Hacker's Diary

by Adam Smith

  When it finished downloading, I clicked the install button and waited patiently through the swift installation, there were few tiny forms to fill, you know how it is.

  When I installed, it reminded me of Adobe after effects, if you are not familiar with that, well it's one of the most robust programs in the field of video editing. I did not have much time before my next night shift. Fortunately enough, I had a day off on Friday and a day shift on Saturday. So, I decided I will close the program and lurk around their forum and videos. It took me about ten minutes to understand that this software and a mastery of it had a great potential for anyone who would be up to the task. It had absolutely everything for the image, code and physics processing. I was very impressed and pleasantly surprised there was a free version.

  And still, something bugged me inside. I Googled for "How much it would cost to market a video game” one of the results stated that it would cost $50K to market for an indie video game. Holly mother of god! Well, I still did not give up the very same moment, I'm sure there are cheaper ways to market an indie video game, of course, they wouldn't be as effective or as profitable, alas, it still could be a good start.

  Another thing that bothered me was how much time it would take to learn this thing? I looked at the video tutorials lengths at the beginner's section and made a swift calculation, it would take me a month of 3-4 hours per day, just to master the program, and that is in a good case. Oh, well, I thought it may be worth the cause, right? Wrong! I haven't thought how much time it would actually take to develop the game itself and then how much work and money it would take to invest before you get to see the money rolling in.

  The last thing I did before dumping the idea all together was when I Googled for "How to make a video game in a week?". The first result was Quora, which I passed and went straight to the second result that was about a software named BuildBox. The CEO of which was Trey Smith. When I saw the picture, I instantly recognized the guy from a newsletter I was signed on a long time ago about internet marketing. The software was premium, costs about $100 a month and their website claimed they've produced multiple successful apps. Well, the old saying about you need to have money to make money may be true after all.

  I got tired of thinking and resumed my reading of "Work, Consume, Die!" I had to know if he gets raped or not.

  Then the evening came in, I suddenly woke up from a nap which I did not plan to have, looked at the clock and it appeared to me that I had only ten minutes to get dressed and be ready to go to the pickup station. This is unacceptable, I can't allow myself to be late. I jumped out of the bed and started to dress up in a cool frenzy manner. Pants - checked, shirt - checked, jacket - checked, food - checked, book - checked, phone - checked, empty wallet and ID - checked. I forgot something, I looked around and of course! The employee pass, without that it would take half an hour just to try and get the pass to the Duty-Free. I grabbed and put the band, it was attached to my neck. One final look at the mirror and I'm out of the door. Ten minutes was apparently enough because I got to the station on time, as they came over a minute after I got there. I should put an alarm clock before the next shift, and every other shift I was going to be working. Lesson learned.

  Then, it was the usual routine, the security check, the corridor, the scan of the finger, the endless amount of clients. Smile, ticket, boarding pass, you wish to take it with you or keep in the country? Do you have a direct flight? Yes, of course mam, the discounts are calculated automatically. You wish to pay in dollars or in shekels? Well, that's not a problem, you can pay in Euro, as long as, it's not a credit card...

  Everything seemed to be fine, but I wasn't happy deep inside. I believe nobody was, but yet again, there was this dark skinned girl that always smiled at me and my palms started to sweat every time I spoke to her. Somebody at the presentation to the new employees mentioned they spent pretty decent amount of time and started low and advanced with the years, found love here and got married and even had been on a birth vacation, then came back and continued to work, all here at the firm.

  This kind of thoughts was ringing in my head, every time I looked at one of the female coworkers that I was attracted to and I felt some sort of sadness. Like if the life has its own plan for you and you can't really do anything about it. You just get sucked into the system and go with the flow, you learn to swim on the way.

  And yet, there was something beautiful about this kind of simplicity. No need for worries, you simply live with half-opened eyes and rely on the system that proved its success.

  One more interesting that I noticed it's that Brits were buying Vodka and Russians were buying whiskey, contrary to the common image of both. One time, I even said it out loud to one of the Brits, he was quite amused with the fact and it made me feel better.

  I made it home in the morning, after the night shift, you make it home early in the morning of the next day. I did brush my teeth this time and went to sleep, the dental treatment is darn expensive in this country.

  Chapter 3

  Friday! What a lovely day! I got a call from my parents, they were happy I found a job and asked how it was going so far. I said it was fine and I asked them about their business, the answer was similar. They have invited me for dinner, I cringed and was glad they couldn't see, I said that I work on Saturday and to be productive at work, I have to be well rested, so I prefer to stay at my place. There was silence for a second on the other side of the line and after that, they expressed their understanding.

  The day had begun and I felt kind of Okay, after all, my body got used to the crazy ever-changing schedule. I've put The Eye of a Tiger on full volume and went into the shower.

