Three small stories. All minor, none particularly naughty. 1. In the 80's when I was young, I heard from a friend about a phone hack. By dialing a particular s

Three small stories. All minor, none particularly naughty. 1. In the 80's when I was young, I heard from a friend about a phone hack. By dialing a particular sequence, you could redial your own phone number, turning your phone system into an intercom. I tried this, dialed my home phone number and got my parents, who were very confused to learn that I was in our kitchen, talking to them upstairs, on our phoneline. This had no practical purpose - or impact - other than to surprise them. 2. When traveling with my father at one point, we made a stopover at Minneapolis, I believe it was. They made us deplane, but the pilots and attendants came and went by punching in a door code. I did nothing more than watch them punch it in, then followed them, entered the code and let myself back on board. My Dad was surprised when I could open the door, and the attendants were surprised to discover us back on the plane already. Obviously, this is not something to try these days. 3. In high school, I got stopped by the police quite a bit. Usually because I was speeding, but also because my car was old and beat up. One of the things I discovered was that a subset of the police wasn't eager to give you a speeding ticket - and impact your insurance rates - but they felt they had to do something. So I gave them something. When stopped, I would initially "hunt" for my wallet, which had my license and insurance card in it, only to not turn it up, instead handing them just the registration from the glove compartment. On two occasions, I got tickets for not having these times, which - while as superficially expensive as a speeding ticket - did not apply points to my insurance and thereby increase my rates. If it looked like they were going to give me both, I would "find" my wallet in a crease under the driver's seat. I'm not sure I'd try this now, and I certainly wouldn't try it every time I was stopped, it may well still work on occasion. Of course you're better off not getting stopped in the first place...