A curious phone call and a spooky thought...

["Michael H. Warfield" <mhw () WITTSEND COM>]

Hello all,

        I'll prefix this by saying that this could all be a
mere coincidence...

        About 10 minutes after I saw my posting hit bugtraq, I got
a curious phone call from someone in the 408 area code claiming
to be a recruiter (at 1:20 in the morning, yeah, right).  After a
few comments they broke into laughter, made a couple of offensive remarks,
and then hung up on me (and I wanted to continue to conversation, gee,
how rude...).  After that, they didn't want to talk to me any more...
CLID really is a beautiful thing.  :-)  (Remember the movie "War Games"?
"Would you like to play a game?"  :-> )

        About that same time (just a minute or two prior to the call)
I had someone sniffing at my vitae on my web site from 216.240.54.8
[216-240-54-8.ip.idiom.com].  Must have been a night for
coincidences.  :-)

        And before anyone asks, no, I did not port scan them back or
do anything else regarding the IP address...  :-)

        Anyone else experience anything similar after having a message
post here?  I have the rest of the phone number to compare notes with...

        Now for the "spooky thought".  As a result of that posting,
I received something like a dozen or so "Out of Office" or "Vacation"
messages from various subscribers to this list.

        Now...  Put those together...  Assuming that all of the
above was not a coincidence...  If we have practical jokers like these
(or worse) lurking on this list (and I'm not so foolish as to really
believe that we don't) and these other people are letting posters to
this list know that their systems are unattended...  Why does this give
me a very BAD feeling???

        And Kurt is worried about people ignoring warnings.  We may
have more fundamental things to worry about.  "Beep!  We're sorry.
We're not home right now.  If you don't want to leave your name and
number, the key to the house is under the front door mat and the
house will be vacant for the next two weeks.  Beep!"

        Just a spooky thought.

        Like I said...  Could all have been a coincidence.  Or...  They
may be reading this message now.  (Hi dudes!)

        Oh...  And I'll keep track of any of those who send me a second
vacation beep...

        Mike
--
 Michael H. Warfield    |  (770) 985-6132   |  mhw () WittsEnd com
  (The Mad Wizard)      |  (678) 463-0932   |  http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
  NIC whois:  MHW9      |  An optimist believes we live in the best of all
 PGP Key: 0xDF1DD471    |  possible worlds.  A pessimist is sure of it!