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Internetjack
Sep 15, 2007

oh god how did this get here i am not good with computers
Top Cop
I've wanted to share these stories with GBS for years. I held off because I did not want to implicate any of the main players in the (possibly illegal) tom-foolery that happened at the time. Given that it has been over 25 years, I'd be surprised if some of the people mentioned, Bob, are still alive. So, time to share.

I graduated college with a degree in electrical engineering. After graduation I moved back to my parent's place in the Silicon Valley while I job searched. This was the time of the first dotcom boom and there was a lot going on in that area. I landed a great job with Cisco Systems after a couple of months, as a tech, but soon to be a test engineer in manufacturing. Lots of money, stock options, health care, etc. for a 24 year old. It was an exciting time.

Day one my new manager walks me around the building, introduces me to the team I will work with and a lot of other people too, that will be training me and testing me. I get my own workbench with oscilloscope, tools, etc. It is super cool. I'm told I will have a mentor to teach me the product line I will work on; diagnostics, trouble shooting, repairs. His name is Bob, he's not an employee per se, but a contractor, but he did not show up that day, but he is also really good at his work. Hmm, okay?...

Day two I show up early like an eager beaver and head to my bench. There is someone sitting there already working some troubleshooting. This guy has a foot long pony tail, hasn't shaved in a couple of days and is wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and sandals beneath his ESD smock. We introduce ourselves and this is Bob, my new mentor. He was 40 years old back then.

First things first, he shows me how to operate the industrial coffee maker, shows me the break room where there are free waters, teas, sodas, popcorn. That was the first hour of my second day. He walks me around the second floor that is all cubicles and management offices and take me to a conference room that has a big table with a dozen chairs and a couple of leather couches and tells me if I ever need a nap to just come in here and use one of the couches because the room is hardly ever used.

We finally do some work; him showing me how to run diagnostics, going over the boards in the product line and looking over schematics. He was honestly a great teacher; as good as any professor from college. Noon time comes up and he tells me we are going to lunch. "He's buying". There was a very nice cafeteria in the building with chefs and everything, but we are not going there, we are going out for lunch. How long can we be out? Lol, as long as we want.

Over the next week we went to a variety of restaurants, but that day we just hit up a local pizza joint. This is where I first learned that Bob was a hardcore alcoholic. We split a pepperoni pizza and a pitcher of beer. I had actually read the employee's handbook the night before like a good student and knew it was totally acceptable to have a drink with coworkers for a "business lunch". Okay. First pitcher is down and Bob orders a second. That goes down in minutes and a third is ordered.

We get back to work and actually working (and laughing a lot), but I am buzzed as hell the whole afternoon. That was my second day at work.


I have lots of Bob stories to share, this is just tip of the iceberg. Also, there is a reason why I chose the Guns tag. We will get there.

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Nooner
Mar 26, 2011

AN A+ OPSTER (:
umunhum is a funny name (:

Internetjack
Sep 15, 2007

oh god how did this get here i am not good with computers
Top Cop

Nooner posted:

umunhum is a funny name (:

It is. I had to look it up to remember how to spell it.

Internetjack
Sep 15, 2007

oh god how did this get here i am not good with computers
Top Cop
Bob bought a house. After a few months working with him, "Hey! I bought a house! Want to see it?!"

Okay, sounds cool, where is it?

It's at the top of Umunhum!

I grew up as a teenager in that region and I know that Umunhum is one of the highest peaks in the Santa Cruz mountains. It's only about 3500', but for a coastal range that's pretty high. Turns out It's a one hour drive from work to there. Not even a traffic thing, just the roads and distance.

The place is cool as heck. Two story log cabin in great shape, and probably 4000 sqft total. It was huge. It had bay windows and you could see all of Santa Cruz and the Monterey Bay from inside or out on the deck; and I mean all of it. It's a million dollar view. Some of the best sunsets I've seen, and massive layers of rolling fog were there.
Old couple had sold it after decades, moved closer to town for healthcare.

There was also a 4 bay garage. A side-by-side ATV/golfcart thing was in there. And super strangely, a heavy punching bag and a speed bag. There was a duck pond with a duck house and two ducks. There's acreage. I think it was only 5-10 but there were some well cut roads and all that, so it was real fun for hiking, the ATV thing, bikes.

