Just for the heck of it, I decided to check my work email. (The VPN has been screwy lately and I thought I'd check on it.) I had almost 100 messages but most were the usual spam and "plausibly deniable" MIS requests. There were also 10 or 15 different emails that were just really weird.

The first thing was that a bunch of people who clearly weren't employees wanted access to the company intranet. wtf? At first I thought it must have been a mistake, but after the 8th one or so I really had to start scratching my head. Hackers, maybe? If it is hackers, I can't imagine what they'd want from our company intranet. It isn't exactly a very juicy target.

Despite the fact that we spent a year in meetings planning that thing and like fifty grand for software and consulting building it, I'm probably one of the only people that uses it. Even I only use it for moving big files around. If someone were looking for sensitive information (my company does deal with sensitive stuff sometimes) they'd be out of luck. We have military contracts. That means we're required to keep any machine with their crap on it physically isolated from our  network. Hell, I'm the MIS director and I'm not even allowed to touch that stuff. They have thier own contractors that handle everything up to and including plugging the computers into the wall outlets. When those machines break, the techs call the contractors and THEY come fix them. I have nothing to do with it.

That's not even the weirdest part, though. We've had hackers try to get in through the web site before. Whatever. They all have the same level of (and lack) of success. The really weird thing was the rest of the emails. They were all different, but a lot of them talked about "the signal" or asked if I knew anything about what "6EQUJ5" means. All seemingly from different people. By the way, if this is supposed to be some kind of social engineering trick by the same hackers, it isn't working, guys. It didn't seem like that, though. They all seemed so, I don't know, earnest? Like they really thought I would know something that could help them.

Anyway, I don't know. I should really stop checking my work email on weekends.

Even though I'm a tech guy, I've never had a blog before.I guess I never saw the point. Maybe it will be good even if it's just for me to keep track of what I'm doing.

Let's see...it's very cold here (24 degrees!) but it's very sunny out. I'm up early for a Saturday. I need to go to Tires Tires Tires and look at tires. (duh) I think I'm going to go to the one in Sioux City. There's a long, straight stretch of I-29 between here and there that's calling my name.