2001-10-12 - 12:05 p.m.

Important Rule For Life I Learned the Hard Way for last night:

It is very difficult, but not impossible, to jimmy open a window with a pair of butter knives.

Yesterday at three o'clock I went on my lunch break and biked home as I've been doing so often lately. I turned on my computer, did my normal every-day being on the computer type stuff, and left. I didn't think much of it until I was leaving work again at 11:15 at night.

Two days ago, Carrie, a co-worker, had to borrow a key that we both have that gets into a special drop-off thing for the tapes we use to back up our work every day. She didn't have hers, so I lent her mine. Last night she gave it back to me, and I went to put it back on my lanyard where I keep all of my keys.

That was the moment I started thinking about what I did on my lunch break with a bit more detail. I got home, took my keys out, unlocked my front door, unlocked the door to my room, sat down on the bed next to my laptop, set the keys down next to me, did my computer stuff, ate, got up, locked my bedroom door, and left.

You'll notice nowhere in there is the actual picking up of my keys before locking my door and leaving.

Damn.

So there I was, heading home on my bike at a quarter after 11, hoping against hope that I hadn't locked my bedroom door, or that I'd set my keys down outside the room or something (I knew I hadn't locked my front door, or at least if I had, I could break into it, so if anything I could get inside and sleep on the couch). I get home, and try the front door. It opens, thankfully. I'm not stuck outside. This is a very good thing.

I quickly stride across the room to my bedroom, pause for a moment, close my eyes, and grab the doorknob. I'd say I tried to turn it, but considering how utterly I failed to cause it to turn at all, saying I tried to turn it is like saying I tried to slow down the rotation of the Earth by pushing on the ground. Absolutely nothing happened.

So, step one for getting into a locked room, I took out my wallet. This is something I learned from my time at MSSM. Unfortunately, in the real world, where locks actually work, this is not so effective. I tried it anyway. I took out an old ATM card for a closed account (I haven't cleaned out my wallet in a while) and tried to slide it in the crack in the door to undo the lock. I couldn't even get it through the crack, the card was too thick. So I tried a thinner card, but while that made it through, it was too thin to have an effect on the lock. In the end, I had failed that.

I went around to my bedroom windows and looked at them. I knew two of the four had no screens on them, and thus, if I could get them open, would be the easiest to get into. Unfortunately, I also knew that those windows were latched and thus going to be pretty well impossible to open. I knew this because my severe arachnophobia meant that I had to have the window latched so, hypothetically, no spiders could get in through the windows that didn't have screens. Not that I thought the spiders would open the window, but the wind can.

So I had two windows left. Both had screens on them, but fortunately, as I looked at one of them, the screen was not latched on. If I managed to get the window open, I would be able to push the screen out and get in.

That's, if I managed to get the window open. Another minus to having the screen there is I couldn't tell if the window was latched closed or not.

So to the kitchen I went. I found a butter knife and went outside. I slid it into the crack of the window and tried to pry it open. It moved very little. I kept trying, pry, release, pry, release, pry, release. It seemed like I wasn't making any progress at all until I looked inside and noticed that the handle you turn to open the window was slowly but surely making a circle.

Eventually I got to the point that one knife wasn't going to cut it (pun not intended). I went and got a second one, and with a carefully planned system, I would pry open with one knife so I could get the second one deeper and open it even more. More prying and releasing for a very long time, and finally when I released it I was able to grip it with my hands instead of the knives. Pull pull pull pull pull pull pull pull, every time I'd pull the window the handle inside would move just a bit. I was convinced that at some point the cops were going to show up and I was going to have to explain to them why I was breaking into my own bedroom. But they didn't, fortunately.

Finally I got the window open enough that I could reach an arm in. I pushed out the screen and turned the handle until it was open all the way. I got my bike to use as a footstool, climbed through the window, stepped onto my drawers and box fan, then onto the ground, victorious. Opened up my bedroom door, unlocked it, and stood, basking in the glow of my yellowed kitchen light. I went out to get the bent butter knives sitting on the edge of my window, put them back in my sink where I'd gotten them, came back to my room, sat down, and started doing computer things again.

And as I sat there, proud that I hadn't completely fallen victim to my own stupidity, I realised one important thing.

If I was able to break into my house….

What's to stop someone who actually knows what they're doing?