Bob said he had two unused bedrooms and he knew I wanted to get out of parent's house (not that I didn't appreciate it, but you know what I mean) so I signed up.
He gave me a great deal, something like $500/month. That area was ~$1500/month for a studio apartment at that time.

I moved in. It was a crazy and fun time.
Plenty more to share.

Internetjack fucked around with this message at 05:49 on Oct 11, 2021

CPL593H
Oct 28, 2009

I know what you did last summer, and frankly I am displeased.
None of that sounds illegal.

Internetjack
Sep 15, 2007

oh god how did this get here i am not good with computers
Top Cop

CPL593H posted:

None of that sounds illegal.

Stuff that may or may not have been illegal definitely happened.

I'm trying to remember these stories chronologically, but there were quite a few. It gets all jumbled in my old brain.

One of the best rooms in the building was the music room. It was downstairs and had a pool table in the center but Bob had added tons of music stuff. At one end was a stack of 6 Marshall(?) amps. They were from his friend that lived in town and had no room for them. They were big. The stack was about 8' wide and 5' tall. It was a big space so there was lots of room for everything.

Plugged into them was a six string, bass, synthesizer, and a couple of mics. There was a complete drum kit. We all sucked but we could make a fuckton of noise when we wanted. We would use earplugs when we turned everything to max. The funny part to the room was that it had two barn style doors that swung out, creating enough space to drive a car through.

We opened them in the summer. The neighbor about 400 yards away did not care for this.

down n out
Sep 16, 2008

Nap Ghost
Good natured alcoholics like Bob are a treasure and add greatly to the spice of life.

Treecko
Apr 23, 2008

The Official Demon Girl
Boss of 2022!
Bob sounds cool as gently caress I hope he's still around chilling somewhere

Treecko
Apr 23, 2008

The Official Demon Girl
Boss of 2022!
Alternatively, I'm sorry Bob ever existed and I hope you're doing better now that he's gone?

Internetjack
Sep 15, 2007

oh god how did this get here i am not good with computers
Top Cop

Treecko posted:

Bob sounds cool as gently caress I hope he's still around chilling somewhere

It was a fun time while I lived there; no regrets. I'd love to know if he is still surviving; but also, read on.

down n out posted:

Good natured alcoholics like Bob are a treasure and add greatly to the spice of life.

100% agree

Internetjack
Sep 15, 2007

oh god how did this get here i am not good with computers
Top Cop
My parents had an old Subaru they wanted to sell and I happen to mention it to Bob. He totally wants to buy it.

We head to the parent's place and they sell it to him.

Within about a week he's drunk driving back to the house into the mountains and wraps the car around a tree. There aren't a lot of people on the road, but within a while someone finds the crash and calls it in. The responders call in a helicopter airlift to San Francisco.

Afterwards with some re-hab Bob was mostly okay. The car was lost though.

bob dobbs is dead
Oct 8, 2017

I love peeps
Nap Ghost
is bob dead rn

Treecko
Apr 23, 2008

The Official Demon Girl
Boss of 2022!

Just gonna be the first to point out the user name before some beats me to it AGAIN.

Nyan Bread
Mar 17, 2006

This suspiciously reads like one of those novels where the schizophrenic protagonist finds out they've been Bob the entire time

CPL593H
Oct 28, 2009

I know what you did last summer, and frankly I am displeased.

EVERY TIME GOING posted:

This suspiciously reads like one of those novels where the schizophrenic protagonist finds out they've been Bob the entire time

That's not schizophrenia that's disassociate identity disorder.

Internetjack
Sep 15, 2007

oh god how did this get here i am not good with computers
Top Cop
It was a pretty good hallucination if I was Bob the whole time. As always; truth is stranger than a variety of mental disorders.


Appreciating the name and post. The honest answer is that I have no idea. I haven't been in touch in over 17 years. And while these are a lot of fun tales, it does get a bit dark at the end. Nothing absolutely horrible, but nothing to celebrate.

CPL593H
Oct 28, 2009

I know what you did last summer, and frankly I am displeased.

