In The News

Apparently, the number of people it takes to assassinate Mahmoud al-Mabhouh is up to twenty six.

The latest accusations by Dubai police raised the size of the alleged assassination team to at least 26 and further expanded the international web of the investigation — now stretching from the United State to Europe and Australia.

The above referenced article mainly discusses the diplomatic outrage concerning the fact that this team apparently used passports from Britain, Ireland, France and Australia. I’ll let the suits and paper pushers figure that out.

What concerns me is the fact that twenty six people were allegedly directly involved. Now, I’ll be the first to admit this type of operation isn’t exactly my cup of tea, but even so, I prefer to work alone, and if forced, in small teams. This isn’t Ocean’s Eleven, or Twelve. That’s just a lot of people to trust when your untortured future is on the line.

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Going My Way?

What to do when you have to transport a body? Well, there are a few different types of bodies to transport.

First, you have a dead body. They’re easy to conceal in the trunk of a car and don’t make much noise. But, they are quite hard to explain if you’re talking to a customs agent who decides it would be a good idea to take a peak in your trunk.

Second are the alive but hostile bodies. The best part about this type is that they’re alive. When sitting in a car they don’t look dead and when given the proper motivation, or threat of physical violence to either them or someone they care about, they will generally sit still and can even say helpful things like, “No officer, there isn’t a problem here at all.” The worst part about the alive but hostiles is, well, they’re alive. They’re under duress and can be total wildcards. They can be a complete pain in the neck, alert law enforcement and get stressed enough to think that exiting a vehicle while bound at eighty five miles per hour on a busy highway is a good, safe way to attempt an escape.

Lastly are the alive and friendly type. For this kind, you can set up an arranged meeting time and place. Around lunch works well because it is a common time to leave the office. You get to the parking lot, pick up your friend Carson, take him to where he needs to go, acquire what information you need, and avoid information you don’t, like what is in that backpack, make sure you’re not being followed and return to work just in time to make that enthralling conference call you were scared you might miss.

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I Am Not Your Mother

Okay, I’m really tired and I’m having trouble making accurate sense of my observations.

- The guy at work who turned on a dime as soon as came around the corner while taking my lunch to the microwave was not avoiding me, just probably someone who forgot something at his desk.
- The telephony services van driving through the parking lot, occupied by two males, was probably not a tactical team meant to stalk me, but rather just doing work on the building.
- The guy at the grocery store moving the pallet jack of A&W Root Beer was not trying to impede my movement, he was traversing the soda aisle.

Of course I took all of these potential threats seriously, as you would if your life depended on it. But typically my point in time judgment is a bit more accurate.

Speaking of the grocery store, I’m making pasta carbonara for dinner. I sort of lied in the comments section of that link. I couldn’t wait until the weekend to try the dish. And I don’t know Carla personally, but anyone who lists sharp knives, cast iron, and small dogs for cleaning as topics of interest wins a spot among my blog bookmarks.

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Cheque This Out

Sometimes a man has just got to make a living.

In this business, you tend to stumble upon business operations that generate lots of money. A few years ago I was able to acquire a pile of cash, in the electronic sense, that I’ve been sitting on ever since.

Patience is the key. If you finish an operation and immediately go out and buy a boat or something, you’re sure to be under an allotment of fiscal microscopes. You need to be able to substantiate what you purchase. What isn’t watched as closely, however, are your everyday expenses.

Using this train of thought, today I set up an auto payment for all of my utility-esque expenses. Cable, internet, trash, water, and power. These are now paid automatically every month from an offshore account, funneled through an ING savings account, originating from my operational find a few years back.

The beauty of it all is that I’ve offset a few hundred dollars of monthly obligations that weigh against my corporate salary. Is it like winning the lottery? No. But winning the lottery draws attention. Attention gets you killed.

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On Demand

I was scrambling at the end of my work day. I had some data testing to finish up. It was taking me longer than necessary. This exaggerated timeline was purposeful. It allowed me to finalize the data for Mother.

I was finally able to aggregate the Bulgarian data Mother was looking for. I saved it to disc, sent an email to my boss, and headed out the door.

I had to get to Blockbuster. Mother placed a contact there. Between 5 and 5:15, the contact’s co-worker would be out on break. Given her pack a day habit, it was a pretty safe bet they’d be out back.

I pulled up a few minutes after the turn of the hour, and dropped off season 6 of 24 in the return bin, and left without talking to anyone. The third disc of the season, to an outsider, would look like any other burned compact disc. It will even play a forty five minute mix if someone played it. Encrypted, though, was a dossier detailing the ins and outs of the Bulgarian operation. It looked as if someone had mistakenly returned the wrong disc. My contact would swap this out with an actual 24 DVD and forward the information to Mother later on.

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Good Things Come In...

This is certainly not the sight you want to see as soon as you wake up, and before your first cup of coffee.

Treasa and the dogs stayed over last night. I, being the first to rise, went downstairs, started the coffee and took the dogs outside. At the end of the cul-de-sac were two SUVs and a truck. Given the ice/snow covered roads, I’m more concerned about being attacked by vehicles with four wheel drive than some tinted out performance sedan.

The engines were cold and there wasn’t anyone inside the vehicles. Should I come under attack this morning, I have an extra layer of security; Brogan, the canine door bell.

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All You Can Eat

Luckily, the power didn’t go out during the most recent snowfall. It was a few flakes over a foot this time. I knew I would be snowed in, so my strategy was preparedness and supply conservation.

