#and some of them actually switched to thinkpad and never went back

[lenovo-real]

the only macbook allowed is the one that @scaththefloof has. He put linux on it and it quote "scares me with how fast it is", he still should get a thinkpad though. he should get a t420 or something. Also @scaththefloof's father works for us and has the same exact macbook pro with Ubuntu. Scath switched to Kubuntu though.

and now the macbook uses arch because Scath has stockholm syndrome

[antoinesylvia]

My Homelab/Office 2020 - DFW Quarantine Edition

Moved into our first home almost a year ago (October 2019), I picked out a room that had 2 closets for my media/game/office area. Since the room isn't massive, I decided to build a desk into closet #1 to save on space. Here 1 of 2 shelves was ripped off, the back area was repainted gray. A piece of card board was hung to represent my 49 inch monitor and this setup also gave an idea how high I needed the desk. 

On my top shelf this was the initial drop for all my Cat6 cabling in the house, I did 5 more runs after this (WAN is dropped here as well).

I measured the closet and then went to Home Depot to grab a countertop. Based on the dimensions, it needed to be cut into an object shape you would see on Tetris. 

Getting to work, cutting the countertop.

My father-in-law helped me cut it to size in the driveway and then we framed the closet, added in kitchen cabinets to the bottom (used for storage and to hide a UPS). We ran electrical sockets inside the closet. I bought and painted 2 kitchen cabinets which I use for storage under my desk as well.

The holes allowed me to run cables under my desk much easier, I learned many of these techniques on Battlestations subreddit and Setup Wars on Youtube. My daughter was a good helper when it came to finding studs.

Some of my cousins are networking engineers, they advised me to go with Unifi devices. Here I mounted my Unifi 16 port switch, my Unifi Security Gateway (I'll try out pfSense sometime down the line), and my HD Homerun (big antenna is in the attic). I have Cat6 drops in each room in the house, so everything runs here. On my USG, I have both a LAN #2 and a LAN #1 line running to the 2nd closet in this room (server room). This shot is before the cable management. 

Cable management completed in closet #1. Added an access point and connected 3 old Raspberry Pi devices I had laying around (1 for PiHole - Adblocker, 1 for Unbound - Recursive DNS server, and 1 for Privoxy - Non Caching web proxy). 

Rats nest of wires under my desk. I mounted an amplifier, optical DVD ROM drive, a USB hub that takes input from up to 4 computers (allows me to switch between servers in closet #2 with my USB mic, camera, keyboard, headset always functioning), and a small pull out drawer. 

Cable management complete, night shot with with Nanoleaf wall lights. Unifi controller is mounted under the bookshelf, allows me to keep tabs on the network. I have a tablet on each side of the door frame (apps run on there that monitor my self hosted web services). I drilled a 3 inch hole on my desk to fit a grommet wireless phone charger. All my smart lights are either running on a schedule or turn on/off via an Alexa command. All of our smart devices across the house and outside, run on its on VLAN for segmentation purposes. 

Quick shot with desk light off. I'm thinking in the future of doing a build that will mount to the wall (where "game over" is shown). 

Wooting One keyboard with custom keycaps and Swiftpoint Z mouse, plus Stream Deck (I'm going to make a gaming comeback one day!). 

Good wallpapers are hard to find with this resolution so pieced together my own. 

Speakers and books at inside corner of desk. 

Speakers and books at inside corner of desk. 

Closet #2, first look (this is in the same room but off to the other side). Ran a few CAT6 cables from closet #1, into the attic and dropped here (one on LAN #1, the other on LAN #2 for USG). Had to add electrical sockets as well. 

