Okay, Sonja, here you go: "My first rock and roll concert"
But first can I tell you what a drag my hometown and my high school were? God, I hated high school–hated, hated, hated. Here’s one reason why: On May 9th, 1965 the Rolling Stones were giving a concert in Chicago. I couldn’t have been more excited. So I started asking around to see who would like to go with me. Guess how many of my classmates were into going to see the Rolling Stones for the first time in their young lives? Zero is right. The reason they all gave was all pretty much along the lines of, “Ick. The Rolling Stones! They are so dirty and so bad.”
Tom Wolfe had one of the memorable quotes of the 1960′s contrasting the Beatles and the Stones:
“The Beatles want to hold your hand, but the Rolling Stones want to burn your town.”
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That’s why I loved them. I trusted them to want to burn down my town and, I hoped, my high school.
So no one at my high school wanted to see the group that would soon be known as “The World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band”. The band who would one day sell over 200 million albums worldwide wasn’t good enough for them. Well, I had two words for them and they aren’t “Bless You”.
I went alone. Yup. Fourteen years old and I did something none of them would do: I got on the train and went to downtown Chicago to see them by myself. I had just seen them May 2nd on Ed Sullivan where they had done “The Last Time”, “Little Red Rooster” ” Everybody Needs Someone to Love”, and 2120 S. Michigan”–yeah Chicago and Chess Records where they recorded.
I can’t remember for sure, but I think I bought my ticket at the door. I mean I must have. No one was lending me a credit card to get a ticket by phone or anything. Can you imagine just showing up today to see the Stones expecting to get a ticket at the door? No. Why? Because all the dumbf**ks from my high school are taking their kids now to show them how cool Mom and Dad are.
I wasn’t all that popular in high school, and I’m proud of it. I’m sure I was the only student there who subscribed to the Village Voice, wore different colored tights instead of stockings, read philosophy in typing/shorthand class instead of taking the boring practice tests, and, worst of all, hung out with a few other unpopular non-conformist girls who turned me on to Bob Dylan weren’t afraid to be themselves. Also, I had big breasts and was attractive but I had no intention of giving football players blow jobs, which was why the cheerleaders and some of the other girls were so damn popular. A note here: Once the BMOC and captain of the football team asked me out for a date. I was stupid and vain enough to go out with him. When he dropped me off that night I remember I didn’t want to kiss him. He sat and stared at me. He also acted like he was waiting for something to happen. I got out of the car, slammed the door, and went in the house to wonder who had made up the lie that I was easy. No, you could have your popularity, thank you very much.
Oh, wait. One more thing. Another note about my snooty classmates. : When I was fifteen I was known to hang out with a notorious bad boy, high school drop-out, long-haired, suspected dope smoker. I ended up marrying him for reasons I can’t comprehend even now. But this was another big black mark on my character and the short list of classmates who would be seen in public with me grew shorter. Later, after we were married and he sold marijuana for a living, I met lots of the holier-than-thou, looked-down-their-noses-at-me kids in my living room where they were testing the pot they were about to buy.
Anyhow, back to my first rock and roll concert. It was, of course, a life-changing experience. I saw them in the Airie Crown Theater in the old McCormick Place. Old, because it burned down sometime ago. But I remember it as being a smallish theater. I bet I wasn’t twenty feet from the stage. I talked to a group of boys were had come together that were sitting in seats near me. They were nice and included me in their conversations while we waited for the show to start.
I knew one thing instantly. I would get a long black-and-white scarf and drape it on me when I learned to dance like Mick Jagger. And I did. But in those days no one was passing joints or getting up to dance no matter what the music did to their feet. Incredible really when you think of it. All those teenagers sitting and actually listening, not screaming, to the band. And behaving themselves.
I had such a great time I couldn’t help but feel sorry for all the loser f**kers who wouldn’t dream of coming with me to see this “disgusting” band. When I got off the train that evening, I was already changed. I was now a wild one. Some boys I didn’t know who didn’t go to my school pulled the car over and asked me if I wanted a ride. For the first time in my life I said yes. I was willing to do everything, try everything (but not have sex with strangers, of course). I was going to be my own person in a big way now. They took me home and my new life began. Soon people like me were called flower children and, later, hippies.