Obviously I bought enough beer and bourbon to hold me through a few days of snow induced house arrest, but food would be another issue.

Essentially, food provisions boil down to two types: those you have to heat up, and those you don’t. You can find a box of pasta on sale at the grocery store for about a dollar. But without power, you can’t boil the water to cook it. Same goes for raw meats and frozen food items. Note that for the purposes of this explanation, I’m ignoring the potential of cooking with cast iron in the fireplace.

The second food category consists of items you can eat ‘as is.’ Raw veggies, fruit, nuts, most canned goods, bread, and as was my diet for the last day, deli meats, are all good expamples. During the early part of the storm, while power was on, I ate items from the first category to sustain my stash of those in the second. I was eating food that required power to prepare in case later on, if I had lost power, I still had food to eat that didn’t require electricity to prepare.

Of course, items like deli meats are in category 2 in the winter and category 1 in the summer because they require refrigeration. If power had gone out, I could have kept my ham and swiss from spoiling by placing them inside a large cooler, i.e. my front porch. My only concern then would be whether I had a ham sammy or a ham-and-swiss popsicle.

Luckily, I didn’t have to rely on my preparation this time. The key, though, is that I could have if I needed to.

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Majenta Feeling Taken Shelter In Base Of My Spine

This corporate gig has kept me working pretty hard recently. The only positives I see from this whole work thing are the pay check and the fact that the café stocks Cherry Coke Zero.

I’ve managed to profile our customer population into groups that may have been impacted by the Bulgarian credit card squeeze. Of the millions upon millions of accounts we have, I could immediately dismiss the ones that don’t owe anything. From there, it was a matter of modeling transaction behavior to determine who is involved in the Bulgarian scheme.

I segmented the population into buckets of accounts based upon the modeled probability that they were impacted. Before sending the file of leads to Mother for review, I discussed the separation logic I used to create the statistical stratification. Because some of the variables I incorporated weren’t the most operationally identifiable, I need to go back in and tweak it a bit.

More snow is expected again tonight. Next time I’m requesting assignment somewhere significantly warmer.

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Sun, Sun, Mr. Golden Sun...

It’s still snowing.

I sure wish I had that fourth gallon of milk.

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Milk Aisle Intolerance

We’re expecting anywhere between twelve and twenty four inches of snow, depending upon who you ask, tomorrow. Because it’s expected to start in the early afternoon, the grocery store was a complete mad house today. None of this is a surprise, because Delawarians are completely incompetent when it comes to snow.

We’re going to be stuck in our houses, maybe, until Sunday, and people are buying stuff like its Y2K all over again. I actually laughed out loud at the empty milk shelves and the women almost coming to tears over them. See blurry cell phone pic. The (pretty attractive) woman behind me in the checkout line said that she saw a woman buying four gallons of milk. Four gallons!?!?



Now, I’ll admit that an increases level of grocery fervor is tolerable, considering that the Super Bowl is this weekend and that the shopping that had been planned for Saturday had to be accelerated, but c’mon!

Treasa and I, of course, predicted the chaos and went to the liquor store yesterday. I don’t even want to know how crazy that place was today.

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House Call

A few days ago I got tired of the slow drain in my master bathroom sink. So I took apart the drain and cleared the clog, which was a pretty gross blob of gooey grossness. As I was putting it back together, I cracked the sleeve that connects the sink to the pipe. I went to Lowe’s and purchased a replacement Lavatory Pop-Up. But instead of installing it myself, and breaking the same piece twice, I had Treasa call a maintenance man from one of her properties.

He came over today and fixed it for free. And a lot faster than I would have.

Well, I think it cost me a sandwich, but all in all, not a bad deal.

The plumbing job had absolutely nothing to do with an operational procedure; however it did show me how accepting neighbors are of people in uniforms, carrying a few tools, entering your home. If I ever need to pick something up in the future for Mother, taking the truck, putting on some work clothes and carrying a tool box seems like a pretty simple way to remain under the radar.

An original idea? No. Simple and effective? Yes.

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Neighborhood Watch

Sorry about the lack of updates over the past few days. I haven’t been killed or detained, which you should have figured out by reading the previous sentence.

I made my way home from work today to find three police cars at the front of my neighborhood, lights flashing. There was, what appeared to be, a minor traffic accident. However, this happened on a section of road that was completely straight for a few hundred yards in either direction. The lead car had jumped the curb and struck a small tree next to the sidewalk. The second car had come to a stop only inches behind it. To add another level of complexity, there was a drug dog searching both vehicles. My best guess was that some sort of drug deal had gone bad resulting in the second car forcing the first off of the road.

And I paid a lot of extra money to live in the good part of town.

If someone in the same neighborhood has a less than legal distribution business, it does explain why someone broke into my truck a few days ago. Presumably, they were looking for something, like my GPS, to trade for a score.

Hopefully, this will cause the local police force to increase patrols through this area. Now, you may think that increased police presence would be a hindrance to someone like me. For day to day activities, this is not the case.

A quieter locale reduces the chances of an extraneous factor impeding on any operation I may have planned. Luckily I was able to work from home following my truck break in. But what would have happened if I had to leave abruptly to meet one of Mother’s contacts that morning? Driving a truck with a busted out window would attract police attention in the wrong way. My ability to stay alive depends on skillful planning of operations and their inherent contingencies. It is virtually impossible to strategize a backup plan that fits into my cover story that covers waking up to a pile of glass on my driver’s seat.

Hopefully, there won’t be any other incidents in the future.

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