14 - Secrecy

So Haley basically told me, "Hey, thanks for never writing on your blog but letting people check it daily and find nothing there.  It's great!"  Well, she didn't actually say that, but she might as well.  My bad, really.

So in the realm I work in, we have "Secret" stuff.  Computers, laptops, printers, USB drives (thumb drives as I think everyone calls them, but that could just be my realm), binders, papers, even Internet and email.  Something is deemed Secret if it contains or is used to contain any information that, if slipped into the wrong hands, could potentially compromise our mission.  For example, if wanted find out where I was flying tonight, I would log onto a Secret computer, open the Secret internet, use Secret email to ask someone about it, print any info I needed with a Secret printer onto Secret paper and save anything onto a Secret thumb drive.  Might sound very Cloak & Daggar, but it's mostly just annoying.

On a flight a few weeks ago, one of our pilots had his map (printed on Secret paper because it's very secret) get sucked out the window while flying.  Oops.  It created a big stir because the map, as you could imagine, had some Secret stuff on it.  A decree was sent down to have all pilots create a Secret map folder, rather than have maps printed on loose paper.  Anything that is Secret has to have a small Secret sticker put on it, so they put out a stack of Secret stickers for us.  I took my map book and covered the entire cover of book with Secret stickers.  It got a few laughs when people saw 25 stickers on my book.  I then grabbed the box of salt next to our popcorn machine (yes, we have a popcorn machine.  like one you'd see in a movie theater) and put a Secret sticker on that.

Fast forward a few more days.

One of the Secret thumb drives went missing.  For two days, we tore our offices apart looking for the stupid thing.  It had A LOT of sensitive info on it and would have been a big, humongous pain in the ass for many levels above us to change all the info on it.  Even though it probably dropped in the trash and would never make it into the hands of the enemy, not to mention be able to be used effectively by said enemy, you still had to assume the worse and change everything.  Everyone was real uptight for those two days looking for the thumb drive.  Eventually everyone was sat down and scolded about lack of discipline with sensitive material and this and that and while we're on the subject, whomever put the Secret sticker on the popcorn salt, well, that's not funny either.  I had to stare at the ground to keep from laughing as the 4-5 guys who saw me do it turned and looked at me with knowing smiles on their face.  Oops.  Bad timing, I guess.

Anyway, the thumb drive was eventually found in the laundry, nobody got in trouble, especially me, and we're all a little more disciplined with Secret stuff, especially me.  I'm not quite sure this story makes much sense at all, perhaps it was a you-had-to-be-there instance.  But it was a bit out of the ordinary for our monotonous life.

Rockies in 6.  And if you didn't know it, possibly the best weekend of college football this year.  If you're stuck in the desert and live for nothing else but good weekends of football, you might be very excited for this one.