outskirts: life and times in charlottesville

Charlottesville prides itself on being a tech savvy village, so I guess that is why criminals targeted a local elementary school and walked away with a bunch of Macs (at least they were smart thieves…who would possibly want a PC). I also guess that is why the local university experienced ‘human error’^* and let about 6,000 names with social security numbers get loose.

16 computers and 6000 names. How many names could be put on each computers? I guess I would need a computer to figure that out. Gotta love technology.

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^*Human error is an expression that should never be used. When the shuttle blew up was it called shuttle error? No. There was a reason. My guess was that in this case the error was the placement of a file on a web server. Maybe a port wasn’t closed. I don’t know, but I wouldn’t use a term that covers all bases but gives no explanation.

As everyone knows, Artini 2006 was one of the best events ever held in C-Ville. They are now gearing up for the 2007 edition. While on the Artini site I noticed that the picture on the party page was one of the shots I took last year (that was the first day I had my new cute little Sony Cybershot and barely knew how to use it).

I wonder if I should get a free ticket for that advertising material I provided

A note from a tipster:

A significant amount of police activity is going on near the psychic place on 29N and the turnaround south of it? It was reported that at least two individuals had been cuffed and were laying on the ground.

Back in May I posted about a group of youth running wildly through the streets and being chased by police. I never found any further information about the event.

This group did manage to make the news as a group of eight sent two to the hospital after using a blunt object? Any guess as to the object? Bat? Brick (are they considered blunt?)? Or maybe that biblical thing…a stone.

After asking a few questions, an anonymous source let me know that this is a common time of year for gang initiation activity. I guess a group of eight could be called a gang.

Two weeks ago four different reports of gunfire were called in within a few minutes of each other but it was called a random event. I’ll be honest, four reports from different locations at the same time in a town this size doesn’t seem very random.

In any event (not random of course), a downtown apartment complex next to the legendary South Street Brewery (I heard DM from DMB has been there before) was riddled with bullets last night, forcing one resident to say he is now a bit leery about living downtown.

Time for a nice cold beer. I hear they are pretty good at South Street provided your glass doesn’t get shattered.

Exclusive Outskirts interview: A bank robbery brought in a flood of strong men with guns to a small educational company after a burglar tried to make off with some loot. A few former employees of Boxer Learning (you know that big empty building on the mall that has been for sale/for lease/for rent for the last four years) were there working that day.

Officers came very loudly up the stairs about 9 this morning with guns drawn and made us all put our hands up, and then gave us a pat down. Then sort of stalked around with their guns still out looking in cubicles, around corners, in the bathrooms, …

Luckily, education continues once again. I wonder if the robber got away with anything. I wonder if he got enough education to know how to launder his money. Will we ever find out?