forging documents

[Thomas Pain]

so I'm trying to send a fax with my roommate's signature on it.  He's in jail, so he can't sign for stuff so easily.

So, you'd think that this would be possible

I have a pdf file, I filled it out, and now I need to put his signature on there.

I don't have acrobat

no problem, I'll just convert it to tiff or png or some such, throw his sig on there in a graphics program, and voila.

no dice.

I found a few freeware programs that can convert pdfs to tiffs, but they have the downside of not actually working, and/or producing a file that is really very very very low resolution

open office can edit pdfs, which is nice, but when I open this pdf, open office is using a font size that is too big, and I have no idea how to adjust that

so what I finally did is went out and bought a scanner.

so I print the document, then scan it back in and add his signature

now I am trying to figure out how to get my web based fax service to fax the damn thing without it being the size of a postage stamp on the page.... okay looks like my file needs to be in tiff format, not bmp, if I want the fax service to not shrink it to a postage stamp... 

I'm sending myself faxes to test... 

will I be able to put together a multi-page tiff?  Who knows.

I hate to use gimp...  gimp is an example of why geeks should not design user interfaces. 

[Thomas Pain]

I wonder if the people receiving these documents will be suspicious because each signature is going to be identical to the next, right down to the last pixel...   hmmm... nahh... I'm sending it to a government agency... it won't be a problem.

[AugustWest]

Dude, it's a real bad idea to confess to crimes on the internet.

[Thomas Pain]

well it depends on the crime
and that depends on intent

wow... this cover page from my fax service says FAX in bold 64 point type.  that hardly seems necessary

so it looks like GIMP can import multi-page tiffs, with each page going in a new layer, but it can't save multi-page tiffs.  that's just dumb.

Christ.  OO can't handle muti page tiffs either --- but is possible they will have it do that for version 3.3...  they is ware of it and is working on it apparently

oh wait, my fax service will let me upload multiple pages at once and it will stuff 'em all into the same fax.  awesome

[AugustWest]

Whatever you say, Paper Trail Jones.

[Thomas Pain]

I ain't afraid a no wikipedia brown

I once had like a 45 minute interview with a secret service detective and a local cop.  I know you shouldn't ever talk to the cops, but I just wanted to see what their tactics were.  it was hilarious, the dude was all trying to profile me psychologically to see if I was crazy or just an asshole.  he's all like, do you own any guns.  And I'm like, yeah a friend a mine she gave me this rifle I don't know much about it though it's a 22 I don't know if it's semi automatic or whatever you call it when you hold the trigger down and the bullets keep coming out what do you call that?  I think she said it does that.  But I've never tried it out before.  And the dude is like "does it have a scope?"
and then at the end of the interview he's like "I hope the next time I see you it's with an arrest warrant."  And then he walks off and the local detective is kinda like bemused by the whole thing and he's like "that's a nice cat you have" in reference to my cat.  Everyone likes my cat.


 

[Thomas Pain]

so last 3 topics in science and nature have been started by me

I hope I'm not creating too many topics turning this into my personal blog as some of you may have observed I can be quite loquacious

there's still a post by bobby isoceles somewhere that was TLDR that I been meaning to get back to but in the mean time I do like to blabber about my own simple travails.

so anyway

department of homeland security is now in possession of my brilliant forgeries, delivered via fax.

if they can figure that out and track me down more power to them but I ain't holding my breath they are the most disorganized son a bitches you ever did see

my roommate gets arrested, right, in some state, and so I go to the ICE web site, (immigrations and customs enforcement, one of the largest divisions of homeland security, in charge of all sorts a stuff... ) it lists the offices.. there's a dozen or so offices in charge of different regions.. so I call the regional office... and they're like, oh, you have to call the state office in the state he's in, and they give me the number... and I'm wondering... they couldn't just put that on the web site?

and so I call the state office, and they are like, oh, you have to call the other state office... and they give me the number.... the state is shared by two offices.. north side of the state, the north office, south side, south office..

so to get this far was 20 phone calls to various places, mostly the same places, because at home land security, they don't answer the phone often, if ever, they prefer voice mail, and they don't returns calls that much either...

so I call the other state office... but.. it's a wrong number...