  Afterwards, I went to the local grocery store to grab a bag of rice and carton of milk. I also picked a local free newspaper, "Israel Today" there was an article about a huge exit of an Israeli startup and loads of political and sports news. When I got home, I found out I was out of toilet paper, time for a round two. When I got back the second time, I picked the Culinary book that I found several days ago and browsed through it swiftly, delighted by the idea of having enough money soon to try some of the recipes there. I carefully put it back in the closet. I did not have shelves for books, but I had a tiny closet that was good enough to store all of my limited amount of physical books.

  The room I was living in wasn't all too bad, it was close to the central street of Holon, to the bus station that had a straight line to Tel Aviv, there were several grocery stores around and I liked it because it was relatively cheap. Also, the owner is an old friendly fellow who had been working as a carpenter most of his life. Well, this old fellow had stories to tell and I liked him because if anything got broken he would fix it at no extra charge.

  Time to get back to brain work. I played the first, how to video on the Unity website and tried to follow along. It was a tutorial on building a simple game where you were a ball rolling around and collecting tiny twisting cubes. I was done by the end of the day with building my own version of this game. I felt happy when I rolled the ball and collected all of the cubes and the game declared "You Win!". There is nothing more satisfying as being able to create something that worked as you planned, even though, it was something that simple.

  I still thought about getting the law degree. Maybe, I will branch out into digital copyright law, because you know I would have a use of my knowledge of being a computer geek. I went to bed satisfied with my day.

  Then something interesting has happened, I saw a dream and remembered it when I woke up. It was something dark, I was at the firm doing my job and then forgot to close the cash box, and all the cash was in there for anyone to take, when I came back from a break, the cash was gone. I got yelling from the boss and then I woke up in a cold sweat. Note to me, double check that you do close the cash box.

  I went on my day shift excited, I wanted to share with someone my first success in video game building. However, it seemed nobody was interested in listening. So, on a break,
I went into the Electronics store in hopes to find the fellows who were discussing MU that day. To my regret, they weren't there. I went back to the dining room, took my launch box and put it in the microwave, waited for a minute and ate my launch. After the break was over, I strolled back to number six, my favorite cash box, the one I was occupying quite often during my work shifts.

  I thanked the guy for replacing me during the break and went on with the routine of the work. There were some concern with not being able to share my excitement, so I thought, what the heck, I will mention it to one of my customers. And there was a fine opportunity presented when a young English speaking fellow presumably Dutch pilot walked towards my cash box. Of course, I asked for his passport and general declaration of the flight he was attending. And I saw that his last name was some variation of Tudor.

  "Are you familiar with the British royal family Tudors?" He smiled and said "Yes, of course, I researched the topic and was familiar with their history, it appears their roots go back to Celts and my family might have some connection to them, however, it's most likely not the case." While we waited for an approval from a deputy manager, we had a small chat and he mentioned that Tudor, in fact, has something to do with being a ruler of the world, but he said it's far from possible in our century. I in my turn, stated that if you do want to be a ruler of the world today you should branch into politics or be a bank owner. He was a very serious looking fellow.

  And he stated that Jews, in fact, possess most of the banks in the world. Not sure about his Semitic attitude, but I did not care as we were in a very secure place, with plenty of people and loads, and I mean, loads of security cameras everywhere filming each step of every one of us. So, I said "It's not completely the case, there are plenty of American banks and Swiss that appear to be quite successful in that area too" "But aren't the Americans sharing the same culture as Jews?" The deputy came and I passed her the card, and started to scan the few products that he selected for himself to purchase.

  I continued while performing the mechanical actions "Well, Americans are consisting of wide diversity of cultures, there are Irish, Scottish, German and many other nations that were involved in its establishment" "I know that" he said, appearing to be slightly annoyed. I finished his bill and waited for the second permission for his discount. The conversation did not seem to go in the right direction, so I dropped the idea of mentioning my small victory, it appeared to be entirely irrelevant. When the card was cleared the second time, I charged the fellow and wished a great flight.

  Back home around 8 PM, I did the usual full pre-bedding routine and fell asleep. Luckily, I did not forget to close the cash box, not on this or any other day.

  I finished the Frankie's book and felt compelled to have something else to read. There is a bookstore at the airport, it's the most successful book branch in Israel called Steimatzky. I planned to go there on my next day, during the half-hour break.

  The Sunday shift was a day shift as well. I liked the day shifts the most, they are the longest and bring the most money. Also, it was a first day of the month, so it was only 9 days from getting my first salary, hurray!

  My father has sent me a Whatsapp message. He was in Argentina, he and my mother divorced when I was six years old. I do not have any brothers or sisters, however, my mother remarried a man who has a couple of grown-up children from his previous marriage. I was not in contact with them, we met only once or twice. My father, however, begged for digital attention from me, from time to time. We were in a good relationship, unlike, he and my mother, however, it's hard to call it friendship. I can't say I loved or hated him, but I knew that he had some obligation to fill parental responsibility towards me. He did not send any money to my mother ever during her period of my upbringing. He came to visit once, though. He wasn't rich or extraordinary in any way, I came to accept my childhood as it is and I won't say I have a reason to complain about it in any way. My mother did a tremendous work in bringing me up.

