No Subject

[Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>]

So I fly home Friday from San Jose.  Probably because I was
in a hurry, after walking through the magnetometer and x-raying
my stuff, a security dude grabbed my laptop and said he wanted
to 'analyze' it.  Yeah sure whatever, I decided not to protest
I was late for my flight.

This analysis, it turned out, was wiping a coffee filter over the strap
of its bag, and sticking the coffee filter into a slot on a machine.
No solvent even.  The machine had columns labelled TNT RDX NITRO PETN HMX.
I recognized the first four as high explosives.  Later, I wondered
if people with angina (who take nitro orally) ever set this off.
Most of them, of course, are not bearded eastern-european/semetic
guys in their 30's who look worried and in a hurry.

Anyway, that was it, and I made my flight.  Didn't even open
the laptop's case.  

The machine name was ION-something; I wonder whether it sucked vapors
from the fiber disk or whether it was a neutron-spectrometer (?) device.

(Had this been a UK Customs 'inspection' of the contents of the disk, I
might have had to explain the half-gig of "noise" I have on the disk.
Only, it really is noise. Really.)

Anyway, the moral of the story: 

Don't store your laptop with your explosives :-)