Stormspotter-Todd's Blog

On Starlings, Falcons, and Stalkers...

2012-02-01T10:51:00.009-05:00

If you've ever been stalked by multiple people before as I have, this video makes total sense to you. I came across it when a Facebook friend posted it, and it made me stop and think.

This video was interesting to me because I couldn't believe that the birds would act in exactly the opposite of what you would expect. You'd THINK that where attacked, they would disperse in every possible direction in order to confuse the attacker. Instead, they all balled into one gigantic black ball, offering up any NUMBER of choice peices of meat.

Then it hit me...

I thought about my stalkers and how they had reacted when I fought back to make them stop. It's something in every animal - even in humans; but especially in animals.

When you're an animal and you know you're about to die, you panic, and you blend in with everybody else in the hopes that the attacker will get confused and *miss* you and get someone else, instead. Or, in the human equivalent: when you get caught, blame everybody else, and hopefully in the confusion someone ELSE will get it, and not you.

I see this darkness in far more people now in my learn-ed age than I would have ever allowed myself to have realized or believed in my naive and inexperienced youth. I remember always having exaggerated, elevated, much brighter hopes for mankind when I was a lot younger. (sigh)

In the human world, we're supposed to be intelligent. In the human world, we're supposed to have something that the animals do not, called a "conscience, which supposedly "elevates" us such that it allows us to overcome our instincts to do amazingly honorable things to protect others from harm. In the human world, we're supposed to be more "civil", with morals which are designed to make us own up when we've done something wrong. In the human world, we're supposed to know huge-sounding words such as "honor", "chivalry", "compassion", "understanding", "kindness", "fairness", and phrases like "service to others".

I keep hoping to see good examples of "civilized" humans in my life but in reality, I am continually disappointed at how, in the end, instinct always overcomes, and the good guys always get it because the bad guys were too chicken, and despicably dishonorable.

And you know, it doesn't seem to matter how much "religion" someone's got, either. Even politicians go to church and know a few verses to fool people. For most, religion is simply a notch for the belt - something to put on the resume to fool others into believing that you're a person of "good character". Where is religion, today? It seems to be filled more with goodness-sayers and fast-quoters than very many actual good-doers. I think more and more people are giving up on "religion" these days for that very reason. It doesn't hold the honest goodness and the truth that it used to, anymore. As a result, the world has become much more of a "fend for yourself and blame it on the next guy" world, today.

In the end, the Judases vastly outnumber the ones who are willing to do the right thing, blaming everyone else, hiding behind public service activities and faked good intentions for "alibi", and trying to use everyone else to save their own butts when that falcon "piper" turns wielding really sharp claws.

In other words, that reaction in the video made TOTAL sense to me.

Considering Lawsuit Against State of Fla Over Radar-detector Ticketting Campaign...

2011-09-11T20:35:00.007-04:00

Considering the possibility of a class action lawsuit against the State of Florida/DMV/FHP for ticketting motorists for the usage of radar detectors in vehicles on Florida roads:

where the Florida Senate actually killed a bill by Senator Oelrich in 2007 to ban RDs in Florida, setting a "precedence" that their use is okay and accepted in the State of Florida;
for setting confusing, nonspecific, unclear, and contradictory laws (e.g., the "Windshield Obstruction Law"), which contains unfair, inexplicable loopholes for revenue-generating devices, which when combined with the Senate's precedence to allow the use of RDs, places motorists into a no-win, double jeopardy situation of unfair and unconstitutional bias against them if they attempt to fight it.
using the windshield obstruction law to call RD use on windshield "unsafe";
while at the same time offering no adequate or reasonable explanation as to how the toll device is somehow "safe";
charging motorists to USE a toll device that the windshield law would otherwise deem to be be "unsafe" by it's positioning - except by inexplicable "exemption";
accosting motorists $114 for having an RD mounted on a windshield, but not fining people for the use of the toll device mounted on the windshield - often in the same position;

Looking for lawyers to work either pro bono or on a pay-only-if-you-win basis to extract reasonable explanations out of the Florida DMV / Highway Patrol system, and the State of Florida itself, or face a lawsuit.

[ Click here for more information ]

Meltdown At Moe's...

2011-08-20T11:08:00.012-04:00

Last night, I went to the Moe's by the Royal Park 16 theater on Newberry Road. I ordered a Joey Jr. (medium burrito), 3 hard-shell Funkmeisters (tacos), and a Taco Salad for Kathy. ( I was hungry. :) ) On Kathy's taco salad, she just wanted ground beef, lettuce, onions, cheese, salsa, and guacamole. On my stuff, they were all the same way...ground beef, lettuce, cheese, onions, sour cream.

FIVE TIMES I had to repeat my order back to the assembler. FIVE TIMES. Why? ...Because every time he asked me what I wanted and how it was to be composed, he stopped me mid-sentence to take care of some chic who had just walked in the door who was upset about the price increase in the "Moo Moo". I'd start to tell him what I wanted, and then some chic at the back of the line would interrupt him. "Oh my GOD! Did the price of the Moo Moo go up?!" He'd cut me off and make me wait while he stopped everything to take care of this poor little college student, who was so distraught over it that she had to know what the deal was NOW.

Have to commend him. It was very important to him to make sure that all the pretty little college girls were satisfied. He'd go through his long schpeil with the girl, and then come back to me and ask what I wanted again.

As I spoke, yet AGAIN, another girl would walk in and freak out over the 10-cent increase in the price of the Moo Moo kids meal. (This must be a pretty popular item with the girls, or something.) Yet again he cut me off to handle this poor little girl who just had to be gently consoled. Yet again, he'd come back to me and again he asked me what I wanted. Then the girl would interrupt him with another question (I forget what about now), again cutting me off. He'd stop me again and talk to her. He came back again and AGAIN asked me what I wanted. (We're up to three times being asked, here.) I paused and stared at him angrilly, but he didn't notice. (sigh) Yet again, I began to explain how I wanted things put together. YET AGAIN...YET ANOTHER girl came in and wanted to know what's up with the price of the god-damned Moo Moo! (Are you KIDDING ME???!!!) :) I'll be damned if yet AGAIN he cut me off and stopped what he was doing and explained to HER now how the price had gone up and how there's no longer the 50-cent bonus thing, but now you get a free drink and something, "...So it's like...included" he says, arms outstretched to put some body expression into his sell.

Noticing the problem, another employee jumps in now, and he wants to help with my order. He asks me what I want. I explain it to HIM. Now the dizzy guy comes back. He wants to know...AGAIN...what I want. But the other guy has begun assmebling my order. He's already started to put together the burrito. The dizzy guy ALSO begins putting together a SECOND burrito, not understanding that the other guy had decided to step in and help because his coworker wasn't paying attention. The helper guy leaves, thinking the frazzled guy has it. AGAIN, the dizzy guy asked me what I wanted on everything. I pointed out, "But uhm...I only wanted ONE burrito."

Now the dizzy guy is starting to get upset with me. As he sees it, I'm just being ditzy and I'm just not able to get my order straight, and he's had to repeatedly ask me what I wanted. (Pause for the gears to click and for the audience to put it together.) Now he's starting to give me looks - like he thinks I'm stupid and incompetent. He's irritated now. He's thinking I can't get my order straight, and that I'm causing him his problems. He's now got two burritos, three tacos, and a taco salad laid out on the assembly board. In an irritated voice, he asks, "So, you DON'T want two burritos?" He looked confused for a second like he didn't know what to do with the extra burrito, and like he was really pissed now. He folded up the extra burrito, and threw it back behind him at the garbage can without looking, and it splattered against the wall and fell to the floor, instead.

Now his attitude is angrier. He looked straight into my eyes, and started treating me like I was stupid.
"Okay, I've got ONE Joey Jr., THREE Funkmeisters, and ONE Taco Salad laid out here. Is this correct, sir?"
"Yes."
"Are you SURE, now?"
"Yes."
I'm being VERY patient at this point, because I REALLY want to knock this guy down on his ass for being so smart and rude for something that is really HIS fault.

He finally began assembling everything together, and I could see that he was being deliberately sloppy about it because by now he's turned this whole thing around in his mind that *I'M* the problem and he just can't wait to get me out of the way. I'm so glad to be away from this guy and finally on my way to the register.

FIVE TIMES this guy stopped to come to the rescue of some STUPID little girl who HAD to know what was up with the price of the STUPID "Moo Moo". (...What a STUPID name! *Sigh!*) And in the end, he treated ME -- in front of EVERYBODY ELSE IN THE LINE, and in front of everybody else sitting in that restaurant, and in front of all of his peer employees, like *I* was a dumbass -- loudly, and rudely.

I am NEVER, EVER returning to that Moe's ever again. I should have gone to the one west of I-75. It's slower, not so many ditzy students, and the crew seems to have such a better attitude.

I didn't deserve that. I just wanted some food. There was no reason for me to have to experience that. I like Moe's, but that experience was uncalled for...especially throwing the food against the wall, and making ME seem like *I* was the problem in front of all the other people who WERE the actual problem in that line.

I came so close to slapping a $20 bill down at the register and saying "Keep the food; here's a twenty for the inconvenience I caused you all", and walking out. ...But I didn't. I should have.

UPDATE - Aug. 25, 2011:

Actually got an email from Ernest Milian, who is the Director of Operations at Moe's (and a number of other restaurants) around town...

Mr. Sherman, I read your blog. It was very detailed and informative. I have taken the opportunity to go back and review the video tapes from the shift that day and use it as a training tool for the employees. We value your business and share your belief and it is our goal to serve our guests smartly and politely as the progress through the line. I apologize for the experience you had and appreciate you reaching out to us to inform us.

Ernest Milian
Director of Operations
Alachua Restaurant Group

Oh, good gosh! Now I'm immortalized in training videos! Now they'll ALL know who I am when I walk into the door! (grin) ;O)

Kidding aside, I do appreciate Mr. Milian's concern, and his effort to get back with me on it.

Christmas and Cancer

2010-12-17T10:50:00.031-05:00

I recently posted this on my Facebook page about what happened to my mother when she had cancer...

My friend Michael Heeder posted this on his page...

"Most people have 1000 wishes for Christmas; a cancer patient only has one, to get better. I know 97% of you won't repost this to your status, but my friends will be the 3% that do. In honor of someone who has died, or is still fighting, or survived cancer (like my Dad), copy this as your status ♥"

I repost it here to honor those who have fought cancer, but also...it reminded me of what happened to my mother, who died of cancer herself in 2007; and I thought I'd add the following story about her...

My Mom had cancer and she knew she was dying and that there would be no second chance. I'd promised her long earlier that I would do whatever I could to abide by her wishes, whatever they turned out to be, and that I would stand by her...even when her doctor tried to drug her up, going against both of our wishes, and would repeatedly make her sign a DNR (Do Not Rescuscitate) form while under the influence. While my mother knew she was dying, she - like so many people who know that they're dying and that they don't have much time left - wanted to hold on to every last breath of life while she could. ...And I tried to give that to her - while doctors tried to take it away, actually making her feel GUILTY for holding on.

I remember Mom going to an appointment with her doctor one day and her doctor had yet AGAIN put that DNR in there in her chart. Mom asked her to remove it and the doctor had a temper tantrum - in front of the BOTH of us! She slammed her pen down on the clipboard and BERATED my mother in complete disregard of my presence in the room. "So you want to DRAAAAG this out! Is THAT it, Mrs. Sherman?!!! You want to DRAG this out and make everybody else SUFFER. Is THAT it?!" It took everything that I HAD to keep myself from PUNCHING that doctor, right there in the room. (The doctor was of Asian origin and I guess they have a completely different way of looking at life over in that culture.)

NO one should have to go through anything like that. Death is horrific and cruel enough. Doctors with insensitive mindsets such as what was seen with my Mom's doctor should have their licenses taken away and be banned from ever serving people again. Really, they should be put away. As the doctor once told me..."Your Power of Attorney is only good as long as she's not able to make decisions on her own." But that didn't include times when they'd drug her up on purpose so that her mind was not able to handle anything. They'd ask her to sign those forms when she was in that 'inbetween' period - between consciousness and passed out - where neither of us was technically in control. I've never seen or heard of a doctor going out of her way to DO such a thing, before. ...And I was incredulous at witnessing it happen to us*.

I can't believe I experienced something like that - that my MOM had to endure something like that as she was dying, or that things like this even exist in our world. But there you go. They apparently do.

I have a photo of my mom, laying in her hospital bed, staring at a stuffed teddy bear that I'd gotten for her. I took the photo because I knew exactly what was going through her mind. I didn't have to have the cancer. I didn't have to be the
one dying to know how lonely and all alone and abandoned she must have felt - with doctors who were supposed to be there to HELP her, and yet, who were trying to convince her to effectively euthenize herself "for the good of others", "for the good of her family", and "for the good of the world". Can you IMAGINE being placed into such a situation - where doctors all around are surreptitiously attempting to get you to sign a DNR form...by drugging you, and then actually withholding that information from your family so that they don't know until it's too late and can't do anything to help you if something happened? How would YOU react if all the doctors around you were deliberately trying to kill you?...to commit your murder? Why was it that Kevorkian was always in the courtrooms again? Why was it, again, that society thought that what he was doing was wrong? With him, people gave him PERMISSION to kill them, and the courts still interfered. Here, at NFRH, they don't need permission. Apparently they can do whatever they like and they don't have to answer for it. What a paradox.

