You only live twice: Once to start the installation, and the other time to finish it off
- Reference: 1604300768
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/11/02/who_me/
- Source link:
A reader Regomised as "Noel" told us today's tale of woe, which has all the excitement of a Bond flick, just without the flirtations and gadgetry, but heavy on adventure in the world's iffier places.
Our story takes place roughly a quarter of a century ago, when Noel was working for a well-known British broadcaster "building TV and radio studios in out-of-the-way places around the world – usually just before the war started…
"Said broadcaster had just discovered the delights of audio editing on computers – the latest whizz-bang 486 machines with as many as four sticks of 4MB memory in each. These computers had reassuringly expensive sound cards and interfaces so they could plug into a normal analogue audio mixing desk."
A cautionary tale of virtual floppies and all too real credentials [2]READ MORE
Noel was tasked with setting up a new radio studio in Tajikistan, not long after the Berlin Wall had come down and the Soviet Union was beginning to open up.
Getting there was convoluted. Passenger flights were difficult, and freight wasn't much better, requiring a loop through Moscow.
"For me and a colleague," recalled Noel, "the only practical way to get there was to fly to Tashkent, get a taxi(!) at dark o'clock across the border to [Tajikistan's second biggest city] Khojand, and take an internal flight down to [the capital] Dushanbe."
The journey was delightful. Noel recalled the joy of sitting in the back of a Lada while the driver negotiated a bribe of a dollar or two with border guards (Noel had the best part of $50,000 in cash hidden about his person in order to pay salaries and get the bureau running.) Then there was the cancelled flight from Khojand because the operator had forgotten that fuel had to be paid for. And a 200km jaunt over mountains in that Lada…
"All in a day's work, right?" he cheerfully told us.
"Being slightly hijacked by a soldier who wanted a lift to his home? A mere bagatelle."
The duo finally made it and set about building the studio. A few days later several cubic metres of hardware arrived, although strangely in several discrete packages rather than the pair of big crates it had originally been packed in. Odd, but a swift audit showed it was all there, so the pair cracked on.
Soon, the area was starting to look like a studio, replete with sound desk and the necessary wiring. It was time to plug in those whizzy computers…
Oh dear. The lights all came on, but the monitor screens remained perversely blank. Ever the professionals, the pair broke out the screwdrivers and removed the lids in order to hunt for the inevitable loose cable.
Oh dear again.
"Some kind soul – presumably in Moscow Customs, where they'd broken down the crates – had removed the processors from the computers. Along with all the memory, the sound cards, and the hard drives. The memory had been ripped out carelessly enough to have wrecked the motherboards.
"Effectively we had two power supplies and two monitors..."
So home the pair came, leaving half a studio behind them.
"I lost the toss to come back a fortnight later," recalled Noel. He made the journey once again, carrying the required components in his hand luggage, which he clung onto up the mountain and down in the Lada. "A couple of hours later and the job was done."
Noel's tale, alas, does not end there. Due to the byzantine nature of flights at the time, he found himself popping into the Delhi office on his way back ("that was a free flight from Tashkent," he recalled). It would all have gone swimmingly had, 10 minutes after his flight back to Tashkent departed, a major (and, right then, unexplained) mid-air incident involving two other aircraft not occurred. He was therefore blithely unaware that officials might be a bit on edge.
Upon arrival at Tashkent, Noel was asked for his Delhi visa by the immigration official. "In my other passport," he cheerfully replied. He was in and out of so many countries, all with their own esoteric visa requirements, that he had several passports. "He didn't like that," Noel recalled.
"He didn't like it even more when he opened my hand baggage, which was stuffed to the gills with tools and useful components, curly bits of wire and the like...
"The sound of the security guards' safeties being clicked is not nice."
After some time in a special windowless room, Noel managed to convince the subsequent interrogator of his innocence and was on his way.
