Hiya, Elise!!!
SOOOOOOOO glad to hear that you made it back all in one piece and you're sounding a lot more like yourself again, too. (Also glad that your house wasn't trashed and the lizard was in good -- comatose -- condition.)
As for me, after dashing off my update to you, I got back on the road and headed out to PODUNKVILLE, OREGON to pick up my car... It was all fixed and sounded TOTES BETTER on the way back home. I was TOO TIRED TO DEAL and decided to drive STRAIGHT HOME... it meant my second SUPER-LATE NIGHT in a row but it was SOOOOOOO nice to crash in my own bed -- to a startled snort and mumble from the Hubs -- and then to wake up, luxuriantly, in my OWN room with my OWN pillow under my cheek.
SRSLY, it's the little things in life that make the difference.
And then... well, reading over your last update, I see why this happened, but I was sort of WEIRDED OUT when I originally got the call.
My phone rang, like SUPER-EARLY in the morning -- I was just getting back from my morning SPIN SESSION -- and I picked it up.
Silence. Then "Ummmm, Lindzi"
"Yeppers, that's me!"
"Um...."
I sighed. "Well, WHAT IS IT????"
"Uh, this is Ted. From #life."
"Yeah, Ted, I have your number in my phone. So what's up?"
He started to explain that you'd sent him to investigate Zelda. I didn't know about it but supposed it was a good idea. From what I can tell -- remember that computer-code poem from the very beginning? -- he's pretty good at that stuff.
But then something he was saying sunk in...
"...and since I didn't have the permissions to look at her account activity, I hacked into your profile on the site. Really, Lindzi, even a CHILD could have guessed your password; you really should make more of an effort to keep it more secure. C'mon, "RunGirlRun" is the name of your blog. Seriously, you should put a little more thought into it. I guess I should be glad it wasn't 12345 or something..."
(I had almost set it to 12345. So annoying, that Ted!)
"Ted, thank you for the lesson. What is your point?"
"Oh, yeah. Well, so once I was in your profile, I did some quick scans of the user activity and I..."
Blah blah blah. I figure he probably spent some time stalking Lila's deets as well as whatevs he was doing for Zelda. I made myself a bagel and pretended to listen to him as he blathered on. I thought you said the guy wasn't talkative, Elise????
Any-hoodles, eventually I realized he was actually saying something sorta interesting in between all the computery mumbo-jumbo...
"... and my trace backtracked it to a company's IP address -- naturally it was routed through a number of spoofing sites and I had to break the encryption before continuing..."
"Yeah, yeah, Ted," I interrupted impatiently, losing my patience, "I know you're a genius... so what did you find?"
"AS I WAS SAYING," he went on, as if I hadn't spoken, "After I broke through the encryption I saw that several of the IP addresses were registered to the same shell corporation. Not the same company name, mind you, but the same shell corporation. Even more suspicious, they were all registered on the same day by the same person..."
I set down the phone -- it was on speaker -- and went to wash my hands.
There was a suspicious pause on the other end. "ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME? This is important, Lindzi."
"Yeah, I'm listening," I said, from the counter where I was drying off my hands. "This is TOTES INTERESTING. TELL ME MORE PLEASE."
(Srsly, sarcasm is lost on these computer geeks.)
"Well, the thing is, other than having a shell corporation name, and possibly a name of a person for you, I don't have much else. In fact..."
He suddenly sounded hesitant. I leaped onto that, because it probably meant something more interesting was coming down the line.
"What? What is it, Ted?"
"Well," he said reluctantly, "if I were still with Lila I might suggest that you check with her about the shell corporation. That's her field, you know -- corporate law -- and she might have some contacts that could trace it to the people or company that it's standing in for."
"Huh," I said, lost in thought. "I thought you said there's a name, too."
"Ummm..." Now he sounded kinda embarrassed, "well, yeah, but it probably won't do you much good... every one of those IP addresses was registered by a 'Mr. V. Dracula Jr.'"
I snorted. Well, it was in keeping with Zelda's bogus profile, I guess. "Yeah, I think it's probably a fake name."