I have owned a ton of Thinkpads since my IBM days, I figured I could test hooking them all up and having them all specialize in different functions (yes, I have a Proxmox box but it's a decommissioned HP Microserver on the top shelf which is getting repurposed with TrueNAS_core). If you're wondering what OSes run on these laptops: Windows 10, Ubuntu, CentOS, AntiX. All of these units are hardwired into my managed Netgear 10gigabit switch (only my servers on the floor have 10 gigabit NICs useful to pass data between the two). Power strip is also mounted on the right side, next to another tablet used for monitoring. These laptop screens are usually turned off.

Computing inventory in image:

Lenovo Yoga Y500, Lenovo Thinkpad T420, Lenovo Thinkpad T430s, Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga 12, Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga 14, Lenovo Thinkpad W541 (used to self host my webservices), Lenovo S10-3T, and HP Microserver N54L 

Left side of closet #2 

**moved these Pis and unmanaged switch to outside part of closet** 

Since I have a bunch of Raspberry Pi 3s, I decided recently to get started with Kubernetes clusters (my time is limited but hoping to have everything going by the holidays 2020) via Rancher, headless. The next image will show the rest of the Pis but in total:

9x Raspberry Pi 3  and 2x Raspberry Pi 4 

2nd shot with cable management. The idea is to get K3s going, there's Blinkt installed on each Pi, lights will indicate how many pods per node. The Pis are hardwired into a switch which is on LAN #2 (USG). I might also try out Docker Swarm simultaneously on my x86/x64 laptops. Here's my compose generic template (have to re-do the configs at a later data) but gives you an idea of the type of web services I am looking to run: https://gist.github.com/antoinesylvia/3af241cbfa1179ed7806d2cc1c67bd31

20 percent of my web services today run on Docker, the other 80 percent are native installs on Linux and or Windows. Looking to get that up to 90 percent by the summer of 2021.

Basic flow to call web services:

User <--> my.domain (Cloudflare 1st level) <--> (NGINX on-prem, using Auth_Request module with 2FA to unlock backend services) <--> App <-->  DB.

If you ever need ideas for what apps to self-host: https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted 

Homelabs get hot, so I had the HVAC folks to come out and install an exhaust in the ceiling and dampers in the attic. 

I built my servers in the garage this past winter/spring, a little each night when my daughter allowed me to. The SLI build is actually for Parsec (think of it as a self hosted Stadia but authentication servers are still controlled by a 3rd party), I had the GPUs for years and never really used them until now.

Completed image of my 2 recent builds and old build from 2011.

Retroplex (left machine) - Intel 6850 i7 (6 core, 12 thread), GTX 1080, and 96GB DDR4 RAM. Powers the gaming experience.

Metroplex (middle machine) - AMD Threadripper 1950x (16 core, 32 thread), p2000 GPU, 128GB DDR4 RAM.

HQ 2011 (right machine) - AMD Bulldozer 8150 (8 cores), generic GPU (just so it can boot), 32GB DDR3 RAM. 

I've been working and labbing so much, I haven't even connected my projector or installed a TV since moving in here 11 months ago. I'm also looking to get some VR going, headset and sensors are connected to my gaming server in closet #2. Anyhow, you see all my PS4 and retro consoles I had growing up such as Atari 2600, NES, Sega Genesis/32X, PS1, Dreamcast, PS2, PS3 and Game Gear. The joysticks are for emulation projects, I use a Front End called AttractMode and script out my own themes (building out a digital history gaming museum).

My longest CAT6 drop, from closet #1 to the opposite side of the room. Had to get in a very tight space in my attic to make this happen, I'm 6'8" for context. This allows me to connect this cord to my Unifi Flex Mini, so I can hardware my consoles (PS4, PS5 soon)

Homelab area includes a space for my daughter. She loves pressing power buttons on my servers on the floor, so I had to install decoy buttons and move the real buttons to the backside. 

Next project, a bartop with a Raspberry Pi (Retropie project) which will be housed in an iCade shell, swapping out all the buttons. Always have tech projects going on. Small steps each day with limited time.

