Partners in Crime

Everyone needs a partner in crime. Life is just NOT that interesting unless you have someone to share the excitement of your conquests with (like building and configuring my first workstation or learning to replace the brake pads on my car) or the ridiculous predicaments of your failures (witness Cosmo the pig or the flaming tire incident--we skipped a step in the brake pad replacement, OOPS).

I'm not advertising "real" crime, so don't get your hackles up!

My partner in crime has always been my not-so-little brother. We've been pulling off escapades ever since we realized that we were always going to be the only two people we really knew everywhere we went. That was a long, long time ago. We moved a lot as my father's job involved consulting with various oil companies for short periods of time. Frequent relocation seemed to be the catalyst for our relationship--that and the fact that there just weren't that many people out there that thought as strangely as we do.

Yes, we fought like cats and dogs, but you had better not mess with either one of us or the other is liable to attack you quietly in your sleep. :)

We spent inordinate amounts of time together as children and adolescents hiking in the woods of northeast Oklahoma, working on computers, building things, wrecking go-carts, and fishing.

I was there when he caught a water mocassin by the tail with his fishing lure. He was there when I jumped into a nest of young copperheads (no I wasn't bitten). I was there when he became the world's youngest bulletin board operator on the then-infantile Internet. He was there when I learned to use it (it was the mid-80's...very early for the Internet and WELL before graphic user interfaces made life easy). I was there when he hacked into his own FBI file. He was there when I told him to "shut that darn thing off quick and keep it to yourself!" We were both there when mom and dad took off for two weeks to tour the western US and a tropical storm exposed a leak in their roof that brought down most of the ceiling in the second floor of their home--lots and lots of towels, shop-vac'ing, bagging of insulation, and praying that the whole roof wasn't going to cave in.

Not much has changed since then.

Now, we take off "hackin' through the bracken" whenever we have a mind to. We enjoy studying military and political history. We're movie and book buffs--only of certain genres (generally military or sci fi). We are still computer aficionados...mostly networking and network security systems--and we love a challenge, so we take on what amounts to "freelance" work (emphasis on free). Actually, our idea of a challenge is to accept any offer to build or repair something and we've gotten quite good at it. We work and speak well enough together that most people think we are twins. Weird.

Best of all, we know the worst things about each other and its still OK. I can't say enough about that. Not at all.

Attrition, this one's for you...

Scat