And I never did get to see the Beatles and John Lennon whom I loved so much I wanted to die when he did. But from that summer on I never missed a U.S. Rolling Stones concert until 1994 when I was a broken woman, having just lost my mind, custody of my children, my sobriety, my second husband, my car, my home…you name it. But even then I stood and faced North towards Soldier Field where they were playing, the Voodoo Lounge Tour, and I said a regretful goodbye. My last Stones concert was the Steel Wheels tour, when my friend and sponsee, Linda, drove us up to East Troy, WI. I was due to have my second child in two months. And I did catch part of one of their European tours too. In 1976 I was living in Munich when they came to the former olympic field to do a concert. Alcohol was allowed at this concert, unlike my American experience. Sad to say, I got so drunk I really embarrassed myself that night–when I couldn’t find the U-Bahn to get home without help–and the next day when I told some American and British Fullbright scholars that I was surprised the Rolling Stones knew so much German. I said, “Man, they sang almost every song in German.” The girl closest to me looked puzzled and then disgusted, “They didn’t sing one song in German!” Oh well. I still had a great time.
June 2, 2005
Well, I’m back. I was going to start a public or private journal on AOL just to spew venom at Micro$oft and my a-hole hackers. Then I read the “community guidelines” I was expected to follow if I wanted to be on “hometown AOL.” Give me a break. AOL really is a Republican thing, don’t you think? But I like playing with all the gizmos and and fun features it provides. Earthlink was absolutely horrible, even though I got it for free. And it costs $21.95 to AOL’s $17.something.
Also, I googled this blog to find it again. And what to my surprise do I see, but some ad saying it is now worth $12/share. I have no idea what this is all about, but they aren’t selling MY blog out from under me.
So here’s the update I feel compelled to write:
I am now on computer #4 since April of 2003, and I am still hacked. You can’t imagine. I’ve had this one since Jan of this year. Soon it will pass on like the previous three: Turn it on and nothing. And this after having Dell tech install a new power supply. I am saying that when the hackers are done with the computer, they somehow manage to completely destroy it so that it won’t even show lights or make a peep when you turn it on.
I have been to hell and back trying to simply have a computer so I can look things up on the internet, as well as read, research and write. As I mentioned in my last post, I sent a box of evidence to the head of computer crime at the Chicago Dept of Justice. Mr. Bob Podlasek told me he didn’t have time to see me, but he would look at it.
I sent him detailed notes and evidence just before Christmas of last year. I have about 50 floppies, a bunch of CD’s and 30+ notebooks of evidence, but, of course, I didn’t send but a small representational sample because he had told me he was a busy man. I absolutely couldn’t phathom that no one could find these hacker asswipes with the amount of evidence I had. As of today, the only thing I have heard from him after repeated letters, e-mails and phone calls is, “They’ll never catch these guys.” I guess not, if no one even tries. I mean, I sent photos of the hackers I found in the files including their crummy European vacation pics. I sent all the aliases attached to one photo of someone whom I am sure is one of my hackers. I sent IP addresses, names of companies they did business with (one of their businesses is apparently designing websites), and more. That’s all he had to say. Mr. P, my last hope: “They’ll never catch these guys.” He could offer me nothing. I had asked for months if he could, at the very least, write me a letter to show friends, family and co-workers that this fucking XP is really hacked and I am not nuts. I also asked him to return my evidence so I could write a book about what I’ve gone through since I bought my first XP in April of 2003. But I guess he is a busy, busy man.
The point of my article or book will be, I think, that hackees have nowhere to turn for help. If you read back on this blog you will see that I tried to elicit help from everyone from CERT to the Secret Service to Homeland Security to the FBI and so many more agencies that SEEM to provide help to hackees. CERT has a 24-hour “hotline” to report hacker activity. When I called them the guy who answered the phone listened to me and said something along the lines of “Bummer, really, but we can’t help.” Well then who do they help? Who do any of these so-called anti-hacker hotlines and agencies really help? From what I could make out if I were a 10-year-old child being preyed upon sexually over the internet they would immediately help. If I don’t have a lot of identity and financial info of some worth, they could care less. Oprah, for example, could get instant help, but no one was willing to help the likes of me.
So I am left not being able to have a computer period. I can’t imagine buying computer #5 and telling myself, “This time they’ll leave me alone.” And I am not stupid about security either. I have had to learn enough stuff to be an IT professional, if I wanted to take the classes and make it official.
Someone, I think, is out to get me, and even paranoids are right sometimes.
I am not crazy as my friends, family and co-workers assume. What is “crazy” about believing that the most wide-open, vulnerable, piece of crap computer made could be hacked?
