All By Myself – Page 18

Hacked!

09.25.2012 by J. Doe // Leave a Comment

I belong to a prestigious national women’s organization. You know the kind I mean – hard to get into, slightly snooty reputation. Well known. When I mentioned to a male coworker one day that I was a member, he got all “Well, la -dee -da! Excuuuuuuse me!” on me. Yes, he’s joking. Mostly.

I try not to lord it over him too much. Mostly.

Anyway, I try to help out with the ladies, and one of the things I helped out with, just last year, was to build a website for our local chapter. It was a big project and took a lot of time; lots of protocol and guidelines were involved, along with aesthetics and technical skills. Everyone was happy with the final site and I got a certificate for my scrapbook and moved on to other things.

Until just two weeks before I was scheduled to go in to arbitration. I got an email from one of the important ladies in Washington DC, letting me know that she was pretty sure our local website had been hacked.

I load the website.

It says HACKED across the main page.

She would seem to have a point.

I try to log in. No luck. My account not only won’t let me in, it seems to have been erased.

I’d like to think I can do this, but the truth is, I can’t. I can do a few technical things but mostly I need a lot of help. The Departed – being an IT guy – used to take care of our computer stuff, and my computer stuff, at least, mostly worked, although The Child’s computer was never functional for longer than a few days at a time for the several years she owned it.

I call Dad. There’s a small miracle and he answers, and goes off to see what’s happened.

While I wait for a return phone call, I mull. Over the past month, I’ve had an old yahoo email account hacked – and also an old, old hotmail account. Both of them – just in the last month. I had read the article about the Wired reporter’s epic hack, and thought to myself, jeez, I should really get more serious about passwords – but it’s just two old email accounts that I haven’t used in years. I closed both accounts when it happened and moved onto other things.

Like, you know, getting quotes for pest control services.

I’ve got time to kill, so I start updating passwords, adding verification layers, and so on. Revoking access. Doing … stuff.

And the thought that keeps nagging at me is: I’ve had a lot of this all at once.

My father calls me back. He’s all calm and reminds me that when I accidentally broke the site earlier in the year, we fixed it quickly and then said, Hey, people say backing up files is a good idea, let’s try it!

It is a seriously good idea. I love it when we have good ideas. He’s got the whole site on a CD.

I’ll restore it tomorrow, he says. It’s late and I don’t want to do anything dumb since I’m tired. I also want to check the back end. It could just be random, but it seems a bit of an odd target. And it looks … amateurish.

You don’t think?

Yes, he says. That’s exactly what I think. But this sort of thing usually leaves a trail.

I’ll find out.

Rats!

09.24.2012 by J. Doe // 4 Comments

The Dog is recovering well from his stroke. He’s still not 100% and sometimes he stumbles when he walks. He doesn’t go very fast. But if I’m traveling at his pace in a straight line when I’m his age, I’ll consider myself to be doing pretty well.

One sunny Saturday, we take a walk together. Not far. Just around the corner and back.

We get back just in time to see a critter meandering through my front yard and disappear under a bush near my porch. It’s about the size of a squirrel, only without the cute bushy tail.

You know, a rat.

I know a few things about rats. Fun facts like: rats are nocturnal – meaning that something is probably up with this one, given that he’s strolling through my yard in broad daylight.

Or how about this: Rats can gnaw through concrete. I learned this from my next door neighbor, who at one point had rats living in the crawlspace below her house.

No, not her house in the ghetto. Her house right next door to mine, in one of the suburbs where property values are actually increasing.

Or maybe, they were increasing.

Come to think of it, maybe this is a really good time to sell.

I shoot her a text: “Seen any rats recently?”

She replies: “Yes. My husband found a dead one in the driveway. No head.”

Why could she not be one of the many people in my life who lies to me?

We have new neighbors in the next house over, so I send an email. It takes me a long time to compose, because they’re new to the neighborhood and I like them and there’s just not a really welcoming way to say, Hey, be careful of the rats – they’re baaaack.

She replies fairly quickly: “Thanks for letting me know. My mother saw one on the fence yesterday, too.”

I’m going to assume that there’s some sort of language problem with her reply. There must be. Her fence is six feet tall. She must have meant near the fence.

I don’t want to talk to any more neighbors. It’s like there’s a block party in our neighborhood and the rats have a 100% RSVP rate.

I need someone to deal with this for me. I’m too busy having visions of the bug scene in Creepshow, only with rats that can leap tall fences in a single bound. Mostly with heads.

What would The Departed do if he were here?

Oh wait – we had a mouse once that we thought might be a rat. What we did was this: I dealt with it.

I can do this.

Cleaning House

09.18.2012 by J. Doe // Leave a Comment

I’m paying bills endlessly: Legal bills. Vet bills for sick dogs, and vet bills for cats that have passed from this world to the next. I get a notice in the mail that a series of tests done on The Child are not covered by my health insurance – rather unexpected, as they had been under my old insurance. The Departed took that insurance with him and canceled both our policies last November, when I didn’t deliver his new iPhone fast enough to suit him.

The bills are endless, the money finite.

And one afternoon, I try to put detergent in the washer – bought within the past two years – and the faceplate falls off.

The machine doesn’t even wait a full day to break again: The Child tries to do her own laundry, to help out, and lights start flashing at her. It’s jammed.

She calls me over. “Mommy, help. It doesn’t work.”

No, it doesn’t, and pressing buttons doesn’t work. Slamming them and crying doesn’t work either.

Nor does hurling laundry across the hall and screaming “I can’t afford any more problems!”

I finally unplug the machine and slam my fists on it a few more times for good measure and when I plug it back in, it seems to be working again. I call up to The Child but receive no reply.

I look around the house, and call out a couple more times, and she’s not there.

I start to rewind the evening in my head and realize I heard a door slam earlier.

I call outside the house, but the result is the same – no reply. It’s getting dark.

I think maybe she went to be by herself in the college next door. She likes to go exploring there. I start to leash up the dog to take him out with me and then remember, he can’t walk that far anymore.

I walk around the corner and into the college, calling her name, over and over. I hear children, but they are not her – they’re at a neighbors’ house. I see movement near a dumpster and start to walk toward it, but then hesitate when I see a lone man standing nearby. He watches me, from a distance.

I cannot see him clearly, but he gives me chills. I go back to my house, still calling her name, over and over.

At home there is me, and a sick dog, and a cat I can’t even see because he knows things aren’t right and he’s hiding. I find my phone to call the police, and when I pick it up, I can see there’s a new voicemail.

My neighbor had called me 20 minutes ago, so I wouldn’t worry. The Child is there at his house and can hang out as long as she likes, he says.

They’re playing cards.

I want to cry, but it will not come.

Hacked!

Rats!

Cleaning House

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