Ever undertaken journeys that might make Michael Palin say "Steady on…" only to find your luggage was not quite what you thought it was? Or mindlessly carried the tools of your trade into places where trigger fingers are ever so itchy? Take your own spin on the Regomiser with an email to [3]Who, Me? ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/Tag/who-me
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/26/who_me/
[3] mailto:whome@theregister.com
[4] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: car key
Passing through Luton airport the tray with my waterproof jacket is kicked to the manual security check.
Security person 2 to security person 1, behind the monitor "What's wrong with this?" Security person 1 "It looks like there's a torch in the pocket" Security person 2 dutifully takes torch from pocket turns it on and off, shakes head and hands me my jacket.
Same airport more idiot security [or I'm an idiot depending on your viewpoint] stopped me and made me buy new clear ziplock bags because mine was 10mm too big in one dimension, how much safer the skies must have been that day. #proudparents
Re: car key or Dutch House Key!
My old door lock used to have this pointy sharp key with lots of jagged corners, I was given the raised eyebrow a few times at the TSA counter... I could only shrug and say, that's a house key!
Re: Fairly Frequent Flier
Back before everyone had a GPS-enabled supercomputer in their pocket, I was at a startup looking to make GPS kit for skiers and snowboarders. So I was taking the prototype with me on a personal skiing trip. Clear plastic box containing the antenna and a custom-built circuit board, ribbon cable to a separate battery pack. All tucked inside my helmet bag along with a roll of duct tape.
After a few minutes of the security guard running it back and forth through the scanner (I was obviously not putting a fragile prototype in checked baggage), I finally asked "would you like me to explain what that is?"
After explaining, I was allowed to take the prototype into the cabin. The duct tape had to be checked in.
Re: Fairly Frequent Flier
After 11/9, I was flying back from Hamburg to Frankfurt, when the security found my nail scissors, they have fallen out of washbag about 3 weeks earlier and had gotten wedged under the stiffening board at the bottom of my travel bag.
Telling them that I had flown 4 times in the last 2 weeks with them in there didn't help, I found the scissors, but I had to throw them away, before they would let me on the plane!
More worrying was that 3 other security checks hadn't noticed them.
The electric toothbrush also got some strange looks - on one flight, it got in a tight spot and my baggage was vibrating when I got it off the carousel.
An ex on the other hand had her baggage stopped during loading and it lay on the tarmac, with security around it, because it was humming. She was pulled out of the waiting area and escorted to the tarmac. Let's just say, it wasn't her toothbrush, very embarrassing for all involved.
Mine's the one with the vibrating pocket.
I think Noel & Noel win the who, me trophy
That’s some story from “Noel”.
Things where certainly edgier a few decades ago, but I don’t think anyone really noticed!!
Re: I think Noel & Noel win the who, me trophy
When I started reading it I thought he was gonna end up somewhere really nasty .... like Crinkley Bottom!
I did transport lab samples from one place (Canada) to another (LBNL, USA), early 2000s (2002/03? memory fails). Those were samples of some crystals (some ground, some monocrystalline), some man-made and with known ratios of impurities, some not. Some doped with Uranium. Then I did not know the address of the LBNL guest house when crossing the border (hey, I was young and did not know about the added security theatre).
At least they did not look at the sample case (small glass vials, lots of powdered substances, some with "U-doped" written on them) too closely when opening my suitcase...
Not just in exotic places
I was the front line IT person for some scientists and engineers at a large UK public utility. One Monday morning I had a call from a department who said that "nothing is working". Obviously I got the blame as I had been in there on Friday updating their network and installing their new kit (a couple of ATs and XTs). Two computers wouldn’t boot, another seemed to come up but nothing showed on the screen and a couple of the rest gave various ominous boot chimes. After a brief investigation I realized that the bad computers all had bits missing. Someone over the weekend had taken stuff from most of them - Enough to build two complete XTs with Hercules graphics cards and an AT with VGA, and 3 10-Base2 network cards. I guess they sourced the cases and monitors from elsewhere. We could never prove it, but we think the bits went out with a cleaner or security person. I wondered why they hadn’t nicked the complete PCs, but a colleague thought that "It would be too obvious, or maybe they thought that no-one would notice?".
