That was a nice idea. Get up and do a lot of work at the computer, just like yesterday. Nothing doing, The Firefox  web browser had something to say about that, cutting me off at the outset by suggesting I do a reset or refresh to speed up the browser. That reset/refresh took about ¾ of an hour, after which span of time I noticed that bookmarks, autocomplete, and probably saved passwords had all been deleted. So I got to spend another ¾ hour figuring out why this happened, finding an absolutely bushleague solution somewhere on the Firefox support forum. This morning irritation was the kind of amateur shit that keeps software developers and their tech support minions employed, since the only way out of these situations is for developers and their bureaucracy to keep their asshole end users at their beckoning.

I had a more robust thought process and discussion-with-self about The Case and why it seems to plague me so. It comes partly from discovering that it was none other than Kevin Mitnick I spoke with or listened to that night. Don’t get the impression I am starstruck by this decades-old encounter. It is nothing of the kind. It makes me realize — not that it was ever lost on me — that all those phreaks out there were genuine people with real names behind their handles and exhaustive techniques for raiding voicemail systems and computer networks from behind anonymous shields. No doubt, much of my instinctive interest in payphones came from the veil of anonymity they provided, or at least seemed to provide. This was, as I believe I am on records as saying, part of why I was inspired to continue developing the Payphone Project when I did, in what might have been a subconscious attempt to remedy what I found to be a central ill at the center of the phone phreaking world I so consequentially dipped into: its association with payphones. Why should it be so easy to trick people by calling from confusing or untraceable phone numbers?

Bah, that scene has only exploded with time, as caller ID spoofing, VOIP systems, and even public resources like those horrible LinkNYC kiosks make it easier than anonymously harass people over the phone.

But the clarity I think I reached today is that while I was never on record for the specifics of what we did that night it looks like a few of the people who mowed us down are on record for what they did, and I just have to ask if they have any idea of the trouble they got us into. There cannot have been too many scenarios like the one we got caught up in, in which I and some friends were there to talk and leech off the toll-free numbers so we could stay in contact without it costing us anything. The people who steamrollered us that night were, it seems, simply doing what they did night after night: destroying corporate computer and voicemail systems for gits and shiggles.

Well, I’ll think about this. In the meantime tonight is the first purge of old stuff I’ve done in a week or so, with at least 3 boxes of those old music magazines going to the incinerator, or wherever recycled papers go.

I am inspired somewhat by a radio play on the BBC Radio IV Extra last night that got me thinking about what conclusions people might draw about me from the contents of my domicile. A plot point in the radio play was that everyone in the family wondered what was in all those boxes their mother carried around for 50 years. It turned out the contents of those boxes were not of the hoarding trap, nor was it the sort of thing that would turn up on what I call the Treadmills of the Possessions of the Dead, better known as secondhand thrift shops. No, the diaries and contents of the mother’s boxes were enough to inspire the sort of conversation that mothers and daughters should have now that the daughter is 50. Hah, that’s a reference to a New Yorker cartoon where the very elderly man tells another elderly man “Son, now that you’re 60, there are a few things about the family you ought to know.”

I am typing so fast I cannot possibly type fast enough. The point of the BBC reference is that I would not want anyone coming through here and letting it be known that I filled so much of my living space with worthless old music magazines of interest to absolutely nobody. Further to that, much of what motivated me to clear out the storage locker in the first place (besides the irksomely increasing expense and the assholery of the management at the facility) was that I don’t want pickers bidding on my stuff at the auctions these places hold. I want control over the dispersal of my ephemera. Hmm, that sounds dirty.

Alright, onward and righteous with the purging. I will not be stopped this time by the crutches of targeted hoarding, save for a few particular pieces that I’ve had in mind for a long time.