Internetjack posted:

It was a pretty good hallucination if I was Bob the whole time. As always; truth is stranger than a variety of mental disorders.

Appreciating the name and post. The honest answer is that I have no idea. I haven't been in touch in over 17 years. And while these are a lot of fun tales, it does get a bit dark at the end. Nothing absolutely horrible, but nothing to celebrate.

:justpost:

Internetjack
Sep 15, 2007

oh god how did this get here i am not good with computers
Top Cop
We set up a shooting range on the property. For archery and pistol shooting. It was a few hundred yards from the house and at the bottom of a hill, a safe range. It was very cool, and we actually learned a lot with practice.

Though we'd get shitfaced drunk at times and go down there with everything. Guns and arrows. It was totally rad.

Dick Swiveller
Mar 2, 2011

Looking forward to these tales, OP.

OxMan
May 13, 2006

COME SEE
GRAVE DIGGER
LIVE AT MONSTER TRUCK JAM 2KXX



I'm a little confused about the location here cause I thought Mt umunhum was the mountain from the San Jose side that had the missile radar base tower visible.

DeadlyMuffin
Jul 3, 2007


OxMan posted:

I'm a little confused about the location here cause I thought Mt umunhum was the mountain from the San Jose side that had the missile radar base tower visible.

It is

Internetjack
Sep 15, 2007

oh god how did this get here i am not good with computers
Top Cop

OxMan posted:

I'm a little confused about the location here cause I thought Mt umunhum was the mountain from the San Jose side that had the missile radar base tower visible.

There was a very tall, 100'+ transmission tower about a quarter of a mile from our house. It had the blinky beacon light on top so airplanes would see it at night. We always assumed it was a radio repeater type function. Drunken friends and neighbors always wanted to climb it; scramble over the barbed wire and climb the ladder. I always thought it was super stupid because we had no idea how much power and what frequencies it transmitted and that it could possibly have enough power to be like a huge microwave. But climb it they did. I opted out every time because I was a huge wimp.

Ventral EggSac
Dec 3, 2019

poo poo yes please keep going

Internetjack
Sep 15, 2007

oh god how did this get here i am not good with computers
Top Cop
Umunhum was a cool place, the views, the remoteness and all that. There was also a lot of weird and dodgy poo poo up there. A lot of neighbors were fine people, but there were some seriously sketchy folks. There was a guy that had some acreage not too far from where we lived. Complete survivalist/prepper/meth-head. He showed us one of his several buried cargo containers. It was full of a lot of food, a few guns and cases of ammo. He claimed to have several of these hidden on his property. There were no buildings on the property, just several trailers and RVs that he lived out of. The crazy part (lol) was that he built a motorcycle course over it all with jumps and landings and technical stuff. It was for his son that he shared custody with his divorced wife.

Kid would come up and ride his off-road BMX motorcycle all over the place; so I guess that was cool in its own way.

One weekend my brother comes up to hang out and BBQ and drink a couple beers, watch the sunset, etc.
It gets dark to about 10PM and he has to head home. He heads out down the road past the prepper's place.

He calls the next morning to tell me this:

It's dark, late at night, he's only about 5 minutes from our house. This is a dirt road at the top of a mountain.
A woman runs into the road in front of him, waving him down. She is distressed and asking my brother for a ride off the mountain. He takes a moment to feel that he isn't in some weird carjack scenario, and lets her in. Its about a half hour drive into the nearest main town, Los Gatos, and of course asks her what is up? Where does she need to go?

She explained that she had come up the hill 3 weeks ago to visit her "boyfriend", the meth-head, and he and his buddy had her locked in one of the trailers since then. She also shares that they shoved her van off the side of the hill to limit her means of escape. Sure enough, 100' later she points down the hillside and asks if he can see it. He had a decent flashlight and shined it down the hillside, and a couple hundred feet down was a van that had rolled a dozen times lying in the brush. She had just managed to break out of the trailer that night while the two psychos were both gone.

My brother asks where to take her; police station?, shelter? wherever. She just wanted to be dropped in town and would call a friend that she could stay with. My brother gave her $40 and pretty much said okay, I am out. He then went home.

