J. Goldberg, Cybersleuth

J. GOLDBERG, CYBERSLEUTH

It is amazing what your staff can do when you give them a chance to shine. While I’m here in New York, my intrepid band of assistants back home have really been doing some digging. One of my subalterns found the following piece of evidence we are turning over to the FBI:

Dear Melissa,

I guess now you know who the real code warrior is. Todd is such a dork. You think he’s cool because he’s got a nose ring and his mom buys him all that tricked-out hardware. But he can’t program to save his life. Dork. C’mon Melissa, haven’t you seen all the news stories about the Melissa Virus? Who do you think did that? That was me. Last week when I called in sick and missed that bio test, I laid down some righteous code. Pretty cool, no? I’d like to see Todd do that with all that hardware he’s got. C’mon, can’t you see he’s all hat and no cattle? I did that on the old Compaq contura my dad gave me — and my R key is missing! I replaced it with the helmet of an Imperial Storm Trooper action figure. Well, now the man is coming down on me.The Carnegie Mellon Computer Emergency Response Team is trying to track me down. The FBI says I’m a top priority. I may have to jet if they get close. You could come with me. Wouldn’t that be sweet? We could take your dad’s car.It’d be like on Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Anyway I think you’re really cool and I don’t understand you and Todd. He’s such an idiot. Even when we were kids, we wouln’t let him play Dungeons and Dragons with us because he could never get it. You’re the only girl in AP Calc who understands me. It was also really cool of you tell everyone to shut up when they laughed at me when I burped that Jolt soda through my nose in bio class. If you want, you could come over to my place after school and I could write another virus for you. Maybe I can call it “Todd” and it’ll make everyone’s computer stay “DORK DORK DORK” over and over again. That would be pretty cool.

Stay hip,

-Ronnie, The Code Warrior, Finklestein

AT EASE

Tomorrow I won’t rely on staffwork. But today, I’m going to enjoy the land of my birth and the pastrami that is my heritage.

THE POLL, CONT.