I’m a moderator of a closed mailing list for officers of local alumni associations. Somehow I ended up angering this random crazy man via email who then threatened me. It ended up with the random crazy man calling me a jerk, telling me to watch my back, calling me an insulting little twit, and other fine things. The random crazy man is not just random, I’ve since found out that he was a past president of a prominent local alumni association.

I’ve forwarded the threatening email to the Portland Police Bureau.

All I did was post the following:

Subject: Does anyone know <innocent person> of the <alumni association>?
He is requesting to join <our mailing list>

His first reply, to the entire mailing list, was:

He’s the President of <alumni association>, jerk. Just say “Welcome, <innocent person>”.

The mailing list is for club officers of alumni clubs of Ivy League colleges (plus MIT and Stanford, et al) so I didn’t expect this kind of response. All we ever post are book signings, singing performances, lectures, etc. that local alumni associations are hosting. It’s really to let other clubs know about events. So my reply was:

Well, I’ve added <innocent person>, and removed <rude person>@<email place>.com.
Thanks for the feedback.

<rude person>@<email place>.com is the email for <rude person>. I didn’t know <rude person>’s real name until after the whole email exchange.

He then sent me the threatening email:

arrogant functionary. we’ll meet some time. watch your back.

Of course, receiving such an email made me defensive (and not too wise) and I replied:

Nice threat. I’d report this to the police but I figure you’re a coward.

I reconsidered and forwarded his threatening email to the Portland Police Bureau, as well as his ISP.

His final reply was:

Couldn’t get into med school….can’t get a good job….time to get your life together young man.
Don’t ever send out an email asking a question like ‘Who is <innocent person>….he wants to get onto the list I
manage….. you insulting little twit. Respect your elders. You might get somewhere in life.

He emphasizes the point I don’t understand. I am the moderator of this email list. I have no idea of the affiliation of anybody wanting to join the group unless, of course, they’re affiliated with MIT (I am an alumnus, after all). I mistakenly thought I was the only moderator (I am co-moderator) and so the only way I could find out about the person joining (<innocent person>, who did nothing wrong in this entire exchange) was to ask the mailing list. How did I set this guy off?

I guess, like my friend Greg says, I’m a shit magnet.

Addendum:

The police told me that threats, verbal or written, are free speech. I kind of think that means they don’t want to do the paperwork, but whatever.

My friend Ben Shelton passed away last week at the age of 31. A wake is scheduled this weekend.

Everything else is lame in comparison. In any case, I got home in time to realize it was time to pass the baton in the “make your little sister happy relay” again and I had to take the package I got from REI over to the Slabs for delivery to Paso Robles, CA. It would be easier if they’d just move the heck up here, but Portland isn’t exactly paradise, either.

Last Friday when I went back to work at 8:30PM or so, I decided to clear out all the Diet Coke bottles I’d accumulated.They completely filled the small trunk of my Honda, and so I got rid of them while I was at the Slabs, since they’re near a Safeway. I was in line with some folks who looked like their entire income was from recycling bottles. (For those from other planets, Oregonians pay a $0.05 deposit on every bottle, and were the first state to do that. Lately you have to get the money back by shoving the cans or bottles into a smelly machine that counts and crushes them, and for your trouble you get a slip of paper that you can take into the store to exchange for money.) In any case, I had $4.85 worth of bottles, or ninety-seven bottles to return.

From time to time I get calls to participate in surveys. They hold out the carrot, telling me it’ll just be a couple of hours and they’ll pay some amount of money that is non-zero. But then they ask questions to see what sort of “bin” I fall into. How much to I make, what kind of job do I have, etc. Whatever it is, I tell them the truth and I never seem to make it past those questions. Today they were asking questions about animation, and they didn’t like that I was 40-years-old and living with my parents. WHO ELSE WATCHES ANIMATION? Hell, the only other thing that would match those conditions better would be something regarding Star Trek.

OK, so I FILLED UP MY iPod mini! I just got the latest Daft Punk (which is just as repetitive as you’d imagine) and I couldn’t fit the whole album onto my iPod without deleting other stuff. I only have music on here that I can listen to on “shuffle.” I can’t pick things to delete off of here. I’m sure other people would hate what I have, but I find it odd that I have four gigs of songs I want to hear.

Oh, and this is all going up early because I’ve got the punes. I’ve been watching too many medical programs, like “House” and I’m thinking I have some sort of weird organ failure. Good thing I’ve found that everyone around me has the same symptoms.

So last night I adjusted the clocks and went to sleep early because I had a headache. This morning I got up, ate breakfast, took a nap until lunch, and then took a nap until dinner. Sounds like I have a cold or something. I never did take my temperature but that’s sure what it seemed like.

I think I had a disturbing dream about an ex-girlfriend, but there aren’t to many of them so I can’t be sure if it wasn’t about someone else. Like a supermodel or something. I can’t remember.

At least I hope not. Had to go back to work to try to fix something (that I must admit is not fixed). Got to pay $1.90 for the privilege since it’s Friday night and all the free parking was being used.