Re: Not just in exotic places
Been there done that!
I mean I've also been called to a non-w**king machine, only to find that some small but expensive components had vanished, like an old oak table!
Sadly, no international jet-settng for me
The most "exciting" cross-border incident for me was when my always-optimistic colleague only brought an out-of-date driving licence for ID for an internal UK flight.
"Don't worry. It'll be fine."
And it was.
Re: Sadly, no international jet-settng for me
yeah, i know that feeling.
Until a couple years ago, also here in Italy you could fly with your (valid) driving licence as ID.
It was fine for all airlines, except a not-so-cheap-as-they-would-imply irish one. They didn't let me board the bloody plane even if all the airport staff told them it was ok, given that the flight was domestic...
I stopped flying with them, even if this meant paying double for the same route.
And i am thankful for my job that some years later made me able to afford a car... especially in those times, when being alone in your car is more healthy than flying with some idiots who think that face-masks are for clowns...
Re: Sadly, no international jet-settng for me
Depends on your definition of "more healthy". Travelling alone in a car reduces the chance of a Covid19 infection. But flying is far far safer than driving. You're much more likely to have an unhealthy crash in a car than in a plane.
Re: Sadly, no international jet-settng for me
I was once on my way to Calais when near Dunkerque it occurred to me I had left both my drivers licence and my passport in the office. The only photo ID I had with me was my hockey referee card. British customs let me on the ferry though. Must have been my trusty Rover 800. Thanks chaps!
(And this happened post 9-11)
Re: Sadly, no international jet-settng for me
Why would there be a problem?
The shit airlines that insist on photo ID only care that the name on the ID matches the one on the boarding pass and the self-loading freight holding that boarding pass looks like the picture in the photo ID.
They claim this is for security reasons. Which is bollocks. It's revenue protection. Ryanair (spit!), Sleazyjet, etc don't want someone to give their ticket to somebody else. And to stop travel agents (remember them?) buying up all the really, really cheap tickets and then reselling them.
BTW there are other equally shit airlines that don't require photo ID for internal flights.
Re: Sadly, no international jet-settng for me
A colleague of mine once did Germany and back (late 90's, pre-Euro) with a Westminster resident's card. To be fair, we'd been doing that trip every week for about 6 months by that point, so they probably recognised us...
SImilar experience
Went to the UK and back, on the way via Maplin.
Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to approach the helpful folks at airport and check that "there isn't any problem with my case full of goodies"
Oh I got through UK customs just fine but got bag searched and interrogated at the other end.
Fortunately kept the receipt(s) but the poor Customs fellow wasn't too happy.
"Whats this bundle of wires?"
"What are these strange pieces of rectangular fibreglass with black film on them?"
"What is this box marked "Video decoder" ?
An hour later.. !!!
Shoulda gone for something simpler...
I was working in ILR at about the time when computer-based digital audio editing was becoming popular. Never did anything quite as exciting as Noel but then again we weren't exactly swimming in cash.
We did look at systems such as SADiE (see the advert on p4 of [1]this PDF ), even auditioned one in a studio setting, but found that for a system based around the fastest '486 currently available with the largest discs on the most expensive SCSI interface and with a proprietary audio card, it was remarkably fragile with frustrating bugs which often required restarting the software, sometimes required rebooting the machine and occasionally resulted in lost work - edits, if not actual audio. Other systems (e.g. Avid) used similar technology and were similarly pricey.
Instead we invested in a system called [2]Soundscape which was a stand-alone box attached to any computer which could run Windows 3. It was a fraction of the price and seemed to be a lot more stable and mature. Not only would the interface run on a '286 if necessary (I think we ran ours on a '386SX) but it used IDE discs in hot-swap bays rather than SCSI, so it was a lot more affordable to have a disc-based library. It had the major advantage of keeping audio signals very well away from the "noisy" environment inside a computer case, and being a bog-standard 2U (IIRC) rack mount unit with proper XLRs directly on the back panel rather than a "breakout box", which made installing the thing a lot simpler.