"Now, Lindzi, I am setting a reminder on your account for you to change your password. It should be stronger and should contain, at a minimum..."
More boring computer talk. I was beginning to realize that if I interrupted him, he rewound to a few sentences before my interruption and REPEATED HIMSELF, so it was better to let it all run its course.
"Um, Ted," I finally asked, " Why are you telling me all of this? I assume that Elise asked you to do the digging, right?"
"Um... well... um... " he sounded reluctant. "Well, your account was easier to crack so I just went with it. Tell Elise that she probably should get her boyfriend's name out of her own password, though. And since I logged into your account and looked around with it I figured that I should probably let you know, you know, because it's the right thing to do and... Hey, have you heard from Paige recently?"
Srsly, Elise, it was one of the LAMEST transitions in history. But WHATEVS. I was SUPER-TIRED and didn't want to deal with it anyway. I chatted with him about Paige and their plans to seek out other log flume rides around the country. She'd attempted to talk him into trying swing-dancing but for the moment he was holding out.
"I am thinking of getting a Schnoodle, however," he mentioned.
"A whaaaa???" I said, through the gulp of hot chocolate that I'd been drinking.
"A Schnauzer-Poodle crossbreed. Schnoodle. I think it would be a pleasant companion for my pugs."
"Um, have fun with that?" I said. "Uh, do you have Paige's phone number!"
"Sure, I was just waiting until it's late enough to call her! It's early over there in California, you know!!!"
"Yeah, I'm on the SAME TIME ZONE." OK, actually I'm an hour later, but WHATEVS. Maybe he'd
He didn't get it. And he STILL WOULDN'T GET OFF THE DARNED PHONE.
"So, as I was saying, I thought that a Schnoodle would be a great companion for my pugs, because they have such complementary personalities..."
Arrrrrgh. Like two hours later, he apparently decided it was time to call Paige and hung up on me. Anywhoo, he sent me the deets over email -- I've forwarded them on to you -- and it sounds like we might want to call in Lila to tell us about this V. Dracula, Jr. and his "Bram, Stoker, Stein and Franken, PLLC" shell corporation.
Blech. I think I haven't heard that much NERDY COMPUTER TALK since my LITTLE BRO decided to go all HACKER one summer. (Thankfully he grew out of it, not apparently having the patience for the hacking part of being a hacker. He thought it would be cooler and there would be awesome computer chicks to keep him company. Yeah, not so much.)
Moving on... I've been thinking through DATE IDEAS... what do you think would be a good venue for an Ethan / Lila date? I don't want to encourage her to glom on too fast, so I was thinking something BUSINESSLIKE and PROFESSIONAL might keep her in line... maybe we could get her going on this "shell corporation" within the context of a date???
And then what about some of these other matches of ours? I mean, with Violet and Jay on the outs, who should either of them be set up with? I'm tempted to try Jay with Yesenia, but also think that I should GIVE HIM SOME TIME to lose the happy-couple weight.
OH, heard back from Tiffany's aunt. She's in her reserved room at Sunshine Estates and slowly but surely coming back around. Her aunt was rather worried about this new "stealing brains" fixation of hers, but, when I explained the zombie dress-up, sighed and said that it wasn't unprecedented.
"We had a couple years where everything was about the Unicorns who stole her lunch... turned out that she'd watched an ill-advised round of My Little Ponies and had gotten it all conflated with the crowd of ne'er do wells that she was hanging out with at the time. I think you call them 'Bronies'?"
So maybe she'll be available for dating later on. Not sure I want to chance it.
I'm trying to get back into the swing of things around here. Didn't realize until this morning that I had gone THREE WHOLE DAYS without ANY REAL EXERCISE. What is that????? It must be why I'm feeling so INSANELY EXHAUSTED.
Any-whoo, there's the skinny on the Zelda situ and as much of the BORING COMPUTER DEETS as I can remember. There's probably more in the email that Ted sent... I'll confess that I didn't read it when I saw that it was six pages and filled with icky words like "reverse lookup" and "site registration ID".
Hope you can make more out of it than I could! Let me know if you want me to contact Lila, or if you're ready to do so yourself!!!
XOXOXOXOXOXOX,
Lindzi