Daddy Roush Need 6000 Rates Fans Help ...'s blog: "Daddy Roush"

Okay, here is another installment since many of you enjoyed the first. HAIRDRYER, ANYONE? The kitchen door opened from the garage and in walks Jeff and Meghan Ramlow carrying several shopping bags. “Oh. Hi, mom and dad. I didn’t even here the garage door open”, says David as he looks up from his plate of Chicken Jean Pierre. “Hey, mom. Hey, dad. How was dinner this evening?” says Kayla as she steps away from the refrigerator with a gallon of milk. “What’s with all the bags”, David says looking at them quizzically. “Yeah, I thought you went grocery shopping the other day”, say Kayla. “Well, to answer your first question; dinner was wonderful, as usual. Chef Giacomo prepared an exquisite dish with roasted red peppers that I just absolutely loved”, says Meghan Ramlow as she starts removing the items from the bags to be put away. “And to answer your second question”, says Jeff Ramlow, “I had to stop and pick up a couple of things, and your mother remembered a few things that she had forgotten.” “Here you go, Kayla”, says Jeff as he hands her a box with a brand new hair dryer in it. “Why didn’t you tell me that you needed a new one?” Kayla immediately looks at David with an evil stare as he sits there with a dumbfounded look on his face. “Umm, dad; I can explain the hairdryer”, David says as he clears his throat. “Can we talk in your office for a moment?” “Honey, would you fix me a Seven and Seven, and bring it to the office?” says Jeff speaking in the direction of his wife but not removing his eyes from David. “I have a feeling that I’m going to need it for this. On second thought, you better make that a double. The thought of Adam Rivers seeing my daughter wearing only a towel has me a little queasy.” Jeff Ramlow sat at his desk and just stared across at his son for what seemed like an eternity. David sat there and fought over and over in his mind with how he was going to explain to his father that not only had he infiltrated and cracked the his dad’s Department of Justice computer server in their home, but knocked it offline, and brought it back up. At that moment, a knock comes from the office door, and Meghan enters carrying a high ball glass on a silver tray. She walks over and sits it on the desk in front of Jeff, kisses him on the cheek, and walks out of the office, gently closing the door behind her. “Dad, I don’t know where to start.” says David as he fumbles for the right words to say. “I guess… I kind of figured that you knew what I had been doing, the reason you kept changing the security policy on the servers. I mean, I was installing a beta copy of the new server OS from Microsoft, and when it went to look for the DHCP server to assign it an IP address, it kept returning an error message telling me the DHCP server could not be located. I knew that this was incorrect, so I came down here to your office, and I attempted to log onto the server using my administrative credentials from your office. When I still could not log on using my credentials, I went back to my room and grabbed a copy of the script that I wrote a few months ago that allows me to gain access into any server using any dummy Administrative account that I choose. Once I was in, I immediately accessed the security policy to see what changes you had made to it so that I could allow the new server to be assigned an IP address. I don’t know what happened at that point. I’m still a bit puzzled. The server crashed, then the other servers went offline, and we had no internet access. At this point, I’m scrambling trying to get everything back up, and then Kayla comes storming in and I lost it for a moment. I reset the server and reloaded the script that I made, and gained access to the server again. I went straight to the security policy, and found what I was looking for. I made the changes, restarted the server one more time, and all was well.” Jeff sat there for a moment and stared into space. He wasn’t quite sure what to think. His mind just did not want to comprehend the fact that his seventeen year old son had just sat in front of him and confessed to electronically breaking into his Department of Justice computer server on not just one occasion, but on numerous occasions. How was he going to handle this? How could he inform his supervisors at the White House? Would he have to put his son, who was about to graduate in a few months with a four point zero grade average at the top of his class in jail, and ruin his dreams of following in his parents steps, and becoming an agent for the United States Secret Service? He looks at David and takes a long sip of his drink. Calmly, he says, “Do you realize how much damage that you have done? Are you aware that you have placed your entire future in jeopardy? How does federal prison sound right now? And I don’t mean working there”, he adds. “I want you to go up to your room and sit there until I come up”, he starts. “No chatting. No Internet. No email. No Computer. I want you to just sit there and think about all of this.” He takes another long pull on his drink and then looks at the empty glass as he swirls the ice cubes left in it. He looks up at David and says, “Go.” David gets up from his chair and leaves his father’s office, gently closing the door behind him. “Worthy of Trust and Confidence” he reads from the poster of a Secret Service shield on his wall as he lay there on his bed. How could his father have trust in him now he thought? Would his parents have anymore confidence in him? A