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Dustin and the Golden Tubas (Part 1)by the LiveSecurity Content Team[Editor's Note: Welcome back to the world of network administrator Dustin Barnes, which is fictitious but, we hope, resembles your world in some ways. Long-time LiveSecurity readers know the drill: cheesy prizes available if you figure out what's happened to Dustin's extranet partner (details at the end of the article). If this is your first exposure to the popular Mr. Barnes, you can find three previous Dustin Barnes Mysteries in our Editorials Index. Enjoy! -- Scott Pinzon] Dustin Barnes' head sank when his desk phone warbled. He had established a solid VPN connection with his company's new business partner in Singapore, ConGlomCo. But ConGlomCo's arrogant Sam Powers and condescending Lee Boon Sen had sucked the joy right out of his life (for reasons disclosed in "Dustin and the Tunnel of Curses"). What ridiculous demand did they have now? He slumped in resignation and answered with a gruff, "Barnes." "Mr. Dustin Barnes? At Kunstler & Sons Musical Instruments?" "You found me." The polite, youngish female voice didn't sound to him like Sam or Lee. It reminded Dustin of that tomboy in all those Charlie Brown TV cartoons... what was her name? Peppermint Patty? "Who's this?" "Goh Choy Chew here, Dustin, calling from ConGlomCo." Dustin was still getting used to Singaporean names. "What can I do for you, Ms. Here?" An infectious laugh bubbled out of the receiver. "'Here' is not part of my name, ang mo. I'm Goh Chew. Just call me 'Chew.'" Dustin, an unrepentant punster, spent a moment in grateful silence at the humor potential in the name, "Goh Chew." But before he could speak, Chew said, "I know my name sounds funny to Americans. When I attended Berkeley, my dorm friends kept bringing me bubble gum, taffy, and tobacco." Dustin smiled. "As in, stuff to chew." "Even rawhide dog bones. They still do it. But I get the last laugh. I use everything they send!" "Well, of course," Dustin responded. "No office is complete without a spittoon." This provoked the bubbly laugh again, which Dustin took as permission to add, "But here's the question: is the spittoon half empty, or half full?" "It's too freakin' small!" Chew retorted, and that made Dustin chuckle despite the gloomy Monday. His eyes fell upon the shelf of O'Reilly books across from him. The DNS and BIND book had crickets on the cover. Somehow that seemed to fit with Chew's young, spunky voice. The way she shifted between American English and accented Singlish reminded him of his half-Spanish wife, who perpetually amused him by speaking academically or in Latina street argot, whichever fit the moment. Chew continued, "But I call for a reason. I understand that your JIT connection to our database server points to 10.10.10.174, sala?" Dustin crunched the phone receiver between his shoulder and his ear so both hands could type. He called up his Just-In-Time management software, navigated through a couple of screens, and found the answer. "Correct." "OK. Please, we need you to change it to a name instead of an IP address. So we can move servers around without having to notify you every time we do something." "Fair enough," he said. "So, please change it to jit15.dbserver.internal.conglomco.com," Chew said. Dustin typed the name in. He had a DOS prompt open in another window. He Alt + Tabbed to bring up the prompt, and typed, "ping jit15.dbserver.internal.conglomco.com." A second later, he got the reply: Pinging jit15.dbserver.internal.conglomco.com [10.10.10.174] "Looks good," he said. "I've changed the name. I've also pinged it, and the reply comes from 10.10.10.174." "Then we're all set," Chew said. "Unless you have any questions?" "Just one. Those rawhide bones taste any good?" Chew's merry laugh flowed out of the receiver. "Those, I give my dog!" she said. "Along with the tobacco plugs." That caught him off-guard. "Really?" "Gotcha!" Chew said. "I can't believe you fell for that." Dustin shook his head. After three weeks of fighting with Sam and Lee about the tight new JIT / extranet, finding a ConGlomCo employee with a sense of humor seemed as unlikely as finding Howard Dean at a George Bush fundraiser. He asked, "How come I haven't talked with you before?" "Aw, you probably won't talk to me again, either," Chew said. She dropped her voice, confiding. "There's a lot of turnover at ConGlomCo right now. I'm babysitting these DNS servers until the guy who quit yesterday can be replaced." "Yeah? Where do you usually work?" "Dev team. They're pretty angry that I'm here, too, because they're developing new order fulfillment software on a deadline, so jia lat. Then I got pulled out to sit in the NOC. Depending on the politics, I might be back at my normal job tomorrow." "Yeah, or if Lee Boon Sen gets tired of you spitting tobacco juice all over the floor." Chew barked a short laugh. "Aiyah! If Lee were here, I'd spit on him!" Dustin enjoyed Chew's candor. But