My mom knew very well already that she was dying. She didn't need to be constantly reminded of her dire situation. ...And then to be told, effectively, that she's holding up a bed, was exceedingly insensitive and cruel. They did everything except utter the words, "Now hurry up and DIE, please!" Now imagine if it were YOUR own mother being treated like that. (sigh) ...She laid there STARING at that god damned thing, and I KNEW what she was thinking in that moment - and it ripped me to fucking SHREADS...and there wasn't a damned thing I could DO about any of it. The doctors had all the control when I was away, and Dr. Larissa Lim, the doctor in charge, made sure to surround herself with doctors who thought just like her, and who were willing to allow this stuff to go on without saying anything to the relatives. :( I remember thinking to myself, "This whole situation is fucking CRUEL, it's NOT NORMAL, it's not FAIR, and it's just NOT RIGHT!!!" ...God DAMMIT!!! It STILL bothers me, even now. :(

THREE TIMES I caught that damned DNR back in my mother's charts. The doctor knew that I was working double the normal hours at my Census job, which was equivalent to having two jobs at the time, that I was busy with every spare other moment trying to take care of last minute details with my mom's affairs because she hadn't taken care of them like she had thought. The doctor knew I'd just had a car accident too, and that my car had been totalled, and that as a result, I was also busy trying to find a rental and a replacement so that I didn't lose my job. I remember having assignments taking me along a path 200 miles long, way out in Volusia County when my mother would call, crying and half drugged, desperately BEGGING me to come back right away because Dr. Lim was yet again making her sign a DNR form. I remember having to tell my mom that I couldn't...that I was many hours away on the other side of Florida. I remember her leaving a voicemail message on my cellphone, once. It was immedately after they'd drugged her, and she drifted off, repeating the words "Todd! Todd! Todd! Todd!...", over and over, endlessly - each word a desperate breath. She ate up the maximum allotted time for the message just repeating my name. She started out more lucid, telling me that they'd drugged her up again and that they were trying to get her to sign the DNR again. She begged me to come back and help her, and asked me where I was a number of times, as if she were talking to me, live. She asked me why I wouldn't come to help her. Then she drifted off into this..."state", and began repeating my name over and over for the rest of the message, until it timed out...a good many minutes. I remember starting to cry, being in Crescent City at the time, a hundred-something miles away, and I couldn't DO anything. :( Nobody knows what that PAIN is like, to have your own family member being treated like that, deliberately ignored and disobeyed...and to not be able to do anything about it. My mother was suffering at the hands of this god damned doctor...and so was I. She was being abused and taken advantage of...and I'd be so far away, and unable to do anything about it. When I WOULD get back, very late, she would be drugged up, completely out of it, and I wouldn't be able to have a lucid conversation with her to find out what had happned. If I even SUGGESTED reversing the medications and waking her up, the nurses would get these very shocked looks on their faces, as if I was being aboslutely ridiculous and perhaps "intervention" might be required or something! The brainwashing within that hospital was very thorough, and no one challenged or spoke up or gave thought to what was morally correct and what wasn't. To do so meant to lose their jobs. So, I'd always have to wait until the drugs wore off, and then I'd get the story and I'd always feel incredulous and betrayed by these supposedly "responsible" people wearing white smocks all around me. What was so incredible was that this doctor would DO this when I wasn't aware, and she wasn't TELLING me she was doing it, either. She was hoping that my mom would DIE before I could do anything about it. She was actively FIGHTING me...AND my mom...BOTH our wishes...deliberately doing the OPPOSITE of our wishes.

It's bad enough already, having to deal with someone in your family dying. It's quite another, and quite extremely surreal, to have to deal with cultish doctors and hospital workers who are actually countermanding your dying family member's wishes, and yours.

The world isn't supposed to work like that. It's very scary to come to the sudden realization that there are actually a vast...VAST...number of people out there who behave in the manner of a cult, and who will literally work together to fight you in the name of preventing what they perceive to be cruel, and who justify themselves by convincing themselves that you are just "not seeing the light" and that intervention is not only necessary but mandatory. I was following my mother's actual wishes. I'd made a promise to do what she wanted - even if it meant using up every last dime we had and it ate up all our potential inheritances. These people were trying to convince me that I was lying to myself. I was grateful for Hospice and what they were trying to do for people; but once my mother was in there, I pretty much ran into the very same thing all over again. They didn't understand what we had just gone through, seemed to be in denial that what the doctors were doing was wrong, and they were actually defending the actions of the rogue doctors, while at the same time, doing their best to make me actually feel guilty for doing what my mother wanted. It was very... (*sigh!*) ...It was like one of those moments where the hallways seem to be stretching out interminably long, and you feel so very much alone, all by yourself, and everyone around you is fucked in the head. ...But the paradox is that in their world, THEY'RE the normal people and YOU'RE the insane one. I felt like I was in the middle of a very dark and twisted movie. You cannot possibly understand until you experience it for yourself.

Mind you, back before Hospice, in amongst working, I'm having to take my mom back and forth in a cycle between rad treatments, chemo treatments, hospital stays, then moving to assisted care facilities, then home. (sigh) Then the cycle would repeat again as Medicare time limits and expense limits would be reached. I was constantly busy and really had NO time to myself. In amidst all of this, the doctors were fighting. Dr. Lim and her staff were constantly negative and were very depressing and cruel. Then there were the doctors who needed candidate patients to experiment with a new cancer tool called the "Cyberknife", which at the time was new and going through trials. They were continually trying to get Mom on the list for it, but complications would always occur which would stall it. They would tell her that it would give her a chance and that with it they could remove the cancer from her lungs. Dr. Lim would argue with that, and advise that the cancer was too infused throughout her lungs and spreading way too quickly for anything to help. The imgery actually wasn't backing that up. She was actually right, but she was GUESSING, at the time. While it may have been true, the fighting with us in itself, and the deliberate countermanding of our wishes NOT use a DNR...this was cruel and wasn't at all funny. But eventually, while the arguments were going on and nothing was happening with the Cyberknife, Mom reached that point where it actually had become impossible to do anything at all and I had no choice but to put her in Hospice.

VERY early one day, after having been out all day working and trying to take care of things and having literally but only a couple hours of sleep, I got a call - I think it was around 3:30am - from someone at Hospice telling me I might want to come...that "it's time." I was SO VERY tired. I literally had to push myself up with my eyes closed, and I got out of bed. I remember literally banging into walls, stubbing my foot on the foot of the bed, forcing myself to get dressed. IT took me forever. I called my mom's sister, and she and her husband came up from Leesburg. I remember when I got there, the nurse actually asked me why it took me so long to get there. (*sigh!*) I'm just a cruel, callous, insensitive bastard, I guess. Yah. That's why.

I want to say that my mom died in the company of family, knowing that they were there. But by then she had been in a coma for days and was not aware of anything when she died. ...Not of me. ...Not of her sister and brother-in-law. I never got to say good-bye, and that bothers me so much. I always felt guilty because I was always gone, always far away, trying to take care of an AWFUL lot of ridiculously unbelievable and overwhelming things going on simultaneously (granted)... But still... That wasn't fair. That wasn't fair. NONE of it was fair...what happened.

At the same time that I was having to deal with my mom dying, I had six (SIX!) local ham radio operators cruelly stalking and harassing me over control of a program called "Alachua County SKYWARN". I'd done a great job with it. I'd founded it myself; did pretty much everything by myself because no one else wanted to do the real hard work. We were known across the country and helped to form other similar groups, nationwide. There were no problems with the program at all. And we did it without need of dues, or grants, or donations. But apparently the hams saw my program as overshadowing their own ham radio organizations' popularity and publicity and they didn't like it. So they cruelly went to people in emergency management and in the Weather Service and did everything they could to destoy my name, and all trust and confidence in me, and in the organization. I had to deal with hams calling me up and leaving threatening messages on my phone - filling up the answering machine so that it could hold no more messages, ringing my phone off the hook until I answered, email bombing me, pager bombing me, using Spoofcards to falsify CIDs so that they could leave cruel stanzas from songs on my machine like "Why don't you just BREEEEAK down!" They attacked and frightened my friends, and my associations. They threatened to destroy one friend's Naval career by falsely telling the Navy that she was a security threat. I'd call the police and the police would even sabotage my cases because they knew the Emergency Manager, who was being influenced by the hams. The hams threatened me, the organization. They stole passwords and hacked into EMWIN equipment (weather-related computer and satellite downlink equipment that had been given to Alachua County SKYWARN by the State and federal government) and perused directories containing PII information (it stands for 'Personally Identifiable Information'). At some point or another, I'd called the Gainesville Police Department, the University Police Department, the Alachua County Sheriff's Office, the State Attorney's Office. The hams knew everyone, and everywhere I went I got blown off. One day early on, while I was still taking care of my mom, one ham called the house and even feigned an emergency and made my mom actually disconnect from her O² machine and to come get me off the john some 60 feet away. I remember hearing her, gasping for breath, slapping her hand on the wall as she approached, wondering what was so urgent that she would disconnect herself and come to get me so far away in the bathroom. Was she having a heart attack and coming to tell me to take her to the hospital? When she told me what it was about, I was livid. I slowly walked her back to her bed, and hooked her back up to the machine. When I answered the phone, the individual admitted what I had suspected - that there was no actual emergency, that she just wanted me to pick up the phone so that we could 'talk'. She DID know my mother's condition, too, when she did that - AND HAD RECENTLY LOST HER OLDEST DAUGHTER TO CANCER, HERSELF!!! And on the DAY of my mother's funeral service, one ham was even emailing me, harassing me with complaints that he said another ham was writing to ARRL Section Managers about me. ...What? The day of my mom's funeral was the appropriate time for this?

I no longer trust hams because of how I was treated by them, especially for how they treated my mother, and for their lack of compassion even after she had died. I no longer want anything to do with ham radio for that. I have dealt with hams for many years and I have been consistently burned by them. I repeatedly find them to be immature, brash, unbehaved, uncontrollable, not capable of listening to authority, they do what they want regardless of the laid down rules, they're wanting of the impossible, and hide to the four winds when you need them to do a job, they bitch and complain about each other endlessly, and they're never satisfied. They big-headed, think they're priviledged because emergency management treats them with far too much leniency. And most of all, they're extremely unprofessional and unreliable. The ham license today doesn't mean the same thing that it used to. We should have never allowed the code requirement to disappear. It would have kept out the people who weren't serious.

And because of what happened to my mother at the hands of one doctor at North Florida Regional, I no longer trust the medical profession to be honest or capable of doing the right thing, either. What matters instead (comes the ultimate realiation to me) is the 'bottom line'...the money, someone taking up space in a bed that they consider to be better used by someone who is going to 'make it'. I'm reminded of the ST:TNG episode "Half A Life" with David Ogden Stiers playing a man past a certain age on a planet where once people reach the age of 60, they have to engage in a ceremonial ritual suicide and step into a chamber to disintegrate themselves "to avoid old age, infirmity, indignity, dependence on others, and the cruel uncertainty about when the end would come." ...Or more basically, so as not to be a burden on the rest of society. I think we're actually there, now. My mother should not have been so cruelly treated. I shouldn't have had to deal with all of that myself, either. It was so unspeakably cruel.

I NEVER got to say goodbye to my mother because I had to keep working, and because I had to take care of a lot of last minute affairs which should have been taken care of but that my mother I think didn't want to take care of because no one wants to admit that they're dying, I guess. ...And that's what taking care of your "final affairs" would be...an acknowledgement that this really is "it." (sigh) I guess I don't blame her for it. I understand it completely, in fact. But when they finally called me that night...I was SO tired. I was getting no sleep at all. Still, I stayed with my mother until her last breath. In fact, I can tell you the exact minute and the second that her last breath actually occurred (I was watching her closely; couldn't help it), and that the nurse's written time on her death certificate is wrong by some 15+ minutes. My mom never reawakened so that I could get that final good-bye. :(

I will have ALL of that experience in my mind and in my heart to deal with...for the rest of my life.

Christmas that year really sucked because I had Mom's bad experiences to be forced to repeatedly have to think about over and over in my mind after she died.

...But it was made a little easier by having met Kathy.

See, at the same that Mom had died, I'd met Kathy...oddly, out of having to inventory some items that Mom had left in a storage room in a storage facility that Kathy owned. As I paid the bill, we just started talking... Kathy was so NORMAL. (long pause) No, then again, I take that back...she's NOT normal. She's both. She's like ME, in fact; and it was refreshing. I got to know her. ...Someone who thought like me, who laughed at my stupid jokes, who played jokes on ME, who could could be childish where everybody else insisted upon seriousness; who could hammer, cut, saw, stain, sew, AND who didn't mind getting greasy and who could fix a car problem...who enjoyed children and being with her grandkids, going for walks in the park, listening to a cantata, or rocking out to the latest pop or rock music, and who had no beef with slipping an ice cube down my pants to get me back after I pulled a prank. We've been seeing each other for 3-1/2 years, now, as of the time of this writing.

So I guess you could say that in the midst of death, came another life...

There are photos of my mother and some small details about her life in my photo album on my Facebook page, but you have to be a "friend" in order to view them, right now. Unfortunately, after all the negative experiences I've had with people these past number of years, I am finding it harder to trust. Eventually, I plan to duplicate the photos on my personal web site, which is open to all.

Where Did Todd Go?...On Dealing With PsychopathsUPDATE: 09/16/2010 - The NWS's Reaction

2010-09-16T13:26:00.163-04:00

Noticed lots of hits from Jeff Capehart’s account to the AC-SKYWARN page, today. Knowing him, he's probably gloating over the fact that the Watch/Warning Map image file isn’t loading on it for some reason right now. That'd be just like him. It’s not getting FTP’d to AFN from the EMWIN software and the problem seems to coincide with updating to a beta version. Emailed the software author about it. Hopefully it will be resolved, soon.

Jeff's hits of course reminded me again of the stalking fiasco that I've been going through these past five years, and how I haven't finished the online blog about it...

I was thinking in particular lately about Angie Enyedi’s odd, and not-so-odd reactions. ...That is, when she was repeatedly hitting and hitting my original stalking blog (see "Where'd Todd Go?...On Dealing With Psychopaths and Stalking", and "Addemdum: 03/10/2010") at all hours of the day and night some time ago, and why she tried to get some apparent friends at some Jacksonville-based mortgage and loan company (see Lender Processing Services) to look up information on me. (I could see it on my hit counters when they used keyword searches like "todd sherman enyedi" on April 19th and May 6th, which called attention to it.) And at the same time, Angie herself was hitting that particular blog at ridiculously frequent times: early morning, early afternoon, afternoon, evening, even late at night, and graveyard shift. And then she'd come back days later and do it all over again to see if anything else was added. (see related IP log) It obviously really, really bothered her...panicked her, in fact. You could see it. Talk about a really guilty conscience. She was obviously quite frightened and completely flipping out. She was scared shitless about the existence of that blog, and likely what it could possibly one-day mean in terms of lawsuits and possible criminal charges not just against her but many people in NWS-JAX and a ACOEM, and elsewhere.

Well! Really, though! I mean...what did she expect? ...That you could pick on someone and that that person would just keep his mouth shut about it? Is that what I was supposed to do? Was I supposed to recognize how "all-powerful" the NWS-JAX employees were, and be worrisomely impressed with all of the sideways governmental contacts that they had, and at how many favors they could pull from them all, and at how much damage they could do to me, and just quietly die - run away, slip away into the darkness, and curl in my tail or something, and be grateful that the "Great and All-Powerful Al Sandrik" had not done more to me than he already did? Just what were they thinking was supposed to happen, here?

I know what was hoped would happen. And maybe they'd be right...if they were correct, and I WAS he actual bad guy. But I wasn't the bad guy, and they were wrong. So, in this situation, again I ask, is the innocent victim supposed to cave to how all-powerful everybody is and just TAKE the guilty verdict, regardless? And then everyone's problems would all be solved? Is that how it was supposed to go? Just what IS the "normal" reaction supposed to be when you're guilty, and when you're innocent? Is it NORMAL these days for the innocent victim to take it up the ass, shut up, and just go away without a fight? ...Is THAT right?