  I sent him a message telling him that I found a job and was going to get the first salary very soon. He congratulated me and asked how my situation on personal relationship front is was. I said, I'm working on that and added a smiling emoji. Right after that, I've sent a message saying that I have to prepare for work. I did not want another Spanish Inquisition. He wished me a good day and I have put the phone aside, I got out of bed and took a glance at the watch. There was one hour before work. I went to the table with my laptop and decided I will spend the next thirty minutes subscribing to practical YouTube channels about game development. I can't recall how exactly but I've stumbled upon some ordinary gamer’s channel.

  There were plenty of interesting videos but one of them mentioned a topic never known to me before. The video was titled something along the lines like "Deep Web browsing day no.” I was interested in what is, in fact, the Deep Web. I hadn't enough time to watch the video, so I did a swift search on Google and read the Wiki article about that. It is, in fact, a very interesting topic, of which I wasn't aware prior to an encounter with that video.

  I learned from that article that, in fact, there is more to the Internet than the ordinary user knows. There are websites that anyone can access and they are known to most, they are registered with the search engines and also known as the clear web that is the tip of the metaphorical iceberg which in this example was the internet. The rest of this is the Deep Web. It's like 90% of the ever growing internet. These are the sites that belong to servers and at most aren't registered with search engines like Google.

  Most of their pages are also protected by passwords. And there is also a peculiar detail about the Deep Web that is called the Dark Web. It is a slight amount of sites that can be accessed through the encrypted network, and are hosted on a secret, private servers. Some of the sites on the dark web contain illegal services. That was very intriguing, I never knew about such a state of things and that got me beyond excited. I did not have much time to research further, so I jotted on a notepad the mysterious words "Dark Web" and got myself ready to work.

  The ride was more nauseous than ever, due to the driver being new and making a lot of tiny stops on the way.

  When we got to the airport, I took a break for a minute, to breathe some fresh air, as there are no windows or any sources of air within the building.

  I wasn't late, so I proceeded in a low pace, got onto the moving staircase and waited patiently while it took me up. Surprisingly, there were plenty of people planning to have a flight today. I walked towards the security checkpoint for employees. While I was waiting in line to get checked, I looked around without any interest because I was already familiar with the scene and just wanted to gaze at something else than coworkers back. The place had some pre-Duty-Free stores. There were some jewelry stores belonging to Stern, Pizza Hut, Hoodies, Steimatzky, Musical Albums store and some other convince services.

  The line was going really slow, someone had a problem with their pass. The same guy, every damn time. When they finally approved him, we got moving.

  The watch was showing 9:50 AM, it means 10 minutes before the official starting time of the shift. I had to hurry up to scan my finger and get to the cash box on time. It's always crowded like a sardine at this time of the day.

  When I made it there, there was no cashier I was supporting any contact with. So, I simply scanned my finger, put my bag on the shelf and went to take over cash box number six. Everything went as usual, plenty of customers everyone buying what they want and plenty of it, fooled by the artificial discounts.

  I was doing fine but the fact was that I was lonelier than a yogi who found himself in mid of Berlin at Oktoberfest. Well, everything has its price, and that may sound sad, but me too. Then, I made it through the day to the break. When I was locking my cash box and preparing it for the one who was going to replace me, something happened to the system. The screen has blinked and I saw the window of a familiar command line. If you're not familiar with windows, well, it allows yo
u to do many things in Windows, usually, super users make a lot of things with it. You get plenty of information about the system when you make yourself familiar with it. Then, I recognized the icons and layout of windows XP.

  The cash box was running in Windows XP. Quiet outdated for 2017 and not well managed for a firm that makes $400MM a year. I wanted to see what the deputy manager had to say, so I played a fool and lit up the red light. When she came, I bluntly asked her "What happened?" she said without any concern or deep explanation "The computer reboots and it goes back to normal, don't mind. Have you been at the break?" "No, I was just preparing to go and this happened." "Don't mind it, it's fine. Go eat your lunch." "Thanks" I said and walked out to the dining room.

  I warmed my lunch, as usual, and was really questioning the security of this cash boxes. There might be a way, I thought to myself. But quickly dismissed the idea, because anything in that matter would cost many years in prison if you get caught. And that my friend is a ruined life. Besides, there are cameras everywhere and... no, no point to continue, it's just their problem, and if something happens, it won't be because of me.

  The other day, I went to Ifat's office and asked about if there is any available position at the IT department of the firm. She said that I should keep my eyes open and apply through the ad that would be published at the employee dining room, if there would be a need. In other words, it was a polite way to say "Fuck off, we are full".

  After the lunch, I came back to my cash box, the system was up and running. I made up my mind and decided not to give it too much attention. You will forget about it in a day or two, Adi, keep working and keep doing what has the lowest amount of risk. Lowest possibility to get you fucked. The rest of the day went relatively easy and I could say I wasn't as squeezed out when I got home as I would be at days I would do a night shift.