[sending-the-message]

Never Buy Cheap Computers on Craigslist by 2017Interloper

Ever notice the little lightbulb icon at the top of the MS Word screen, to the far right of all the options like File, Home, View, etc.? Well, I don’t know about yours, but mine isn’t working properly. It showed me something I didn’t want to see, and I may have used it to kill my girlfriend.

I just got a new laptop. For a broke ass grad student, finding a customized Lenovo ThinkPad b66 with 32G Ram and all the other awesome specs it comes with, WITH WINDOWS 7 INSTALLED (Huge selling point for me) for $300 was unreal. I use my laptop for gaming, streaming, work, school, you name it. I had to go check it out. I didn’t realize the b66 was a Lenovo model, but reading the tech specs on the Craigslist ad gave me a nerd boner for the ages.

The older lady who answered the phone number listed on the craigslist ad was really nice, and said it had belonged to her grandson. “He is gone now,” she told me. “I have no use for the thing. Is three hundred too much? It looks like a nice computer, at least, to me.” I could have been a total dick, and talked her down to 200. I am sure of it. But, I would have felt bad about it, and I happened to have the cash. Granted, it was all I had, but I had gas in the car, coffee, and my girlfriend and I had some things in the pantry that could pass as food, so we’d be ok for a few days. I noticed that the lady didn’t specify what ‘gone’ meant in reference to her grandson, whether he had died, moved away or what have you, and thought it a bit odd that she had mentioned it. Hey, maybe she was just a lonely old lady and I was the first person she had spoken to in a few days, right? I told her I was sorry about her grandson, went and cleaned out my bank account at the nearest ATM and sat in my car at the Evergreen Town Park where we had agreed to meet, waiting for her to show up.

I had to call my girlfriend, Alex. She and I had been talking about getting a new laptop for a while now; the one we currently shared was getting a little long in tooth. There was one we were looking at that was decent and in our price range, but I was resistant to spending any money on it, because they all come with Windows 10 now, and I freaking hate Windows 10. We settled on looking at used ones, and figured it would be cheaper that way anyway.

“Hey!” She answered. “Good timing. You just got me on my break. What’s up?”

“Well, I drained my bank account, but you are never going to guess what I just found for three hundred bucks!”

At first, she was weary about the cost but when I told her about the operating system and had her google the specs on the thing, all she could say was “damn.”

I saw the lady I was waiting for, at least, I figured it was her. She was driving a green Buick, and craning her neck, likely looking around for me and my car as I described it on the phone. She was probably feeling the slight anxiety that most people get when meeting someone from Craigslist, that ‘what if I just gave my car’s description to some serial killer’ feeling. I figured I’d not keep her waiting on me, and I was psyched about the computer. “Babe, I gotta run. I don’t want to be all rude and make this old lady wait. Love You.”

“Love You. Good find. Can’t wait to check it out.” We hung up and I got out of the car and waived at the lady in the Buick.

She rolled down her window halfway. “Are you Colin? The young man I spoke to earlier?” She asked, a little hesitantly.

“Yes ma’am, thank you for meeting me. My girlfriend and I have been looking for a good computer for a while now,” I told her, trying to small talk a little to make her feel at ease. I got the impression she was nervous or uncomfortable. Craigslist ads get a lot of bad publicity. For all the scams and bullshit that undoubtedly originate with Craigslist ads, most times when you buy secondhand things, rent an apartment or adopt a pet go without a hitch. But, those aren’t ever the ones you hear about. Plus, I’m a dude, so I don’t worry about that stuff as much as Alex does and I imagine other women might. I mean, it’s not like a bigger dude couldn’t lure me out to a dark alley and jump me or whatever, I guess it’s just not my nature to worry about things like that. If it happens, I’ll deal with it when the time comes. Then, I just wanted to make the old lady feel at ease, because she was doing Alex and me a huge favor with this cheap laptop.