No way, man! I'm not like that! Maybe 15 years ago when I was more patient, and forgiving, and I let a lot of stuff go, out of kindness. But this is VERY different, now. This isn't as (relatively) simple a thing as Jane calling Betty a slut in high school. This was serious, serious stuff, here! Al broke city, state, county, and federal laws to get the "favors" done that he had asked for from people inside of Emergency Management and elsewhere; and he's responsible for so very much of what eventually happened to me. In fact his actions even made things worse for me. My harassers got even worse. Based upon what Al had told Emergency Management, Emergency Management labeled me and told police departments that I was the stalker and that my stalkers were the good guys. Police departments sabotaged cases I'd filed against my stalkers based upon what Dave Donnelly had said to them. My reputation was entirely destroyed by people who didn't know what the hell they were doing or what was really going on! They were totally wrong, and they convinced other government agencies that I was a real problem! ...And then those agencies took real actions against me. I don't take that lightly. Hell yes, I'm going to fight back...and one day I'm eventually going to get answers, dammit!

Angie wasn't the only problem at NWS-JAX. There were others there who got a whole lot more involved in all of this than she did...

* * *

While Angie may have been the one who erroneously told Al that I was a problem, Al is the one who ultimately directed all of the traffic. He made everything happen. He jumped to some rash conclusions of his own without allowing the proper process of "due process" to play out in my situation. As a result, many of my supposedly guaranteed civil rights were violated...prevented from happening. As a result, even more harm came to me.

This man orchestrated the entire symphony and he really didn't have to go as far as he did. He worked with others - "conspired" - in coordinated fashion with other people in various other government agencies high and low, with malice aforethought, to completely block me OUT of defending myself, in fact. There is no way that someone with conscience, with understanding of right and wrong, and of the laws, would engage in the path like the one that he chose. Therefore, Al was "missing a few" in terms of conscience. Al wasn't interested in fact. He just wanted revenge for harm that he thought was occuring to Angie Enyedi, and he wanted to show the person whom he at the time thought was the bad guy..."who was 'boss'".

Al specifically chose to utilize the path of handling things under the table with the INTENT of preventing me from knowing what was happening, from being able to speak up for myself, to know what was being said about me behind closed doors, and ultimately to prevent me from exercising any of my civil rights to protect myself. This includes: knowing what any accusations were, knowing WHO my accusers were, being able to FACE my accusers, and being able to answer in defense of myself. People don't do things like that "by accident".

I have no idea why Al would go this far. Someone had to be telling him something pretty drastically terrible in order to react in this manner. I only have scattered clues and hints to take me to a general reasoning, but nothing specific because no one has been kind enough to actually let me in on it. Whatever he thought I did, it must have been pretty bad. SO bad, in fact, that completely circumventing due process of the law was determined to be absolutely necessary. This includes skipping use of the police, skipping use of the courts, and obtaining "favors" from leadership in lower and sideways agencies to get what he wanted done, including ACOEM, FDEM, GPD, UPD, the Gainesville State Attorney's Office, and (recently, as of May, 2011) the FBI.

Part of what caused it had to be the hams with their repetative extracurricular phone calls and emails in complaint of me that Angie had repeatedly alluded to on the night that she "confided" in me. I think Al must have taken it ALL in and prejudiced me. He formed a gut feeling "opinion" of me which was forged by all the comments of others. I can think of no other reason why this man hated me so god damned much without even knowing me very well at all. But Al obviously spread some very very bad word about me around to Emergency Management; and then local EM spread it around into the police departments. I think he worked people up, and I think that's how this was allowed to go so far. He villainized me; made me the enemy. He unfairly made me a paria. Otherwise, there is no explanation for how everyone in so MANY police and government circles did what they did, and went so FAR.

It wasn't bad enough that the hams were stalking me, that my mother had cancer. I also had to contend with Al aiding and abetting all the bad guys, too. ...Even if he didn't REALIZE that that's what he was doing. That is nonsequitor. It doesn't matter in the slightest, here.

Let's not mince words here... Al attacked me, without first bothering to find out all of the facts in the situation that he so insisted upon involving himself in.

Not only did Al violate laws, but he's also a Department of Commerce employee of the United States federal government who took all those actions against ANOTHER employee of the Department of Commerce. Unfortunately for Al, I work for the same federal government, in another branch of the DoC. He ABUSED his powers in a serious manner so as to deliberately cause harm to another federal employee, while on the CLOCK for the NWS, while wearing the UNIFORM of the NWS, while utilizing CONTACTS of the NWS! Carrying that just a little further...without the knowledge of the DoC, and without conference with or the permission of the DoC, he made the DoC defacto responsible for his acions. He was irresponsible. This is not something he can just shrug away. And he involved OTHER goverment agencies, and PEOPLE in those agencies, convinced them to do FAVORS for him, and in so doing, he made them responsible as well. (This is the downside of doing "favors"...especially when you do those favors on blind trust.) As a result, his is a path of destruction everywhere he goes. He must have thought himself a genious, or something of a god when he did it. I have to wonder if he now doesn't himself wonder if he's in fact not the biggest idiot on the face of the planet for pulling what he pulled. He's got so much to hide, now. ...So much to cover up. I didn't put him there. He did. He's rash. He acts before he thinks. People who did him favors must now constantly apologize for taking part in his rash actions without first checking facts. People could end up in serious trouble for doing him the favors that he asked for. As a result, so as to protect themselves, everyone is forced to become deeply caught up in lies and deceit and plots and plans that he put together. ...Lies that they had NO IDEA they'd end up having to keep GOING for him for so long. He did very well at destroying not only MY life, but the lives of his co-workers, of his business associations in other agencies, of his friends, of his family, and god knows who else. ...Who else? Who ELSE is going to be held responsible because HE had a bright idea about "handling" somebody? Who ELSE is ALSO going to have to suffer for something that he was SURE would work flawlessly? He is irreponsible. He is a hothead. He thought about only himself. I wonder if he ever in his life thought he'd end up in this situation.

So what does he DO, now? Go to the authorities and admit that he had been duped by emails and phone calls from hams about the guilt or innocence of some guy whom he barely knew, how he had abused his powers of office so as to rain fire down upon that innocent man? I think not. Al didn't just "sin". He commited crimes. He could be charged and sent to jail. He could also be sued. He could also lose his job. He could also lose his pension, his reputation, his ability to obtain another adequaely paying job, his family, his home, everything he owns - because he had to get personally involved in someone else's affairs; had to personally "get" some guy; had to be the "Godfather" in some mafioso little scheme.

Oh, I understand. Al thought he was protecting. But, he ended up the bully, instead. He ended up being the bad guy. He'd delusioned himself into believing that what he was doing was for good, and that it was okay to break the laws - to show the bad guy. Al wanted to be the vigilante hero. He became the criminal, instead. He harmed the wrong guy, and completely destroyed an innocent person's life, and then he couldn't be held to be responsible enough to own up to what he did. That's not a brave man. That's a coward. That's the mark of a real asshole.

(sigh) Al's got a lot to think about. He's got a lot on his plate to answer to, to own up for. If he hadn't been so callously efficient about how he did what he did to me, I wouldn't now say that I'm sure that he has NO regrets about what he did, and that he would probably do it again, in fact. For this reason, I believe Al should be incarcerated. No bail. No deals. For that is how he saw ME; and that is how he believed *I* had to be treated.

And I'm REALLY not in the mood for "Golden Rule" lectures. I don't want to hear it. What Al did was wrong and a humiliating public example needs to be set in this world of mostly psychopaths who only learn by punishment...just like they do with rapists. I sincerely believe in this. Examples are important, or else these things just get repeated because the bad guys only otherwise learn that they can get away with it. After all, it's what Al did to ME inside NWS and Emergency Management circles. He spread it around that I was bad and that I needed to be "dealt" with.

No mercy. Right? Mercy is for the weak-hearted. Right?

Maybe it's best if people just realized that I've learned something very extremely important about dealing with all these people who have been so adamant about causing me so much headache...

I've learned that they (as in, the assholes) don't just simply "go away" when you tell them to. They continue, on and on, in secret, under the table, behind closed doors. They are relentless because they get just too much sick satisfaction out of it. NORMAL means of thinking DO NOT WORK with these people. You can't just tell them to stop. It doesn't work.

So you have to think backwards. You have to think in terms of what is NOT expected, what is NOT normal, what people WOULDN'T expect. If people like this are picking on you (and they're not the murdering type, of course), then you do NOT run away. You stand and fight. You do NOT keep your mouth shut, or listen to their threats. If someone threatens to cause you harm, you NEVER take their bluff. In fact, you don't EVER play the game of poker at all.

...You CALL...EVERYTHING...right there, on the spot, loudly, and with lots of fanfare. If someone threatens you, you start walking towards them and get right up into their face and make them think that you're extremely unpredictable and quite possibly capable of fighting back right there...which is what they in actuality really don't want. And make damned sure that you do it in a highly public, non-private place and way. This scares the shit out of them, takes them aback, puts them off balance, and makes them realize that you're not so "predictable" after all. This is essential.

You do exactly the opposite of normal thinking and be as loud as you possibly CAN, instead. You scare the living crap out of them. You get just as crazy as they have been. You take them off their guard.

If some whacko, angry chic has threatened you with calling the police and telling them that you hit and raped her because she simply didn't like losing some argument or something (hey, there are some SCREWED UP people out there), you step back to 25 feet, pick up your cellphone, and call the police right away and tell them that a woman just threatened to call the cops and tell them that you raped her. You just did what she didn't expect you to. She expected you to cave, to do it her way. She's a bully and she expected to be in control of you. Now she's in a panic. When she's in a panic, the chances are high that she will screw up when the cops arrive and that she'll end up burying herself in even more rapidly-put-together lies which can later be picked apart. She may even give up altogether and decide to back down. Always keep things moving way too fast and out of their control. They don't know what to do or how to handle that. They may make up more stuff - stuff which has no backing and which can be picked apart, while your own story remains solid. If necessary, you GO THROUGH all the tests. You SIT in the waiting room at the police station for a while. You wait for all the tests to be done and to come up showing absolutely nothing. Then you turn around and press charges, and sue her, and you also invite the Press to attend all the hearings, and share everything with them, and you make sure that the entire world knows what she tried to do to you. NOW, if anyone ELSE is out there with half a mind to do the same thing to you, you just made those people think TWICE about it - because you've now shown yourself to be a wildcard who doesn't take crap from people and who is perfectly fine with making an EXTREMELY loud noise aboutit, which they don't like.

If people are harassing you, threatening you, stalking you, and they duped the government into getting involved too, then you make blogs which talk about it every detail, with cites and references, and every bit of evidence that you can muster. Then you make sure that it's referenced in every large search engine out there, using every possible keyword matching combination possible. You call every police agency around and file a complaint every time you're harassed. (In so doing, you now have something on the record to back you up when someone says "Why didn't you try to do anything about it?" As well, when it all finally DOES make it into a courtroom, now the police agencies which were supposed to protect you and do something and DIDN'T are suddenly caught on the line and left having to explain themselves.) If necessary, offer interviews to the Press.

YOU DON'T CAVE TO THESE PEOPLE! NOT EVER!

If they're the partucularly tunnel-visioned type who can't put you down, be patient. Wait a little bit for some evidence to gather as they make mistakes. Then you turn it around, and you make THEM the victims, instead. You take control back in your life. You take everything that they've done to you, and you use that against them. Everything that they do to you leaves a trail. It gets longer and longer the more that they do to you, and involves more and more people - AND BECOMES UNBEARABLY COMPLICATED FOR THEM TO KEEP UP WITH, too. That's important for you to realize. Your story will always hold together while their's keeps "changing to fit". It can actually be utilized over time. It can be referenced. At some point, you don't have to prove much of anything at all anymore because they've done so much that it becomes obvious and calls attention to itself.

...It's what I call, "...the moment of 'Sun Tzu Realization'".

The best way to win a war is not to fight at all. Sun Tzu was right about that. But there's something else. Something that your enemies never notice; and never get. Most of the time, unfortunately, it also happens to be what the VICTIM never gets...and that is, that if people are going to stalk you, it can be used AGAINST them, too. Too often, victims take it up the ass, because they don't realize this, and/or because they're too frozen in fear of retaliation, and the bad guys get away with it. But if they're going to fight, you should use their weakness and stupidity AGAINST them - not to a LIGHT degree either; but to the utmost MAXIMIZED degree. If they're going to be stupid, then make sure they know how stupid they really were.

That is what these blogs are. I am calling attention to everything and in so doing they are all FORCED to stop in their tracks. Suddenly, now rather than being the bullies, they're all having to create "alibis". Suddenly they have to prove to the world that they're the sweetest, kindest people on the face of the planet. Suddenly, the harassment and stalking stops. Suddenly they've all got a new mission: to prove to the world how GOOD they are. They get involved in three TIMES the public service and charity that they normally do, noticeably and seemingly inexplicably. (...Like I noticed Jeff Capehart do immediately after I publicized my original blog entry about my harassments. And I remember thinking that it was hilarious because I realized that I was finally now in more control of my life again - not COMPLETE control; but I had SOME, and it was nice.) Suddenly the bullies are forced to lie, to make up stuff, to develop wildly twisted and contorted stories that are SO complicated and which are forced to include SO MANY people to coordinate with (so that they can all back each other up) that it becomes hard to track even for THEM. ...And it will be so easy to pick all of that apart in a courtroom.

ACOEM, NWS-JAX, GPD, UPD, GARC, GARS, Paul Eakin, Dave Donnelly, Chief William May, Al Sandrik, Angie Enyedi, Steve Letro, Officer Mayo, Officer Metz, Officer Hollings, and everybody else...I DO REALIZE that they were all duped by the hams - the people who were stalking me. But the simple fact is...there was a proper procedure for handling circumstances like this and everybody just jumped to the wrong conclusions about who was guilty and who was innocent; and without stopping THERE, quite shockingly, everybody then irrationally took ACTIONS TOO!...against the wrong person. Now everybody is having to run and hide so that no one else knows all the hell and problems that they caused, and which could cost them their careers, and perhaps even jail time, or a lawsuit here and there. But that's not right. It's not an excuse. It's not excuseable. It has to be answered for, now. When you do something wrong, you HAVE to pay the piper. That's what I was always taught. When you do something wrong, you have to take responsibility for it. This is the mark of a GOOD-HEARTED person, a RESPONSIBLE individual, a moral, thoughtful, and honorable human being. This could have all been so easily avoided had people used the proper procedures, stifled their instinct to hate someone based on gossip that they had no clue was true or not, followed all the rules and laws, and AVOIDED stepping on my civil rights along the way. Regardless of the fact that people in EM and NWS and all the police agencies were duped, they still broke laws, and ignored procedures that were supposed to be there to actually PREVENT such miscarriages of justice from occuring. They still made conscious and deliberate CHOICES to take shortcuts and prevent me from being able to utilize my basic civil rights, with the INTENT of preventing me from doing anything to protect myself. If they had a problem, they were supposed to handle it more publicly. Complaints were supposed to be filed, with signatures and time/date stamps affixed. Paperwork was supposed to be filled out. Upper echolon was supposed to be duly and properly notified and allowed to be brought up to speed on the situation, and to be able to make decisions of it's own. All of this was skipped. In a courtroom, I'm going to ask for proof of ALL those steps being taken. They're all going to just shrug and say...

