The Amazing CIA Conspiracy


Some time ago, way back in February 1995 I received some email from a guy named Rick Broadhead. Much to the displeasure of my friend Richard, Rick had asked for my permission to use a screen shot of my home page for an upcoming book. Along with Jim Carroll he was co-authoring The Canadian Internet Advantage to be published by Prentice Hall. Richard and I had a laugh about how many others had received such a note and I decided to simply respond to Rick and tell him that it was fine with me and "Do I get an autographed copy?". Rick has been silent since "first contact".

I suppose Richard was a little motivated at the time and began to create his own home page. He spent a couple of weeks editing the text and making sure the graphics had just the right color adjustments. As far as I know he did not receive a similar message from Rick. Richard has some reason to be a little pissed because it was he who introduced me to the graphical world of the WEB. He showed me alot of neat stuff about the WEB and told me how to get started putting my own page together. It was sometime around the new year that I started surfing the net looking for some good stuff to use on my page and to form some thoughts about what a home page should be. I suppose everyone has their own ideas on this subject. Nevertheless I decided that a good page should be simple and to the point. Tell the world a little about yourself, keep the images to a reasonable size and perhaps show a few links to places that interest you. I also thought that it was a good place to put one's resume. As I had recently embarked on a self-employed career path I was sure it wouldn't hurt. Yeah, there are a few details on my resume that might be considered personal but the reality as I see it is that if someone wants to track you down then they'll figure it all out anyway. It's too late to worry about it. Those bastards still don't have my shoe size. There's safety in numbers. I'll never capitulate.

Because I hadn't received any details about the books' publish date I had pretty much forgotten about the whole affair when out of the blue I received a message from a guy saying "got u in carroll's book". This guy was definitely new, he even admitted it in his message. I had seen some messaging in the past but this guy took the cake, of course Richard is a close second. Personally I tend to introduce myself in a first message to someone new. This guy just jumped in like he was an old friend. He definitely didn't like the keyboard because the rest of his message was like an ad for acronyms. What he really wanted to know was what one of the links on my page was all about. He didn't realise that I had no idea my page was even in a book. I told him what he wanted to know and insisted that he reply immediately with the name of the book and the page I was on. Like a good soldier he replied the next day. It was a Sunday and I remember the day because living where I do it was hard not to remember walking through Gay Pride Day on my way to the The Toronto Computer Book Store over on Yonge Street. Walking through the event is always a kick because there is a good chance you might see some un-tethered breasts floating in the breeze. Although the naked breasts may indeed belong to a lesbian, to a straight man like myself breasts are breasts and believe me, they have no sexual preference. Anyhow I was pleased to open the book to page 48 and see my mug in print. The book was about $30.00 and I bought it on the spot, wouldn't you? That was July 2nd. As soon as I got home I opened my mailer and sent mail to all my friends on the net bragging about how I got my home page in a book. "Hey bud, next time you're in a bookstore have a look in The Canadian Internet Advantage on page 48 for a good laugh". I sat back and waited for the deluge of hits and email from all the hitters. Well, it didn't really happen. At the time of this writing I've had over 1000 hits on my page since May 22nd and frankly I don't think that can be considered a deluge. I did however make some new friends and for the life of me I cannot understand how or why a guy from Kuwait found my page, but it did happen. I suppose he picked up the book while he was on a trip to Canada.

If you think that's the end of it then you better relax....there's more. On August 26th (two days after the release of Windows 95) I was at a client's site doing his whole network over with Windows 95. I was surprised that he was willing to take a chance with a new product but he had been playing with a beta version and felt that it was solid enough to go ahead. Some guys are still waiting for the smoke to clear. Personally I've been using Windows 95 for most of this year and compared to Windows 3.1, it sucks less! That's if you insist that it sucks at all, of course. When I met my client at his shop he was desperate to go out for a coffee and a donut, it was after all only noon and he had just got out of bed. While he was at the donut shop he picked up a couple of copies of We Compute (September 95) a local computer type paper. He dropped one on the counter and said it was for me. We got to work and managed to upgrade several of his machines before the night was over and agreed to continue the next day. As I was leaving I picked up my copy of We Compute and headed home. Early the next day a friend of mine gave me a call and was "just a little upset" because he had just blown up his sound card. He wanted to know if I had some idea what they were going for these days so I said, "Just a sec, I've got the We Compute paper here, perhaps there are some prices for comparison". So I start flipping through the paper. I quoted a couple of prices for him and continued to flip pages. Imagine my surprise when I got to page 23 and saw my picture. I started laughing out loud and told my friend I'd be right over, "you're not going to believe this", I said. He lives just down the hall. We Compute had been doing a series of articles on the net and that month's session was about making your own home page. I even had a couple of old friends call and say that things must be kinda tough at We Compute for them to have to resort to putting MY picture in their paper. So there is the story so far. But I think there is a little unfinished business here.

Up at the top of this page I had replied to Rick Broadhead with "Do I get an autographed copy?". He has yet to reply and I thought that with the right amount of pressure he might just come across so I'm putting his email address here (rickb@hookup.net) so you can send him a note right from this page and demand that he come clean. Please do, just for laughs. I wanted to put a picture of the screen shot from the book and the relative text here but I would have had to tear out the page because the only scanner I have access to is a pull through type, not a flatbed. That book cost me 30 bucks and I thought I should keep it pristeen for the grandchildren to look at one day. If he sends me an autographed copy of the book, I'll find a flatbed scanner, scan in his autograph and put it here. As it stands the pictures on this page were taken from the many copies of We Compute that I grabbed back in August. I needed several copies for my folks and such. And that brings me to another piece of business that is yet unfinished. Those pricks at We Compute never even asked my permission (so naturally I have not asked them either) to publish the screen shot taken from Rick's book. Maybe I should cut them some slack because later on in the paper they did a review of The Canadian Internet Advantage and I was mentioned (see the third graphic on this page) there as well. But you think they could have at least dropped me some email. They DO compute there I imagine. So here (wecomput@cml.com) and here (wecomput@io.org) are a couple of addresses so you can wind them up as well, if you are so inclined. I want a free (delivered) subscription or at least some sucking up. How about publishing this URL? Perhaps they need someone to write wise apple articles like this one?

You might be asking why I might babble on like this and go to all the trouble of telling you all the sordid details of my 15 minutes of fame. I guess I want to stir up some shit and involve the totally innocent pawns of Rick and the guys at We Compute but the real truth is that I'm hoping to generate more traffic for my home page. I'm just planting some seeds here. As the book in question is called The Canadian Internet Advantage and conveniently the acronym for the book is CIA, I thought I would capitalize on that. It seems to me that some of the search engines available on the WEB capture the text from your page and use it when you ask for a search. In my case if you do a search for "Flewitt" you come up with my page. Check it out if you don't believe me. I'm hoping that some poor bastard will be doing a search for CIA and come across my page and visit. When he sees the link to this he won't be able to resist clicking on it and I'll have another notch in my rifle so to speak. If you happen to be one of these misled souls then feel free to send some hate mail if you like. While you are at it send Rick and We Compute some mail and maybe those fargin bastages will make restitution.

cia@flewitt.com

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