I wrote Bill Gates twice and told him what I thought, but, whatdoyouknow, he never responded. He has his billions, and doesn’t give a damn if this shit works or not.
I called the Micro$oft hotline many times. The purpose of these consumer friendly hotlines, as I understand it, is to make up for the fact that Windows XP really is a lot of open windows, with open backdoors thrown in for good measure. So M$ said, they would offer additional help at no charge to customers having trouble. This was back in the day (last year I think) when they were publishing these nauseating articles about Micro$oft being “trustworthy”. Give me a break.
When I last called again, hoping to connect to someone who would apologize and send me a computer I could use, I was transferred from desk to desk until I reached an M$ engineer. (One of the few probably that hasn’t made a run to Google yet.) After letting me tell him the problems in detail for about the 100th time in my life and the 8th time that day, he assured me that there was absolutely nothing M$ could do to help.
Nice, huh? I said, “Should I just throw the latest computer out the window and forget ever even trying to use a computer?” He agreed that most likely computer #5 would also end up hacked and destroyed. He then repeated that Micro$soft couldn’t help. Fuck you, in otherwords. We’ve got your money. Maybe Longhorn won’t be as much as a catastrophe as XP, I bet they’re thinking while counting the days. Like I would ever buy M$ products again. I am headed towards Linux, that is, if I can somehow save this computer first.
Well, this may be my last post for a while again. I rarely am allowed to get online, and when I do I must go through their broadband proxy even though I am a dial-up user. This way they can decide which sites I can and can’t go to. Miraculously, I have now been online for three whole days for the first time in months. I normally go to the library to read my e-mail and look up things on the internet. And pay a dime a page for printing when I have a perfectly good printer at home that I can’t use.
People ask me, “What makes you so special? Why would anyone want to hack you?” Say what? Am I the only XP owner in the world that has ever been hacked?
Book is forthcoming. I just hope it doesn’t get to long, what with the evidence, refusals of help agencies, manifestos from the hackers, detailed accounts of their break-ins to my apartment and the damage they did, etc.
“Trustworthy computing” indeed! Look up that article from M$ just for laughs.
I woke up this blog because I got an e-mail that someone was actually linking to it. I am amazed. I didn’t think it was even being published. I miss you and I miss this blog. The hackers have continued to overwhelm me. Let me see, the most recent posting re hackers would be that I called local police again because I was pissed off that they again locked me out. Whenever I call the bigshots they always ask “Did you call local police?” So I did because the Computer Crimes guy at the Attorney General’s Office who said he would look at my evidence and maybe help me, now told me that he was going on vacation and would “get back to me” when he returned. So the fucking domain, which is only another word for hackers, locked me out and I decided to see what the local police would do. It was hilarious if it wasn’t your computer. A cop came over and told me he had built two computers. You’d think he’d know a thing or two? No! He insisted on treating me like a total dummy (probably because I am a woman and who cares how many 1,000 page books I’ve read on Windows and on Security). He DEMANDED in that very cop-like way to format and re-install Windows. I told him I’d already paid 4 so-called experts and that’s all they did and it didn’t change a thing: I was still hacked up to the gills. He knew, in that cop-like way they really know things that are absurd, that I just needed a man like him to show me how to format and re-install. It is so funny the way these assholes believe that formating in and of itself delete everything never to return. I tried to explain to him, as I’ve tried to explain to the rest of these so-called computer expert a-holes, that they have rigged my setup to always include their fuckin’ network and all their files. I end up re-hacked.
The cop couldn’t wait to SHOW ME. When he was done I printed out a three-page listing of all the hacker’s files that were installed with the re-installation. I cannot get anyone who understands the sysprep and setupmgr to help me. I try to work on it myself and get lost in the computer details I don’t understand. Do I have an explanation, they wonder, for why anyone would be hacking me? Only that they store all their files in my computer and use it for hacking other computers. Isn’t that enough?
God help me! I only want to re-own my computer and enjoy blogs, and reviews, and news and write e-mails and maybe some resumes since I am starving here. Is that so fucking much to ask? Are there nothing but idiots out there who pretend to help me but are fucking ignorant?
I need a hacker to hack my computer. Please. At a reasonable rate.
Buddhist class is almost over and I didn’t participate much. I am inserting some lessons from today. I have been too busy with KM and with my pill addiction I guess to think about my spiritual condition. I am a mess. My home is a mess. My health will soon be a mess. I need help but I am so far from asking for it…
For Tonglen (“giving and receiving”) practice, in addition to what is in Surya’s books, read any book by Pema Chodron, or “Mind Training” by Chogyam Trungpa.