the way she freely dished made her sound very young. He surprised himself by saying in a fatherly tone, "Chew, be careful around that guy. He won't take your jokes lightly." Chew snorted. "He was potty trained waaaaay too early. So hey, you guys make musical instruments?" Well, he had tried. Best to lighten up. "Yep. Just about anything shiny -- trumpets, bugles, coronets, even saxes. Want a trombone?" "I'll take a dozen of each, lah." "Sure, and since you guys are a mining company, send me a pallet of diamonds, willya? Or platinum, gold, whatever's laying around." "Deal!" Chew said. "Nice talking with you, Dustin." Dustin hung up, savoring the mental picture of an otherwise-pristine LAN room with the floor covered in tobacco stains, Goh Chew typing away while her cheek bulged with a big ol' chaw, occasionally hawking a brown missile at Lee Boon Sen. Then he shook it off. Better not to get involved in other people's personal issues. As long as they could hold up their end of the JIT arrangement, the rest was no concern of his. Two Weeks Later...Grant Crawford, Dustin's boss, wore his brown hair like a fluffier version of Ted Koppel: a poofy blow-dry helmet last seen on men in the 1980s. He was in his forties but his Van Dyke beard was a suspiciously robust, uniform brown, leading Dustin to believe Crawford dyed it. But Dustin figured that was the entire list of Crawford's shortcomings. Kunstler & Son's IT Director was a great boss who cared about his team, knew the technology, and advanced IT's agenda aggressively within the company. Who also happened to be very angry right now. "We need answers now," Crawford demanded. "If we don't find out why this happened, we could get hit again." "On it," Dustin acknowledged crisply. He turned his back on Crawford and that oversized, Hagrid-looking guy from the factory floor whose name Dustin could never remember, and rattled his keyboard. "Look," Dustin said, pointing at his monitor. "Here's where the system ordered the part." Crawford and the big dark man scrutinized the screen. The Hagrid-guy cross-checked against a printout in his hand and rumbled, "Right part number. Reasonable date. Usual amount." "So why have we run out of it?" Crawford asked. "Did ConGlomCo's system acknowledge the order?" Dustin tapped the keyboard and added a mouse click. "Here ya go." Silence while the three men read the screen: 246874 3584-668587 CAMRPO 157892 =============================================================== | ConGlomCo Automated Material Resource Planning and Ordering | |=============================================================| | - = E L E C T R O N I C I N V O I C E = - | | | | Ord Nbr: 3258Z-47578 | | Ord Date: 4 Nov 2003 | | Ship Date: 5 Nov 2003 | | Estimated Arrival: 7 Nov 2003 | | | |==================C u s t o m e r I n f o===================| | | | Customer Nbr: 358985KNS | | Customer Name: Kunstler & Sons Musical Instruments | | Contact: Randy Reynolds 414-555-0412 | | | |----- B i l l T o ------------------- S h i p T o ---------| | | | K&S Musical Instruments K&S Musical Instruments | | 1632 Abraham Ave NW Receiving | | Madison, WI 53778 1640 Abraham Ave NW | | Madison, WI 53778 | | | |=============================================================| | Prt Ord Ship B/O Unit Total | | Nbr Item Description Qty Qty QTY UM Price Cost | |_____________________________________________________________| |VP895 T230 Valve Pistons 750 Pend 0 EA 5.45 4087.50| | | | Bulk Discount(10%) 408.75-| | Total Price 3678.75 | |_____________________________________________________________| | Merchandise Totals 4087.50 | | Delivery Chg 437.00 | | ________ | | Sub-Total 4524.50 | | Bulk Discount -408.75 | | Sales Tax .00 | | ________ | | Order Total 4115.75 | | | | Payment: PO# 87-A54R58 | | | | Balance Due ---> 4115.75 | =============================================================== |Receiving Srv: | | jit15.dbserver.internal.conglomco.com (10.10.10.56) | |Transaction Nbr: 78W-101303-08:57:42 | |Sending Srv: KnS.client.internal.com (192.168.39.23) | =============================================================== Crawford uttered a one-syllable word for excrement while Dustin made a quick screen capture, and commanded it to print. The big guy said, "Did I mention production is stopped until that part shows up?" "I get that!" Crawford bristled. "But if we placed the order and they acknowledged it, the problem's not on our end. Barnes, call ConGlomCo. Find out what the hell happened. We're losing money every minute those valve pistons aren't here. I'll inform Kunstler, so that he knows its not our fault. Gherkin, come with me." Dustin didn't bother watching Crawford and Gherkin (Gherkin?) leave his office. He was already entering the phone number of his assistant, Nandi Paradivash, into his pager, adding "911" for urgency. ConGlomCo had a special Help Desk dedicated to their extranet partners and JIT vendors. Dustin hit the speed dial button he'd programmed for it, and braced himself for the