  "I don't have that official paperwork. No."
  "No, I never notified my superiors. No."
  "No, the NWS itself had no clue what we were doing under the table."
  "No, the County of Alachua had no clue what ACOEM was doing to Todd, because they were left out of the loop; but now they're responsible because I was an employee of the County."
  "I knew I was supposed to notify someone in (City/County/State/DC/HQ) about it but that would have taken time, and I felt that this was serious, so we took some shortcuts."
  "No, I never notified Todd that we were holding meetings about him wherein we decided what under the table actions to take against him."
  "Yes, that's right. When Todd found out about the meeting, and his Assistant Coordinator asked if he/they could attend, I told her no, that he/they could NOT and that we weren't interested in hearing what he/they had to say."
  "Yes, we told GPD/UPD/et al that he was a problem and to ignore his complaints, but we really thought he was the bad guy at the time. We thought we were doing the right thing to protect the people we actually thought at the time were the innocent victims."
  "Yes, I deliberately delayed subpoenaeing the IP logs because Dave Donnelly had advised me, based upon what the National Weather Service had told him, that he was a 'problem' and that was trying to use the law to harass innocent people. I did this so as to prevent Mr. Sherman from obtaining any evidence which would have revealed who had been harassing him and who had created a fake Yahoo account in his name, and shared detailed knowledge about the case with the very people he had filed the complaint against specifically with the intent of helping them to elude arrest and conviction."
  "Yes, I implied to the investigating officers of the University Police Department that Todd was a problem - based on what Mr. Donnelly had said, and told them that they should not take anything that he has to say about the hacking, or the investigation thereof, seriously, and to cooperate in fact with the accused and to share all knowledge of the case with him during the investigation."

You get the picture.

Of course, the NWS itself will deny knowledge of what it's employees were doing so as to protect itself. It will distance itself from these employees, not back them up. Same with the County of Alachua and what Dave and Chief May did. Same with the City of Gainesville over what the rogue cop did. Same with the University of Florida with what ITs cops did "under the table" without the knowledge of THAT organization. Not ONE agency will back it's employees up knowing that to do so puts the AGENCY in harms way. These people acted independently. I will SUE the agencies anyway, because the actions were taken ON THE CLOCK, WHILE WEARING THE UNIFORMS, using the NAMES of those agencies to GARNER those favors when they were asked for. The agencies will be hit with a sudden lawsuit, and will be asking where the hell it came from, and they'll be going to their employees for those answers, and the employees will be shirking any reponsibility and denying. But the evidence will point to otherwise.

But it's not going to matter. The damage has already been done. And this is also ALL part of the "Sun Tzu Realization" - that they were all breaking the rules and the laws, and that they never thought about these things while they were so involved in doing everything that they did, and they're all going to have to ACCOUNT for this, eventually. I think they know this, now. But I'm not interested in hearing the excuses, now. I don't care. Everyone involved took merciless...MERCILESS actions against me, and I begged REPEATEDLY for help and mercy and no one was interested in giving me any, or in listening to my side. They were all TOLD that people were stalking and harassing me. It was out there. Everyone proceded as if I was making it all up. No one wanted to give it a chance. Everyone assumed, and then took actions based upon the GUESS that I was indeed the bad guy. They brought this upon themselves. And I think it's also why no one has ever made any effort to try to make me shut up, or to take down these blogs. Because just the simple act of TRYING TO DO that forces attention to be called to the situation, and demands inquiries, investigations, and having to answer questions about it all; and they don't want that. So back to the Sun Tzu Realization...I seem to actually have some sort of "control" over everyone, now. I have found a way to make my harassers stop and go into hiding, and the people in government who were abusing their powers to also take note about the things that they were doing. It would seem that I don't have to worry about anything bad happening, anymore. Although, the bad that did occur still occurred, and my name and reputation were still completely destroyed, and the damage was still done, nonetheless.

If they didn't want me to defend myself, then they shouldn't have done what they did. The problem with bullies is that they get so used to people being afraid of them and of getting their asses kicked by them that they get USED to being able to do whatever they want to people. Then the bullies begin to EXPECT that this will ALWAYS work. It usually DOES...with MOST PEOPLE, anyway. But...I'm not "most people" (anymore). Now I'm that one backwards asshole that screws them up and ruins what was a really good day until they met me.

Was I always that way? No. I used to believe in people more. I used to take a lot, and I used to be exceedingly patient. I used to be super kind, and super patient, and super forgiving, and super understanding. I used to believe in being nice to people more. I used to let people go with their infractions, and pretend they never happened, to give people "second chances". I used to say, "Never pay heed to the first impression. It's he 167th impression that actually matters, because this is the true individual when they are most comfortable with you. I don't do that anymore. My stalkers actually saw it not as a good and honorable trait, but as a weakness and they exploited it. Today, I don't trust anyone right off the bat. I suspect everyone. That being said, would you believe...something in me still finds some small want to resist that Pavlovianly-trained reaction?

(sigh!) You have to get your ass kicked a few times with these types and be cornered into a wall before you learn. Most victimized people never learn because most victimized people never run into this DEGREE of harassment and stalking in their lifetimes. However, in my case, I ran into a particularly sadistic bunch of people who didn't know when to stop, and now not only are they having to answer for it, but so are the dumbasses they duped! And now they all appear to be regretting the day they picked on me, and if so, then that is just SO satisfying. (*sigh!*) Again though...it's not the victory I'm looking for. I want these people to be brought to justice and to be made to answer for all the things they did...publicly...on the record. I want my name back. I want the world to know what happened to me. My civil rights were stomped on, I was unfairly labelled, and then picked on by people who had all the power while I had none. People need to understand that. Until they do, justice has not been served, here; and things are by no means "over". Although, I'm sure these guys all wish it were, now.

Somebody told me that Angie had children now - that they had seen it on her Facebook page....two kids with her that looked to be maybe four and five years old. Were they hers? I have no idea. Don't REALLY care. Maybe they were just visiting family at the time the photo was taken. But it might explain WHY she has reacted the way that she has in this whole thing. It's scary because now everything seems to make better sense. Everything starts to come together into a clearer reasoning, now. (sigh) Not only had she majorly screwed up and caused harm to someone innocent, but now she had a "life" with a real family, and she was trying to protect it, apparently...by trying to make the wrongs she had done to me "go away", remain hidden, by calling upon favors from friends inside NWS and EM, who themselves called upon favors in the police departments to make any investigations "go away". She freaked. She flipped out. She thought I was the bad guy, not the victim. She interpreted a lot of things wrong. She made wrong assumptions. She jumped to incorrect conclusions. She thought the bad guys were the good guys. Considering how Jeff used to invade himself into my business, into my friends, into my life, and all the resultant confusion caused by all of that...I think I can see how it could have happened. Angie is the crux of everything, however. Angie wigged out and had a "shit fit", as they say. She panicked. She freaked out and then she went to Al and begged him to help her. Al, not liking me to begin with, had no problem with obliging, and that's when things got even WORSE...

On the night that she stayed to talk with me after the spotter training class (in 2005 - more about that as we go on, here), she kept telling me not to tell anyone about our talk. She said that she didn’t want it "getting back to Matt"...at any cost.

But I'm jumping ahead, here...

After the class, she followed me outside as I gathered my stuff from the classroom and was loading it into my car. She was unusually nice, and even kinda flirty. I wasn't sure how to take it. That whole EVENING was weird, actually. But I learned something about her. She's wasn't quite the so-well-put-together person that I had come to think she was. She had a kind of "spacey" side.

Man, she was all over the place that night. She was kind of "flighty". I remember the conversation going back and forth, but mostly centering on her marriage to Matt and how "smothering" she felt he was, and on the "awesome job" she said that I was doing with SKYWARN.

At one point, she was talking about how she was having second thoughts about the marriage thing, how she was wanting to divorce Matt, how she felt that it was "over", and she just wanted out, now. She said "At first I thought marriage to Matt was something that I really *did* want; but now I think I’ve changed my mind. I just...I really can’t take it anymore. He...smothers me. He’s insecure. He’s too emotional. He wants my attention all the time. So much that I feel like I just can't breath. It's just NOT what I wanted. I don’t know what to do. I feel really bad. But I just want out, now." I remember telling her to calm down, to take a deep breath, that this stuff happens in marriages a lot - all the time - especially in the early years of the marriage. I told her not to make any rash decisions about it, to think about what she was doing, to give it some time. She kept telling me "no", that she was pretty sure already that a divorce was what she really wanted to do. But near the end of the night, some three hours after the class had ended, I think I had actually convinced her to think more, and to give it while.

All during that evening, she complimented me on what I was doing with SKYWARN, told me that she was proud of me, proud of what I was doing for SKYWARN, and of my enthusiasm for it, how she admired me for how I was sticking to it in the face of all of the crap, etc. I remember thanking her for that and I related a little more to her about the problem that I was having with the hams down here. She confided something that Al had told her. She said that he had warned her to "Watch out for those Alachua County people...they're crazy." I paused and sighed, and I told her that I actually agreed.

I never got Al. I remembered how Al was always offish when around me. I could tell he didn't like me. His body language, his weird stares...they all made it easy to figure out. He wasn't even conscious he was doing it. There was no real reason for it. I'd never done anything to him in the past. But I would look into his eyes and see a man who had a prejudice, for whatever reason. I wondered if he actually didn't mean me when he'd said that to Angie. Al used to look at me weird...like he just couldn't stand me. I'd try to be nice and polite, but he was always stand-offish. He never liked my jokes. He'd stare at me like he thought I was a pervert or something, and not be conscious of the stare. Nothing I did ever seemed to make the man happy. He always made me feel REALLY uncomfortable, and extremely unliked. I never liked him. ...He treated our entire group like we were stupid. During spotter training classes he would often put an old slide from a presentation put together by Fred Johnson long ago into his own, not to actually teach people anything important, but to insult and berate the group, here. (Angie wouldn't do this. It was just Al...) It was a picture I'd taken of some cloud features in the years before, when we were all new and learning. It had some Photoshopped arrows and descriptional queries on it. I wanted to know what certain features seen in the picture were and so I'd labeled them...some incorrectly...but so that FRED JOHNSON would know what I meant and he could thus explain them to me. Al apparently came across them years later, probably obvioiusly going through Fred's old files and directories, and he didn't understand the background. He just usurped them into his own presentation and whenever he'd give a class he'd say, in front of 50+ other people watching, "THESE are slides from people who do NOT know what they're talking about!" The slide included names and callsigns, with no attempt to disguise them. I'd told him before to remove the slide, and I'd told him the background story about it, too. He obviously didn't care. He continued to use it. As far as I know, he's still using that damned slide today in a severely misinterpreted way to criticize and make fun of Alachua County hams and spotters.

[UPDATE - 12/09/2010: Al finally came down and did another spotter training class. Took three years, but it finally happened. But during the class, the jerk yet AGAIN used that slide. This time I publicly rebuked him about it and he promised to remove the slide, and admitted that yes, he HAD swiped it from Fred Johnson's old stuff. Why am I SURE that he'll forget his promise, though? Meanwhile, I'm sure they'll wait yet ANOTHER three years or more before the next class, while the give Flagler County EMA three- to five-a-year in that time, like they always do.]

At any rate, when Al told Angie that the people in Alachua County were nuts, I really hated to admit it, but Al was right. I couldn't stand it; but he was. I couldn't argue that. The hams down here ARE "nucking futs" as I like to say. They really are. In all the years that I'd associated with the Gainesville Amateur Radio Society - some of whose members were also simultaneous members of the Gator Amateur Radio Club, I couldn't help but notice how after every damned meeting - sometimes during - they were always talking about somebody, always making fun of somebody, always criticizing and complaining about somebody, or spreading something about somebody. They were always dissatisfied with someone or something.

But Angie could not understand that. With Angie, everything had to be in "absolutes". "I don't know", given in answer to "Why do they pick on you so much?", would short circuit her. I know many people like this. If it doesn't fit something logical, then they resort to stupid wives tales, stupid irratonal philosophies, and jumping to utterly rash conclusions. I can't STAND that. I've BEEN the victim of gossip. I know what it feels like. I've BEEN picked on by the bullies, before. I know what that's like. I know WHY it's not nice to jump to conclusions about people and I don't do it. In fact, I always tended to befriend the victims because I could recognize when they were being bullied, and I didn't like seeing it, and I would often try to console them so they they wouldn't learn to hate the whole world. But there are people who believe that if things happen to you, it's for a reason, or because you're just "bad". For example, some believe that if something is happening to you, it's because of "Karma", or because "Something in your past is catching up with you and you deserve it!", or because "You must have DONE something to them!", or my personal favorite "Some people are just MEANT to live a harsh life and you just have to accept that and LIVE with it." Where do people come up with this CRAPOLA?

She kept repeatedly asking me, "WHY are they stalking you, though?", over and over, like a broken record. It was as if my explanations just weren’t good enough for her, like she felt that it HAD to be my own fault. (Why do people always want to blame the victims? Why?) I would say "I don’t know," and then we’d talk about something else; and then she’d revisit it again, later. "Yes, but...WHY are they going after you?" She couldn’t put it down. I don't think she wanted to believe that people can attack others without provocation. Some people don't believe that psychopaths can exist. They believe that everyone MUST have a "conscience" and that every bad person is "rehabilitatable", defacto, "because EVERYONE has a conscience". It actually short circuits them if you try to explain that no, there are SOME people who don't HAVE a conscience like you and me, who are cruel on PURPOSE, as a means to some selfish, unscrupulous end, and they are NOT rehabilitatable. To people like Angie, everything has to be "A + B". There is no other thinking. Angie wanted simple explanations, and there were none. Angie wanted everything to fit, and they didn't. Angie wanted reason and logic, and there was none. And if things didn't make sense, then it meant that you were lying. This is the simpleton logic and reason that most people use. And in human history it's often culprit for putting blame on a lot of innocent people. So I think Angie became paranoid and afraid of me, because she didn't understand. The hams had succeeded in causing fear and distrust.

At any rate, we parted on good terms, that night. There was no real flirting. (I asked if she wanted to go grab a drink to talk about the Matt situation, as friends. That's as close to "flirting" as this situation gets to.) Angie went home late, that night. And we continued to talk via email on normal terms for a while.

But then I made a mistake. I later entrusted Jeff with knowledge of what was discussed between us, that night. Jeff was then my friend. You're supposed to be able to trust your friends with this kind of stuff and know that it won't go anywhere. That's just the law of friends. It happens all the time. When I meet friends of my friends I expect that SOME of them were entrusted with talks of personal information about my life. But then Jeff did something that finally made me realize that this is not a man out for my own best interests. And I'll go into that in a little bit, here.

At any rate, so if Angie now has kids?...a family?... Then...now she most likely doesn’t want what happened that night – or word of it, rather – to get back to her husband, Matt Enyedi, or worse...the kids, or anyone else on either side of the family. She probably feared that it could destroy her whole life.