Internetjack
Sep 15, 2007

oh god how did this get here i am not good with computers
Top Cop
The first time I hung out with Bob after work was a Friday. "Let's hit a pub and get food and drinks!" Sounds good to me. We go to downtown San Jose. The bar we go to does not serve food at all; so just beers and drinks it is.

After a bit I still want food so we walk a block or two to another bar, but they had stopped serving food an hour before. So more beer and drinks. There may have been some pretzels.

We then hit a third bar with no food.

We finally meander to one of those cowboy bars (where no one is an actual cowboy but they dress like it) that does the whole line-dancing evening. We are both pretty hosed up and I'm just getting a bad vibe on going into this place; like "this isn't going to end well".

Within 5 minutes Bob is yelling at some dude in a cowboy hat, "Your stupid hat and bell buckle are only that big to make up for your tiny dick!" You could hear this across the whole dance floor and bar and music. The bouncers escorted us out in seconds. Turns out that Bob had immediately started hitting on the guy's wife the second we walked in; and surprise!, the guy didn't care for that.

So we are literally sitting outside on the curb. I'm completely drunk and have no idea where my truck is, but know I couldn't even drive it if I did know where it was. I ask "what should we do?" I'm thinking we just get some lovely hotel room and sleep it off.

"Oh, my ex-girlfriend lives close by! We can crash there!" It was a couple of blocks away.

Now Bob had told me about her. They had been together for a couple of years but broke up when she could no longer tolerate his alcoholism. And we were two drunks showing up at her door around 11PM unannounced. Turns out she is an incredibly courteous person and lets us in while doing a smdh at us. I was very meek with my thank you's and nice to meet you's. The next morning we actually ate some scrambled eggs and coffee together and she was actually very super cool. Bob had hosed up by not working to stay together with her imo.

We leave. We have at least a mile to walk through San Jose to find our vehicles. First thing out of Bob's mouth when we leave the door is, "We need to get some bloody marys". And got them we did, then found our cars and drove home.

OxMan
May 13, 2006

COME SEE
GRAVE DIGGER
LIVE AT MONSTER TRUCK JAM 2KXX



Internetjack posted:

There was a very tall, 100'+ transmission tower about a quarter of a mile from our house. It had the blinky beacon light on top so airplanes would see it at night. We always assumed it was a radio repeater type function. Drunken friends and neighbors always wanted to climb it; scramble over the barbed wire and climb the ladder. I always thought it was super stupid because we had no idea how much power and what frequencies it transmitted and that it could possibly have enough power to be like a huge microwave. But climb it they did. I opted out every time because I was a huge wimp.

Hell yeah OK I just wanted to make sure I'm not crazy, because I've been there. I used to live in San Jose and when the military decided to clean up and raze down the base the city decided to turn it into a park, and during that process I did security for the USACOE cleanup process, but this was about 8 years ago. Not surprised at all to hear about the prepper types, one thing that y'all not mentioning with this whole leaving cars at night is that the entire area is a mountain lion preserve so there's that added spice bonus. All the roads leading up to the top are all locked with daisychained locks so it takes some effort and danger to sneak around out there on foot period.

raspurtin
Apr 18, 2005

drat, it sounds like Bob might have bought my uncle's place. He lived on Umunhum for like 30 years, owned at least 3 different properties, and ended up building his own place. 2 stories, huge garage (he owned a car repair shop and owned lots of vehicles), view, etc. My uncle sold and moved off the mountain at least 20 years ago.

We had a blast visiting when I was a kid - hiking up the mountain, exploring the creek looking for crawdads, riding dirt bikes around. Fun times. Watch out for poison oak though, it's loving everywhere up there.

Julius CSAR
Oct 3, 2007

by sebmojo
Bob sounds like a real G. Also crazy that your brother rescued a chick from Leonard Lake and Charles Ng.

BAGS FLY AT NOON
Apr 6, 2011

A Soft Nylon Bag
I am looking forward to learning more about the Crazy Misadventures of Bob.

Internetjack
Sep 15, 2007

oh god how did this get here i am not good with computers
Top Cop
When I was there there were only a couple gates at the far ends of the road, and everyone left them open because it was a total pita to get out of your vehicle, drive through, and then stop and secure them. We had a neighbor that installed a remote controlled gate on the shared entry to 3 properties, but he gave out enough gate openers (like garage door openers) to all the households.