Here is a method of “on-the-spot” Tonglen practice: (I learned this from Lama John Makransky.) Students can practice this or any other authentic Tonglen practice from
the tradition.
1. Feel your own emotional reaction to something familiar, then bring yourself into a meditative calm as much as possible. After a while, feel your emotion (anger, frustration, etc, etc) again, as though it were real. Become intimate with this form of suffering. (For me, the most familiar feeling was anger – being cut off on the highway. Anger and feeling wronged.)
2. Say to yourself: “So THIS is what so many others feel! This, precisely this feeling of ____ is what so many others are feeling and suffering right now.” Expand your awareness to others.
3. Bring to your heart the wish of compassion: “May they all be free of this suffering. By my experiencing this, may all of us be free of it.” Take others’ suffering into your heart and visualize the shell of self-clinging around your heart cracking.
4. Visualize light radiating through the cracks and going out to all beings – yourself and all others – with the wish of love: “May all beings possess happiness and well-being.”
Picture all good things coming to everyone as the light from your heart radiates in all directions.
5. Take joy in the joy everyone is experiencing.
6. Drop concepts, visualizations, sense of self and other and rest in radiant emptiness.
7. Dedicate the power of the practice to the liberation of all.
“In Buddhist cosmology, there is the concept of ‘the hungry ghost.’ The image is of a being with a huge swollen body; a needlelike neck, a tiny open mouth. Suffering from insatiable hunger, the hungry ghost is continuously trying to accomplish an impossible task–getting enough food into its small mouth and down its thin neck to satisfy its huge gut.” Lama Surya Das, the author of Awakening The Buddha Within (p.250) goes on to say that this is a good symbol for the familiar mental states of longing, neediness and insatiable desire.
I have been so careful about materialism and money, but I am so needy. I need, I think, the punishment of a mindless, brutish menial job that uses none of my talents to keep me wallowing in the amount of self-hatred I call home. I long for things I dare not try to make a reality as one day blends into the next and I wait to quit smoking, lose weight, get happy, meet Godot and die. My life is nothing except for my children who need my love.
But now it appears I have been freed. I have been let out of my cage at the zoo after four long years. The cage door was opened by the fact that they didn’t want me, but like an animal used to confinement, I cowered in the safety of my cell. Maybe they’ll still call me I hoped like a loon. Praise God someone has come to save me–my own past self I guess. Even though I’ve worked for them for years, the new background check yielding up an old felony makes me unworthy to even wash their dishes. Hooray I should say.
I want to use my time to create something beautiful for God. I don’t want to swear with my minutes and vomit with my hours. The worst of it was not just that it was useless work, but that they had my mind each day for $8.25 an hour. I was in thought prison. I could only think about dirty dishes all day: Who put the lipstick on this cup? Who would dare put their gum on the bottom of their plate? Why did this person leave so much food–did they hate it or were they ill? Why can’t the waitstaff bus the plates better, damn them? I can’t believe that they just put dishes any old place. What do they think the bins are for? Why can’t they put the glasses where they belong?
And on and on until I was a mean, old crazy shrew of a dried up woman without a sign of a soul or mind.
And for what? So I could take all my $8.25′s an hour and bundle up about $285 of them and send for phentermine so I could wash more dishes faster. Or be able to fight the hackers for my computer for more hours. Still hearing the FedEx delivery woman saying, “See you in two weeks.” now that I’m worried about buying soap. Had to get those pills down my needlelike neck into my swollen body because the hunger for drugs is always insatiable. Ask any drug addict, even a recovering one like me.
It’s a new year. Here’s the poem that is today’s poem:
This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and
the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks,
stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor
to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience
and indulgence toward the people . . . re-examine all you have
been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss what insults
your very soul, and your very flesh shall become a great poem.
–Walt Whitman
Advice, too, that I would like to give to my children, who pretty much take all advice I try to give them as another page in Mom’s book of Crazy and laugh it off. I think I’ll e-mail it to each of them anyway. It doesn’t help to underestimate one’s children.