But like...I’m supposed to do what, now?...keep my mouth shut, not try to get my name back, keep everything a secret "for the good of the others", sacrifice myself for the sake of Angie's peace?...for the sake of Angie's right to live a normal life? What about me? What about what happened to me? Look at my life now, after what all these people did to it. This isn't some high school thing where little Mary calls Jane a slut in front of everybody in the classroom, and it spreads all around the school, and Jane goes home to Mom crying about what Mary said, and Mary gets in trouble with the Principle, gets a temporary suspension, and it all just goes AWAY after a short while. My name and reputation were irreparably destroyed, permanently, and "officially"...literally in front of the "city", the "county", the "state", and "federal" governments; and across multiple local area AND national civilian organizations, and even inside police circles. I have a right, really, to take this woman to court and sue her for what she did, and Al, and Steve. But she was the one who encouraged government leaders to see me as a threat, as a stalker, as a "serious problem" as Steve Letro put it to my Assistant Coordinator during a phone call...and they all took real actions against me which caused me great harm and damage. It was what ANGIE did that put the final convincing nail in the coffin for me. After that, people attacked me, my friends, my family, my associations to even worse degree. An officer in the Gainesville Police Department sabotaged a harassment case that I’d filed against a couple of hams who were stalking me because of the things that she told Al Sandrik and that he had passed on to the Alachua County Emergency Management. ACOEM then suggested to the police that I was a problem based upon what Angie and Al had said, and made the cop believe that I was trying to use the police to pick on innocent people - which was false. The University Police Department deliberately screwed up a hacking investigation for the same reasons. The State Attorney’s Office blew off complaints about my stalkers because of the way that GPD had inaccurately represented the case to them. I had NO police protection in this town (still dont, really)...all because Angie had implied that *I* was the problem here in Alachua County. How was I a problem? WHAT DID SHE SAY, exactly??? I was not allowed to know the specifics. I was not allowed to participate in the meetings about me. I was not allowed to face my accusers, to know what was being said, to be able to answer to it. NWS and EM had private, closed meetings. They literally held their own closed trials, tried to keep me out of the loop, convicted me in the closed doors of their private offices, and carried out sentence upon me...without my ever being present. I was not allowed to offer my side. Nobody ever wanted to hear it.

I can't help but ask... How come whenever a pretty female cries, all the world will come to her rescue, put together a whole investigation - without any questions asked? ...But when a male complains about being stalked and harrassed, he has to actually prove everything, first; show evidence of everything, first; and have the entire case alrady put together FOR the police before they'll even take a first step? That's the opening statement that I think I'm going to make if any of this ever gets to see the light of a real courtroom. :( Whenever I tried to complain and get the police to help me, I was actually treated rudely, and like I was just being ridiculous, and quite frankly, like I was a royal pain in the ass. ...And they sabotaged every chance at evidence gathering.

What do I have to do to get my name back, to get everybody to do the right thing? ...Take everybody into court? ...Sue them? How far do I have to go? (sigh)

So why did Angie do this? Now I know...

She was duped by the hams into believing that I was a threat and not the hams.
She made some bad guesses and misinterpreted a heck of a lot - especially about my own intentions.
Once she finally realized this, she realized she was stuck and that she had a choice of either
- continuing the facade to keep herself safe, or
- tell the truth and risk everything in her life, AND bring everybody else down too, while
- suffering humiliation and embarassment in front of friends, family, coworkers and her educational peers for the grave mistakes that she and her NWS partners had made and the harm that they all brought to another human being.

These are not good realizations for a mind to have to deal with. She panicked. She snapped. I see that, now. It took me YEARS to figure that out. ...YEARS! Nothing was making sense.

But the fact still remains...nothing has been done to correct the wrongs done to me, and/or to Alachua County SKYWARN.

But I can't do this. I'm not going to let it go. I'm not going to sit back here and just take all of this and not defend myself. I want my name back! I deserve that. And if no one is going to own up to it, then I have no choice but to take everyone to court and make it public and force people to admit it in front of court and TV cameras, and in newspapers, and in front of their friends and families. I will do that. It's GOING to happen. And the longer that people DON'T own up to it and that no attempt at correction is made, the angrier I am getting and the more I truly believe that no mercy and no "deals" should be allowed for ANYONE. I'm going to go for pressing the fullest possible charges, and demanding the fullest possible recompenses. I have a right to be angry.

(sigh) So that's what that was all about. Angie was worried that what happened between me and her that day might get back to Matt, to both of their families, to the NWS... She could lose the marriage, possibly the kids if she actually had any, and maybe have to pay child support, and alimony. She might lose her job, and be generally held in disgrace everywhere she went. She'd gotten friends at her job to help her too, putting her friends' careers at risk, as well. They got other people in other government agencies to help them out with the "Todd problem," putting their careers at risk, and putting those government agencies at risk of a lawsuit. Everybody did a favor in some way or another for Angie, in the end. Now her entire world is "responsible" for what happened in some form or another. Everyone and everything is connected to Angie in some way, shape, or form. Now I understand. ...Most perfectly, in fact. I get it. I'm not stupid! So then, the mortgage company...they were being used to try to find "dirt" in case I were to ever file a lawsuit. A mortgage company, used it's resources in a manner not consistent with their stated purpose, to try to dig up slanderous information about someone, and shared it with someone not actually a customer, as a "favor". ...THAT’S what all of that was about. But I caught them. Did the employee who DID that favor actually advise his/her employers of it? Somehow I doubt it. But the actioins of the rogue emplyee now make that company liable, as well. Every time I turn around, something sleezy and shady is happening at the hands of NWS employees. It's kind of frightening to actually watch happen right in front of my own eyes...almost "live", through my IP logs. (sigh)

...And now I’m frightened even MORE because this was a woman who was once NICE to me, kind to me... She was someone I once believed in, once respected and admired for her dedication to SKYWARN. I used to think that she was so awesome, an asset to our local SKYWARN efforts. And now, not because I’d actually DONE anything to her but, because the information I knew could become a threat to the peace and quiet of her life...I’m now someone she feels she has to act desperately with. Now I’m a threat. Now I’m a problem. Now I’m someone she feels she has to eliminate or else she could encounter problems. And that in itself is just...well..."psychopathic". I can’t believe this. So she went to Al. And Al, not knowing what was really happening, jumped right on the bandwagon to come to her rescue, thinking..."damsel in distress; must protect". But Al has a lot of testosterone, and didn't stop to think. He just acted. (You know... "Grunt, grunt!") Al had a hero complex, wanted to show off to everybody just how good of a hero he could be, and got himself in far too deeply, went overboard, did far too much, and as a result, is now stuck in the face of a LOT of soon-to-come trouble for himself and everyone else AROUND him, because while Angie was the catalyst, he was ultimately responsible, criminally and liably, for making everything that eventually happened inside NWS, FDEM, ACOEM, ACSO, GPD, UPD, and the Gainesville SAO.

So why did Angie change?

I trusted Jeff Capehart with very personal and private information about what happened, that night, between me and Angie. You’re supposed to be able to go to your best friends and trust that they’ll keep your most secret things to themselves, damn it. Friends are supposed to be the holders of your secrets, people you can trust anything with. And just a short two-and-a-half-weeks after confiding that information to Jeff, he actually betrayed me by taking that information STRAIGHT back to Angie in a critical, condescending letter designed not only to strike fear in Angie’s heart, but to show her that he knew. He didn't even CC me. It was meant to be a private email to Angie about me - one that he had expected would not be duped back to me, or that I would ever know about. If Angie hadn't sent me a copy, I would have never caught on that Jeff was engaging in this kind of thing behind my back. I suddenly began to realize WHY people kept dropping like flies in my contacts and associations. Jeff was contacting everyone behind my back and attempting to make people doubt in me. Here, he attempted to use the situation to garner Angie's confidence in him, and to distrust me. But Angie forwarded a copy back to me, "FYI". It was designed to make Angie doubt, and fear, and distrust. The email was designed to show her that I was irresponsible, while simultaneously giving the appearance that he was "a good friend", "for my own good". ...And it worked extremely well.

After he sent that letter, suddenly Angie went from being a friend who trusted and confided in me, to someone who didn’t know who the hell I was. She doubted me and my intentions. Suddenly she went from open to closed. You could see her whole attitude towards the things going on down here quickly change. Suddenly, someone who used to send and exchange very friendly email conversations with me now didn't want anything from me but a "business-only" relationship.

I sent Angie some emails which begged her not to listen to the hate. It didn't do any good, though. Now I'd lost a friend, too.

There was no other purpose for that letter. Jeff sent it with wording designed to make it sound like he was my friend; and yet, right in front of your face at the very same time, was condescending wording designed to make me look stupid and irresponsible. It was a "hate" mail, in disguise of something sent in the name of "friendship". It was right in front of your face. ...But Angie didn’t see that. ...Because Jeff is an excellent charismatic speaker. He is able to make hate sound like a "favor" being done to "help" someone. No one ever catches that sort of stuff...especially when it comes from someone whom everyone believes in.

You know? Had Jeff NOT sent that email...none of this might not have ever happened. It's what STARTED the whole thing, and is what made Angie realize that SHE was now being targetted by the people who were targetting me, and it HAD to frighten her. I don't care WHAT she says, later.

It took me a long, long time to see Jeff for what he really was. He was someone who always told me he was my friend; and yet, he would always do things to sabotage me. As a victim who trusts someone, you never notice these things at first. You don’t want to believe them. And it takes a very long time for victims to realize what is really going on...but not until it’s too late, and great, immense damage has been done in their lives. This is the relationship between abuser and victim. You don’t want to believe that this person could be bad, and so you actually develop excuses for them. ...Clubs, organizations, and whole government agencies make excuses for them. Sometimes you’re lucky and the abuser sees the light. But in this case, Jeff was a psychopath. He doesn’t understand emotions. He only knows how to get what he wants at any cost...and if attacking your friends and associations does the job, then that is what he’s going to do.

The email to Angie again brought up an argument that Jeff and I had had a year-and-a-half before, about the "SKYWARN Coordinator" manning the EOC (Emergency Operations Center, now called the CCC, for Combined Communcations Center) during hurricanes. Jeff wanted me to man the EOC as a SKYWARN representative during hurricanes. He would try everything to get me to do it. He'd accuse me of being irresponsible by choosing to stay home with my mother (who had cancer). When that didn't work, he tried to embarass me with it in front of other members during GARS meetings. What Jeff really wanted was for me to go there so that he could go home during hurricanes, because usually not many other hams would volunteer to allow themselves to be locked down in a place that was not home. To boot, his wife Susan was always bitching at him for always being there and never being able to leave. I guess he saw me as the easist, most open target to hit with it. Jeff was always saying that as SKYWARN Coordinator, it was my "duty" to man the EOC during hurricanes. But my argument was always..."To man the EOC to do...WHAT? To do WHAT, Jeff? ...Coordinate SKYWARN activities in 75+ mph winds?!!! So then, you’re advocating that spotters should post themselves at their windows during 75+ mph winds and report...WHAT? ...things flying around outside their home?...things flying into windows that should have been boarded up but weren’t because the Coordinator and the National Weather service TOLD them to sit by the windows?...to report when they get injured from manning their windows in 75+ mph winds? Just WHAT...is a SKYWARN Coordinator...supposed to do during hurricanes...that actually the *ARES EC*, or someone else in *ARES*...can’t already do? During hurricanes, all spotter activities should CEASE. There should BE no spotters out and about, or manning their windows...and windows should be boarded UP! If I EVER personally hear of any spotter activity during hurricanes I will personally SHOOT them - because it's about the same god damned THING! You might as well just jump in front of a BUS!" The argument made perfect sense and was logical; there WAS no arguing with it. But Jeff would still try, anyway. You will NOT find ONE Emergency Manager, ONE NWS employee, who will contradict me or argue with me on this. It's a simple matter of liability. There is NO purpose for "SKYWARN" operations during hurricanes. And it is NOT necessary, mandated, or REQUIRED for a SKYWARN Coordinator of a CIVILIAN organization to be present on official government property just to repeat NWS bulletins and hurricane status and damage reports over a microphone. When hurricanes come, SKYWARN stands down, and ARES takes over. Period. Failing to win that argument, as I said, he'd try to embarass me in front of my peers for deciding to stay home and watch my mother when she had cancer during hurricanes. You KNOW though? Putting my foot down, that wasn't any of his god damned business. I was watching the hurricanes and if they seemed like they were going to be a strong enough danger mandating going to a shelter then I would have done that. As it is they were always TD status. We were lucky and so actually going to shelters was NOT required. But Jeff had this thing about controlling my life. He couldn't put it down. He'd always take every opportunity to bring it up again, later. ...Even YEARS later, as he did with the NWS to try to sway their opinion of me, THERE.

But going to NWS, Emergency Management, the local ham clubs, and repeatedly bringing it up solely for the purpose of trying to embarass me and make me look stupid was wrong. And anyone attempting to SUPPORT him in doing that was wrong. And he'd always fool people, again, by touting that he was only doing it to me because he was trying to do me a "favor". People are so gullible. But hey. I fell for it too for quite the long time. Jeff was all about controling you. It had nothing to do with favors and friendships. It was about controlling you. And if you didn't do what he told you to do, he tried to publicly humiliate you. I really don't see how people in the NWS could have been so GULLIBLE, though. WHY didn't they see that that's what he was trying to DO? I thought it was pretty obvious. I mean, that was a pretty shitty email to send about someone.

But STILL Jeff would always try to bring the argument back up again. I’d even told him to drop it, but he’d only wait a couple of months, and bring it back up again. He didn’t like to lose. He can’t stand that. So he’d try to go to my friends and convince THEM to convince me. When that didn’t work, he went to government LEADERS and tried to make THEM convince me of the errors of my ways. He'd wait until some spotter training class, or some public presentation, and he'd bring it up in front of a hundred people and laugh about it. This isn't a man looking out for me. It's a man trying to deliberately cause people to disrespect and disbelieve in me. With Jeff it was always dirty pool. ...With someone he called his FRIEND. He did this to me repeatedly and I was starting to slowly get the picture that Jeff wasn’t being my friend, he was really manipulating me. It was becoming slowly apparent that what we had wasn’t really a "friendship" but some sort of sick symbiosis thing where I’m important to him in some way that I hadn’t figured out yet. Maybe I was just a tool with which to glean more popularity and attention, some check mark on some public service card. I don't know. But what we had, I was slowly beginning to realize, was not a normal relationship, but something sick and twisted.

In the days after the 2005 spotter training class, Angie and I exchanged more emails. In them I tried to explain to her the situation down here, about all the stalking, the harassments. It was a mistake, though. Jeff's email had done too much damage. I tried and tried...BEGGED her not to let the other hams who were stalking me contaminate her idea of me or to think of me badly. But I wasn’t aware that all I was doing was just exactly the opposite. It wasn’t working. Humans have a really nasty, bad habit of trying to be "at-home CSI detectives". They don’t have the forensics training, so lacking that, they try to go by "gut feelings", almost on ESP. They think they know humans enough to be able to GUESS at who the bad guy really is when the clues just aren't clear enough or there. More often than not, this fails, and the wrong people become harmed. That is what happened, here. I guess it's my "beady eyes." (What the hell IS that, anyway?)