I completely missed the 30th “birthday” of Northwest Bicycles, but I haven’t been on a bike for years. I rode down to the new REI in the Pearl District because I got a free gift for my trouble, but the bikes are used to collect dust and as coatracks. I only go into Northwest Bicycles to talk to the guys who own it. I’ve been going in there for years. Not quite 30 years, but at least 25 years.

I also made it to the gym. I noticed that the woman who reminds me of my ex has bigger arms than I do. And they’re muscular. Woo.

On the way to work, I ran into a guy I sort of know. He’s an account manager at a firm that makes legal copies and he has a band called Pillowfight and they’re playing on Friday. Then, on the way home, I saw a woman who was in my bioinformatics class (and who had my co-worker’s mom on her thesis committee). Finally, at Fred Meyer’s (a local grocery chain owned by Kroger’s) I saw the old volunteer outreach coordinator from Cascade AIDS project.

Funny how I was trying to prevent something that diminished white blood cell counts and now I have too many white blood cells. OK, so it’s not so funny. Perhaps it’s ironic. I haven’t quite decided.

I didn’t post anything yesterday because, what did I do? Played with my computer, trying to get it to run software to program little tiny computers like the ones I used to design at Mitsubishi Semiconductor. The ones used in VCRs to blink the display “12:00.”

Anyway, not much happened then, or tonight. Went to the gym and it was fairly full. Not a surprise, since it’s Monday and also because it was raining fairly hard. Finally, it’s raining in Oregon.

I think THEY are doing Speed Dating again tomorrow (they being my friend Ted, actually) and I enjoyed myself at the first one. However, I also think that the only thing that will happen if I go to Speed Dating is that I’ll end up $40 poorer. Sure, I’ll get to meet a bunch of new people, but I’ll never see them again. What’s the point in that? I might as well just burn the $40 and watch TV. Maybe I should try to sign up for eHarmony and see if I get a rejection letter like my friend Ben did.

I haven’t really tried it out, which means I really haven’t tried talking to anyone yet. Just hooked it all up and listened to a bunch of people from all over the US. Then I started playing with the computer instead.

Then I watched a bunch of weird cartoons on the Cartoon Network. I’ve always liked cartoons and comic books (just ask my sister) and there’s plenty of weird ones they play on Saturdays. Several are from Japan, and I think they don’t make any sense in the original Japanese. They add some story when they translate it to English, and that’s why you see cartoons like Speed Racer where they’re talking as fast as they can so they can fit in the explanation.

Oh, well. More computer tomfoolery tomorrow.

Especially since it’s Friday, and if you’re bored enough to read this then you’ve probably been bored enough to read this in the past and know that Fridays are boring gym nights and I’m also building this ham radio kit.

(To those in the know, I’ve decided that while I’m a 100W kind of guy, building 100W radios and tuners is the pits. QRO is fun for the big parts, and QRP is fun because everything can be manageably small. 100W is about the point where things aren’t big enough to need a hammer for all the parts but it takes some imaginitive bending and chiseling to get things done right.)

Anyway, work is work and of course the most interesting part of the day was probably the gym. The weird part is that I finally talked to the woman who most resembles my ex. That sort of frightens me. She looks like my ex but much more buff. She was having trouble with her iPod shuffle and I suggested that she take it back and get one that works. The weird thing is another woman came in who looked like someone else I went out with in the near past and — you probably knew this — I haven’t gone out with that many women.

And as you’ve guessed, I worked on my radio.

OK, time to see if I can catch up on my sleep.

I thought I spent a lot of time in the basement tonight, putting together more ham radio stuff, but I realized that I was limited by my “need” to watch Joey and Dragon Ball: GT. So I thought I was slowing down on the building pace but I only put in a couple of hours. (In the past, I represented the US in an International electronic assembly competition. I don’t remember how well I did, and think I might have come in dead last, but I do know I didn’t win.) In any case, I was good at this at some point, good enough to be sent to Linz, Austria.

Ah, well. Now that I think of it, I was a day late and a dollar short there, too.

Time to try to get some sleep. There’s a Japanese saying about springtime and sleeping like you were dead or something (which doesn’t sound all that great when you say it in translation) but I’ve been having troubles getting up lately. This morning I woke up in a panic, thinking it was mid-morning and I was late for work. My alarm hadn’t gone off yet. In any case, I’m probably going to end up screwing around until late and then drag into work. It’s just the way things are.

So the friendly girl at the desk is off for a semester in Italy, so now we’re stuck with surly. Actually, that’s not true, but Jenny was the friendliest one. I can’t remember the name of the thin blonde woman at the desk, but she’s a knitter (made a keyhole scarf) and so I suppose that’s worth something to someone. I usually walk by Lint on the way home, and it probably matters to them.

I got another ham radio kit today, so now I have something else to do besides ruining my sister’s blog. Or at least the computer it runs on.

Cupid was supposed to arrive today according to my horoscope. Nope. Well, I suppose he’s got another 44 minutes.

OK, 27 now.