How NOT to start your Monday

First thing: Clock radio isn’t working right. We’ve been on vacation, so we haven’t been using it. I remembered to turn it on, but evidently the tuning has drifted because all we hear is static. I attempted to retune it in my usual groggy state, but not very successfully. It apparently doesn’t want to recieve any radio stations this morning.

Second thing: Cable modem isn’t working. “Cable” light isn’t on. Wonder of wonders, though, when I call Time Warner they actually admit there is a problem. In the past, my history with Time Warner has been that I call to report a problem, and they say that nothing is wrong anywhere, so they schedule a service call about 4 or 5 days from now. An hour or two later, I call and there is a huge wait time on hold because everybody else in Rochester has discovered their cable modems aren’t working either, and when I finally get through this time they admit the problem, and I cancel the service call and then some time later the cable modem comes on.

Third thing: My badge doesn’t work in the turnstyle at work. Oh oh. I’m a contractor, and contractors live on a hair trigger anyway, especially since Kodak stock is plummetting. Could this be the long-feared layoff? Turns out no, it’s just some paperwork didn’t get done.

When I finally get into work, my home page loads so I know that the cable modem access at home has come back magically, so I log back in to find mail and news flowing. So things are looking up a bit.

Whoever you are, identify yourself or fuck off

Somebody in Finland has been reading all our blogs. It appears that he/she/it started with Stevie or Laura’s, which isn’t all the surprising since they have a Finnish last name. And he’s followed the links from those blogs to Vicki’s and mine. Not a big deal – if we didn’t want random strangers reading our blogs, we’d make them private.

But now it appears this person has gone a step beyond. They are no longer just following links, they are fishing around for files that aren’t there. Looking at this IP, I see attempts to reference

/~rose/me
/~rose/lstevie
/~rose/mom
/~rose/dad
/~rose/home
/~rose/friends
/~rose/school
/~rose/my%20pictures
/~rose/my_pictures
/~laura/me
/~laura
/~laura/laura
/~laura/dad
/~laura/sis
/~laura/sys
/~laura/stevie
/~calsabon/me
/~calsabon/stevie
/~calsabon/laura
/~calsabon/mom
/~calsabon/dad

and I’m more than a little creeped out.

So whoever is at 81.197.2.111, listen up: Looking for information nobody invited you to look at is a violation of our privacy. Identify yourself or find your IP blocked and a complaint lodged with your ISP. And quit looking for things that aren’t there.