I'm not in jail, and I won't be in jail. Besides, I got bail money.
The guy said his project had been vandalized (but did not know how it had been vandalized). He said that my post was directly responsible for the vandalism and that the Harris County Sheriff would be involved. He was very non-specific about what, if anything, had occurred, but by golly, it was just all my fault.
The Sheriff's Dept has had no calls for service at the project address in the past several days, so either the vandalism did not happen or did not warrant a criminal complaint. I suppose he can always go back and call them, but my money is on it never happened in the first place.
He was explicit in saying he found the thread via Google and that there was so much negative information about him on the internet that he was worried about the thread damaging his reputation and his business. (The thread has since been removed at my request).
Bottom line is this guy tried to shake me down because negative things got said about him on the internet. I was the only one with my real name, so he saw an easy target for a shake down. His mission was to get me in trouble at work and threaten my job because he pissed of someone else and they said something about it. He freely admitted he only wanted to talk to my superiors about it.
I'm not in trouble, and my job is in not in danger (sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Speer). In fact, I just got the best performance evaluation of my career.
Like I said before, though, I was encouraged to re-evaluate the appearance associated with timestamps on my posts. If I don't post during the day, I can't be accused of acting as an agent of the City when someone gets all butthurt.
When I spoke to him yesterday, he told me to call two specific people at GHBA who would say all kinds of nice things about him.
I called one of them today.
He didn't have much of anything to say one way or the other, but he was surprised to hear about how the guy tried to shake me down over some stupid internet crap.
Even if something DID happen, even if someone DID pour wolf urine on the slab, as I had joked, I am not responsible for the actions of someone else because I cannot force someone to act out something they read on the internet (but it sure would keep away deer and other unwanted wildlife).
I'm glad he has nothing better to do with his time than to hunt down people from the internet and tattle on them like a 5 year old. While he's doing that, I'll be at work making Houston a better place to live.
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DISCLAIMER: This post does not reflect the views or opinions of my employer or anyone else. In fact, it might not even reflect my own views or opinions. This is the internet, and we all know you shouldn't believe everything you see on the internet. Furthermore, this is TexAgs, where most things are not taken seriously. If you think this post is serious, it may or may not be, and it's not my fault if you are wrong. If you aren't sure, ask.
[This message has been edited by Ryan the Temp (edited 6/25/2010 4:19p).]