Goin' around and comin' around

This is hilarious. As many of you know, Monte works for a storage company managing their data and computer systems. The company has stores all over the US and Canada, and four months ago in one particular store in Georgia, the store was robbed. The glass windows of the store were shattered in the middle of the night, and the site's computer was stolen. Now this sort of thing, unfortunate though it is, has been known to happen and it's usually just a matter of filing a police report and an insurance claim. For the most part that's the end of it--you never see the thieves or the hardware again. However, in those cases the thieves in question are smart enough not to plug the computer back in, turn it on and then leave it on for long periods. The Georgian thieves, bless their hearts, didn't suffer from the same burden of intelligence and/or a suspcious nature. Today, Monte noticed the computer from Georgia was turned on, logged in and ready for action somewhere in Texas. Now, you and I would simply notify the police, who would then say in a somewhat snarky voice, "where in Texas?" We'd reply "well, it doesn't work like that . . . we have a general idea, we don't have an exact location," and in response we'd get a very terse and abbreviated geography lesson involving the size of Texas, followed by a comparason of our problem to sewing implements and large amounts of piled fescue. The computer would sit in Texas and blink inquiringly but patiently at us, and not much else would go down.

Monte is not you and me.

Not even a little bit.

Monte, on the other hand, saw that the machine was turned on, and since he has a program that not only tells when company computers are on, but can also change things about those computers at his discretion, he did what Monte would do.

He started uninstalling stuff.

The thieves will discover upon their return that they have no more Microsoft Office among other things, and that he's looked at their e-mail, at their pictures (this is me-n-zeke robbin' a store, this is me-n-Zeke at Stone Mountain, etc.), portions of their drive are erased, and if they turn the machine on again he has other even more sinister ideas he's dying to try. I think one of them involves sending out an e-mail using the thieves own account to the people in their address book that reads, "Don't trust me, I'm a thief. I stole the computer that sent you this e-mail. If I were you, I'd rethink the life choices that brought you into contact with someone like me, who clearly experiences no moral or ethical delimma when it comes to comitting a freaking robbery!!! HELLO?!"

Wait, I'm being told it was burglary. They were burglars. That's not as cool. It makes them sound like that creepy cartoon dude painted next to the grimace in all McDonald's playlands. Still, can you imagine the burgular's dinnertime conversation tonight? "Dang it Zeke, I told you we was not supposed to turn it on and leave it on! We's been hacked! Now we caint use us that Excel spreadsheet you was workin' on to finish out our dang taxes Zeke!"