dahbeed............safecracker?

when beed started up with the postal service he was a clerk. he unloaded trucks on an open dock in the middle of the night. beed remembers some nights where the wind chill was below zero. your ass can hump when it's that cold outside.

he dumped bags of mail, sorted letters, threw parcel post. after about 3 and a half years as a clerk, management announced that bowling green was going to receive some mail sorting machines. this would create some different jobs.

one of them was called "mail processing equipment mechanic" or "mpe-6" for short. everyone was talking about who the bosses were gonna put in those jobs and beed bein' way down the totem pole at that time wouldn't have a chance.

but that's not how they filled those positions. you had to pass the mpe exam. this examination did have some mechanical questions but a large portion of the exam dealt with electricity and electronics.

now, electronics is not something you can run down to barnes and noble and grab an "electronics for dummies" book and learn over a weekend. beed spent 7 months stationed in memphis tennessee studying basic electricity and electronics. he then spent several more months in classes on various types of equipment. the long training is one of the reasons beed had to sign up for a 4 year enlistment instead of 3.

back to the postal service exam. beed had to break out all of his old training material and re-memorize things like all of the formulas in "ohm's law". but it was well worth it. there were about 12 of us that took the exam. both of us that passed it were former marines. so much for the marines bein' the dummies of our armed services.

so beed got one of the coveted positions and received more postal training for the machines we were getting. the postal service has an awesome training facility in norman oklahoma. beed has actually spent nearly a year of his life in norman for various training. not consecutively but over a 15 year period.

the training facility is truely top notch. the housing facility is run by marriott and is also top notch. here is a link to the training facility. http://www.nced.com/ one class beed took was 9 freakin' weeks long. but it was a pretty complicated piece of equipment so it took that long to teach it.

when beed first started as a mechanic they were using us to do everything. fix the machines, work on the heating and cooling equipment. hell, they even had us building offices in our free time. the most interesting classes that dahbeed ever took though were called "security" & "advanced security".

"security" was a class that taught how safes worked. they taught us how to take the locking mechanism apart and also how to set them to new combinations. they even tossed in the history of safes.

before beed could attend "advanced security" he had to go to the po-po station and get them to fingerprint him. these were then sent to the fbi by the postal service's inspection service to get a top secret (no kidding) rating if they passed the background check.

beed actually had a "top secret" clearance rating in the marine corps for some of the "crypto" gear that he worked on.

anyhoo, beed passed and got to attend "advanced security" no this was a cool class. they taught us how to put a suction cup microphone near the lock. you then "manipulated" the lock until you got it open. you wore these super pimp headphones that were hooked up to a little amplifier and the mike. the wheels in the lock make a different sound when you are turning past the little opening in the wheel.

next up, they taught us how to drill out locks on the safe if you cannot manipulate it open. they gave us a book with the precise drill points for every lock that sargent and greenleaf or mosler makes. s & g is the world's largest lock manufacturer and mosler is probably second. we didn't get to keep the book. it was sent to the inspection service and if we ever needed it they would send it to us and we would have to send it back when we were finished.

to pass the class you had to drill out a lock successfully and of course beed was able to do his first time.

one thing they were not "allowed" to show us was how to pick locks. because we had passed the high security level we were allowed to purchase a set of lock picks. they then did "describe" how one would go about picking a lock if one wanted to.

they also let us take a bunch of regular locks back to our room to practice picking on. it really is not very hard to do if you have a set of lock picks. beed is the one everyone at work here calls when they forgot their keys to their filing cabinet or desk or any cabinet for that matter.

sometimes beed gets 'em open in like 2 seconds. sometimes it takes a couple of minutes. the key (no pun intended) is to know which direction a lock turns. you would not believe how many people open something every day yet when you axe them "which direction does it turn" they can't tell you.

probably the finest pick job (other than his nose) that beed has ever performed was when he bet a buddy he could pick his desk lock and not use his picks. it was for like a coke or something. it took him a few minutes but with a pocketknife and a paper clip beed was able to get it. macgyver would have been proud of the beedstah.

see, this beed fellah gots all kinds of different skillzzzz in his repertoire. he's a hoopstah genio (genius), former electronics technician, former jarhead. he is a lover of all things female, oh.....it's a mutual admirations society too folks, they love the beedstah. beed done tole ya'll that he has that little something that women adore......no not THAT LITTLE SOMETHING. he means that intangible, ya'll get your minds out of tha gutter. and now you know, that beed has a little cat burglar in him. the driller of safes, the picker of locks.

sincerely,

dahbeed "alexander munday" wagner