I threw ideas at Angie, like becoming an officer in ACS. I was trying to hunt down people with real knowledge and real experience in meteorology, spotting, etc…because I thought with people like that in our repertoire would be the best thing all around for the group. I wanted people who knew their stuff. I wanted people with knowledge and enthusiasm. It is THESE types of people who really make things work. But more I tried to convince Angie to help out, more Angie saw "flirting", I think. I wasn’t interested in her as a mate, or even a god damned SEX partner. I just wanted someone smart and who knew their stuff and who could thus really help the group GO places. I also wanted a friend...someone who understood, and GOD dammit whom I could trust. ...For ONCE. ...And Angie indicated pride in what I was doing, and she was SO very enthusiastic about SKYWARN. But knowing that I was being stalked not just by one...but by up to SIX DIFFERENT HAMS...Angie decided that she wanted no part of this. She would back out of invitations to join up, citing the appearance of favoritism, and that if she got involved with one group, she’d have to do the same for all. And while this of course sounded reasonable, I knew it was total BS. :( Angie was frightened...of the whole situation, of me. She had NO CLUE who was telling the truth and who was lying. And I’m sure she had fears that if she showed any sign of assisting Alachua County SKYWARN with anything, then MY attackers might become HER attackers. That SHE might end up in the attacker’s sights. …and Jeff’s letter...proved just exactly that to be true. ANYONE, not just Angie, could have had those fears, and they would have been...

...Absolutely correct to have them. They’re RIGHT. They’re one hundred percent CORRECT. They WOULD become targets. They WOULD be attacked, too. It was (still is) a VERY REAL CONCERN! I could not (still cannot) argue this fact. There was nothing that I could do. The argument is not without merit. The argument does make sense. ...And I can’t do anything about it. No one wants anything to do with Alachua County SKYWARN...because SOMETHING very strange is going on with it. But what was WRONG, was that when I complained...people jumped to wild conclusions, took REAL actions against the wrong person, and completely destroyed that person AND the organization...and neither deserved it.

Jeffrey Donald Capehart W4UFL and Susan Ann Tipton K9PDL, Frederick Scott West KG4VWD, Jay Lieberman KD4FER, Philip Spoffard Royce KE4PWE and Melissa Royce KE4WBQ - six Cylons... Er, I mean ham radio operators who went out of their way to stalk and harass and destroy me and Alachua County SKYWARN... …WHY??? Just so that everyone knows, between the six, they've engaged in the following crimes: stalking, harassment, arson, computer hacking, other computer crimes including the use of computers to stalk and harass, to cause deliberate blockage and use of pagers, cellphones, and answering machines, leaving threatening messages, email bombing, pager bombing, cellphone bombing, threats to keep my mouth shut about the harassments, check fraud, threat of physical assault, assaulting people with guns, assaulting OFFICERS with guns, attempt use slander and deliberately false information about a person and an organization spread about in such a deliberate manner as to cause fear and panic on other civilian organizations and multiple city, county, state, and federal government agencies, forging business cards with intent to con city, county, and state government employees into taking over an organization, conspiracy to do so, using fake titles with intent to con city, county, and state government employees, attempting to use power of office to take over other organizations, conspiracy to do so, attempting to use power of office to illicitely take equipment - including computers and licensed transmitting and satellite receiving equipment obtained through legal means from the State government, attempting to cover up those things, ignoring complaints of stalking and harassment by city, county, state employees and failing to file proper reports and to work with the victim to investigate, violation of fairness laws, violation of the civil rights of me and ACS...and so on.

But the HAMS weren't the problem. No, no. *I* was the problem...so much so that FOUR GOVERNMENT AGENCIES went OUT OF THEIR WAY to have meetings about me, to blackball me, to prevent ACS from being recognized or to perform any further public service training classes, etc. When *I* complained about the hams stalking me, I was met with incredulousness and disbelief. Everyone blew me off. WHY? People stopped listening to me halfway through my complaints. Police blew me off. Emergency Management blew me off. The National Weather Service blew me off. The Gainesville State Attorney's Office blew me off. GPD sabotaged a harassment case. UPD sabotaged a hacking investigation. I was treated like I was a son of a bitch and a tyrant for making the complaints. WHY?????

What did I actually DO that was so BAD? What WAS it that Angie TOLD everybody? Can ANYBODY stand in front of a Judge and adequately and justifiably EXPLAIN that to him, I wonder, just exactly what the hell it was that I even DID? No. They can’t. That’s why nobody is suing me. That’s why no one is taking me to court over all these blogs and harassment-related web pages. That’s why people try to manipulate the search engines to HIDE those blogs, and web pages...QUIETLY, sureptitiously. ...Because if this got into court NOW, it would become officially public, placed into the public RECORD. There would be questions, interrogations, inquiries and real investigations... People would be sued, criminally charged in some cases, lose their careers, their homes, their livelihood. ...All because a number of gullible people went too far, "convicted" the wrong person in the "Court of Public Guesswork and At Home Justice", caused him AND an innocent organization - as well as civilian spotters and organizations all across the entire NWS-JAX County Warning Area...tangible harm, and great unjustice. ...And now, everyone is liable, everyone is responsible, everyone could easily at any wrong step come under some very deep, dark trouble, and everyone wants to cover it up and "make it go away". Besides, what are they actually going to try to claim that I DID?

I'm sorry. I just have to rant. Let me get this straight. Does anyone actually think that anyone is going to sue me for "defamation of character"? Do I have that correctly? What was it Terry Garr said in CE3K? "...I'm sorry...You said what? ...You said WHAT?" ...Pot kinda calling the kettle BLACK; wouldn't you say? Everyone "wishes" they'd never gone as far as they did - without reason, without proof, or evidence, or witnesses. Meanwhile, MY OWN life...remains destroyed. I get no acknowledgements. I get no APOLOGY from anyone. I am..."sacrificed"...for the good of the many. The evidence is inescapable. I was dreadfully harmed by slander and gossip and rumor to a degree not EVEN funny, excuseable, or explicable. That's obvious to ANY judge. I don't think ACOEM, the National Weather Service, the Gainesville Police Department, the University Police Department, the Alachua County Sheriff's Office, the Gainesville State Attorney's Office, the Gainesville Amateur Radio Society, the Gator Amateur Radio Club, the University of Florida, the American Radio Relay League, ARRL North Florida Section Manager Paul Eakin, GARC Faculty Advisor Dr. Jay Garlitz, NWS-JAX WCM Angie Enyedi, NWS-JAX Lead WCM Al Sandrik, NWS-JAX Lead Meteorologist Steve Letro, Emergency Manager David Donnelly, Ret. Emergency Manager Chief William May, GPD Detective Joseph Mayo, UPD Detective Michael Metz, ACSO Deputy John Moorhouse, GARS/GARC officer Jeffrey Donald Capehart W4UFL, GARS/GARC officer Susan Ann Tipton K9PDL, Frederick Scott West KG4VWD, Jay Leiberman KD4FER, Philip Spoffard Royce KE4PWE, Melissa Shires Royce KE4WBQ, or anyone ELSE who thinks that I've harmed THEM for all of the cruel things I can PROVE that they did...will be looked at with any serious credibility or consideration by any judge once that judge sees the incredible EXTENT that people with hate WENT to in order to bring someone harm. ...ESPECIALLY without being given any right to be heard or to defend myself. No. I don't worry about it. Not at all. That's actually what I WANT...to BE in a courtroom...with ANY of these people...having it all handled publicly, fairly, in the venue where it actually BELONGS. So yes. Let's ALL get together in a courtoom and have a NICE little "pow-wow". (sigh)

Sorry. I got off track again, there. (sigh)

Meanwhile, innocent spotters across this county are being punished for the acts of a few very stupid, childish, and selfish hams who wanted power, and glory, and attention for themselves, and who caused so much trouble to get it. Spotter classes in Alachua County have been cancelled and put off for the past three years plus now, because NWS empolyees, realizing what they had done, are now too afraid to come down here and face everyone, and are afraid of having to answer for what they did. It's not fair. *I* certainly didn't deserve all that happened to me. But the local citizens who were not involved in any of this bullshit in any way...they CERTAINLY didn't deserve this especially, and it's not fair to withhold training from them, OR to force them to have to go through background security checks, and to have to have "clearance" to access a building where a spotter training class is being held, or to have to learn EMRISS-this and EMCOMM-that training, or to become trained in Incident Command Operations, or to have to be able to drag a 300-pound dummy 100-feet....just to become a storm spotter - someone who is only supposed to look up, and pick up a cellphone. That's just utter ridiculousness. It's inexplicable. It's not in the NWS requirements to be a storm spotter, not in any NWS SOP. And it's not fair to also force them the drive all the way to Duval County, just to GET that training.

...And handing the spotter program over to local emergency management didn't do a whole hell of a lotta good, either...because all that did was give the power straight back TO the very people who were CAUSING the problem . Who do you think EM handed that program TO??? That's right...the HAM RADIO OPERRATORS! ...The very same hams who had engaged in all the stalking and harassment and problems in the first place.

(sigh, pause)

During a previous spotter training class, there was one other odd thing that happened that I just HAVE to mention something about. It had to do with a spotter by the name of Charles Sacco. It was completely and totally innocent. Or it SHOULD have been. It SHOULD have been nothing. But it obviously was something that bothered Jeff very greatly...

During that class, Charles approached me and asked for my autograph. In the ten years previous of holding spotter training classes, NO ONE had ever asked me for my autograph. It kinda took me aback, at first. I didn’t know what to do. It felt kind of weird. I never, ever considered myself as anyone famous or even worthy of much attention, much less an autograph. I didn’t think myself worthy of anyone’s hero status, certainly. Really, I was just some stupid, insignificant nobody, who was just like everyone else. All I basically did was introduce someone else with a degree who actually GAVE the spotter training class, or a weather- or safety-related presentation. I REALLY didn’t think that I deserved THAT kind of elevation. So I hesitated for a second when he asked me for it. I remember that. But at the same time, something else was also going through my mind in that same moment. It was a kind of fear. It was...hesitance. It was...wariness. For a split second, I worried what this might make OTHER people think. What would Scott think? ...or Jay? ...or any of the other weird people who had been stalking me think? What would they DO? SHOULD I sign this? Or should I just wave it off and walk away and hope nobody saw it happen? I wasn’t feeling pride, or ego, or anything LIKE that. I was feeling awkward, to be quite honest. ...I felt kinda weirded, because it wasn't..."normal". But if I refused, I might also make Charles feel insulted, or like I didn't like him. And that wasn't the case at all. All of this was going through my mind in the span of "splits" between the seconds. I hesitated for a total of maybe a couple of seconds, and then before my facial expression could become noticed, I caught my open mouth, closed it, smiled, and said "Sure", and signed Charles’s paper. But now I wish I hadn't. I wish I'd just walked away. I wish that it had never happened. Because...

...THEN I noticed Jeff’s crooked, almost cynical smile. He had been watching the whole thing. His look made me feel unusually uncomfortable and unnerved. It was like a crook who had just caught you stealing a cookie from the cookie jar or something. It was kind of a...a...almost a sadistic kind of smile. I don’t think HE even realized that he was making it. I didn’t like it. It didn't seem like a normal "human" kind of smile. There was something very "wrong" with it. It made me kind of nervous. It was like...like the face that a stalker who was about to pounce on his prey or something might make.

As people were leaving after the class, Jeff approached me. He told me how he noticed how Charles had asked for my autograph. I was like "Eh, it wasn’t any big deal. I just signed it." I told him how I felt kinda weirded by it; how it had never happended before. I told hiim how I realized that Charles just really liked the spotter program and I was a leader in the organization and he just admired the leader. Then he said, "OH! *I* see! I think I *understand* you, now." There was a scary pause in me - something in the WAY that that man said it. It sent CHILLS up my spine. It bothered me. It was like...like some "switch" had clicked in him or something. I didn’t know why, but something instinctive inside me made me feel very extremely uncomfortable. ...Like some "program" had been activated inside a sleeper and it was very dark. I felt like...like the whole "friendship" between us?...like it might have been a ruse. ...Like he wasn’t really after my friendship all this time, but something else. Like...like, all these years, he was..."STUDYING" me all of this time. I suddenly got this feeling like I had just been some sort of..."experiment", and now he had gathered all of the information that he needed and he was now ready to move on to the next "level". But...what "level?" NOW what was I in for? When he said that, I stopped immediately, my mouth slightly agape. I remember realizing that. Something inside me told me that I was in some sort of trouble. I got very scared. It's hard to explain it...the kind of feeling that I felt, that is. It was "dark". It was a very weird experience. In that moment, I suddenly started to see Jeff in a very different, darker light. Over the next few days, I began to go over everything that happened between us in the past. I began to realize...Jeff always criticized. He always put me down. He always made fun of me. He talked about me behind his back. ...Both he and his wife, really. He was always getting in the way of something I was doing, or trying to sabotage projects, or the way that people saw me. Everything with us was always me trying to do something important to help people, and Jeff making light of it, putting it down, and doing things to embarrass and humiliate me, or to make my projects and ideas seem stupid and inconsequential to others. In the past, he’d work with me on ideas, and then when we’d go before the club or other people to try to glean support for it, HE’D STOMP ON IT AND PUT IT DOWN!!!...making everyone think it wasn’t worth supporting! I was beginning to realize...this...this was not a friendship. What it WAS was an abusive relationship. And as I repeated what Jeff said in my mind – "I think I’ve finally figured you out, now!" – I finallly began to realize that I was being played like a fiddle. I wasn’t a "friend". I wasn’t a human being. I was a toy. I was a lab rat. He’s been using me to try to figure out humans in general, because he didn’t feel emotions or understand them, and to him they were a foreign concept and he needed a FEELING subject to manipulate and experiment with in order to try to figure us all out.

Flash forward again...

After what he had done to me with Angie, I cut off the friendship, right there. That was it. That was the last straw. I’d had it. He was history. I gave the man so many chances, before, and I was STUPID to do that. I'm TOO damned kind to people and I need to stop it. I'm not doing it anymore. I told him that his Assistant Coordinator status was revoked, that he was no longer to call me, email me, talk to me, or in any other way to contact me. He was not to talk ABOUT me to others, OR about Alachua County SKYWARN. I told him that if he contacted me again, or if I found out that he was talking about me and working people up and causing difficulty for me after I'd told him to STOP doing that, then I would call the police and charge him with stalking and harassment. I was done with this asshole.

But (sigh), with Jeff, an ultimatum always has a "time limit". It’s not really seriously meant. Everything is dream-world haziness to him. "I’ll just wait a couple of weeks and get back with him, because after all, he’s just blowing off steam and I’ll just wait until he’s calmed down." I’ve never been able to give Jeff an ultimatum and have him take it seriously. I've never truly been able to make the man stop doing anything I didn't want him to do - including working low lifes like Scott, Jay and the Royces up. He is obsessive compulsively fixated on following me, my life, the things I’m doing, throwing obstacles in my path, and watching what happens and laughing. He is mentally UNABLE to put me down. He CANNOT do it. So with Jeff, a week later, or two weeks later, or maybe three, maybe a month, or maybe two months later...he’d always make attempt to contact me again; to come back into my life. After which, I’d again reissue the threat to call the police. He just COULD NOT UNDERSTAND. I COULDN’T make him go away. What you have to do is ignore him, not respond at ALL. After a while, he gives up. But even then, not forever. He just tries again some time later. ...And you continue to ignore him.

