Year: 2005

So my quest to save Calimar from marriage was a complete failure but I still managed to have a really great time this weekend. I present to everyone…

I’m referring to it as a con because it seemed like a mini-hacker con to me. I met people there that I usually only interact with online. I met, for the 2nd time in my life, Jammie who founded the #rock channel a decade ago. I met a guy I didn’t know but who said to me, “Yeah, you used to prank call my dad all the time and you would really piss him off!” Not to mention that there were PLA Bells on the wedding cake and cactus confetti spread all around them. Cal’s wife arranged that herself so she can’t be that bad of a person! I didn’t take many pictures myself so I’m planning on stealing Jammie and Laura’s pictures as soon as they’re all up online. For now, though, here are a few of my pictures. More will be added soon…

I had 2 pictures of the PLA bells on the cake but one of them got corrupted in the transfer from my SD card and it happened to be the better picture. Dammit. Hopefully Jammie took one too so I can put it up. The picture of Calimar singing with one of the groomsmen – they’re doing karaoke of the song Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. In girl voices. I regret not bringing my video camera for that. On Sunday I drove a friend several hundred miles home to help him avoid airfare. So I thought the Limo thing on my back window was fitting.

The weekend was great fun. I ate at restaurants all weekend and I never seemed to be able to pay the tab because someone always beat me to it. Damn you nice people! I finally managed to pick up the tab on our piddley breakfast Sunday morning before we left. On Friday night we all met at a bar called Chances and stayed there until about 2am. I ended up sleeping on the floor in D’s hotel room. I’d slept on Cal’s couch the night before and it was comfortable and everything but he had these animals in his kitchen (sugar gliders, I think they’re called) and they made horribly annoying noises all night and kept me up. I don’t think I slept for more than an hour at a time. The hotel floor was much quieter.

On Saturday morning we got up and did some running around town with Cal, going to a few stores and gathering random things that were needed for the wedding. Ate breakfast with a bunch of people at some mexican place. The wedding ended up lasting maybe 30 or 40 minutes. I ended up being one of the ushers in the wedding which was fine with me since it required minimal responsibility. At some point, Cal’s fiance, Anita, decided that I would be the one to walk her down the isle and give her away. I text messaged this information to my friend Amy on Friday evening and she replied, “That will be an easy way to keep Cal from getting hitched. Just before you walk her down the isle, chloroform her and lock her in the closet. That way Cal will just think she is another runaway bride like that one chick on TV.” I thought that was a hilarious idea so I passed my cell phone around the table for everyone to read the text message. I’m thinking that perhaps this is the reason it was decided that I wouldn’t give Anita away. She probably wasn’t sure if I was joking or not.

After the wedding was the reception and then me and a few others went to Corpus Christi to see Revenge of the Sith. I’m not really a big Star Wars fan but it was still a good movie. After the movie we hung out in a place called Habeeb’s Corner and ate pizza for awhile. Then me, D, Laura and Jammie went in search of a beach to run around on. We made a quick pitstop at a stripclub along the way that was actually just a double-wide trailer with a sign on top reading ADULT CABARET. We stayed there for less than 3 minutes and then continued to Rockport in search of the beach.

You’d think for a town which is practically an island, we could find a beach. But it was dark and all we could find were fishing piers. None of us were FROM Rockport and I’d sure never bothered looking for a beach there before. We actually stopped at a Circle K and asked the clerk where the beach was. Eventually we found a suitable beach. Laura and Jammie, who are from DC and NYC, really wanted to see a Texas beach. And they got to see it, overgrown with moss, roaches, fishheads and a terrible smell. We eventually found a much cleaner section of beach and Laura convinced me to run around in the ocean with her. In my clothes.

That night ended around 2am or so. The next morning after our breakfast and goodbyes, I gave D a ride to his house, a few hundred miles away and then I made it to Muskogee, Oklahoma and crashed in a Super 8 for the night. I was really hoping to make it to Missouri before stopping, but I was tired. I got home on Monday around 5:30pm. I’d hung around Muskogee all morning, working from my cell phone, which is why it took me so long to make it back to Alton.

Comment from not jammie in certainly not NYC on Thursday, June 09, 2005: Wow that jammie chick is pretty hot! You should go visit her!

