Análisis y Tratamiento de los Datos

“Another DeKonnick?” asked Brian.

Reuben nodded. A second beer would probably help him worry a little less about what he’d decided. “Thanks.”

Brian was one of the co-owners of the place, known as “The Reef,” which had opened a year and a half earlier. He bore a startling resem- blance to Vin Diesel, but apparently was not fond of having this fact pointed out. Reef was a fairly new place, started by several people who had worked together at another bar elsewhere in Adams Morgan.They had promptly done everything right, and the place was an overnight suc- cess. Reuben loved it because of its comfortable atmosphere.They never let it fill entirely to capacity, and as a result, even on the busiest of nights it was still sane and civilized inside.

Reuben rotated on his stool and looked out the second-story window that overlooked 18th _{Street. On either side of him, large salt-water aquar-} iums throughout the bar calmly displayed the life contained inside as Reuben tried to put his mind at ease.What if I’m wrong? I’ll be screwed.

“Here you go, bro.” Brian placed the chalice-shaped glass of beer on the bar.

“Thanks. Quiet tonight, huh? Even for a weeknight.”

“Yeah, you know how it is, sometimes it’s dead, sometimes it’s slammed. It all works out.”

“True enough.” Reuben spun back to face the bar squarely and took a sip from the glass. Reef had one of the best selections of beer in the city, certainly second only to the Brickskeller, who was probably untouchable in that regard. Reef only carried beer on tap, and only good beer at that. They did reluctantly end up adding one bad beer, simply because so many of the weekend tourist crowd asked for some kind of awful light beer. But they didn’t show it any respect on their beer list, describing it as, “It’s light. It’s wet. Some call it beer.”

Reuben picked up his glass and walked to the tank in the center. He loved looking at the fish here, and loved the story behind them. A broad collection of aquatic life including shrimp, a rock lobster, a brightly-col- ored sea cucumber, and even a lionfish, the contents of the tanks had all belonged to the bar’s owners beforehand.Their common love for the ocean and its life was the inspiration for the concept behind the bar, and when they opened, the bar’s tanks became the new home for their aquatic collections.There was something very soothing about watching everything move around.

He wondered if maybe he was making too much of a big deal of all of this. After all, computers had been hacked before, and everything had always been okay.The world kept turning, even after the nastiest worms struck. As messy as Slammer, Code Red, Nimda, or Blaster were, life still went on. So the systems might be more important in this case, but the FBI was notoriously hackable for years and it didn’t seem like anything too horrible had ever come of it. Just a frequently defaced website and a slew of Denial of Service attacks. He’d make his noise, the hack would come, he’d turn out to be right, and after the dust settled maybe things would just be a bit more secure. Perhaps it took a big mess to get them to clean house in the first place. Reuben walked back to his seat at the bar.

“Whatcha thinking about, bro?” Brian had been noticing his malaise. “It’s hard to explain. I need to make a tough decision at work.” “What kind?”

“Well, I’m not really allowed to talk about it, but it’s like this. I can keep my mouth shut, and let something really bad happen, or I can speak up and get in trouble.”

“Whoa.That sounds like a tough choice. What’re you gonna do?” “The right thing. I’m going to raise hell, and hope I don’t get fried for it. If the ‘something awful’ that I fear actually does happen, I might help lessen it, and being right should save my ass. If not, though, I’m screwed. So I kind of hope it does happen, but not too badly, if that makes sense.”

“Yeah, I hear ya. Doing the right thing is hard. I guess that’s why it’s a catch phrase, ya know? But at the end of the day, I don’t think anyone really ever regrets doing the right thing. Not really, bro. Even if you get screwed, you’ll get over it. But for the rest of your life, you’ll never look back on it with regret.”

Reuben smiled. Brian had a good point there. “Thanks, man.That helps, thinking about it like that. I had already made up my mind, but that really locked it in!” He took a deep drink of his beer, and enjoyed it for the first time that evening. “God, I love the beers you guys carry.”

“Oh, bro, wait until a few weeks from now! We’re going to have a few new ones in.There are some amazing brews we can get in winter, you’ve got to try them.”

“Dude, you have some amazing brews here all the time.” Reuben fin- ished off the beer and put the glass down.

“Another one, bro?”

“Sure, what the hell. Now that I’m not freaking out anymore, I can finally taste the beer.”

“Right on.This one’s on me, bro. For doing the right thing.” “Hey, Brian…you aren’t originally from Seattle by any chance, are you?”

Washington, DC: Tuesday,