I began to realize that with Jeff, you really DO have to show some real consequences, or he just doesn’t take you seriously. But then, I’m not an asshole, either. Calling the police is not something normal for me. It's a foreign concept. I just don’t DO things like that. I told myself I never WOULD...EVER...not in my lifetime. But between Jeff, Susan, Scott, Jay, Phil, and Melissa...it was becoming apparent that these people were not normal, that abnormal people really DO exist, and that there are some people that you just CANNOT avoid having to take serious consequences upon. (sigh) Do you know how SCARY it is to have to DEAL with people like this??? They weren’t going to just "go away" by me leaving them alone, or by my staying out of the limelight, or "keeping my mouth shut" as Frederick Scott West once put it to me. THESE people...couldn’t put me down. They had an obsessive compulsive addiction. It wasn't normal. It was just too much FUN to bother me. And so, if I went into hiding, they’d just get WORSE. They'd hunt me down, seek me out, do things to taunt me, to bother me. Months later, I'd get a harassing call with someone playing a recording of a harassing song, or something like that. If I went to the police, they just had contacts within the agency and they’d just convince the cops that *I* was the lunatic, not they; and that I shouldn’t be taken seriously. ...And it worked.

Then Jeff hacked into the AC-EMWIN system in February of 2009, and I *caught* him. That was it. That was enough. I’d had it. Early the next morning, I *actually* called the cops. I really filed a report with UPD. And for the first time, Jeff SAW that I’d actually called the police on him. You all know the outcome from the previous blogs. But at least, Jeff finally stopped contacting me directly at least. Unfortunately it took having to call the COPS for him to realize that I was serious.

But there you go. Here we are now some five-plus years later, and I am STILL being haunted and affected by these people. ...by Jeff especially.

All of this trouble...because some hams LIED about someone.

Sometimes a lie...gets the whole world in trouble.

[Back To Where Did Todd Go? - Main Index]

'HTML Bible' Book Burning Cancelled

2010-09-10T14:11:00.006-04:00

To everyone:

Just to let you know... I have changed my mind and I will NOT be burning a copy of the HTML Bible on national TV in front of our church tomorrow at 6pm. :) Instead, I will be in New York meeting with a leader of the W3 organization regarding their promise to REMOVE certain stupid, silly taglines from use in HTML altogether.

(sigh!) Kidding aside, I think I've heard about enough of the Reverend Jones guy from the Dove Outreach Church.

Unfortunately for us, we live within a mile from the church location. And it's VERY odd watching jets which used to fly over our house now diverted from their incoming flight paths so that they no longer fly over the airspace of the church. It's not normal to watch small jets make hard left turns into the airport such that their wings actually turn nearly straight up/down. And yet, it's not normal to see helicopters flying over the area repeatedly, all day, knowing that they're probably law enforcement-related.

The City at least HAS made it public that they do intend to actually bill this guy and his church for all of the extra security that this is costing them. I would hope that the County, the State, and the federal government would also do same.

This is definitely the dumbest thing I have ever seen occur here in Gainesville. :o( The second dumbest was watching what the local ham radio operators did to me a few years ago. :o(

Between Bundy, and Rollings, and the "Gainesville Student Murders"', Gainesville already has enough of a bad rap. We don't need any more stupidity to make the rest of the world feel assured that ALL we breed are stupid people. That being said, in all cases, the people who affected us were always people who CAME here from somewhere else, and then they stalked us. For Gainesvillians, it was Bundy and Rollings. For me personally, it was Capehart, Tipton, Leiberman, West, and the Royces. (...ALL of mine were ham radio operators - a scary breed of itself.)

What IS is with Gainesville attracting weird people like that, though? :(

(thinking) In times that are tough like this, it's easy to get angry, and to hate, and to want to do things irrational.

Kahlil Gibron once said, "I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers."

He also said...

"An eye for an eye, and the whole world would be blind."

I believe that to be true.

Gainesville Gas Thefts -Video From Penske-North

2010-07-28T11:44:00.012-04:00

Over the past few months, a couple of local area gas thieves took local businesses for a lot of gas. They would come at night and siphon gas from trucks at Penske, U-Haul, and we suspect from other businesses, too.

After getting hit 5 times before, Penske finally added a security video camera and floodlights and they nabbed the criminals on tape when they made their sixth hit.

They were VERY bold, and took their greedy sweet time - taking over 35 long minutes to go back for seconds and even THIRDS! They had an obsessed focus on obtaining the gas. These guys were very brave to keep coming back THAT often, and to take so LONG on-scene whenever they'd perpetrate the crimes.

But the video ALSO shows that they were pretty intelligent, too. They were very well practiced at what they were doing. They had one guy running around siphoning the gas while another was the lookout and driver of the getaway vehicle - which was a pickup truck. This can all be seen in the video. The siphoner would give the lookout the collected tanks of gas, and the lookout would then walk them across the street and hide them in the woods while the siphoner continued to go back for more. It was a very bold operation, and these guys had no fear of getting caught or of any consequences. ...Just a dark focus on getting the job done no matter what. While they collected the gas, though, they'd leave behind large, smelly puddles of gas, creating a hazardous materials mess all over the pavement.

The Gainesville Sun reported that the police nabbed them stealing gas from the Main Street U-Haul on July 16th, the 21st, and on the 25th (Sunday) where they were finally caught. What was actually found out about them matched exactly what Penske's videos already showed.

They hit Penske-North on May 29th (3 trucks, 70 gals, $200), June 29th and 30th (5 trucks, 85 gals, $255), and on July 12th and 13th (5 trucks, 85 gals, $238). All told, Penske got hit for 14 trucks, 272 gallons of gas, at a grand total of $777.

...And GPD is NOT interested in persuing these people for what they did to Penske. GPD in fact did not even collect the video even though it showed perfectly HOW they actually do it. Penske-North has tried contacting the police about it by both phone and email, but the police have outright ignored their contact attempts. For all we know, these people could have been armed, or dangerous. People drop off rented trucks at all hours, and had someone dropped off a truck at the wrong time and SURPRISED these guys while they were in the middle of their business...it was felt that there was a chance people could be hurt or killed. The police did not believe it necessary to even so much as make occasional patrols. In the end, what finally caught these criminals wasn't the diligent work of the police...but a citizen who SMELLED something as he drove by U-Haul, and who was smart enough to report it on his cellphone.

The Penske video can be viewed here:

http://www.fireline.org/kb4mhh/gastheft

UPDATE: - 08/04/2010

GPD finally called Penske back and advised them that the fingerprint evidence was inconclusive (of course it was), and that they had "asked" the criminals if they had done it, and they of course said (wait for it)...

"...No."

(sigh)

Index To SKYWARN Web Pages On The Internet

2010-05-27T12:07:00.005-04:00

Index TO SKYWARN Web Pages On The Internet

The ORIGINAL list of SKYWARN web sites in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico.

By Todd L. Sherman / KB4MHH

Mis-Use of Florida's Windshield Obstruction Law?...

2010-05-06T09:03:00.033-04:00

(This particular blog entry has been moved to the "Mobile Scanner & RADAR-Detector Laws In The U.S." Blogspot blog. Click link to view the entry. -Todd)

STS-131 Launched - But Scary-looking On Way Up...

2010-04-05T07:22:00.002-04:00

That was the most spectacular shuttle launch I ever saw. Got it all on video tape; but something VERY odd happened after SRB-sep.

Sometime after SRB-sep, and right about the time the shuttle reached the apparent apex of it's ascent, a cloud appeared. Soon after that, the shuttle turned into a huge, bright "comet-like" object speeding across the sky. I've been watching and photographing the shuttle for MANY years, and I've NEVER seen anything like THIS before. It had a bright center, and a HUGE bright tail following behind it even as it headed to the horizon.

It scared me to DEATH because I thought the shuttle had exploded or something sometime post-SRB-separation. It actually frightened me.

I taped as much as I could of the "cometary" part of it's ascent in "night mode" on my camera (which has less resolution, but catches more light).

On the way home, I turned on the radio and there was NOTHING ABOUT IT. After some time, eventually there were some stations which carried comments from I-75 watchers who also commented on the strange-but-spectacular view; but STILL there were no news stories of any explosions or astronaut lives lost. "What the hell?" I said to myself. This was so different. I was SURE an explosion had occurred during the ascent, and I kept whispering to myself, "I hope they were able to abort out of this one." It looked THAT BAD.

I got home, turned on the TV...STILL nothing!

According to the news, and to the Shuttle web site, the shuttle made it to orbit just fine. There are no comments about the comet-like appearance.

So now I'm wondering if this is actually an effect that is always there, but USUALLY NOT VISIBLE because...the one different thing about this launch was that it occurred while the sun was rising but still below the horizon - by about 45 minutes or so, yet. The sun lit the circular plume at the apex of the ascent, and made it "glow" in an iridescent manner. Perhaps the sun also lit the spent Main Engine fuel vapors or something on ascent? (Can any other shuttle photographers out there reading this confirm this for me?)

I've photographed/taped a LOT of shuttle launches and I have NEVER seen anything like this before.

I'm going to wait for the progression of the day and keep an eye on the news stories and NASA sites to see if there is some explanation for the ascent weirdness, but I will DEFINITELY upload my video as soon as I can. I want to get it to TV-20 as well. I have to DL it from the camera, edit it, then I'll upload it. It might take a while though. Don't expect to see the video online until sometime mid to late afternoon or so.

Look for it at http://www.afn.org/~afn09444/shuttle .

UPDATE: 11:00 AM

This morning's launch was for sure the most spectacular shuttle launch I think I've ever seen - barring actually seeing one go up from the Banana River on-site at the Cape.

I think I was right about the effect being something always there, just not visible because it's not usually illuminated from underneath like it was, this morning. As Francisco Reyes of the UF's Astronomy Department put it:

"I got a good part of the effect after the separation of the Solid Rocket that you describe. It was a conbination of the sun lighting the gases from the shuttle main engine and I think it is also the compression of gas in the atmosphere due to the supersonic shock. But I will wait for the NASA experts to explain the effect. It was an amazing view, as you said, the best of all the shuttle launch."

I would have to agree. And the small round cloud at the apex of the ascent was iridescently illuminated. It looked like it was lit from within the way that the sun was hitting it. It was quite cool. I took a number of shots of it in various modes.

So, I think we've solved the mystery of the awesome plume.

For those of you who weren't able to get yourselves out of the bed in time, I'm at this moment uploading the video to the web site

I have a relatively slow connection, though. So it'll probably take it a couple of hours to finish. It's about 200MB large. (I'm putting up the best-resolution version. It'll download a heck of a lot faster than it takes me to upload it, I promise.)

So, the astronauts made it safely to orbit and they will soon be meeting their friends aboard the ISS. (Which also makes it's appearance in the video that I'm uploading. I also happened to catch Jupiter in there, too, low on the eastern horizon. :) Quite a fascinating morning both astronomically and spaceflightically! ...Yah, yah. I know. I invented a word, there. LOL.)

Another Night-time Shuttle Launch!

2010-03-27T22:32:00.002-04:00

For those of you who aren't aware that you can even SEE shuttle launches from here in Gainesville, you're gonna get ONE more chance to see another night launch...

I mention this because we were previously told that there would be no more "night launches" for the space shuttle. However, due to some problems that had to be looked at with STS-131, the next shuttle flight, it had been delayed a bit. So now it's scheduled to fly early in the morning on April 5th. Sunrise should be about 7:12a. The shuttle is set to go up some 50 minutes before that, which should be pretty dark. So those of you wanting ONE MORE CHANCE for a "night launch" photo or video opportunity might want to set your clocks to get up early for this.

What's a night-time launch LOOK like from here in Gainesville? Well, see here: http://www.afn.org/~afn09444/shuttle .

If you HAVEN'T seen a shuttle launch from here, yet, NOW is the time. There are only a FEW more flights left before the shuttle program is ended entirely. After that, the future of the manned space program is unsure.

They're well worth setting aside the time to view. ...And since these are the last few launches left, you should definitely get out there to witness a part of history soon to disappear.

-Todd

From the 'Space Shuttle' Facebook page:

"NASA managers gave space shuttle Discovery the "go" for an April 5 launch date for the STS-131 mission to the International Space Station. After an all-day Flight Readiness Review meeting, there were no unresolved issues that would prevent Discovery and crew from flying a safe and successful mission.

Discovery is set to liftoff into the predawn darkness from Kennedy's Launch Pad 39A at 6:21 a.m. EDT."

Mobile Scanner & RADAR-Detector Laws In The United States

2010-03-15T14:12:00.009-04:00

Are scanners legal in Florida? Are radar-detectors legal in Virginia? Know the law before you go!

Lists actual text of known U.S. state-level laws which restrict or deny the mobile usage of radio frequency scanners or radar-detectors.

Great for those who travel with a scanner, or who use a radar-detector, and who often cross state lines. With color-coded maps! Online since 1995. Now celebrating 15 years on the web!

Visit our web site...

MOBILE SCANNER & RADAR-DETECTOR LAWS IN THE UNITED STATES

Also visit our BLOGSPOT BLOG page at...

http://scannerlaws.blogspot.com.

FOR INSTANT UPDATES, visit our Twitter page...

http://twitter.com/msrdl

Additional Shuttle Launch Videos Added!

2010-03-14T18:14:00.003-04:00

I've added a couple more space shuttle launch videos to my videos pages:

STS-126 - This is a night-time shuttle launch taken using night mode, this time. I just wanted to see what a launch looked like using that mode. Taken from Gainesville, Fla.

STS-119 - This is a launch taken around sunset on March 15, 2009, from somewhere in the vicinity of Lake Panasoffkee while we were driving on our way home from visiting relatives in Tampa.

You can find them on my Shuttle Videos web page.

Enjoy!

"Where Did Todd Go?"On Dealing With PsychopathsUpdate: 03/10/2010 - On Prof. Richard Hollinger

2010-03-10T12:01:00.030-05:00

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS

NOTES, March 9, 2010:

Contacted local University of Florida criminologist Prof. Richard Hollinger by phone back on February 4th after a few previous emails and interviewed him regarding a past criminal case involving 5 University of Florida students who had hacked into the UF's IFAS computer server system back in 1985.

Said he's interviewed the people who were involved in the hacking before for his research. He described his "interview" with Susan Tipton, which in the end seemed to be more of a chance meeting and almost a flirting session.