She seemed a little uneasy still, but she stepped out of the car, and we walked over to the bench. She took the laptop out of the case and handed it to me. “Go on ahead and fire it up,” she said. “You can take a look and make sure it has everything it is supposed to have, and no viruses or bugs or whatever it is that steals all your information.” She smiled. “Forgive me, I don’t know much about these things. I had my daughter type out all of the information on that computer ad you found my number on. She showed me how to use Facebook on my phone, and that’s about as far as I go with this sort of thing.”

The laptop booted right up, appeared to have all the usual bells and whistles, had a full version of Microsoft Office on it (I would remember to switch the subscription to my name later) and a surface inspection of it looked fine. I told the lady as much. “It looks fantastic to me. I believe I owe you a few dollars?” I produced six fifty-dollar bills from my wallet and handed them to her, trying to be discreet. I’d rather have a casual onlooker think it was a drug deal than jump her because they saw me handing her cash.

She still looked a little uneasy as she stuck the bills in her wallet. “Thank you,” she said.

“Ma’am?” I asked, hoping that she hadn’t realized that she was practically giving the computer away. “Is everything all right?”

She sighed, barely audible. “Yes, thank you.” We got up and walked toward the parking lot. “I just…” She paused, looking as if she were trying to decide whether or not to tell me something. “My grandson… he was on the computer a lot. I can’t say for sure what got to him at the end, but… I don’t know. Just be careful,” she said warily. With that, she got back into the Buick and left.

I sat there holding my new computer and feeling kind of weird. I mean, what had happened to the kid? Had he gone into a chatroom and met some kind of creepy pedophile? Disappeared? Suicide? It really was nothing but idle curiosity and I supposed it didn’t matter anyway, but it gave me the creeps. I shook it off and drove home.

I took the computer into the apartment I shared with Alex, and set it down on the small, round kitchen table we had. It was getting dark, so it was probably around 6:00, and I was hungry. I figured Alex would grab a bite on her way home. She didn’t get off work until 10:30, and I wasn’t a great cook, nor did I feel like making pasta or a sandwich, which were currently my options. I grabbed the take-out box of last night’s Chinese and put it in the microwave. While my crappy takeout dinner reheated, I unzipped the bag the laptop was in and fired it up. There was a wireless mouse, a wall plugs, and a manufacturer’s CD-ROM that came with the computer neatly tucked into the bag with the laptop.

I shuddered a little seeing the dead boy’s name pop up with a little icon of a soccer ball. I was going to click “guest,” but I told myself I needed to access the admin account on the computer to create my own profile, run some anti malware and antivirus BS and all that. If I were being honest with myself, I wanted to snoop a little, because the lady’s comments were kind of weird. I pulled up Google, and just as I suspected, the kid’s account was still logged in. The microwave startled me when it let me know that my food was done with a pretentious little ‘ding!’ I got up and got my food and a fork, realizing that I felt guilty, like a kid with his hand in the cookie jar, thinking in that brief second that I may have been discovered snooping through a dead kid’s computer.

No. MY computer, I mentally corrected myself. I purchased it, and the previous owner just had something unfortunate happen to him. It wasn’t the computer. And it isn’t snooping, because it is my computer, and I would like to know if the kid had visited any websites or received any sketch emails that I should worry about stealing my credit cards and internet porn search history or anything like that. Right?

Right. And so, with that justification in mind, even though I wasn’t actually concerned about any of that, I went about my snooping. I was curious, and felt kind of guilty and a little spooked. There is something that feels intrinsically wrong about snooping through a dead person’s files, especially a dead kid. Maybe he hadn’t died, but I had the feeling he did, from the way his grandmother had warned me. My mind kicked into justification mode again and told me it was no different than wandering around an estate sale after someone died, and Alex brought me to those all the time. Truth be told, they creeped me out a little, too, but it’s just what people did. Best not to think about it.

