From: George Gingo
Date: 02/27/98
Subj: Felony stupid

In 1994 I represented one of 5 young men charged with residential burglary in Shaver Lake, California. This is in the County of Fresno. The five men stole a car in the City of Fresno, drove up into the mountain town of Shaver Lake, and found a cabin that was unoccupied. They broke in through a window and had a wonderful weekend. In the stolen car was a camera. They took lots of pictures of themselves enjoying the cabin. When the left the cabin to go home, they forgot something. The camera with its undeveloped film was still in the cabin. The cabin owners came several days later and realized a burglary occurred. They found the camera and the sheriff had the film developed. Three years later my client was getting out of prison.

I’m impressed. Maybe this is a variant on the darwinian theme. Jail keeps people out of the breeding pool until they have enough common sense to be parents.

It does seem kind of hard to represent clients who go to such efforts to provide evidence against themselves.

From: “TEAMS 5”
Date: 0305/98
Subj: creationism

Dear Sir or Madame:

God still loves you no matter how ignorant you are. This is not a slap in the face compared to the remarks you have made about me as a firm believer in the Christian faith. There are really no true, hardcore facts supporting the THEORY of evolution. I am not ignorant and have researched this subject myself. Thanks for your time. I’m not trying to be rude because I am a Christian.

God bless you
true believer

I don’t know if this was a response to my web site, to something I posted in a newsgroup, or just general purpose spam. It’s probably spam since it’s almost completely general. In any case our “true believer” had best hope that God loves him no matter how ignorant he is – it is his only hope.

From: “Robert B. Wood”
Date: 02/26/98
Subj: Semper Fi

Semper Fi, Stay Warm, . .
and Never EVER Trust a Draft Dodger, . . Especially one that feels YOUR pain!

Robert B. Wood, Former S/Sgt. USMC
Member of the Chosin Few

It’s not my pain that I’m worried about him feeling – it’s what else of mine that he wants to feel that’s got me concerned.

I may not have been the world’s best Marine but I have a great deal of respect for the men and women of the USMC.

From: “Paul Craft”
Date: 03/10/98
Subj: Sad Story of a Cobol Programmer

Hey!

Just wanted to tell you what a hoot your story about the programmer was. Being a dinousaur Cobol programmer, I had a really good laugh. Thanks.

Sincerely,
Patty Craft

Thanks for writing. I got a big chuckle out of it myself. It will not happen in my time but there is another nasty one coming up in about 30 years. UNIX systems use a 32 bit time word for date stamps which gives the number of seconds since some point in 1976. Taking into account signed arithmetic, software using UNIX time stamps is going to start breaking in the 2030’s. This time stamp is all over the place in PC’s and in communications software. What are the odds that 30 years from now we have the year 2000 problem all over again? Pretty good.