Picture an Epson machine running an Intel 286 microprocessor. In the mid-1980s, it represented the absolute pinnacle of technology—a processor operating with such relative speed that you had to push a physical "turbo" button to dial back the power, dropping the machine from a blistering 25 megahertz to a sluggish 4 megahertz just to run DOS. As a kid, I marveled at that raw computational force.

I grew up alongside the evolution of 32-bit processors, part of a generation that deliberately broke early systems just to learn how to rebuild them. By 1998, I was operating DNS and email servers directly from my basement. By 2002, I was initializing internet-connected database servers, actively participating in the birth of the modern digital landscape. It was a wild, intensely nerdy time, but it forged a foundational, structural understanding of how digital infrastructure actually works.

Today, people frequently compare computers to automobiles—a metaphor that sounds perfectly logical until you realize why it ultimately fails. The average user has absolutely no concept of the road, the wheels, the brakes, or the internal combustion engine. They simply turn the key and expect forward momentum. That fundamental ignorance is harmless in a casual user. It becomes terrifying when it infects the highest levels of municipal government.

Vast Fortunes Managed by the Digitally Illiterate

Sherman is currently financing a massive $50 million mega-bond renovation for the local school. Officials heavily market this expensive project as a desperately needed upgrade, promising state-of-the-art facilities and modern technological infrastructure. You would naturally assume the individuals managing this vast public fortune possess a rudimentary grasp of modern digital communication. That assumption shatters upon contact with reality.

On May 11, Sherman CT News submitted a routine Freedom of Information Act request seeking specific public financial records regarding municipal operations. On June 4, the administration made a half-hearted attempt to comply. Superintendent Dr. Patricia Cosentino responded by providing a link to a Google Drive folder. This should have been a seamless digital transaction, but the administration immediately hit a technological brick wall: the provided link was restricted. The digital permission settings completely prevented public access to the necessary files.

Fifty-Five Minutes of Security Theater

A competent administrator simply updates the folder permissions from "restricted" to "public," or alternatively, attaches the files directly to the email as standard PDFs. Superintendent Cosentino chose a wildly different path, initiating a bizarre 55-minute chain of correspondence that completely abandoned the concept of digital file transfer.

A truly Ludacris email exchange

It just kept getting worse.

This is the exact same person responsible for approving millions of dollars in technological expenditures for a modernized school. Yet, she could not figure out how to properly share an electronic document.

The absurdity quickly escalated into heavy-handed security theater. The administration culminated their chaotic correspondence with a written declaration of intent: they officially planned to dispatch an armed School Security Officer to my private residence to act as a highly paid courier for printed pages. I immediately issued a legally binding Formal Notice of Trespass to Cosentino, Lowe, and Vogt, explicitly barring all municipal representatives and armed officers from entering my private property.

Unable to legally cross the property line, the administration deployed their armed officer to the school's physical perimeter instead. The security guard stationed himself rigidly behind the property fence line, staring directly onto my private lawn in a silent posture before finally retreating back inside the facility. They still refuse to comply with the federal and state records request, choosing to break the law rather than execute a basic file transfer. There is simply no excuse for this profound level of technological ignorance, and no justification for their blatant legal defiance.

Dr. Pat, this past week you proved to a technology professional with over two decades of experience that you have absolutely no idea what you are doing. I find your unearned confidence genuinely frightening. That is precisely why I am publishing this account for the entire community to read. Many highly capable individuals suffer quietly from imposter syndrome when they shouldn't. You don't exhibit a single ounce of that hesitation—yet you are the exact person who absolutely should.