Over the next few hours, I found very little, if any, surprising or suspicious activity on the computer. The kid mostly hung out in chat rooms, played WoW, had a reddit account, and had spent a lot of time on YouTube. Nothing that looked like it would be installing malware. (And, I thought, nothing to indicate the kid was suicidal or into anything weird). Somehow it felt like ghosts should have come flying out of the screen or something. None did, and I decided that none of it was my business anyway. I selected anything I found in documents, music, pictures, or on the desktop and each time hit shift+delete, so it would bypass the recycle bin and I would not be tempted to snoop. Snooping like that is sort of a rabbit hole, and one thing my mother always said when we would house sit for the neighbors or found ourselves in anyone else’s home when they weren’t home rung true with me here: ‘if you go looking for trouble, you’ll find it. Doesn’t enough trouble find us on its own?’ That was her ‘don’t snoop through shit that isn’t yours’ spiel, and she was probably right. Time to make it my own.

I wiped the signed-in account on the browser. I went in to the ‘users’ screen and created my own as an Admin, and I made sure any programs I would need to use were installed in a way that any user could access them. I signed in as me, and deleted the poor, dead kid’s account. I opened up Word, intending to sign in to my own “Office 365” Account, so the lady didn’t get charged or anything, and I went to the top of the screen for the “sign in” option.

It wasn’t there. Huh, weird, I thought. Could this have been one of those older copies of Microsoft you bought on a disc and didn’t have to pay a subscription fee for? Score again! I thought they had stopped making those. It looked pretty new, though. Weird. The front door opened, and I heard, “Hellooooo!” in Alex’s sing-songy voice.

“Hey babe.” She came in and kissed my cheek.

“So, you gonna show me this new hotshot computer of ours?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Okay, yours.”

“You can use it sometimes,” I teased. She shoved my shoulder playfully.

As I suspected, she had grabbed something from Zaxby’s on the way home. I grabbed one of the fries in her meal and savored it. Zaxby’s coats their fries in seasoned salt, and they’re freaking delicious. She slapped my hand away and whined, “Hey! I haven’t eaten since noon. Back off!” She turned away from me. “Hey…” She grabbed the wireless mouse and moved it to the top of the screen. Microsoft Word was still open.

“This a bootleg or something?” She was hovering the mouse over the top part of the ribbon, where it says ‘Home, Design, Review’ and the like. Next to those options was a little lightbulb that said “TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT TO DO” and it was blinking red.

“I don’t know, but I tried to sign in to our account, and there is no place to do that,” I told her. “What makes you say that?”

She ate another fry and thought about it. “I don’t know, it just looks different. Maybe the blinking red ‘Help’ thing?” She sat down and moved the laptop in front of her. “May I?”

“Sure.” I gestured for her to have at it. My girlfriend currently works in retail, at a department store, and a lot of people mistakenly assume that retail jobs don’t have any use for tech skills. As the Assistant Manager of her department, she used these Microsoft programs as much or more than I did.

“I can’t get over the blinking ‘TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT TO DO’ thing,” she said. “It’s weirding me out.” She clicked it and it stopped blinking.

She typed, ‘I want to get a raise at work’ and hit enter. “Let’s see what a discounted two-thousand-dollar computer with a bootleg copy of Word can do for me,” she joked.

The screen sat there loading for a minute before a pop-up appeared on the screen.

No Registered User Found. Would you like to register, Alex McCabe? (Yes, No)

“What the fuck?!” She said, scooting her chair away from the table. She looked at me.

I should have been scared, felt defensive, or been worried, but I was fascinated. “How…?”

“You should uninstall that,” she said. “It’s probably some kind of black market copy that steals your…. I don’t know.” She walked over and clicked No. The screen reverted to its usual, mostly normal format, except the red blinking message: TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT TO DO. “I am getting in the shower.”

As soon as I heard the bedroom door shut, I immediately began typing into the red blinking area on top of the MS word screen. ‘Tell me how you knew my girlfriend’s name.’

