If he said some Chinese car salesman was trying to blackmail him....would that change the fact that he is a car salesman or would I have to say "criminal". Some would argue that some car salesman are criminals too, but the use of the word just sounds ridiculous. I want to protect the word 'hacker' from exclusive association with the world of crime as the next guy but it sounds to me like some 'hacker' tried to blackmail him.

I used to work my way through school by pulling ethernet wire through celings and rafters of the dirtiest places. Once I used trig to help be figure out the shortest route for the cable.. impressed my co-worker in the process, and stayed a little cleaner in the process. That's far from an engineering job.