Sometimes I Feel Like A Muffin Pimp.

Last Week At My House - Coast Of New England

Ben Mason is the guy that large companies go to when they need a tech solution for something that may be a little out of bounds. He's sort of the tech version of me. I guarantee confidentiality in all my investigations, and Ben does the same with his clients and what they ask him to do.  He teaches at a well-known technology school. His sidework is what he is famous for.

There is not much he cannot crack open, hack, or figure out. His forte is computers, cell phones, spread spectrum technologies, encryption, artificial intelligence, advanced programming techniques, malware, bugs deep within systems, and chips.

I met Ben years ago at a pizza place in Cleveland Circle in Brookline, Massachusetts. 

We were doing the same thing, waiting for our Boston College girlfriends to join us.  We were back to back in plastic orange booths and started talking Sox. Immediately, our senses of humor hit it off.  

We figured each other out pretty fast. I'm sure he saw me as a knuckle-dragging military idiot, and I saw him as an over-educated basement-dwelling nerd. I still think of him like that and occasionally let him know.

When our girlfriends showed up for slices and sodas, we were in the same booth, dropping quotes from The Godfather, Any Farrelly Brothers movie, and The Big Lebowski.  My girlfriend was not keeping up with the three of us at the time, and she left early. I never saw her again.  She wanted nothing to do with me after I started reciting quotes from the movie Dumb and Dumber. She did not appreciate the finer things in life, including Mrs. Allston's cultured son.

Did I mention that Ben is a freaking genius?

While sitting with Eve and me last week at my house, I told him about the computer in front of him. I mentioned how all the other computers from the firm were somehow rendered useless and that a server farm was burned to the ground.

He got excited and happy about what could be an unusual problem he had never tackled before.  Here are the questions he asked me.

"Have you turned the computer on?"

​"Nope"

"Do you know the password?"

"Nope"

"Do you think what's in the computer could get me killed?"

"Yep"

​I said, "I need you to crack the password and then drop the contents into a thumb drive before a signal to wreck the computer can be sent to it." 

"Can you do it?"

Ben laughed and said, "Easy, but I must take the machine to my lab. I can return it tomorrow afternoon, but you'll have to come get it."

​"What is this going to cost me?"

"Six of Eve's Blueberry Muffins, a six-pack of PBR, and you spot me 40 points the next time we go bowling."

​"Forty points is a lot; I'd have to short you a muffin."

At that, Eve punched me in the shoulder and said, "Don't listen to him, Ben; I'll bake 12 muffins for Genie and You."

Ben explained that the computer has to be inside a lead-lined room at the university that no radio signals can penetrate.  This would stop any destruct signals from getting to the computer once turned on. Figuring out the password was chimp work that any of his students have been doing since they were ten. 

I still think forty points is too much.