Loading again. Error message.

‘No registered user found. Would you like to register, Colin Davies? (Y/N)’

I clicked yes. Should I have been a little more concerned that it knew the difference between me and my girlfriend? Absolutely. But I was oddly transfixed by it, and for some reason, it didn’t seem odd at the time. Maybe I was just careless, and maybe it was something else that made me click Yes; I can’t be sure now. Hindsight is always 20/20, right?

‘THANK YOU, COLIN. YOU ARE NOW THE REGISTERED USER. PLEASE CAREFULLY READ THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND END USER LICENSING AGREEMENT, THEN TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT TO DO.’

Does anyone ever read the terms and conditions? I didn’t. I typed again, ‘I want to know how you knew our names.’

Loading.

Error: invalid query.

Okay, well, good parlor trick, Microsoft. Our Wi-Fi/Cable provider billed us on a joint account, so I figured it was pulling our names from the ISP. Great privacy policy, Comcast. I rolled my eyes and typed, ‘I want to see Alex get a raise at work tomorrow’ and hit enter.

Loading.

DID YOU READ THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS?

I clicked Yes, Ignoring the link.

Loading. Nothing happened.

“We’ll see.” I chuckled to myself and closed the lid. I figured I’d join Alex in the shower. And I did. As we were drying off, I told her how I’d registered the software in my own name, and that I told it to get her a raise.

She said, “You erased that creepy bootleg and just downloaded the regular one, right?”

“Of course.” The lie was on my lips before I had time to consider it. In hindsight, that too was odd, because Alex and I had a policy of absolute honesty. The kind of honesty that I wouldn’t recommend for most couples. She had been cheated on in the past, and I had a roommate that got into Heroin and stole from me, so when we first started dating, it was something we had easily agreed on: no lies. And usually, I kept to it. Usually, I had nothing to lie about. I didn’t even think about it as we curled up for bed that night.

Later on that night, I woke to a godawful racket that I can only compare to some sort of a ‘roided-out digital dog whistle. An alarm of some sort? I nudged Alex to see if she could hear it too. She had to. It was loud, abrasive, and probably waking the neighbors. Was it in the house? A neighbor’s alarm system? How the actual fuck was she sleeping through this? Wow. She rolled over and mumbled something incoherent. Sleeping like a baby. I got up, grabbing the .22 varmint rifle I kept next to the bed, and went to see what the noise was. In retrospect, on some level I knew that an intruder couldn’t make this sort of screeching, ear shattering noise, but I was half asleep and did the guy thing: grab gun, defend turf. Like a magnet, I was drawn into the small kitchen, and I could somehow feel that the sound was coming from that area, even though it permeated the air in a way that it was no louder or softer in one room than any other. My new laptop sat innocuously, closed, on the kitchen table, but it was emitting a sickly, orangeish red glow from the small space between the screen and the keyboard. The unnatural light formed an odd, glowing square around the laptop, except the side with the hinges that the screen rested on when you flipped it open.

Okay, I thought. I knew I should have considered that there would be something wrong with this thing. Too cheap. But could it really be making this noise? I half considered shooting the damn thing and going back to bed. I wish I had. Too much paperwork, though. Discharging a firearm in city ordinances would surely get you in deep shit, even if a rabid racoon was attacking you. Instead, God help me, I decided to open it up and see if there was some sort of alarm system or something in the computer causing the noise. Note to self, I thought, turn the damn thing all the way off before bed. In fact, remove the battery.

I sat down at the table, the unholy screeching still in my head, and flipped open the screen. The screeching immediately stopped, and the sickening glow went back to the usual, blue-light laptop screen that all of our retinas have come to know and love. I blinked a couple of times, to clear the sleep fuzz out of my eyes, and because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

I’m sorry to wake you, Colin.

I need you to read the terms and conditions.

