Diary of a madman- Derek Barnes

January 31st, 2001 I just want to know which one of you did it.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, let me apologize in advance for this rant. But if you are the one responsible for my invasion of privacy then let me be the first to call you a bastar*, cause that's what you really are.

Here, lemme explain.....

Last night I'm sitting here in Freak central, minding my own business, answering e-mails, and in general being a good little web-master when I hear this tiny little beeping sound. Now normally I have the stereo going full blast and I wouldn't hear World War 3 if it started at the neighbors but last night I was just chilling out and I didn't have the usual orchestra accompanying me. That's probably the only reason I heard it at all.

So I'm sitting there when I notice this tiny little beeping sound. First I thought it was something sounding off on all the computer equipment Lan and I got strewn around but after a quick check I couldn't find anything that was crying for attention. The beeping was still going off and it was starting to drive me crazy cause I couldn't figure out where it was coming from. So I stood dead still in the living room and finally figured out it was coming from an a/c vent just behind my desk. Now why would an air conditioning vent be beeping? Good question boys and girls, and I thought it mighty odd myself.

Odd until I climbed up on a chair and checked it out. .....And here's where the part of the story comes in.

Somebody has broken into the house and put a tiny little camera up in the vent. A camera that was pointed right down into my living room where it can view every little detail of my life. It was beeping cause it has a tiny lithium back up battery and for some reason it was getting low on juice. Whoever the idiot was that planted it didn't notice that feature when he was buying the sucker down at Spies-R-Us and it was lucky for me that it started going off, otherwise I would have never found it.

At first I was shocked and angry but after I crawled up into the attic and tore the sucker out I started to get a little furious. What right does anyone have to spy on me? Hell, they even tapped into a phone line and power without asking. Course if you're going to plant a bug then I guess permission is the last thing you ask for.

So here I sit today watching the dude from the lock company change every single lock on the place. The guy from the alarm center comes by later. In a few hours Freakylinks HQ should be locked up tighter than Fort Knox. I've already gone through every other room in the house looking for more cameras. I didn't find any but that still leaves the fact that someone has been playing Allen Funt with me.

But who would do it? Sure I've made enemies but I didn't think anyone would be low enough to do something like this. Gunther Mahlberg the vertically challenged paranormal collector? Stu Carmichael, my not so competitive competitor? Or is it someone else I've managed to piss off in the past few years? At this point I don't have any answers and I'm just left sitting here feeling a little violated and a whole lot insecure. Lan is working on the problem, trying to figure out who was downloading the images through the phone lines but I got a feeling she's gonna come up empty handed. I could call the police in and write up a statement but I figure they would know less then I do. They'd probably listen to me rant about vampires, goblins, and ghosts for about 5 seconds before they closed their tiny little evidence notebooks and walked away. Nope, if this thing is gonna get solved then it's gonna be by me and me alone.

So whoever it was that did it let me say that the jig is up. I've found your little dirty secret and you're going to be playing peeping Tom no more.

Man, I'm so upset at whoever did this...

Hurdy Gur Derek "not the least bit amused" Barnes