[Email from elevensdad to eleven]

Are you going to kiss your new boyfriend with that mouth? Sorry, El, I know it's your online personality. Guys only like girls with trucker's mouth when they are having sex. Fuck! Did I just type that to my daughter?

I think you get my point.

Miss you, love dad.

[Reply email from eleven to elevensdad]

Sorry dad :( you are right. I will tone it down, it doesn't feel right typing that anyway.

BTW, I still love your nick, makes me warm and fuzzy when I get an email from you.

Love, Eleven.

XXXXX

Here I sit thanking the internet that you can't see my face. Feeling very sheepish this morning. My dad sent me an email, I was ashamed after reading it.

On a lighter note, even though my dad knows his way around the internet (surprised the hell out of me) I won't let anyone send me email unless it's GPG encrypted. I walked him through the setup. It's not hard to find my public key, but I think I scared away a lot of people with my blogs :)

Max had to leave after seeing me settled into my temporary "apartment.". I quote that, because it's really a Faraday cage with a lot of high tech equipment installed in a basement somewhere. I know where that "somewhere" is, I'm just not telling the internet.

If you are thinking about trying to hack where I live/work think again. Also think: tarpit/honeypot , but with dynamically shifted wide scaling, and a little DIND and DOOD Docker spinups. Using a combination of Openstack, Kubernetes, and of course Ansible. I also have my custom security program Lachesis Muta. If your computer is smoking after trying to hack me… well, that's probably the reason. Wiki the snake if you want to know why I called it that.

Anyway, I'm a nightowl, so I stay up late and sleep late. I can get away with that while working, because my employers don't need to keep hourly tabs on me, just that I have deliverables by the end of each week. Apparently my code gets sent to some other coder who heavily optimizes it. They only get chunks of it, so they can't see the whole program at once. My coding skills are more in the fast category. I get something working and let the hardware take care of speed issues. I'm not offended that they pass it on, they pay for it, they own it.

I only expect to be here for the month before moving back home. I guess I could have worked from home but this was a chance to live in a big city for a bit.

I didn't know that my life would change during a bus ride.

I've taken that same bus for the entire route every morning. Still no luck in finding my soulmate. It doesn't even feel like he's in the same city anymore. It did for the first few days, but then it was gone.

I'm a very logical person, obviously, and I know how that sounds, but I could literally feel his presence. But it's gone now. I'm starting to think I was just infatuated, and a little hyper at being in a new place with a lot of people.

Soulmate. I'm still searching for you.

Eleven loves you.

XXXXX

[Madmax's blog]

I have a girlfriend who knows her way around technology, she helped set up this blog for me. The only reason I even wanted one was because everyone was doing it.

I also met someone, thought I would document the relationship. No. I'm not going to tell him about it… at least not until we get together. This blog may be a deal breaker. I don't know how guys feel about having some of their private life out on the internet. Probably the way most girls feel.

Anyway, his name is Lucas. I mean, I knew that already, we were in a lot of the same classes in Hawkins Middle (it's a town where nothing ever happens. And I mean NOTHING). He was always hanging out with his nerdy friends (they called themselves The Party, can you believe that?) I never got a chance to meet him officially (nobody ever introduced us) so I never got to know him. But I wanted to. I daydreamed (and yes, nightdreamed, read into that what you will) about him a lot.

But today I officially met him.

I needed a new keyboard that could stand up to my heavy typing, I kill a lot of keyboards.

So, I walk into the local Radio Shack, and he's actually the manager there! He just happened to be out on the floor, and asked if he could help.

He smiled at me and pointed his finger, "You are Madmax."

I scrunched my shoulders a little and I think I gushed a lot. I couldn't stop smiling at him.

"What do you need Madmax?" He gave me a smile that made my knees all watery… and if I wanted to blog like my friend Eleven, I'd say my nether regions too. But I won't 'cause she told me she was going to stop her potty mouth.

I let him know I totaled another keyboard.

"Do you touch type?"

I told him I could type.

"But do you touch type , there's a difference."

This was news to me, but he explained. "Anybody can hunt and peck, or even develop their own style and be pretty quick at it. But formal typing, knowing the home row, that stuff, is the way it used to be taught. And touch typing adds the element of not needing to see the keyboard, or the screen."

I asked him how you type without looking at those two.

"Touch typing. Seriously, I'm not being condescending."

So, I guess I can type the standard way, but I need to look at the screen, not so much the keyboard. I asked if it made a difference. He told me the tactile feedback from keyboards wasn't very good with membrane keyboards, but you could be very fast on them. But a keyboard with a mechanical switch could be fast and give you that feedback you need. But the keyboards were more expensive.

They could be REALLY expensive. I ended up with a K70 LUX Corsair model. I'm typing on that now. Lucas said it was using the Cherry-MX blue switches. Whatever the hell that means.

I like the feel of it, I think it might actually take me awhile to kill this keyboard.

Oh! Forgot the most important part.

He asked me out for coffee after the store closes.

! :)

XXXXX

[Email from Ranger to Paladin]

Mike! I finally got to meet Madmax! She was not the bitch everyone makes her out to be. She's cute close up… and her hair! I'm in love Mike. Seriously, you know Dustin and I had a crush on her for ages. Well He's got Suzie now, so we are the last two eligible bachelors left over from the Party.

[Reply email from Paladin to Ranger]

:) As soon as I find the girl from the bus we can double date. Glad you have the last piece of your life puzzle!

XXXXX

I'm having a hard time concentrating on work. I NEED to concentrate because I just signed an NDA for some assembly optimizing work from a… oh, I can't even tell you that.

They literally sent me 11 lines of assembly. It's not poorly written or anything, but probably cranked out by some kind of IDE or commercial assembler. I'll need to profile it, find out where the slow down is (nanoseconds, but it all counts) and make it smaller. It's what I do and I get paid good money for it. Just having a hard time concentrating.

I can't stop thinking about her.

Yeah, that's right. The girl with the prettiest eyes in the known universe.

I think I just might be your soulmate. If you are reading this. Crossed my fingers on that one.

It certainly felt like your soulmate…

But I lost it when I came back to Hawkins.

XXXXX

[Text from Ranger to Madmax]

Running a little late. Meet u in the food court at the mall?

[Text from Madmax to Ranger]

Can't. They r shutting down the mall. Don't know y. I can pick u up at work, or we can cancel?

[Text from Ranger to Madmax]

I don't want to cancel :( pick me up will figure something out.

[Text from Madmax to Ranger]

Done! Be there in a few.

XXXXX

All my bravado with swearing, and humblebragging about my tech… and I'm sitting here crying.

I don't know what to do. I love someone who's name I don't know. He doesn't know me. But I think we BOTH know we are soulmates.

This gave me an idea for a program. I'm not sure it will help me at all, but I know I'll be able to sell it to the government or an alphabet company.

Soulmate: once we are together I'll be yours forever.

I promise.

Eleven loves you.