longest phone greeting he ever encountered: "Consolidated Consortium of Global Mining and Manufacturing Companies, this is [full name] speaking, how may I help you?" You could call that number every five minutes, and whoever answered ran through the same litany every time. He figured ConGlomCo lost over five labor hours per year just on the phone greeting in that one department. Which was why he almost fell out of his Aeron chair when the phone was answered with a breathless, "ConGlomCo. Lee here." "Lee?" Dustin said, caught off guard. "Lee Boon Sen?" "Speaking. Who is calling? Quickly, please!" "Du -- Dustin! At Kunstler & Sons!" "Oh. Well hell itself has broken loose here, Mr. Barnes. Whatever you want to speak about can wait." Dustin found himself blinking and clutching a dead receiver to his ear. He held the phone away from his face and stared at it, as if it had inexplicably turned into a bologna. Stubbornly, he pushed the speed dial button again. He heard the ringing again. He waited. Somewhere around the fifteenth ring, Dustin's assistant rushed into the office. A slim, good-looking Bangalorian in his early twenties, Nandi wore a T-shirt that Dustin couldn't understand: it depicted a cartoon milkshake and an order of french fries wearing angry expressions, accompanied by a smiling meatball. "What is up?" Nandi asked. Dustin answered, "Apparently the End of the World has begun, starting in Singapo -- hello?" He stabbed the speakerphone button, so Nandi could hear. "-- iningandManufacturingCompanies, thisisChewspeaking, howmayIhelpyou?" "Chew! It's Dustin, at Kunstler & Sons! You're still in the NOC?" "Hi, Dustin. Unless you have an emergency, I can't talk right now." Nandi's eyebrows shot up in surprise. Normally, ConGlomCo employees followed protocol without fail. "What's going on over there?" Chew's sigh traveled halfway around the world and out the speakerphone. "We've got orders bouncing all over the globe. A lot of stuff is shipping to addresses that don't exist, and our customers are --" "Barnes!" Crawford's voice bellowed from the corridor. "Get out here!" Alarmed, Dustin interrupted Chew. "I see you're busy. I'll call you later." He punched the disconnect button and, exchanging quick glances with Nandi, hustled down the hall and out to the reception area. Through the doublewide glass doors, Dustin saw a Brinks armored car idling in the parking lot. Crawford and Gherkin, outside, held an animated conversation with a uniformed Brinks guard. Two more guards, each carrying rifles, joined them, while another guard waited in the armored car's shotgun seat, window rolled up. Dustin, mentally noting a handful of curious employees wandering out from the factory floor, pushed through the doors in time to hear the guard saying, "I don't know that. All I know is, this manifest says deliver a half ton of gold to this address. I'm just trying to tell you that we have to do it in two trips." Dustin blanched. With a sinking feeling, he remembered joking with Chew. "We make musical instruments here!" Crawford countered. "What are we supposed to do with a half ton of gold? Make solid-gold tubas?" Anxiously, Dustin interrupted. "If this is a joke, you guys got us good. Ha ha. But it's a prank. Right?" The guard gazed flatly from under the shiny bill of his cap. He gave a little "follow me" wave and strode to the back of the truck. Dustin, Nandi, Crawford, and Gherkin followed. The guard rapped twice, and someone inside the car pushed the doors open. Dustin gasped. He stared at the pile of neatly stacked gold bars, glinting in the gloomy van. "Who sent this?" he asked, knowing the answer. Crawford waved the way bill. "ConGlomCo. But we're not accepting delivery." He shoved the paperwork back into the guard's hands. "Send it back. Or keep it. I don't care. We have nothing to do with it." He stalked away, pushing through the growing crowd of Kunstler & Sons employees. "Call dispatch," the lead guard told one of the others. "What is the meaning of all of this?" Nandi asked Dustin. "It means," Dustin said, "either Chew doesn't recognize nonsense when she hears it, or our problem and ConGlomCo's problem are related. C'mon, let's call Chew again." He headed back inside. Behind him, he heard Nandi saying, "Mr. Guard, may I please touch one of those?" Followed by Gherkin rumbling, "You don't happen to have any trumpet parts in there, do ya?" Dustin glanced back and saw the armed guards, worried by Gherkin's size, starting to raise their weapons. As he pushed open the door to the office, he heard Karl Kunstler's voice inside somewhere exclaiming, "They shipped what?" Suddenly the question Dustin wanted answered was not, "Why do we have a shipment of gold we didn't order, and not our valve pistons we did order?" That was no longer the important issue. The question he wanted answered was: "Why me?" To Be Continued Take me straight to the conclusion, in Part 2! Credits: Technical concepts: Steve Fallin, Corey Nachreiner, Lucas Thompson |