(OK/Cancel)

I clicked “cancel,” and the error message returned, and the screeching began again, worse than before. It was actually causing my eyes to water, sort of how you’ll involuntarily cry if you get punched in the nose. I never knew that ears had the same connection with the tear ducts. Today I Learned, thought dryly as I clicked Yes.

I had no intentions of reading any terms or conditions at that hour, but I knew as I was slowly scrolling through them that I would file a complaint with Lenovo, Microsoft and any other company that had any software or hardware in that computer in the morning, because that is one obnoxious way to get someone to read an End User agreement. I slowly scrolled to the bottom and when I figured that the appropriate amount of time had passed that the computer would (think???) that I had actually read all of their legal garbage, I clicked ‘I Agree’ at the bottom of the pop-up window.

I had often thought to myself that one day, I would actually need to start reading things before signing/agreeing to them. If you pay attention to the news and tech articles, you’ll see that there are certain functions on our SMART tv’s, cell phones and computers that you are not required to allow or agree to, but that we all generally do, essentially allowing these devices to access all of our personal data. I had nothing to hide, and thought that maybe if someone wanted to steal my identity, they could pay my student loan balance while they were at it, and perhaps file last year’s taxes for me. But, like a good red-blooded American, I bought anti-virus software, carried a wallet that protected my bank and credit card info from devices that could remotely steal the info, and upgraded my cards to the ones with the chips in them when my bank asked me to. This time, though, I didn’t read it because I don’t like being told what to do. It’s possible that my stubbornness has caused me a lot of trouble, because the Terms and Conditions the stupid computer wanted me to read weren’t even all that long, compared to some of the other crap I’ve had to scroll through to access my software and apps, but I was tired and still had a headache from that stupid “Terms and Conditions Police” alarm the computer had blasted into my head. I looked at the screen, which was on Microsoft Word again. I shook my head, already forgetting about how I had (told??) my computer that I wanted my girlfriend to get a raise at work.

When you do things like this, little goofy, innocuous things, you tend to forget about it. Alex and I thought we were being clever, typing about her getting a raise into an oddly-worded field (TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT TO DO) that was obviously a help field. The text would have been ingeniously created by some Adderall-popping millennial with a three-day beard and a skinny-pants suit somewhere in Silicon Valley behind a desk, who had probably been paid an obscene salary to come up with some words that were more ‘user-centered’ than the word “Help.” That’s how all of these things work, isn’t it?

Not this one. Anyway, I went about my daily business, attending classes, working my side hustle (which is what I called my part-time office job to make it sound cool. It was my only hustle, and was boring as all hell) and using the computer as one might – I worked on my Masters thesis, sent emails, procrastinated on Reddit, Facebook and occasionally (I know, NERD) played WoW or browsed the crappy, free amateur adventures of YouPorn. Normally, I didn’t bother with Porn, because Alex was… well, I’ll say the kind of girl that didn’t require a huge hand-to-man relationship most of the time. She was an awesome girlfriend, or, at least, I thought she was, before all this. She had been coming home late a lot lately, and acting a little different. Stress, I assumed, and didn’t think twice about it. I certainly didn’t want to add to it. She was hoping to go from Assistant Department Manager to Assistant Store Manager, and she had taken on some extra responsibilities in order to do that.

One night, I sat at the computer, three beers deep, trying like hell to write some stupid paper for school. I can’t even remember what it was. I stared at the computer, tired and drawing a blank, and noticed the help message at the top corner of my screen blinking red: TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT TO DO. I don’t know why I did it. I missed Alex, hadn’t been hanging out with my buddies from school or work much, and I guess the computer was saying something that spoke to me I typed, I WANT TO SEE ALEX.

