"Haste Makes ..." Well, It's a Bad Thing

So I moaned here about how our internet cable provider was on the fritz the past two weeks, and, after having dealt with their less-than-acceptable service for five years, we switched to DSL, thanks to a buddy (in the weakest sense) of the Consort. This buddy came over last week and got us hooked up. At one point as the Consort and the Buddy were changing pointers, etc., our password needed to be entered. Buddy offered to plug in the info if the Consort just sang out the password. Considering the Consort's anality about such things*, he just mumbled that no, it was OK, he'd plug it in. Buddy made some comments about that, implying he was joking, but really making it clear he felt snubbed (he's got the personality you'd expect from a computer guy).

Eureka! We had internet connectivity!

Except that my laptop, which we hadn't turned on during Buddy's visit, wasn't connecting the next day. This was crunch time for Home Tour preparation, so I put it on the back burner and just used our old iMac instead.

But then... I noticed something strange. Someone from Buddy's server was visiting my site... For hours and hours! And They came back several times a day!

This freaked me out because we never talked about my blog with Buddy, so the only way he could have gotten the link was if he had somehow gotten our bookmarks or something. Was this his way of getting even with us for not sharing our password? How much info had he stolen? Did we have to change all our passwords -- like to my student loans or our bank account?!

I was pissed. I was so angry that he would do such a thing (and he's a computer guy, so if anyone could suck someone's private info off a computer, it was Buddy). The Consort was surprised to say the least, but he was busy, too, so he didn't have the time to call Buddy and see what was up with this incident.

I figured the Consort would be too nice about it, so I should take matters into my own hands. I mean, it was my blog this guy had violated! I didn't have time to post anything other than place-holder posts (you all noticed that). But I was planning a post where I would get him. Oh, yes, he'd be reading along, thinking I was praising him, and then -- BANG !-- I'd let him and all my readers know that I knew what he was up to. In my daydream, you all would boo and hiss supportively, and I'd get even, yes I would.

Well, on Saturday morning, I'm elaborating on my payback post daydream in my head while I'm scrubbing the sink, and another explanation comes to mind. See, I've set up my laptop to be invisible to Sitemeter, so when I check my blog, it won't keep a tally of those visits. But my laptop was out of commission, right? So I was using the iMac ... which wasn't invisible ... and our new service provider's server would (of course) have the same name as Buddy's server ... so every time I visited my site, or the girls visited my site, the name would be .... THE SAME!

Serendipity is a wonderful thing. Thank god I didn't have time to put my devious plan in motion those first few days (although, as Buddy wasn't really visiting my site, he never would have seen it; but the Consort's plan of just talking to him would have shown us to be silly fools [so see, deviousness would have kept us safe!]).

Sometimes, giving our brains the time to catch up with our emotions is a good idea.



*When we moved to California, lo these 14 years ago, we didn't have internet connectivity at first. So the Consort took me to one of the student computer labs (which was a busy busy place full of students coming and going, not paying attention to what others were doing) and showed me how I could sign in under his grad student password to get online.
"Now, this is the password," he said. He looked around furtively and he slowly typed out N...E...B...U.
"Oh, you mean Nebu, the name of our parakeet?" I said (out loud, but now loudly).
He waved his hands frantically. "SHHHHHHHHHHH!" he hissed, a look of terror on his face.
We were newlyweds at the time, but I couldn't help laughing at the distress on his face.
You'd think I had shouted out our ATM passcode or something, sheesh!