This describes me and most of the people I know. Why does the press treat "techies" like weirdos?
“You never saw anyone come and go,” Schmoldt said of Warner’s home. “Never saw him go anywhere. As far as we knew, he was kind of a computer geek that worked at home.”
Warner had placed lights and security cameras outside his house.
Warner would do a lot of work in his yard, a tall antenna is placed prominently on the side of the house, Schmoldt said. Warner built the fence around his yard himself, the neighbor recalled.
The neighbors never talked about politics or religion. Warner never gave any indication of any closely held ideology.
I agree about it being anyone. Isn't that sort of the point though: everyone is weird. My dad is mad about football, so a similar report about him would list "never missing a game" and "often wearing his teams colours" and we'd all raise eyebrows.
You can get eyebrows raised about anyone by listing mundane but specific details I think is my point...
It is troubling that any of that would be described as odd, especially in the age of Covid. Not everyone is a social butterfly and not everyone has large extended families. Even circles of friends tend to get smaller as one gets older.
Well, consider the Simpsons' comic book guy: high-IQ but essentially unproductive. He represents that smart-weirdo stereotype.
In terms of envy and anti-intellectualism, it's convenient to lump most tech people, including productive ones, into the smart-weirdo stereotype.
Furthermore, someone is also a "weirdo" if they have a lifestyle that differs significantly from an acceptable "normal" range of allowed configurations.
I don’t think they would have gone to his house or received a search warrant based solely on those two details.
They have the wreckage of RV, so they should have been able to find its VIN. That would have led to identifying the owner. It’s pretty likely at this point that it was the same RV regardless of whether the owner actually set the bomb.
I don't think that's as certain as "should" suggests. Some vehicles have the VIN on the engine block or various highly recognizable part of the frame. Did this one? I don't know what's normal for an RV. If it was like a lot of vehicles and only had it on the front corner of the dash, it might be hard to find among that many pieces over that large an area. And that's not even counting the possibility that the perpetrator deliberately removed it.
That style of RV is literally just a production van with a new body dropped on, so I’d assume it has the VIN in the usual places.
They have now confirmed that they used tips as well as the VIN to idwntify the owner:
> Tips from the public helped authorities initially identify Warner as a suspect. The Tennessee Highway Patrol discovered a vehicle part with the VIN that linked the RV to him.
Glad that they found it, but I don't think that changes the point. The "usual places" is just one or two places on each model, and bomb sites are messy. They could have been diligent and not found it. You were expressing a certainty that wasn't warranted, and in a way that was slightly disparaging to those actually on the ground doing the work.
My “should” was intended in the sense of “I’m optimistic that they would find it”, not “if they don’t find it it’s because they didn’t try hard enough.”
“You should find carrots in the produce section”, not “you should wash your hands after sneezing”.
If I wanted to convey that tone I should have italicized it or used asterisks. That should have carried my intention more accurately.
