Lt. Brian Bradshaw, search and rescue volunteer, altar boy, and camp counsellor, was from Washington state, USA.
I will see his home state in less than an hour when I go down to the ocean. My vantage point where I can see Washington is a 5-minute walk away from my home.
Bless you, Lt. Bradshaw, for a moral and courageous life, and for your service.
Yes.
Exactly.
This reminded me of someone.
Since I didn’t see any snow in Victoria, Canada this year (unlike last year), let’s go today to…
… Baghdad.
So why do I like her?
Maybe it’s because children do and they see a side in her that speaks to me.
No, not the genius superagents who are alleged to have poisioned Alexander Litvinenko, outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, using tens of millions of dollars of radioactive isotope polonium-210 that left a trail from one end of Europe to the other.
Because, if you want to assassinate someone you should:
- spend $50-100 million just on the weapon because bullets are just so passé
- choose a weapon that can be easily tracked over buildings, cities, and oceans… even to specific apartments and couches in Germany for ______ sakes
- select something that’s dangerous for you too because, well, who doesn’t like a bit of radiation poisoning?
No, if that was truly an assassination attempt, and I have my doubts (I believe it could have been nuclear material smuggling gone wrong and that Litvinenko could have been one of the smugglers and killed himself by accident), these agents are far too smart for a mere commoner like myself to comprehend.
The greatest spy ever is undoubtedly former WestJet vice-president Mark Hill.
WestJet is Canada’s second largest airline and Mark Hill decided to run a corporate spying operation on our largest, Air Canada.
Essentially, he used a confidential Air Canada employee password to snoop around their website and steal flight schedules and private data so he could plan WestJet’s routes to maximize their profits and hurt Air Canada.
This wasn’t the most brilliant part, however. That came later when he boarded an Air Canada jet wearing a WestJet denim shirt and a leather jacket with a large WestJet logo on the back.
He sat down beside this nice man who said he works in, “…international corporate intelligence,” and who introduced himself as an ex-CSIS agent (CSIS is the Canadian Security Intelligence Service — our spies responsible for foreign intelligence gathering).
This “ex-CSIS agent” (really a former Royal Canadian Mounted Police staff sergeant and private detective for Air Canada) was reading a book, “The Art of Deception,” by Kevin Mitnick. He easily struck up a conversation because apparently Mark Hill was very cocky and was making fun of Air Canada while sitting on their airplane wearing a WestJet logo and he liked to talk.
The private eye proceded to watch him pull out sheets of paper from a manila envelope and enter confidential Air Canada data into his laptop.
So let me get this straight. You’re running a spying operation yourself, you’re sitting on your target’s property making fun of them while wearing your company’s colours, a man who introduces himself as an ex-spy who currently works in corporate espionage sits down beside you reading a book about about deception and you decide to open up to him and let him watch you enter private Air Canada data into your computer… on an Air Canada plane?
And for that, Mark Hill, I dub you the world’s greatest spy.
[Source: The Gumshoe and his target at 30,000 feet by Brent Jang]
UPDATE: From the University of Victoria Alumni 2003 Legacy Awards page:
WestJet Airlines vice-president and co-founder Mark Hill, BA ‘85, accepts his Distinguished Alumni Award. Mark says his studies of military history and strategy at UVic helped him to develop WestJet’s highly successful business plan.
I don’t have a lot to say right now except my prayers and thoughts are with you, your brother, and all of your family during this time. I will be thinking about you every day.
* James is Jacqui’s younger brother.
UPDATE: Glad it’s not as serious as originally feared. Recover fast!
Jacqui on web cam with cordless phone and landline too
UPDATE 3:10 AM: Jacqui’s asking me why I say she’s a dork.
Gee, why does this always happen?
It began the usual way: I pointed out how wrong she was.