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Tuesday, May 3rd, 2005: Went to the YWCA to pick up enrollment stuff for the kids summer camp. Then went to a bunch of antique shops, pawn shop and a thrift store.

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Thursday, May 5th, 2005: Visited my parents for awhile this evening. Went to Dennis’ to show him button designs and accidentally woke him up.

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Saturday, May 7th, 2005: Got up around 6:30 and drove to Troy for the fundraiser again. Was much busier this week than last.

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Tuesday, May 12th, 2005: Took Tami and her kids to see Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy in Jerseyville.

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Wednesday, May 11th, 2005: Me and Tami ate lunch at a restaurant in Cottage Hills.

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Saturday, May 14th, 2005: Visited my parents to bring them Eli & Janae buttons. Then went to the mall and to a couple flea markets.

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Monday, May 16th, 2005: I was at the mall today looking for a book and a spotted a book on how to use Google. As if Google could possibly be too hard for somebody and they would need to pay $15.00 on a book that shows them how to use it. Of course, they also show you how to use other difficult search engines like Yahoo, MSN Search and Altavista. As if anybody in this century has ever used Altavista. On the same shelf was a book on how to use your Ipod. In case the instruction manual was missing from the box when you bought your Ipod, I guess. Because using an Ipod is even harder than using Google. That one button on it really gets confusing.

Anyway, I picked out my book, Outlook Express for Dummies, paid for it and went home.

Went to Wendy’s today for a Frosty and snapped a picture of their sign. Later I was on the phone with Amy and she came up with the idea of calling them as a radio station doing a spelling contest. So here’s the call. The only thing I forgot to say was, “Hey, what’s your favorite radio station that makes fun of your spelling errors?”

I’m in a rut again. I can’t get motivated to accomplish anything. And I’ve got so much I need to do. A million things. I hate this. This evening I went on a really really long walk across Alton. And I remembered this really idiotic, crazy, retarded, incredibly stupid phreaking adventure I had when I was 19. Well it was more along the lines of fraud or felonies than phreaking. Anyway, I was living in East Alton, working at 7-Elven and living with my parents. I’d been collecting credit card numbers from customers at work and I had quite a collection of them, along with their names and addresses. I even had the mayor of East Alton’s credit card number which I attempted to order a laptop on later that year. But that’s not the stupid part.

While living in Los Angeles a few months earlier, I’d tried to wire myself money through Western Union with some stolen credit cards. I tried it several times and it never worked. I finally found out that the reason was because Western Union needed to call me at the phone number that was on file with the credit card company to verify I was really the card holder. The obvious solution (other than giving up on the idea) was to call up the credit card company and change the card holder’s phone number to a pay phone I could stand at. But I didn’t do that. Instead I ordered call forwarding for these peoples’ phone lines so that I could go to their house, beige box their lines and forward their phone calls to a pay phone that I could answer.

Two of the credit card numbers I had belonged to people in Edwardsville, Illinois. So I picked them as my victims and ordered call forwarding for their lines. Then I asked my parents if I could borrow their truck for the night because my manager needed me to work in the Edwardsville store which was 25 miles away. (The Edwardsville 7-Eleven wasn’t even affiliated with the 2 7-Elevens in town that I worked at.) So around 1:30 in the morning, I start driving to Edwardsville with a map, a homemade beige box, the number of a local pay phone and all kinds of tools. I found the neighborhood and parked the truck several blocks away, thinking if I had to run away quickly I wouldn’t want them to see what kind of vehicle I got into.

The neighborhood was really nice and I can’t believe nobody happened to notice a scruffy-looking, big-haired stranger walking down the road with his jacket bulging full of phreaking supplies. If a cop would have passed me I’m sure he would have questioned me or at least parked somewhere and watched me. My mission was a complete failure. I didn’t get any lines forwarded. The first house had lights all around it and I didn’t feel comfortable walking up to it. The second house had their TNI box way up high where I couldn’t reach it, even when I stood on their deck. It was so stupid and insane, walking around on some family’s deck and snooping around their house at 2:30 in the morning. Their house was on the lake so I walked to the lake and just sat in the grass for probably an hour before getting bored and going home. I’m amazed that I didn’t get caught that night. Or at least chased. I think I gave up on the Western Union idea after that. About a month later is when my girlfriend and I looted 7-Eleven and fled town.