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.