So I sent off a complaint to one of Canada’s largest and most successful retailers, a division of a larger and even more well known Canadian retailer, who shall remain nameless at this point, they responded essentially with, “Golly gee, you’re right, we’ll improve our training and implementation; thanks for bringing this to our attention!” and later that day with, “No, you’re wrong on a technicality because that’s another of our companies,” and later after I eviscerated their point with a funny and cordial email full of facts from their own investor relations department, they came back essentially with, “Hey, no really, you’re right!”
So they want from, “You’re right,” to, “You’re wrong,” and back to, “You’re right!”
Which, as far as I’m concerned, is how these things should end.
So they’ll change their policy across all their business units, I predict, and honour their public commitments (time will tell – I hope I don’t have to launch a great media and blogging campaign right now… you know, domain names are just so darn cheap). And they gave me the umbrella for free.
This is cool.
But then I got this email from the client services specialist I was working with for the last couple days:
Date: September 22, 2006
Subject: Re: In the Sake of Complete Accuracy…
Good Morning Chris:
Well, now you know your ‘representative’ here at [her company] can be a bit cheeky! Sorry, but couldn’t resist it …..I could tell from the content of your emails that you probably have a very sharp sense of humour and would take my quip as it was intended (teasing).
I shall be discussing ‘the’ issue with my superiors today though because I believe that all of our stores across Canada should have a ‘refresher’ on the policy and how to follow it properly for our customers.
You’ve started something Chris and now I’m going to keep you posted!
Thank you and have a great weekend!
Regards
Jackie
(last name and title withheld for privacy… can provide proof in the form of original email to assorted girlfriends upon request!)
Next thing she’s going to tell me that I’m 6′2″ tall and stunningly attractive… of couse, she’s right about half of that.
Really, what is it about women named Jaci?
Editor’s note: Watch for post “I Think Jackie Likes Me Part 2″
Editor’s note: This post was actually published on Sunday September 24th, but I adjusted the date to September 21st to “bump” it behind the first part.
- The reality is the company involved is an excellent one, very successful, and they broke no law… merely failed to implement one of their own policies designed to be industry leaders in price fairness to consumers.
- I since determined it’s also likely that by the letter of their policy they were correct and I was wrong… alas, since they didn’t have any of the signs up they were supposed to have and their retail management team hadn’t yet been trained on it, they mishandled it to the point where I received a free umbrella. My fourth umbrella from the same company (the other three I paid for) because, yes, I lose them.
- Hey, I’m not perfect.
- I posted the previous post (above) to tease my silly – yet oh-so-amazing in depth, humour, passion, and love – girlfriend, Jacqui.
- The reality is that Jackie was replying to a “tongue-in-cheek” email I sent her using a truly bad pun… and so what she said made total sense. Both in her initial response time, the dilligence she showed in tracking down answers from her management team when presented with new information (which demonstrates her intelligence), and in her warm communication she is a top-notch customer service agent.
- I say this from experience both as a customer and in the sales and customer service business.
- The other reality is that Jackie doesn’t “like” me… lol… in that sense.
- Truthfully, I couldn’t even get Jacqui to be jealous at her faux competition: She read the email and said, “I like her.” I guess her real personality really does shine through her writing.
- No matter what the company in question does, I won’t entertain myself with games like registering a domain name… ’twas in jest. The fact is as you’ll see by reading the right hand column →
I have far better things to do with the next three months.
- Yes, I said I’d recommend that two different agencies review the situation (i.e. I’d write a letter) and will if the company doesn’t enhance their signage and training in this area across the country in each of their retail units… but my distinct impression is that once the shortcoming was pointed out to them, they are more interested in fixing it than I am.
- So all is well that ends well… the company has an opportunity to make good on its initial commitment for the reasons which caused them to embrace it in the first place… I got to be totally
cheap thrifty (I like this)… to tease my love(r)… and a cheeky customer service agent to boot.
- The cheeky customer service agent can hardly complain when she emailed me to tell me how cheeky she is and that she likes teasing.
What’s not to love about that?
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