort of space, all tiled over. The surfeit of safety handles and grab-bars in the room hints at the previous owner having the bath removed due to some brand of human frailty. I could rent out the room for Ninja Warrior training with all those points of purchase mounted on the walls.

“The challenge today at Mount Midoriyama, using only the wall furniture, is to go to the toilet, wash your hands and moisterise your toenails, all without touching the floor, falling down the waste drain, or losing too much blood to the mosquitos living on the ceiling.”

For our kids, though, it’s a bit of a bummer. Having become embarrassed at the tiny size and huge grottiness of the baby bath I’ve been jamming them into, I started considering alternatives… and I think I hit on a beauty. A giant Esky.

Think about it. Watertight, energy efficient, drainage tap at the bottom, multifunction and fun! Imagine being grown up and saying to your rich and successful mates, over dinner,

“You think that’s awesome?! Dad used to bath us in an Esky. He’d close the lid and play a game he called Trapped in a Capsized Boat. Sometimes he’d turn the shower on as well for a Das Boot variation on a theme. If we were particularly dirty, he’d hold the lid, and just shake the Esky.”

Carry a Big Stick and Operate at Whatever Volume You Like

This week I presented what I ‘manage’ in my professional capacity, to some heavyweights from the Japanese Head Office.

They were unfailingly polite and showed interest in what we were doing. They raised eyebrows, made noises, asked questions and said things like, “We will be back to talk more about this.” They were senior and polished and experienced.

I was polite and reserved. Maybe a little more than usual. Afterward, a colleague asked why I hadn’t taken the opportunity to really show them how it was done. Why I hadn’t gone all out and impressed them with the numbers and the doovers and the thingamebobs.

I answered with the below story. Partly, because I wondered why I’d been bashful myself (and the answer had only just popped into my head at that moment) and partly because I would like the word “gnomic” in my obituary.

In or around 1983, when I was a teenager, I bought my first 3-in-1 stereo. It was bought with the savings from my job at the bookshop (see how long ago that was? Bookshop!) and topped up with Birthday gift cash. It cost hundreds of dollars. That’s hundreds of 1983 dollars, I’ll have you know. Not your crazy Bitcoin imaginary spondoolies you young kids are smoking.

It was a Panasonic with a turntable in the bottom that came out on a tray (so it could go in a bookshelf without needing room to lift the lid). It had twin tape decks. 'Tape-to-tape' meant you’d joined an elite club that no longer needed to put two tape players face-to-face and then quietly leave the room, to get their mixed tape pirating done. It had 25 or maybe even 50 watts per channel and I was enormously proud of it.

A friend of mine was over to get changed for a party and I had the stereo on. I’m painful these days with a new gadget, so I cringe to think of what I would have been like with 30 less years of disappointments in my electronics cupboard. She showed genuine interest. She listened closely. She asked to hear it up loud, hear her favourite song on it as well as mine and generally made me feel like I had indeed made a good purchase and it could well be one of the finest stereos ever to have been manufactured.

A few weeks later I was at her place to change for a party. It was my first time there and we went to her room to put some music on. She powered up her hand-made, fluid damped turntable, swung the imported tone-arm suspended on the latticework of counterbalanced wires onto the platter, warmed up her NAD pre-amp, switched on the Yamaha amp and kicked the pile of clothes out from in front of one of her four JBL, totem speakers, grabbed the remote and turned up the volume. Then my head caved in and the wallpaper started to bleed.

She didn’t say a thing, just went to hunt for her mascara. When I had picked my jaw back up and had moved to spluttering and pointing, she just gave a graceful little shrug.

And that lesson has really stuck with me.