To get back vaguely on topic, in "Noel"'s case, anyone opening the box would not have found hardware suitable for ripping off - the external box was DSP-based and even in Moscow in those days, the '286 or '386SX-based interface computer would have been distinctly passé and not particularly desirable.
Of course, in the end, both companies went bust though I gather the SADiE brand is still going...
M.
[1] https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Audio/Archive-Studio-Sound/90s/Studio-Sound-1994-08.pdf
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundscape_Digital_Technology
Customs
I've hand carried 2 shuttle PCs (shoebox sized PCs that were all the rage in the early 2000s ... at least with one of our BMs) along with a VPN firewall along with my own laptop (all as carry on luggage) through 3 countries in the Middle East and Africa (the kind of countries where alcohol is no allowed) (the joys of a round trip where they were needed at the penultimae destination) without a hitch, but arriving at the final destination I got held at gunpoint (the only time in my life I've stared down the barrel of a gun) because they wanted to inspect the wallet with 2 dozen CDs I'd brought along with me ...
All obviously self-burned, all backup copies of the original installation media with the product keys written on them with black marker ... and while we did have volume licenses for all these products, and so these were technically probably not illegal i was not really looking forward to having to explain this to a big guy with an even bigger gun and an even bigger moustache
Turned out the only thing they were checking was if I wasn't smuggling dirty movies into the country , and after going trough the ``no it's not movies, it's software '' line a few times the guy waved me through ....
Thankfully Dubai did allow the serving of beer in Hotels ...
Colleague of mine
About 25 years back took hi laptop bag through security for the first time.
There was a pair of scissors stitched between the stiffening plate and the cushioning - wasn't such a pretty laptop case after that
Gun shells and dive gear
The year was 2003, so 9/11 still fresh in everyone's memory. On a trip to Western Australia I had shot a rifle on a farm. Kept the shells (two or three) as a souvenir and had them in my carry-on. Mind you, they were spent, so basically just brass tubes at that point. Checking in in Perth was no problem, but it got me nearly arrested in Singapore and it delayed the flight for an hour. (Kind of them to wait for me, though)
When I fly with my dive gear, I usually have my regulators and dive computer in my carry-on, because I don't like them to be handled roughly. All those hoses and electronics make for an interesting image on the X-ray though, so the bag often gets sent to inspection. Where it usually just serves as a nice conversation starter.
Re: Gun shells and dive gear
Dive gear: Sharm el Sheikh airport security didn't recognize a first stage.... i needed that kilo out of my checked in bag and had three in my carrry on, took them 5 divers smiling and saying "yes" to believe me.
Re: Gun shells and dive gear
Not the experience I had there, it seemed to me that security guards were well acquainted with all kinds of diving gear.
But a friend decided he had to check his DSLR (as they were signs telling all 'video' equipment had to be registered on entry) so we waited almost 2 hours while he was explaining to security why and what he was trying to film in Egypt and that he wasn't an Israeli agent and whatnot...
Re: Gun shells
I once knew a bit of a gun-nut who flew from the UK to South Africa with (among other things) a .44 Magnum pistol (this was a while ago). When he declared it at SA customs he thought he was in trouble when the customs officer called his supervisor, but it turned into a "What's the recoil like? Can I have a go?" session.
Nothing too exciting, but on a trip to Munich I got stopped because my bag was full of Ethernet cable and a small switch (I was on my way to set up some systems for a small conference). Airport security got a little excited until I unpacked it and showed them. The only other thing I had was clothing (and I am pretty sure my boxers weren't explosive)!
Flying into Vancouver on a business jaunt:
Them: Can you take the electronics out of your bag, please?
Me: Are you sure? It's pretty much *all* electronics.
Them: Yes.
