'Phishing' and the Betrayal of Carpzilla

As I mentioned in the photo album post, I just returned from a week's vacation at the Zacharia Lakehouse in northern California. It was a great vacation, all things told - three of my good friends, Andrew Brumme, Jonathan Bakewicz, and Rob Garey decided that before some major shifts in our lives take place, it would be a unique opportunity to get away for a whole week of fellowship and fun together. Besides a lot of fishing, eating, and water-sporting, there were a few other adventures worth mentioning...

Phishing for A Site Shutdown
First, as many of my readers probably noticed, Ruined for Life had a little vacation of its own for about 5 days... and it wasn't paid vacation either. As life would have it, some moron hacked into my domain space and uploaded a phishing scam for a bank in Australia... I received an e-mail while on vacation explaining that a fraudulent site was in operation at my domain address, and that its intent was clearly criminal in nature. Being in a relatively remote place, I got to deal with it via a dial-up (also known as "please shoot me in the face") internet connection. I was able to respond within a few hours, deleted the files, and contacted the bank's IT Security team back, as well as my own host, StartLogic. Although I consider myself fairly technologically savvy, I have no idea how this was accomplished. Perhaps the hacker guessed my password, which had formerly been, "HackersHaveSmallTesticlesOnTheirForehead" - and incidentally, was formerly the password for all my bank accounts. Good thing I changed it, I guess... Anyway, it took several days (too long, in my opinion) for StartLogic to conclude that I was obviously too smart for something so stupid, and they restored my site to its full glory. Thanks for hanging in there...

So Dark The Con of Carp...
The other tale relates to an event that took place at the lake. Let me try to be brief with this one: we fished a lot at the lake. Jonathan and I, arguably, are the two best fisherman amongst us, although Andrew and Rob gave a gallant effort. By Thursday of the week, our us-lake/win-loss record (ie, fish caught vs. lost or escaped) went something like: Chris: 10-2, Jonathan: 8-3, Andrew: 1-0, Rob: 0-5. Rob caught a catfish early on. It escaped from the stringer. Rob caught another one later... but we only found out AFTER we realized it had broken the pole holder and pulled the pole into the lake with it. It was sad. Everyone hurt in their hearts for Rob. I mean, even Andrew had caught a fish. But not Rob....

So around Wednesday or Thursday night, Jonathan were in the small boat fishing. We had only been out 30 minutes or so, and had already caught 2 fish, and miraculously, the fishing pole that Rob had lost to one of his catfish. Jonathan had just pulled in the biggest bass he had ever caught - a very nice size - and Andrew yells from the shore, "Guys, Rob just caught the biggest fish ever! You have to see it - it's like a 20 pound carp!" We were skeptical, but hopeful. We paddled in to the dock, and sure enough, there was a carp, roughly the size of a wooly-mammoth, with Rob standing over it. We estimated it to weigh over 20 pounds, since I can bench lift Andrew (who weighs 15lbs) and I couldn't even lift the carp with Jonathan's big-gun arms spotting me.
Jonathan and I were thrilled. Here was Rob, with a dismal fishing record, having caught the biggest "middle finger to all those who doubted me" fish of the year. It was huge, and we were already recounting the stories we would all tell to our grandchildren as I took the carp back to the lake to release him (carp is not good eating). Since he had been out of the water for about 10 minutes at this point, he was hurting... and although I think its gills were about one generation away from evolving into human lungs, I had to really work with him to snap back once in the water. We watched him slowly swim into the depths of the lake, and made our way inside for dinner.

About an hour later, after I had e-mailed my in-laws with the story, after we had put the picture of Rob on the desktop of the computer, etc. - Andrew proposed a toast to Rob, the fisherman of the week. We all heartily agreed. And then Rob said, "Andrew, isn't there something you want to tell Jonathan and Chris...?"

Andrew proceeded to describe how Rob had not actually "caught" the fish by himself, but rather, another boat of fishermen had snagged it by the neighbor's dock. As they were passing, about to throw it back into the lake, Andrew called out and asked if they could keep it to "show their friends." They drove the boat up to the dock, passed the fish over, and went on their way.

Needless to say, Jonathan and I were fairly disappointed - even hurt. We had hoped that beyond all odds, Rob had been able to make a catch of the year. As the story unfolded, we really hold Rob mostly innocent, as the idea of passing it off as Rob's catch was Andrew's idea, as was the decision to tell us over an hour later instead of just after we had released it. The loss of our excitement was bitter, like I imagine urine would be if I ever had to taste it.

So, if you're inclined to tell Andrew how you feel about this travesty, feel free to drop him a line at the Brumme.com Contact Page. Hackers of the world, you may also feel free to hack into Brumme.com next time you wish to post a fraudulent Phishing scam, as I feel that would be appropriate retribution in this matter.