NOTICE THEY DIDN’T PUT OUT A REWARD FOR FINDING HACKERS
My theory as to why Microsoft will only reward people who lead them to virus and worm instigators, without saying a word about even major hackers, is that there are too many of them. They’d go broke passing out all those rewards. Microsoft has already been hacked I heard, and maybe they don’t like using the H word. My hacker got a message to me through BlogPatrol, my statistics website, that I should get my computer up and running so he or they can use it to hack Dell. I guess they thought I’d jump for joy at that one and eagerly re-install the Windows for them. True, I hate Dell for not standing by my four-year warranty, and leaving me computerless three months after I purchased a computer, but I’ll be damned if they’re using my computer to hack anything–not even the White House. If I can’t use it, no one can.
But tell me I’m not narrowing the search for the hacker. None of the usual tools work. They have disabled everything. Ipconfig doesn’t work. All the net commands are disabled. None of the hostname things work. The best tools for finding out who’s at the other end of your remote network are all on Windows XP Professional, the mere peons get zilch. Anyhow, I’ve seen the 811. and LANs stuff in the files. I know they are within 1,000 feet. I think I have narrowed it down to the right neighbor. Tell me what you think: There is this 20-something who lives with his mother and sister in the garden apartment. He dresses in what you might call an independent mode. You wouldn’t really classify him as anything but you would observe that he’s not run of the mill–some might say odd. He works part-time at the local coffee shop. I saw him in there recently and something in my head just clicked. “It’s him,” my brain said, after weeks of unfairly believing it was the people upstairs from me.
So, out of nowhere that he expects I’m sure, I say, “Do you have a computer?” first thing out of my mouth. He looks flustered and mumbles that he does. “What kind?” I demand to know. Now how’s this for a suspicious answer from a kid who’s at an age and lifestyle where you would expect he’d know what kind of computer he has? He says, “Oh, I don’t know. It’s old. I got it from my aunt.” Then he turns his back to me and stares out the window until I leave. I let it go.
That night I put a tiny voodoo robot toy with a crab-like creature clawing its stomach area and a missing right hand outside his door. It is gone the next morning. The next day I put a tiny toy stop sign. It, too, is gone the following morning. Then I am doing laundry in the basement and have to walk past their apartment windows several times. The shades don’t quite cover the windows on the sides. I peek in and see a new laptop with built-in wireless antenna.
Now to prove it. Tonight I went to a forum at www.whitehats.com. First I went to blackhats, but it seems they mostly work with businesses. Everyone wants to help big businesses. I have yet to find anyone who wants to help an individual who is hacked. My reason for looking at the “hats” today is because sometimes I think the only way I’ll get rid of this hacker is to find another hacker to help me.
I found an online publication for people who hate AOL or just want to make fun of it. I’ll pass it along when I find it again. Here’s what they did to me lately. I haven’t used AOL in months since I can’t get online but I keep it in case I ever get my computer back and want to download patches and firewalls in a hurry. This month my credit card company alerted me to suspicious charges by AOL. It turns out they charged me not once but twice for charges to an account opened by, get this, MsRefusnik. And here I thought she was just one of my screennames. According to AOL she is real. She got drunk one night and told my master screenname that it was over between them. She said she was going solo and the result was that although I am the one and only user (or non-user as of late) I had two accounts to pay for. AOL argued with me that lots of people like to have more than one account and they didn’t find it odd at all. It was a lot of crazy phone calls before I got the account canceled and maybe the charges too.
See ya.
WHAT’S WRONG? SOMETHING WENT RIGHT.
I thought this blog was lost to me forever. I thought it would just orbit out there like space junk while flea market buyers tapped into it occasionally looking for the odd bit on the eplpdx02, fruit flies and doggerel with the theme of not sleeping at night. I have changed so many passwords that I got dizzy. I just did not have a clue what the password was for this blog. Unfortunately, the e-mail address that they kindly send the password reminder to was canceled due to being hacked. So I could not log in to change my user information and I was unable to get an e-mail to them because the page wasn’t working properly. And then today my brain went pop and I found where I had actually written down the password and here I am.
By the way, the e-mail address I had to cancel because it was full of malicious files was poor MsRefusnik’s. Let’s say goodbye forever to her shall we. I know I will never again leave an e-mail address out on the web for all to send their trojans, worms and viruses to or just to more easily hack the computer. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Speaking of security, here are some of the very interesting and unusual websites I promised you last time. All the research I’ve done has got to be good for something: at least I can share some of it. Do read “At Microsoft Security Flaws Emerge as Business Shortcomings,” and then look over the entire issue of SecurityFocus.Com. According to Helen Jung’s AP article, loss of revenue is getting Microsoft’s attention in terms of Windows’ vulnerabilities. MS said in latest quarterly report that revenue from multiyear contracts dropped $768 million from previous quarter, about $450 million lower than anticipated. And I bet I can guess the feature here: MS, it goes on to say, is making improvements in Windows XP desktop next year. “The improvements are to include disabling certain features that can allow hacker break-ins.” What do you want to bet they’re getting rid of the ridiculous remote assistance hacking feature?