Two laptops (netbooks, fortunately), a couple of USB/serial converters, an ethernet switch, and the associated power supplies and assorted cables... Took me a while to cram it all back into the bag.
Belfast
1998, sent over from Glasgow to Newtonards to do a network survey on a factory - someone wanted to know length of the cable runs etc.
Pleasant day trip, first time over there so my immediate impression of the bunting was "oh must be a Gala day coming up" - i realised my mistake about 5 seconds later.
Everyone was very nice, lots of people keen to understand what football team I supported and did I know such and such ( I lived in Ayrshire at the time, if you know, you know).
All went well till I got back to Belfast City and my carry on went into the xray. Seems various networking gear and cables, a fluke multimeter, assorted screwdiver sets and the like, all looked a bit odd to the nice man. His even bigger, grumpier friend with the gun across his chest invited me into a side room for a chat with some people in suits.
Reader, my arse collapsed....
Not me...
but one client I worked for had a contract for the Angolan election in the early 90s.
I was "lucky", I couldn't find my passport, so I didn't get to go out there. The team was put up in a villa in huge grounds. The security guards took them outside into the garden and pointed to an imaginary line 50M into the grounds - "go beyond that point and you are on your own!" Was the simple statement from the Uzi wielding security guard...
We had no-end of problems with email (cc:mail over modem onto a Novell server at HQ in the UK). For some reasons the connection always failed and we were getting increasingly irritated phone calls from the team on-site and from management. In the end, we attached a phone to the modem and listened in as they tried to connect.
"Bleeeep, blurgh, bleeep, CLICK!"
A polite call to the Angolan government to ask them to pretty please not listen in on the line, it was only being used for email and they were welcome to come and inspect the laptop at any time they wanted. The equipment they had was so old, it was causing a loud enough click to cause the modem to drop the connection.
The election went well, well, it was fair at least. But the rebels weren't happy when the government won. The team was evacuated to the airport, laying on the floor in the back of Toyota Land Cruisers and Land Rovers, whilst the security hung out the windows and shot back at the rebels...
We also did the election in Serbia... Funny, after the elections were over, my passport miraculously re-appeared!
Back before it was possible to cram video recording stuff into something the size of some matchboxes or in a phone you needed to be a bit more enterprising for how you captured your video on the move. So for skiing I had a contraption which was a bullet camera, mic and remote all feeding to my rucksack which contained camcorder and a tuppaware tub full of batteries/cables... Somehow I was never questioned over dragging all that lot through customs etc.
On a long weekend to Budapest I had crammed my rucksack with a camera, phone, iPod and all the OTT charging/connectivity cables etc. When the rucksack went though the x-ray scanner the operator looked at the screen, looked and me, and then turned to his mate and said "James Bond". I'm sure Bond would have less obvious sky kit...
Fairly Frequent Flier
Taking the whole family on trips to the US & Canada before emigrating to the later, I used to try & ensure the kids (Including the very nearly now ex-Mrs Oncoming Scorn) had their own personal in-flight entertainment & plug in rechargeable battery packs to last the journey & subsequent trip from/to Devon by train.
A colleague witnessing me making these up on the fly at the 11th hour before I finished work went (A week or two after the shoe bomber debacle - The cause of why we now need to wear our best socks when flying)....stated.
"Errrrmmm given the heightened security, do you think it's wise to go in with home made black boxes & cables?"
As we passed through customs\security with those boxes on that occasion & others we didn't fit the suicide bomber profile.
However you wouldn't believe the issue I had with one female indian security inspector who wouldn't believe that my OEM car key (Remote (un)lock & start) wasn't the trigger for a bomb, after four passes of the keys through the x-ray machine, one of the more enlightened female co-workers effectively said to her "FFS its a car key!".
I'm not sure if I should have felt relieved or not on that flight, wondering if I had been used as a diversionary tactic to allow something else to slip through, when flying from Calgary to Seattle & if the plane (Or someone else's) was going to go bang & then break up about me (Them) before hitting the ground (See Icon).