knock comes from the door. “David?” says Kayla as she enters his room. “So what did daddy say to you? Are you going to be able to attend graduation; or will you still be grounded?” she says as she pushes his feet over and sits on his bed. “I know that he wasn’t to upset, because I could not hear him screaming.” David lay there and just looked back and forth from the ceiling to the Secret Service poster. “Sis”, he starts to say as he sits up in bed, “I’m sorry for everything. I’m not really sure what I was thinking. Why I was trying to cover up what damage that had already been done, I don’t know. I guess I figured that once everything was back up and running properly, that all was okay.” Kayla pats her brother on his back as she stands up. She leans over and gives him a big hug and says, “Everything will be fine. If anything, you’ll have to go to the office with daddy and explain everything to the Chief. You have probably just secured your future with the Service, and MIT will be a sure thing.” “Yeah, well don’t be too sure.” He says as he falls back on the bed. “Well, I’m not gonna sit here and watch you mope and pout. I’m going to do my katas and add the new CD’s that I bought the other day to the music server, now that it’s back online”, says Kayla and she turns and leaves his room. As David lay there on the bed staring aimlessly at nothing, his dad enters the room and says, “Grab your coat and let’s go. The Chief wants me in his office with you in twenty minutes. “I’ll be in the garage”. “Oh, great”, David thought to himself as he got up and grabbed his coat from the closet and left his room. The man has the personality of Ben Stein, and the sense of humor to match, he thought to himself as he descended the stairs.

I couldn't figure out which part I wanted to show, so instead, I just uploaded and entire chapter. Please let me what you think and leave comments. SHUT DOWN Kayla was seated at the desk in her room, surfing the internet, and listening to some of mom and dad’s old favorite jazz tunes as they streamed to her computer from the family’s network server. It seemed as if it had been raining periodically for weeks, yet it had only been a few days; thank goodness for air conditioning. The time drug on for what seemed to be an eternity. It was a hot and muggy evening as she sat listening to the music. Without any notice, the song just stopped right in the middle of her favorite part as the artist held the note for what seemed like an eternity. “Now what in the world is going on?” she exclaimed as she realized that she had also lost her internet access when she found herself staring at the infamous white page stating ‘Internet Explorer cannot display the page’, instead of the homepage of FOXNews.com. Then it hit her, “David!” she yelled, as she got up and stormed from her bedroom. As she stomps down the hallway, she says, “I have got to get this research done so that I can finish this outline for my class. It is due tomorrow. I don’t have time for you to be meddling with the routers or the firewall”, she yelled as she burst into her brother’s room. She looked around, and he was nowhere to be found. “What the…,” she thought to herself. “I know he’s home. He was here when I got home an hour ago.” Then it hit her as she snapped her fingers. She turned around, and off she went down the long hallway. Down the stairs she stormed as her blood pressure rose to a boiling point. As she walked furiously down the hall passing the family pictures and portraits, she glanced at one of her older brother David and gave it an evil stare. As she grew closer to the door of her dad’s office, she could here the sounds of someone pecking away on a keyboard and her suspicions were confirmed. “I knew it!” she exclaimed, as she burst into the office. “Do you mind bringing the servers and internet access back online so that I can finish my research for my outline?” “Research, my ass! I’m sure that you had that outline finished within 2 hours of being home from school the day you got the assignment. You were probably sitting there listening to Kenny G. and seeing if there was any Breaking News on FoxNews.com. I know you better than that.” “Yeah, well mom and dad are going to make you wish that you had been working on your outline or studying for finals, instead of trying to hack into the servers. What are you doing anyway? Unless dad has changed something again, that’s not the remote interface for the household servers.” “Shh, I’ve almost got it.” Dave said, as he typed uncontrollably at the keyboard. “What have you almost got? What have you done now?” “Dad rewrote the security policy and changed the administrative rights on several of the management consoles. While I was attempting to hack into them, I must have triggered something and set off a red flag, because as soon as it occurred you had no more FoxNews.com, the music server, and even the mail server… they all went offline. And I was just about there, when you came barging in here screaming and carrying on like some wild banshee.” “So, what is it that you are saying?” “What I’m trying to say is, (David plays with the keyboard) there I got it! We’re back up and running.” Dave said as he breathed a sigh of relief. “So, what you’re telling me is that daddy developed a program that not only monitors the firewall and checks for invalid authorization, but will also disengage internet access, and shut itself down if someone attempts to gain access remotely?” Kayla said as she stood there with a puzzled look, scratching her head. “I