Go figure, no weird error messages this time. I went to delete my typing and go back to my research when an odd program popped up. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw. It was Alex, all right, and she was at work – but she was in the back room, I was guessing, bent over a table with her tits hanging out of her button-down shirt and her skirt hiked up around her waist. A man held her hands behind her back while he fucked her from behind. I knew this guy, it was Dan, the Store Manager. And he was fucking my girlfriend. Let me tell you, this shit put YouPorn to shame. Alex was hot, and if I wasn’t so freaked out by this, and if I wasn’t looking at my own girlfriend and her boss, I would have had a rager to take care of. If not for the audio, I could have suspected she was being raped, and sprang into action. Only, she wasn’t. People who were being raped didn’t usually tell their assailants to fuck them, and moan, and… Oh, God. I felt sick. I was in shock. There was no way that was Alex… except, hadn’t that been the outfit she left today wearing?

How the fuck did the computer do that? Maybe it was some kind of elaborate hoax. I did the only thing that my numbed brain could think of, and I called her. If I spoke to her, and she didn’t sound like she was letting some guy drill her like a porn star in the back room, maybe I would just set fire to the computer and be done with it. I called her cell phone number, and god damn it I heard her ring tone. Through the audio on that God damned video.

No, please, no. I heard her say “He’ll call back.” And with that, I knew she was cheating on me. For a sick, voyeuristic moment, I sat and watched this unfold. As they were switching positions, her on her knees, and he approaching her with his dick in his hand, I found the X at the top of the screen and closed it. Now, I had a lot on my mind. Alex, whom I was sure I would ask to marry me after grad school before that moment, was cheating on me. What’s more, somehow, my computer knew it, and had found a camera somewhere in the room and showed it to me. What was anyone hoping to accomplish with all this? What the fuck was up with this computer? What was wrong with this world?

I should have gone to Alex’s work and asked for her. I should have broken up with her on the spot, and beat the ever-loving shit out of ‘Dan,’ the man who was undoubtedly currently getting a blowjob from the mouth that kissed me every morning. Instead, I went back to the computer, and stared at the field where I had typed ‘I WANT TO SEE ALEX’, blinking red, with the message TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT TO DO. My voice cracked, I could hear it through the empty apartment. I said, through very un-manly tears that I was furiously trying to choke back, “Why?”

It wasn’t loud and it wasn’t a scream; more a perfect reflection of the confusion, hurt and anger I was currently feeling. How could she? How long had it been going on? Had she ever… before we…. My train of thought was interrupted as a dialogue box popped up on the screen of my computer that said, “SHE REALLY WANTED THAT RAISE, COLIN.” I picked the computer up and heaved it against the wall, expecting to be sweeping it into the trash in a drunken rage (I pounded the rest of my beer and opened two more very shortly after) along with my hopes and dreams of a future with Alex, but it bounced off the wall and fell harmlessly to the ground. Not a chip, scratch or crack anywhere on it. What the fuck? I let out a feral cry and charged the thing. I guess I tried to tackle it. I bashed it on the floor, the table, and punched at the screen. I was seeing red.

When all was said and done, I looked at my computer, which was now on the other side of the kitchen after having been punched, slammed, kicked and punted across the room into a wall, and it sat there, unharmed, the screen seemingly taunting me with its blinking red message, which I could see across the room: TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT TO DO. My drunk, angry brain had now reached an eerie state of calm as I began to accept one thing about this shitty situation: somehow, this computer was able to… do things. See things. Know things. Show me things. Possibly even make things happen.

What I should have been thinking of were bets, lottery numbers, riches, success and the like. I should have confirmed what I honestly already knew. All the late nights, her emotional distance, the extra few minutes in the mirror before work, the new underwear… It all added up now, I just didn’t want to see it those past few weeks. No, I was too angry to ask my bootleg copy of Microsoft Office to give me the key to success or make me rich. All I could think of was revenge, and I sat down before I lost my nerve, opened my seventh beer for the night, and considered all of the ways I could exact it. I finally decided on one, and slowly began to type. “I want Alex McCabe to kill her boss.” The little circle spun on the screen, loading.

I sat in the dark, drinking, and waiting.