I can imagine as times and people have changed so has the road.


There were not a lot of places up there, so it's entirely plausible we were in your uncle's house.

Internetjack
Sep 15, 2007

oh god how did this get here i am not good with computers
Top Cop
There were two other roommates at Bob's. One was a high school friend of mine that graduated shortly after I did. School teacher; and his school was only about a half hour drive down the hill. Bob gave him the third bedroom at an even cheaper rate, which was totally cool. He was an actual musician, percussionist, so he was a huge asset to our lovely jam sessions.

The fourth guy was Chris, a long time friend of Bob's at similar age in his 40s. I loved hanging out with him, but the guy was a perpetual slacker to the Nth degree. He was also a person that had those wide "crazy eyes" all the time which made him look slightly insane. Chris loved to smoke weed, but never had much money so he would buy the shittiest dirt weed full of seeds and stems and then just pick through it all. But I swear to god this guy was smoking every minute he was awake. There wasn't a fourth bedroom, but he bought a camper, not a truck and camper, just the camper, and had it set under the eaves of the garage. I actually loaned him $500 for the purchase and I think I got paid back $350. But he did share his lovely weed freely, so it was all good.

In the few years I knew and lived with Chris, he took a course in becoming a masseuse (trust me you would not want a guy looking like he did massaging you) and dropped out before finishing. He later took up a basic HTML course at a community college and was doing well. I saw a couple of websites he built and they were pretty good for the tech of the time. The day of the final exam he decided to skip it and go get a massage instead and failed the certification. Last I remember that he was doing pizza delivery. That's all fine and well and he had good work, but he would still skip days at a time but somehow keep his job.

The best one though was the day he came back from actually delivering pizzas and he has a brand spanking new mountain bike! This is a nice one I'd have guessed at $1000.

"Uh so Chris, where'd you get that bike??" Seriously wondering if he stole it, but he really was not that type of person.

"A guy tried to mug me when I got back to my car after a delivery." He was just off his bike but had his hand down his pants and threatening to pull out a gun if Chris didn't hand over his cash. Chris yelled, "I bet you don't even have a dick down there!" and charged the guy. Dude ran. Left his bike behind. Police were called and eyewitness's validated the story. When everything was wrapped up he asks the officer, "So what about that bike there?" Cop replies, "I don't see any bike." and walks away. Chris grabs it and throws it in the back seat of his car and drives home.

Milo and POTUS
Sep 3, 2017

I will not shut up about the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I talk about them all the time and work them into every conversation I have. I built a shrine in my room for the yellow one who died because sadly no one noticed because she died around 9/11. Wanna see it?

Internetjack posted:

Stuff that may or may not have been illegal definitely happened.

Stuff that may or may not be illegal happens all the time

Internetjack
Sep 15, 2007

oh god how did this get here i am not good with computers
Top Cop
Bob bought a Porsche one day. I believe it was a 911 model.

I came back up the mountain after running errands and there is a Porsche in the garage with the hood popped and Bob was working away on it. Changing the oil, checking the air filter, checking the brakes, checking spark plugs etc. He was actually a very knowledgeable mechanic.

"Oh, you got a Porsche! That's cool." "Yeah, this is going to be great!" was his reply.

He's out there wrenching away all day and evening. I'm in my room playing video games at 10PM and he comes back into the house, (I don't know if he'd had lunch or dinner, but definitely had a few drinks), and announces that we are good to go!

Go? When?

Now.

I'd had a few beers myself, and was suggesting we hold off until tomorrow.

Nope, we are going NOW.

Okay, as long as it has seatbelts...

We go out to the garage and he tosses the keys to me. Uh, this is your new car, you should drive it. His answer, "We'll take turns, you start."

I'd never driven a high end sports car before, I was slightly buzzed, it's a remote road, so why not?

For reference, the fastest I'd ever driven my truck on this road was 30 mph. We get out there and I am quickly hitting speeds of 60-80 mph. It drove beautifully. The suspension, or the harmonics at those speeds made the washboard and potholes disappear. That car was just hugging the road and it kicked rear end.