He laughed and chuckled and elaborated about how impressed he was with her, how he thought she was so nice, how she related to him that the whole thing was just this minor joke, how the incident was supposedly inconsequential and blown way out of proportion, how she related the entire hacking incident to even be an "embarrassment" for the University, and that the University of Florida "just wanted to make it go away", and this guy ate it up.

Here is a transcript of the actual conversation from my notes made during the call: Hollinger Transcript.

If such an embarrassment, why did UF go so far and to actually prosecute? Why didn't they just drop charges altogether if it was so "unimportant" and "embarrassing"? Where's the objective thinking, here?

Professor made the classic mistake of getting caught up in psychopathic drivel, something noted in many psychology books - and he missed it. There are stories, for example, of psychopaths describing the gruesome murders they've committed as being "necessary" to their ends, and for a second, the psychologists admit...they often actually catch themselves smiling with them and nodding their heads in agreement, laughing along with them even, until they realize..."Oh my god! What the hell am I DOING?!" Why does this happen? Because they're so good at talking. Often very charismatic, they have been known to charm even the most well-trained experts.

This "enamoration" with Susan shocked and frightened me, took me aback, and I did not think it was appropriate for someone who was supposed to be interested in accurately researching the psychology of crimes to be so apparently easily and gullibly manipulated. How did the Professor not see this? I worried that the Professor wasn't going to be very helpful because he was too busy seeing stars. The Professor sounded to me to be far more overly emotionally attached to Susan than he should be. Seemed way too overly "compromised" by her charisma and manner of speaking and did not seem able to speak objectively or in any "detached" way about the situation. Worse, he didn't seem able to recognize it in himself. I've seen this in Susan repeatedly before, from personal experience over nearly twenty years, now - how she is able to manipulate people by smiling and giggling a lot, disarming them. Throw in her obviously apparent intelligence, and something else very important: her ability to belittle you and correct you all the time and to make you feel like she could always challenge your intelligence so that you end up looking or feeling stupid in front of others, and she seems pretty intimidating. This tends to force most people into a passive mode - one of keeping your mouth shut and not speaking up to challenge her. People get easilly hooked up in that; and so, they never bother to question her. They just bob their heads up and down, instead, with an insipid smile on their faces. Susan knows very well how to manipulate people. The Professor did not seem to recognize that he was being manipulated by the criminal.

To digress a second: Was he expecting the criminal to sob and admit guilt and fall to the floor and apologize or something while experiencing a moment of sudden compassionate concern for the victim like they always do in the movies? NO! They're going to deny; to even make it sound as if they were being picked on by society and by the police! He should know this! Is this how his entire $400 book is put together - with non-objective interviews with criminals he "felt" were innocent, allowing himself to be manipulated by them? I keep going back over the phone conversation and this is exactly what I seem to be seeing. I'm going to find a copy of his book and pour through it now from front to back. I want to see just how "objective" this guy really is. I have to now admit that I have very low confidence going in. I don't think I will ever be able to trust what I read now in any of his books because of that conversation that we had about Susan.

This is a criminologist with a PhD and who is supposed to be a professional and objective and detached. I was not impressed with his sympathetic praisings of the criminal; nor did I feel confident in him or in his abilities to objectively think or reason after that. I had a sinking, doubtful feeling, instead - like this guy was going to be yet another one who screws me somehow, or dumps me in the end. It's the same feeling that I had dealing with Detective Joseph Mayo at the Gainesville Police Department, and with Detective Michael Metz at UPD, and with just about everyone else that I've tried to go to for help. ...Where something inside you says, "Here we go again...this doesn't feel right, and it's gonna *happen* again."

Remaining detached is unforgiveably important in research of narcissists, psychopaths, and other people with otherwise "anti-social personality disorders"; and in my phone conversation with him, the Professor did not at all seem to have his objectivity mastered, or to even understand that it was something he should even be aware of. Instead, he was proud of Susan; bragged of her! In fact, I felt like I was listening to a cult religion member bragging of his leader or something. The Professor would seem to have made a huge mistake in his interview with Susan Tipton. Books by Hare, et al, warn of this problem in academic and police circles - the apparent lack of education about the ease with which these people can con and manipulate even the best-trained people who are supposed to know what to look for. People just don't understand what they're dealing with. He made the classic mistake. If you don't watch what you're doing, then you will end up finding yourself emotionally taking sides, and going farther then you needed to or were authorized to, and even taking actions against the victim such as deliberately sabotaging evidence, and perhaps inadvertently aiding and abetting the bad guys - maybe even doing so on purpose, and in so doing, causing harm to the innocent people in the end. (This sounds familiar.)

I'm slowly learning that even a degree doesn't necessarily mean jack, or that the person holding it necessarily knows what he or she is doing. Neither does a uniform or a title. They mean nothing.

So back to the Professor... How am I supposed to trust that this guy is going to take an objective, unbiased stance of real, true whole-hearted research into the situation with Jeff Capehart if he's already so very "taken in" by Jeff's wife? I'm screwed. God dammit! Jesus christ, man!

Last I spoke with the Professor (by email on Feb. 5th - see log of post-interview emails), he advised me that he had made "inquiries" with some of his "contacts" about Jeff Capehart. I never heard from him again after that. He will not return emails or calls. Has not related anything that he had supposedly discovered or uncovered. I fear the Professor spoke too much, to the wrong people without being careful, and that he may have in fact ended up sabotaging my efforts by giving people who were friends of Jeff some heads up word which was then brought back to Jeff.

I trusted that he knew what he was doing, that he was objective, that he would not get emotionally involved and would not pick sides and just investigate. Then again, I trusted a cop to do the same, too, once.

I fear that he came across people who knew Jeff, who were his friends, who vouched for him, and rather then continue his research he simply decided to dump me...or perhaps he was told to by UF upper echolon looking to stay out of something which to them looked like a huge "barrel of monkeys" worth of trouble to be avoided and kept quiet. (sigh) I dunno. I feel like the man just wanted more information out of me - using it in a manner exactly like Paul Eakin did - perhaps to use as followup for his $400 book, just like Eakin wanted to use my pain and suffering in his political campaign to help his popularity. Who knows. He obviously was not actually and honestly interested in helping me. But it would seem that I am no longer worthy of his contact and that he is not interested in following through with what he started or in keeping me updated. So for this reason, I believe that he was compromised. Something is definitely wrong. Something has definitely changed. It is obvious that he bumped into someone who convinced him to stop pursuing the matter immediately, and...he did...including abandoning taking the time to politely advise me that he was no longer interested in pursuing his investigations for (this/that) reason.

So much for "commitment" to the research. I guess that only matters as much as keeping your tenure...not for getting to the truth of anything.

I fear one of a few things could have happened:

Somebody convinced him that I was the bad guy and that Jeff was the good guy, and that I was just picking on a poor, sweet, innocent man who could never do anyone an ounce of harm...and he's abandoned me. Or...
In his research he began to realize that this is bigger and involves far too many prominent people and that maybe it would be best for his career if he just slowly slinked out of the picture and went back to his quiet, private little hole at the UF and appreciate his job, and pretend he never started looking into anything in the first place...and he's abandoned me. Or...
He ran into someone who actually TOLD him that he was prying into things he would do better to keep his nose out of and that it could mean his name, his credibility and his career...and he's abandoned me.

Whichever the case...I seem to yet again be...abandoned.

I'm getting real sick of people pretending to be interested in helping me only to end up aiding and abetting the bad guys somehow, here...from clubs to local government to bad cops. I fear that the Professor may have inadvertently interfered with my case, now. Who did he talk to? How much did he reveal to his "contacts?" Which contacts knew Jeff, and brought that information to Jeff, now? This guy pretended to be interested in helping me, gathered sensitive information from me, apparently shared it, will not reveal who he shared the information with (so I will never know the path that the information took inside UF circles); and then he abandoned me.

Ugh. (sigh) This guy does not impress me. He seems to me more like a low life than someone with a degree who is into it for the education and learning. It just smells of personal agenda, to me. There are good professors, and then there are those who have their own agendas. I have NO idea what this guy's actual agenda is. But...

There is now no place that I can apparently go to for help. :( I don't know where else to go, now. I've gone everywhere. Local clubs don't want to touch it. Local government agencies not only won't help but seem content to actually aid and abet the bad guys and seem bent on running actual interference for them, as do the local police departments. One cop deliberately sabotaged a harassment case I'd filed, and another police department actually helped Jeff Capehart get away with hacking my server. I have no protection. None. Jeff has the power to do whatever he wants. I am unable to do anything about Jeff or the other people he encourages to attack me, and they have the power to do whatever they want at any time, and no one will challenge them.

...Why? ...Because people like the Professor keep pretending to be concerned, only to jump ship at some point - but not without screwing something up pretty badly on the way out.

Here's a question: Let's say Jeff goes too far one day, and again encourages one of those low-life, no-brain types to harass me, and that person decides to use a gun this time; or a knife? And let's say that I survive, and I'm able to talk to the cameras and the mics that are in my face at my hospital bed, asking me what happened. What uh...what's GPD, UPD, ACOEM, the UF...the Professor...what are they all going to say to the cameras when they come for them when Todd said that he went to all of them for help, when he says that he's been complaining to them for many years about people who stalk and harass him and how everywhere he went no one took him seriously and in fact even went as far as to criticize and sabotage him? What will they do when they find out that the Professor...well...he asked for details and pretended to be interested in helping, and then abandoned the guy who got shot? This is the price of taking sides. It's all a big guessing game. If you're not willing to do actual forensics investigating, then you have to guess who is telling the truth, and who is not. You shouldn't be guessing in the first place. But if you're going to get involved, you better be fair and unbiased. If you guess wrong, take the wrong side, and you helped the bad people...then you helped cause harm to the innocent person. And now you're responsible. Yes, what would they do if it ever went that far...got to that point? Nobody ever thinks about these kinds of things. Everybody wants to get involved. Everybody wants to play the at-home, arm chair, CSI detective. But nobody ever uses real forensics. Everybody always goes on "gut feeling" and guess work. "I don't NEED to know all the details! I've seen CSI! I know how it goes!" Then the trouble happens, and suddenly everybody realizes they had NO clue what they were doing, and that they were wrong. Now everybody is scattering in 360 different directions, trying to cover their asses because they screwed up, guessed wrong, and they know it...and now they have to burn and shred papers, erase emails, maybe even convince other parties involved to put their careers on the line and lie for them. Will people put their careers on the line for the other guy? How far will it go? ...And before they realize it....now they're the psychopath, having caused the damage themselves, and they're erasing evidence, and calculating how to avoid getting caught for what they did.

I...keep...SEEING this happen...over...and over in all of this. It is unbelievable. ...The ARRL, the NWS, ACOEM, GPD, UPD, the University of Florida... Good god. Everywhere is somebody thinking they "know" who the bad guy is, and the innocent guy getting it, and then someone realizing they were wrong, and hiding. Me? ...My life just gets wrecked by one person after another, one agency after another, and then people run when they find out they just picked on an innocent person. It's like a surreal Southpark movie. What's up with that in human psychology? Why do people run when they realize they caused damage? Didn't our parents, and our Gods, and our holy books teach us to come forward and admit what we did and to apologize? Ah...but add in more serious factors now...lawsuits, loss of careers, loss of homes, loss of assets and benefits, embarassment of huge public agencies...and a whole new world emerges.

Suddenly our parents, and God, and religion...these things mean nothing. It's okay. Jesus will forgive us for lieing about that guy, for not coming forward with what we know...even if the guy ended up dead as a result of our not doing anything.

Religion...means nothing. God...IS nothing...in the world of crime.

I know too much about life for my own good. And it is depressing.

You'd think that this is only supposed to happen on TV and in the movies...not to real people in real life.

Let's see a criminologist write about that.

...But you won't. (They have to get past the prejudiced belief that I'm the bad guy, first. ...And that's not gonna happen. I guess I don't deserve things like fair chances, and justice, and benefit of the doubt, or even so much as a fair courtroom hearing or trial. Ah but then...that's actually it, though. Isn't it? Nobody wants their mistakes aired in a courtroom because then it would become part of the permanent, referenceable record that the whole world could then see. There could then be inquiries, investigations...maybe even Press involvement!...EEEAGH! People would lose their jobs; people and agencies would get sued. We don't want that now.

I suppose it also has a lot to do with why this blog has also remained up for so long, too. For someone to try to make me take it down, it would involve a courtroom, because I'd object and sue for my right to defend myself against the gossip and rumors being spread about me. (There's an issue for yuh. Can the bad guys say whatever they want about you and not have to answer for it, while you get stifled? Don't challenge me because I'll put that question to the actual real life test.) And that might mean the chance of all this getting out into an even wider circle. And so, they just deal with the pain of seeing their names occasionally hit upon in search engines, I guess. It's far easier to just say "Oh, he's just a disgruntled nutcase!" in response to any queries that might come about, than to bring it into a courtroom, and in front of TV cameras, and risk losing everything you own. Yup-puh. 'Dat it 'tis.)

[Back To Where Did Todd Go? - Main Index]

Basic & Advanced SKYWARN Spotter Training ClassMarch 23, 2010

2010-02-23T15:48:00.006-05:00

There will be a Basic and Advanced Spotter training class at the below location in Columbia County for those who are near your two-year limit and are due for refresher spotter training.

Pre-registration is requested for this class. They have ample seating so if you've got friends, invite em and have them register, too.

Basic & Advanced Skywarn Training for North Florida

Who: NWS Instructor Angie Enyedi
When: March 23, 2010 (Tuesday) 6:00-9:00 PM
Where: Shiloh Baptist Church
173 SW Shiloh St
Fort White, FL

Contact information to sign up:
Leila Lindsey
Tel: (352) 339-4018

This class is hosted by Columbia County Emergency Services.
Free and open to the public.
Trainees are encouraged to participate as Weather Spotters,
however, continued participation is not mandatory.

What is a Storm Spotter?
The Skywarn spotter program is a nationwide network
of volunteers trained by the National Weather Service (NWS)
to report significant weather. Anyone is welcome to participate.

Why Skywarn ?
The NWS's mission is to protect lives and property.
When weather conditions are favorable for severe thunderstorms
or tornadoes are expected to develop, a severe thunderstorm or
tornado WATCH is issued. A Severe Thunderstorm or Tornado
WARNING is issued when severe weather has been reported by
a Skywarn spotter or indicated by Doppler radar. Skywarn
volunteers become the NWS's eyes and ears, helping to provide
better weather watch and warning services.

Email: Leila Lindsey

STS-130 Nighttime Shuttle Launch Video

2010-02-08T07:47:00.002-05:00

I've just uploaded video of the early morning nighttime launch of the STS-130 shuttle mission. This is the final nighttime launch of the shuttle program. All the remaining launches will be during the daytime. As many of you already know, the remaining shuttle missions in 2010 will be the last of the entire shuttle program.

Hams/Spotters: Beware Florida Law Regarding Devices Mounted On Windshield

2009-12-07T13:56:00.003-05:00

(This particular blog entry has been moved to the "Mobile Scanner & RADAR-Detector Laws In The U.S. " Blogspot blog. Please click the link to view this entry. -Todd)