June 29, 2004 :: Singin' in the rain...

During my trip to Fort Lauderdale last weekend, I had occasion to take a couple of showers on the rooftop patio of my brother's condo. Above is a picture of it (alas, sans moi nu). It was quite exhiliarating, bringing out my inner exhibitionist, although practically speaking, no one could see me.

Maybe there is something to nude beaches...

posted by Rainmayun at 11:26 AM -

June 23, 2004 :: Cold Case

Five years ago this Sunday, my brother had his 40th birthday party down in south Florida where he lives. Down on the beach I met a friend and kept in contact with her for maybe three years, after which time we lost contact with each other when I took my epic 3 month vacation and moved to the east coast. I'm headed back to Fort Lauderdale tomorrow for the weekend, and a few days ago I thought I would try to re-establish contact with her.

I started with the information I had — last known address, a home and a cell number that had both been disconnected for a couple of years, and a social security number. None of the free resources I could find online were of any help. I knew that, in the past, she had spent a good deal of effort moving around and hiding from an abusive ex-boyfriend, so she deliberately made herself hard to find. Never listed in any phone book, most of her stuff was never in her name. This was proving to be a challenge.

My next thoughts were of an acquaintance of mine back in California. She works in the PacBell billing department, and can find pretty much anyone who's ever had a telephone in the state of California. Unfortunately, my friend doesn't live in California anymore, so that avenue was dead, but it got me to thinking about alternative resources, or social engineering. I figure, I know enough people who work in government facilities with access to secret databases that someone ought to be able to find her.

Again, all my leads came up empty. I started asking some of my more resourceful friends what they would do, and almost all of them came up with the same answer: pay for an Internet people search. I resisted, because it seemed like cheating, and because I really didn't want to spend any money on this quest. But when everything else failed, I broke down and spent the $39.95.

After 24 hours, the internet search came back with a flurry of information. Aliases, former and currrent addresses, telephone numbers associated with those addresses, names associated with those telephone numbers, dates of issue of social security numbers, possible relatives, phone numbers and addresses of possible relatives. I started weeding through the information, trying to eliminate what wasn't useful. Of the addresses, three were listed as current or active in the last two months. One was the address I had, and along with another address, both turned out to be corporate housing facilities. These were clearly way-stations in the escape from the ex. The third address had some man's name associated with it, but I decided it was worth the risk and called.

A woman answered the phone. I told her I was looking for my friend, and she said, "I know her, but she's no longer here. Who are you?" in a somewhat suspicious tone. I replied that I was her friend from California (because that's where I lived when she contacted me last) and that I was looking for her. Ever suspicious, she took my name and number and said she'd try to get it to my friend.

After getting off the phone and putting two and two together (and scanning some other info on the report), I concluded that the person I spoke to was her mother, and the name listed on that phone was her father. Hopefully she'll get the message and call me before I head down there on the plane tomorrow evening; it would be nice to see her again.

Several of my friends have asked why I was so pressed to find her. "Who is she to you?" "Why is she so important to you?" "She must have been fine or something." Well.... she IS fine, but that's not why I was pressed. I came to realize after a certain point that my singlemindedness in the quest was more about the quest itself than about finding her. I wanted to be able to say I had successfully found someone who'd been hiding and out of touch for a couple of years, with a little sleuthing, to add the "finds missing persons" capability notch to my belt. At this point, there's not much more I can do except hope she gets the message, but I feel like I was at least partially successful.

posted by Rainmayun at 11:36 AM -

June 04, 2004 :: It's dead, anyway

My white jewish officemate is always good for a laugh, or at least a headscratcher.

Yesterday he asked me, "Why do white people have better taste in hip-hop than black people? All my white friends are into underground hip-hop and all my black friends are into 50 Cent and Ja Rule and people like that."

I really didn't have a good comeback. In fact, I didn't have one at all.

If ever there was a time for this face, this was it:

posted by Rainmayun at 10:12 AM -

June 03, 2004 :: The price of unleaded these days

The other day I received a bill from DC WASA, the local water & sewage utility. Actually the bill shows the name of the property owner, but since I am responsible for all the utilities, I opened it. They were asking for $758.35, and they were going to run that up to $799.80 if I didn't pay up by the end of June. I was sure I had paid some kind of water bill since I moved in almost two years ago, so I checked my records. I had never written a check to DC WASA. Still, the amount seemed high, so I called.

Turns out they had sent the account to a collections agency long before I had moved in, which is why I never saw a bill. The original bill date for some of this dates back to December 1999 even. As far as I can tell, the water's been on for five years without anyone paying a cent on the bill. They're supposed to send monthly bills, and I hadn't seen NOT ONE until now. They installed a new water meter in 2002, and then began an audit process that apparently didn't turn up this account until just now. So out of the $758.35, I probably only used about $300 worth of the actual water.

The property owner is my stepmother, though, so I'll go on ahead and pay it. But I wonder if I can get a discount based on the lead content...

posted by Rainmayun at 10:58 AM -

June 01, 2004 :: Comments enabled

I've finally gotten with the trend and enabled comments on my blog posts. Those of you who formerly had posting privileges will find that they've been revoked; you can just leave comments now instead.

posted by Rainmayun at 3:31 PM -

Tuesday Casserole

If I haven't already explained (and I'm too lazy to go back and check)... I do these rambling type posts as a sort of brain dump. Everything that's on my mind, most of which usually isn't enough to warrant a post on its own, gets shoved into one of these, in the same way that an HBCU cafeteria will shove all the week's leftover chicne roasts and rice and deli cheese and steamed vegetables and God knows whatever else into a Friday afternoon casserole. Delicious! Enjoy...

I don't usually put people's real names in my blog posts, but I had to for this one. Who in the hell names their child Velvet? That is so clearly a stripper name, and on top of that the poor child just took the MCAT and is trying to get into med school. Would you take your kids to see Dr. Velvet Jones for a checkup? She's going to have to use a first initial or something.... V. Anastasia Johnson or whatever. Poor child. It doesn't help that she has a slightly west-coast sounding ghetto twang (she grew up in Oklahoma). She's reasonably smart, but she's going to have a hard time getting people to take her seriously.

Public Service Announcement - Signs that you're in friend zone, or worse:

posted by Rainmayun at 12:12 PM -