Of course Bob busts out a couple of beers for us and oh, guess what! He brought along a couple of joints.

So we are smoking and drinking at 60 mph on a dirt road. We finally get to the end of the dirt to the paved road, Skyline Blvd. It runs along the ridge of the Santa Cruz mountains and is a well known road for motorcyclists to test their speed abilities. He tells me to open it up. Within seconds we are at 110 mph, drinking beer and smoking weed. We are flying in more ways than one.

We make it to this small town of La Honda(?) that has a bar that Neil Young would stop by at occasionally and jam. He wasn't there that night. Bummer. But we do suck down a couple of pints.

Time to go home, and Bob's turn to drive. Going back along Skyline he had it floored, 130 mph and maybe a bit more. Still more beers and weed going on. He slowed down when we got back on the dirt and we made it home just fine.

Amazingly we did not kill anyone, any animals, or ourselves.

Panaflex
Sep 28, 2001

Wow. I'm from San Jose and used to loiter around up the mountian with some friends about the time you were up there with Bob. Yeah some seriously sketchy things were always going on up there. Glad you survived.

Internetjack
Sep 15, 2007

oh god how did this get here i am not good with computers
Top Cop
Bob also instructed me on how best to gently caress a goat. For the record I hosed no goats, but I know the technique!

Bob did grow up on a farm, so I assume he knows what he is talking about.

The trick is to wear the tall rubberized rain/mud boots that go up to your knees. The goat will try to run away if you just want to gently caress straight out. The solution is that you grab the goat's back legs and drop them into the boots as well. You will get bruises on your feet, but the goat cannot escape. gently caress away.

I'm horrified while he is telling me this and finally ask, "How many goats have you hosed?"

None! He just knew how to do it. I do not totally believe him. I honestly think he may have hosed a goat or two while growing up as a teenager.

Waltzing Along
Jun 14, 2008

There's only one
Human race
Many faces
Everybody belongs here
Sounds like you hosed a goat.

Internetjack
Sep 15, 2007

oh god how did this get here i am not good with computers
Top Cop

Waltzing Along posted:

Sounds like you hosed a goat.

I know the proper technique apparently, but I mostly keep myself to turkeys and deer.

Colonel Cancer
Sep 26, 2015

Tune into the fireplace channel, you absolute buffoon
Grim tales of Goatfucker Bob

Internetjack
Sep 15, 2007

oh god how did this get here i am not good with computers
Top Cop
One of the craziest parties we had was when 4 of my cousins came to visit. They were up from Los Angeles and were road-tripping, wanted to visit, but also wanted to get some good weed. For some reason they could not score decent weed in LA; lovely and mediocre stuff, but nothing really good. I have no idea why you wouldn't be able to score decent weed in LA.

My brother though has connections in Humboldt and is coming down that night. He notoriously could get the best. The trip was doubling as a drug deal. Cousins show up on Friday night and we do the usual BBQ drinking thing. Bro is late though, will not be there until midnight. We are going off though. I love my cousins and we were just going off the rails. Booze, beer, weed, and a bit of cocaine. Maybe more than a bit.

The evening progresses and we are out of our minds. Me, cousins, Bob, Chris, high school friend. Just wasted. We are driving the side by side ATV, its suppose to hold two and we had six in it, around at midnight and head to the target range and start firing pistols. There was a .45 pistol that used clips and a .45 revolver. To be fair, we were actually very safety conscious and nothing bad happened besides a lot of terrible shooting. Everyone did fire off a good dozen rounds each. While being massively wasted smoking weed and drinking beers.

Brother shows up around midnight with a fair amount of weed. We get our second wind and are smoking the fresh dank, drinking more, eating more and just carrying on. Bob finally instructs us that it is time for the music room jam. We open the barn doors to keep it cool, and just crank out mostly lovely music for the next couple of hours.

It finally gets to about 3AM and we start to crash out. One cousin passed out on the wood floor of the kitchen, the others grabbed couches and carpet and blankets.

The next morning we are doing bacon and eggs and toast. (And bloody marys) but just chilling and recovering.