I call back to the first state office I called, but now they're not answering the phone again...

another 20 phone calls later finds me finally politely suggesting to the ICE congressional liaison office in DC that couldn't someone look up the number for me so I don't have to go through my congressman?  and after a couple minutes of her checking I was pleasantly surprised when she found it.  it turns out that someone had transposed a 0 into an 8 on their phone list. And then distributed that list to every homeland security office everywhere.  doh!  hey, it happens to the best of us.

on a hilarious aside, before I found the ICE congressional office, I tried calling their emergency number.. the number you use for reporting emergencies, or suspicions of criminal activity.. smuggling, illegal aliening, etc...  and... the number didn't work.. It connected, but it connected to a computer that was obviously confused... it spat out a series of errors ending with something about a mailbox not being subscribed, and then it hung up. 

I was like... oh... these are the people who are protecting us from terrorists?

so a few phone calls later, I thought, what the hell, I'll try that emergency number again, and lo 'n behold, the damn thing connected me, to a person no less!

so she was very nice, she noted with interest my report about the emergency number not working.  She explained that they had just upgraded the computer for the emergency number, so it might still have some kinks in it.  She assured me she would forward that information on.  As to my request for the phone number for the state office that was detaining my friend, she wasn't able to help (she had the same wrong number listed) although she was sympathetic...  "well yeah" she said "I can imagine if someone gets arrested and their family doesn't know where they are and can't find them"  I was like "yep, that's exactly what I'm thinking."

It's like, you expect this kind of stuff if you're in China, right... but here in the U.S.?

Basically, before I tried to call Homeland Security, I was pro-gun control in a big way.  Now I understand what those gun nuts are talking about.  With an out of control bureaucracy like this, I can see the need possibly arising for the general public to own guns.  In Europe, where there is very stringent gun control, there are a lot better range of checks and balances in place against the power of the government.  Stuff like education, for example... there are a lot less complete morons who vote.  We don't have such luxuries here in the U.S.... which makes gun ownership by the general population of morons all the more scary and translates all the more into the tragic deaths of tens of thousands of children by gun violence each year, yet... at the same time... this population of morons also in a way kinda makes gun ownership perhaps the only defense of last resort that could possibly somehow curb government abuses, even if only via rhetoric?  (Let's face it, OK city had more rhetorical effect than actual impact on anything.)  I mean think about it... it's this population of moron gun owners who A) vote  (so that ain't gonna help matters any)  and B) it is this population upon which the government must draw to fill it's ranks.  (that explains a lot, don't it?)

anyway, long story short, I finally found my needle in a haystack; I finally got through to the other state (federal) office that was detaining my friend.  Well I got through to their voice mail, anyway.  So I left a message with my number, spelled his name, explained I was calling to confirm he's being held and to know his bond amount, if any...

and I was surprised when a few hours later, they actually called me back!  Of the many messages I had left, this was the only one where they called me back.

Unfortunately I was out, so the dude leaves this hilarious message on my answering machine.  his tone of voice was hilarious, totally lackadasical.. he's like, hey, yeah I looked up the name you gave me, and we don't have him, you'll need to call the other state office they probably have him instead.  If you would have answered, I would have tried to help you track him down and find where he's at, but you didn't answer the phone, he says, 'but go ahead and call the other state office and they'll help you he finishes, not realizing of course that he's now kind of sending me in a paradoxal loop, and this being the feds, it's quite possibly a recursive loop too... sounds like one of those crazy star trek episodes where reality gets all warped and we find this alternate reality where Jean Luc is a 13 yr old girl, only I guess, a more apt metaphor for an alternate reality in a TV show about homeland security would be one where they know what the fyck they're doing and they don't spend vast sums of resources on getting nothing done at all and they don't disappear the people they arrest into a vast black hole of bureaucracy.

So these are the people I'm supposed to be worried about?

Not really. 

As that Hatian guy showed us last week, worst case scenario is they're shipping me off to Guantanamo, all I have to do is kick open the wrong door at the airport and then they ground all airline traffic for the next month while they go through their procedures to 're-secure' all the airports, as if any of this is secure in the first place.

COME ON HOMELAND SECURATAY<< BRING IT YOU BITCH#S , BRING IT!

[KeithHernandez]

I like the cut of your j-i-b.

[Arachno-capitalist]

Dude, it's a real bad idea to confess to crimes on the internet.

[Bobby Isosceles]

I put a document on a forge once, but by the time I could hit the hammer to an anvil, the paper had burned.

Also, gary is a cute cat. The hell, though, does he use pine litter?