Good at Mathematics, was doing well, worked hard, made it to a University teaching position. Then computers hit the scene. His lifes work was gone, he had been replaced by a machine.
While many people were liberated by electronic calculators, I remember the first Wang I saw, about 1970, an adding machine, with LEDs like neon tubes, I think it cost $3400, It did just what the mechanical one's that cost $200 did.
The IBM Selectric with the type ball head was the hottest thing going for writers. The ball could be changed for other languages, or scientific notation. Some documents had to go through three times, and perfect, for Whiteout had not been invented.
Ted had a plan, undone, he failed to adapt to change, I was working IBM punchcard then. He was a master of process, so was my IBM. It filled a room, and was mechanical. Punch cards had been around for over fifty years, I think the one that got him was tape, a room full of trays of cards replaced by one reel.
He had the math, but not the mechanical, which was the model for the electronic, so he developed a hatred of that he could not understand. I think there was something else, that he had plans for, and she might have hopped a jet out of his life. He did hate tranportation, mostly airlines.
I think he became paranoid, at every step machines had ruined his life, he had positioned himself well to rise, a decade before he would have, we were not out to get him, we were out to get his whole class.
The world was a set piece then, change was small and generational. Get through school, learn one thing well, be employed for life.
I started in IT as a mechanic, it paid better then cars, and was cleaner. We had our differances. I was given machines, and manuals, I demanded exploded diagrams, and when they found me with the machines, covers removed, going through them, they freaked. I had been hired to fix them, but they were not broken. I pointed out that books and prints are not machines, and I had to see how they functioned to troubleshoot them, and they were in pieces, so I would put them back together. They got over it.
I was hired by one company, and was learning enough to be an IBM Tech. I drove my industry. Ted had it run away, and she ran away, and the future ran away, and he flipped.
We made him obsolete. I became bored with tube circuts. Transistors were coming along, but it was still replace a tube, or replace a board. All programing was hard wired.
If I brought you all in for torture, then questioning, then more torture, and more questioning, I do not think I would find a single person who has sent a letter bomb. That aside, I do like to gather information, so maybe.
He sent bombs to Universities, airlines, and I think some Tech companies. He killed and maimed people he did not know, for fourteen years. An aspie would become bored. Ted did nothing else, single point, unable to adapt even as a nutcase. Our obsessions do not last.
He was not creative, from the second bomb they knew it was the same person. Aspies cannot help but be creative. When he was caught, all of his bomb making supplies were there, but there was no mention of tons of books. Aspies are book junkies. He did not own a computer. We have children here better than me.
He did not out grow it, which aspies do in their early fourties, delayed development, but they get there. Ted stayed the same till the last. Aspies reinvent themselves, or forget who they were, or something. Where did I leave my identity, I know I left it around here somewhere?
The quality of his bombs was low, his means were crude, no I am not going to tell how. There are thousands of ways, he came up with one, and stuck to it. Stick to it ness is not an aspie trait. Maybe for a month, maybe off and on for a school year, but fourteen years, no way.
As for serial killers, since when do aspies leave the house, seek relationships with strangers, con manipulate, using herd instinct, social skills, their ability to blend in, or take a dominate relationship position, and willfully dive in to extreme emotional interaction?
Aspies might make it as far as a petting zoo. On a slow weekday, when the weather was good.
I am afraid the lot of you are criminally naive.
27 Feb 2007, 9:07 pm