Our neighbor shows up in the driveway and he is pissed. This is the guy that lived about 400 yards away, yelling about all the noise we made. I tell Bob that I got it, my family my fault I'll try to apologize, and Bob tells me that, no, he has it. We both go out and talk with Mike, a 60-something retired tech VP from the valley.

One of the funniest things I ever saw; Mike is yelling that he moved up to mountain to retire to peace and quiet. Bob replies, "huh that is weird, I moved up here so I could make all the noise I wanted."

There was about five seconds of dead silence and I seriously wondered if Mike was about to hit Bob.

He did not and stormed off in a huff. He and his wife actually moved out of their place to somewhere down the ridgeline within a month. His creepy daughter and her creepy boyfriend moved in a while later. They were wiccans and we are pretty sure they tortured our cat.

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Internetjack
Sep 15, 2007

oh god how did this get here i am not good with computers
Top Cop
After Mike left, his lunatic daughter and her boyfriend moved into the place. 18 - 19 years old. I don't want to pass judgement on their belief system, but I will pass judgement on them. They were not good people.

When Mike was there we did visit the house a couple times, and it was nicely decorated and all that. Very cozy. When daughter moved in we walked down to say hi and introduce ourselves as neighbors and folks that shared the same driveway and gate. We actually baked and took brownies.

The house had changed a lot. There were now several hundred candles around, all black and red. That E/N post with huge budget for candles... I laughed when I read that because I had seen the real thing first hand. Hundreds of candles, most of them lit. Honestly enough candles burning to keep the house warm. All of the windows were covered in black sheets.

They told us about their wiccan beliefs and practices, and we were all "ok sounds neat". While the daughter did all of the talking the boyfriend said "Hi" and that was it from him. Bob was always courteous and engaging and he did the hand shake and one arm hug thing. She froze and started to shake. Shoulders massively tensed up, shaking etc. Maybe she had some past trauma or something, but it was just a quick and nice gesture that I still do all the time when I meet folks. Time to go. We head back to the house.

We get a cat. Bob or Chris brought home a cat one day. A shelter cat. There was kitty litter and kibble and cans of food and grooming supplies. It was indoor/outdoor and we followed it as it explored the property. It'd go mousing in the garage, go down to the duck pond and just stare at the ducks (pretty sure it wanted to eat them); but we got use to letting it out for a couple of hours a day and it always came back when we looked or called for it. Chris actually complained that the cat was sneaking into his camper, and he was waking up to it sleeping on his chest.

We get a call from the daughter one day that the cat is down at their place. Not doing anything horrible, but this is unacceptable. Fair enough, our bad for letting it roam so much, we'll keep a tighter eye on it, etc. We go and collect our cat.

Unfortunately we were not good to our word. A week later the cat wandered again and showed up late in the evening with a eyeball that was completely bleeding out.

We rush down the mountain to an emergency vet who cleans things up. The eye is lost and removed. We are told it was a needle-like puncture. The vet says that it is pretty rare to see an injury like that. All of us; me, Bob, Chris, high-school buddy, grew up with cats and never had seen such an injury. Maybe it was a thorn in some brush or something.

We get home and the cat is resting. It's now an indoor cat. Bob and I hop on our computers; really early days of the internet. We look around and start reading about Wiccans and "spells". Almost at the same time we both come across a spell that describes torturing a person's pet for revenge on the owner. Specifically stabbing out an eye. Again, no condemnation of a belief system, but we were quickly figuring out that 1 + 1 = 2. These people had tortured our pet. For some revenge motive against us being too loud while the parents lived there.

This is 10 o'clock at night and Bob goes for a pistol. "We are going down there." The rest of us are all, "okay, let's do it, but no guns". We allow a Swiss army knife. Bob concedes and leaves the gun behind. Amazingly we were all 100% sober, no drinks or weed that whole evening.

We hop in a truck and drive down there. Four dudes in their 20's and 40's showed up at their door at 10:30 at night; accusing them of cat torture. There was a bit of yelling. The crazy part is that they never denied it. Chris was off the rails screaming at them if they ever did anything like that again he would murder them in their sleep. Strangely he specified that he would murder them at 3AM while sleeping, by slitting their throats. On the other hand, if the cat does wander down there and you just call us, everything is good.

We did not have any pet issues with neighbors after that.

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