Lost days and blogs

Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. -- I believe that this was uttered by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle via Sherlock Holmes.



I bring this up because I had my own "impossible/improbable" scenario over the last few weeks.



After being violated by the world wide web, I decided it was time to toughen up the security at the old digital hacienda. I would let no unescorted digit past without proper authorization.



In the short run it meant a few extra clicks here and there, no real problem, just a minor inconvenience. For piece of mind, what's a few extra clicks here and there?



I went through our entire home network and all the computers and upped the level of protection to the maximum settings. I even put a password on my wireless router. I really didn't care if some passerby needed a hot spot for their iphone and used my connection. That's great. I am getting more use from my connection than I pay for. Being that I only expect the four of us in the house to be on it at any given time. There is plenty of bandwidth left for a passerby or two.



As a side note. My fingers are much more active now that I have a laptop and oddly enough a lap to put it, when I am watching TV! Since we don't have a lap-cat anymore....



So, with the new security measures comes new problems.



Most recently Andrea was not able to view her blog. We dismissed it for a day or 2 as a problem the website must be having. After all they have a lot more to go wrong with their system than we do, right?



Well, the third day came and went and we still couldn't get to the website. Wow, how can they be down that long and not have people complain. I would think that they may need to do a serious overhaul if this continues.



The fact that NONE of the house computers would go to the site was not entirely lost on me, I just chose to think that it couldn't be a problem here.



Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. This kept running through my mind. Like it has many times before when I was chasing a problem. I chose not to believe that nagging little voice in the back of my head. After all, our system had been working. I hadn't changed anything in the last 24 hours to cause this problem. It must not be MY problem.

No matter how many times I told myself this I knew the reality of a large website being down that long were very improbable.

Today, after the email back from customer support. Emails from friends saying that they could see the website, my chicken of despair came home to roost.

I even briefly thought for a brief moment that our ISP could be at fault, only for an instant though. Why would everyone try to keep Andrea from going to her blog? What sort of sort of sadistic computerised world has it become that "they" want to keep you from your blog?

Well, once I put on my aluminum foil hat and blocked out all the interference(probably from my own wireless internet router) I was able to see through the maze of wires, electrons and the whole improbability of my thought process.

Maybe I should look and see what I can do from here.

I looked into the one thing that all the computers, that could not view the website, had in common. The router.

Go figure. I reset the router. Checked and updated all the firewalls and low and behold I had found the keystone in my own conspiracy.

The router did it. I just don't know at this point if it was working alone or if it had an accomplice.

Innocence lost

We didn't even know that it was in the house. No one know what was going to happen that evening. How long had it been here waiting for the right moment to complete what it was put on this earth to do?

Why?

Who?

How?

Why us?

Why now?

Why, just why?

Andrea was the first to find out about it. Shock. Disbelief. Horror.

What else could we have done? How could we have kept this "predator" away?

So many questions. So many hours spent fixing the problem.

I am, of course, talking about her laptop being compromised. Hacked. Digitally hijacked. Remotely taken control of. Leaving our sphere of controlability (sp?/new word? You saw it here first).

No matter what you call it, what it is is a violation.

Sure, it is not a home invasion robbery or a car jacking at gun point, but the emotional distress is no less real. Not that there was any information worth getting off of her laptop, but I hate to think that the emails it sent out to her friends were more successful.

Now this perpetrator that has violated the sanctity of our Internet connection. Our connection with the outside world, if you will. The very wires that we trust to bring us, among other things, celebrity deaths and drunkenness, local current temperatures and expected eyeball drying high temperatures, and maps of other parts of the world that look like a better place to live than here.

Well now I just don't know what to do. We invite this "information superhighway" into our home and for all the trouble that we had getting it here, we are digitally accosted. Forced to give up information that we never would have otherwise.

How long will it take for me to trust again? I want to believe that Charles Nelson Riley is really dead, but I learned that over the Internet. The very same Internet that invaded Andrea's computer and took away her privacy!

I want to forgive it, but I just don't know what it will take for me to trust again.

Maybe I can do a Google search and find out what I should do.