think so.” Dave replied. “But I am not one hundred percent positive that it matters if it is remote or not. I’m gonna have to talk with dad and find out. In any case, he has a glitch in the software, because I was able to make my way through, gain access, and bring everything back online.” “Yeah, well, it’s a good thing that you did” said Kayla. “You keep forgetting that this house is tied to their office, and all hell would break loose with everyone from Langley to the Situation Room showing up within moments to find out what the problem is.” His sister had a point. He hated when she was right about the little things. If one of the family’s computers, and especially one of the servers, went offline without a proper shutdown, then it sent up a red flag, and the Secret Service’s IT Manager sent out a team to find out what the problem was. With as many direct links to the White House, Langley, and several other places via phones, digital means, and many others, it would leave one to wonder that if a household can be this thoroughly protected, and in touch, then what do they have in the White House that you can’t find here. Taking note of his sister’s words, David quickly exited from the server and said, “Quick! Go upstairs, get undressed wrap a towel around you and sit in the bathroom, and wait for my cue. Oh, turn the shower on, get it hot and steamy, and wet your hairdryer”. Staring at him in a dismal state of shock and not sure what was going though her brother’s head at that moment; Kayla turns to him and says, “Have you lost your mind”? “No, I have not. Now, go. Do it”, he said as he pushed Kayla out of the office, down the hall, and up the stairs. Moments later, he was back in his dad’s office putting everything back the way it was when the door bell rang. “Damn! Do these guys have an office around the corner or what?” he says as he left his father’s office, closing the door behind him. David calmly walked down the hallway to the front door. He opens the door to find two men standing in the doorway dressed in navy blue Brooks Brother’s suits with obtrusive abstract ties that Donald Trump wouldn’t wear on a bad day. “Good evening, gentlemen, can I help you?” he says with an empty look on his face. “Good evening, Mr. Ramlow”, says the first man standing in the foreground with a pair of Serengeti’s on. “We received a call from the office that one of your servers had gone offline. When the IT Manager could not make a connection with the backup server, he sent us out to check on things”. David stands there with a puzzled look on his face for a brief moment, and then he rolls his eyes in the direction of the staircase as he says, “Women. Everything is fine gentlemen. My sister is upstairs taking a bath, and getting ready to go out. Somehow she knocked the hairdryer into the tub with it on as, as the tub was draining. She is just fine. However, I did have to go and reset the breaker that she tripped. I guess, in trying to find the correct breaker, I must have somehow inadvertently turned off the breaker for the servers”. Before David knew what was happening, the agent grabs him and pulls him out the door, handing him off to the second agent. He rushes up the stairs with his gun drawn and heads straight to the bathroom door. The agent knocks twice on the bathroom door, and announces himself, “United States Secret Service. Ms. Ramlow? Are you alright?” The bathroom door opens from the inside, and Kayla stands there with her hair wrapped in a towel, and one wrapped around her naked body, and says with a snappy retort, “Well, I would be much better if you were standing there holding a hairdryer for me instead of a forty caliber Glock 24.” The agent stands in the doorway of the bathroom for a moment, and stares into it over Kayla’s shoulder, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Satisfied that all is well, he turns down the hallway and does a quick sweep of the remaining rooms upstairs. Satisfied that all is clear, he speaks softly into his wrist and says, “Second floor, clear.” Once the agents had searched the house from top to bottom and failed to find anything out of place or suspicious, they turned and left as quickly as they had arrived. “Thanks for everything, guys”, says David, as the agents climbed into their black Chrysler 300M and drove away. As David is closing the front door, he finds that his head is being used to finish closing it, and his arm is wrapped in a painful position behind his back. “Don’t you ever put me in that position again”, says Kayla as she tightens the grips on head brother’s wrist and forehead at the same time. “I don’t appreciate standing there in a towel with a pistol in my face”. “Oh pipe down. It’s all over”, says David as he stands there squirming in pain from the unique position his younger sister had placed him in. “Well, what were you thinking? Or did you even bother doing that much”, says Kayla as she releases her brother. “I’ve been telling you for I don’t know how long, that one day you’re going to get caught hacking into those servers. It’s not a game, David. This is National Security that we are talking about here; not Amazon.com”. “I know exactly who I am messing with. I don’t need you to tell it to me over and over again. I just have to figure out how to explain to dad that I found a major breach in the security policy so that he can inform the IT guys at The Department of Homeland Security”. “Well, Einstein, you figure that out, and I am going to go put my clothes back on”, says Kayla as she starts up the stairs.

TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS, HE LIVED ALL ALONE, IN A ONE BEDROOM HOUSE MADE OF PLASTER AND STONE. I HAD COME DOWN THE CHIMNEY WITH PRESENTS TO GIVE, AND TO SEE JUST WHO IN THIS HOME DID LIVE. I LOOKED ALL ABOUT, A STRANGE SIGHT I DID SEE, NO TINSEL, NO PRESENTS, NOT EVEN A TREE. NO STOCKING BY MANTLE, JUST BOOTS FILLED WITH SAND, ON THE WALL HUNG PICTURES OF FAR DISTANT LANDS. WITH MEDALS AND BADGES, AWARDS OF ALL KINDS, A SOBER THOUGHT CAME THROUGH MY MIND. FOR THIS HOUSE WAS DIFFERENT, IT WAS DARK AND DREARY, I FOUND THE HOME OF A SOLDIER, ONCE I COULD SEE CLEARLY. THE SOLDIER LAY SLEEPING, SILENT, ALONE, CURLED UP ON THE FLOOR IN THIS ONE BEDROOM HOME. THE FACE WAS SO GENTLE, THE ROOM IN SUCH DISORDER, NOT HOW I PICTURED A UNITED STATES SOLDIER. WAS THIS THE HERO OF WHOM I 'D JUST READ? CURLED UP ON A PONCHO, THE FLOOR FOR A BED? I REALIZED THE FAMILIES THAT I SAW THIS NIGHT, OWED THEIR LIVES TO THESE SOLDIERS WHO WERE WILLING TO FIGHT. SOON ROUND THE WORLD, THE CHILDREN WOULD PLAY, AND GROWNUPS WOULD CELEBRATE A BRIGHT CHRISTMAS DAY. THEY ALL ENJOYED FREEDOM EACH MONTH OF THE YEAR, BECAUSE OF THE SOLDIERS, LIKE THE ONE LYING HERE. I COULDN'T HELP WONDER HOW MANY LAY ALONE, ON A COLD CHRISTMAS EVE IN A LAND FAR FROM HOME. THE VERY THOUGHT BROUGHT A TEAR TO MY EYE, I DROPPED TO MY KNEES AND STARTED TO CRY. THE SOLDIER AWAKENED AND I HEARD A ROUGH VOICE, "SANTA DON'T CRY, THIS LIFE IS MY CHOICE"; I FIGHT FOR FREEDOM, I DON'T ASK FOR MORE, MY LIFE IS MY GOD, MY COUNTRY, MY CORPS." THE SOLDIER ROLLED OVER AND DRIFTED TO SLEEP, I COULDN'T CONTROL IT, I CONTINUED TO WEEP. I KEPT WATCH FOR HOURS, SO SILENT AND STILL AND WE BOTH SHIVERED FROM THE COLD NIGHT'S CHILL. I DIDN'T WANT TO LEAVE ON THAT COLD, DARK, NIGHT, THIS GUARDIAN OF HONOR SO WILLING TO FIGHT. THEN THE SOLDIER ROLLED OVER, WITH A VOICE SOFT AND PURE, WHISPERED, "CARRY ON SANTA, IT'S CHRISTMAS DAY, ALL IS SECURE." ONE LOOK AT MY WATCH, AND I KNEW HE WAS RIGHT. "MERRY CHRISTMAS MY FRIEND, AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT." This poem was written by a Marine. The following is his request. I think it is reasonable..... PLEASE. Would you do me the kind favor of sending this to as many people as you can? Christmas will be coming soon and some credit is due to our U.S. service men and women for our being able to celebrate these festivities.Let's try in this small way to pay a tiny bit of what we owe. Make people stop and think of our heroes, living and dead, who sacrificed themselves for us. Please, do your small part to plant this small seed.