Security Focus is run by Kevin Poulson, a convicted former hacker, and it is one-stop shopping as far as your security needs go. There are collected timely articles on every aspect of computer security, book release titles, tool downloads (everything from firewalls and password crackers to intrusion detection, vulnerability scanning…just look around. It’s geared for the seriously security-minded but should be of interest to all.
The best thing to do according to one book, (Counter Hack: A Step-by-Step Guide to Computer Attacks & Effective Defenses) is to subscribe to Bugtraq. Do this by sending an e-mail to LISTSERV@SECURITYFOCUS.COM. Message body: Subscribe Bugtraq, last name, first name
Security News has gone corporate in a big way. If you need to know about computer security from a business standpoint this a good publication to look at.
Because I’m telling you all the usual security b.s. you find at most websites about not opening e-mail attachments and being sure to have a firewall is crap–as if that were all there were to it. It just lulls you into a false confidence while you remain a sitting duck. Hackers are laughing at your firewall. I want to repeat that I had McAfee’s Personal Firewall Plus, Privacy program and Virus screen program without interruption when I was hacked. Since then I’ve watched the hackers go through a Zone Alarm and a Symantec in a matter of days, convincing me not to bother any more.
Time’s up. Last call at the old pub
BOO AND HOORAY FOR HALLOWEEN
The obsessed returns to the possessed. Yes, this blog has a life of its own. According to BlogPatrol I am of no importance to the functioning of this blog: I have exactly as many daily hits when I don’t write for a month as when I do. But I must say, looking at what the google-divers come for, I feel that I have sat at the end of the driveway with my junk on display and my cigar box only holding a little change. It’s time to go in.
Halloween, my favorite holiday. It does for me the opposite of what Christmas does. I feel exhilerated rather than depressed. I start getting excited when I see the store decorations going up. People play tricks. They don’t pretend to care about each other for a day. This old witchy freak fits right in with the other goblins, monsters and ghosts. Lately I have to say I have felt like a ghost.
Yes, my life stopped because my computer is hacked. Silly, huh? But I already admitted I’m obsessed. I do see a psychiatrist, and until last week I thought she was with me on this. Now she wants to see me more often. She came right out and told me that she doesn’t know a thing about computers but she doesn’t believe anyone would want to hack my computer. I really need to get a new doctor, perhaps one who knows enough to look at the computer for five minutes before discounting me as paranoid. But the problem is that in addition to the Adderall (a Dexedrine cousin) she has me on for ADD, she now has quadrupled the Ritalin to help me feel better. And I do feel better. So I put up with her asking me if I sleep walk at night looking for things the hackers have done.
I am ashamed to say that I don’t even follow the news much anymore. I sometimes watch the BBC news at night and that’s about it. Since I can no longer read my NYTimes and alternative papers on the internet I’ve lost interest in the world. If the right wanted to shut me and my anti-Republican blog up they couldn’t have done a better job if they locked me up in jail. If I were just in jail I would find a way. Now my spirit is pretty much crushed.
I am a poor woman. The computer I bought this past April was a major investment for me. I simply cannot go out and buy a new one. Besides they would just hack the new one despite all my readings about security and downloadings of security tools. It is now just a piece of furniture. I still pay for AOL (which began my problems I believe), but I am not allowed online. I have a brand new printer but I am not allowed to use it. My WordPerfect program is gone, as are all of my files. My four-year warranty with Dell is a joke. I call every week or so for the hell of it, demanding that they send someone out to the house to look at it. Again, they have me re-format and re-install for the 20th time, or run msconfig, or debug or some stupid thing while the hackers have now put an additional operating system into my hard drive. I believe it is Windows NT.
How do they do it you ask? I have disabled everything on the computer I can without destroying it. I let it sit completely unhooked from all cables and unplugged for days. There are still 1,500 of their files in there. I picked up a book on wireless technology or wi-fi as people call it. I know they use LANs and I have seen the 811. listed in the computer as a device. So I pulled out my P1 card, which Dell tried to tell me is a modem card. Maybe it is, but maybe it is a wireless network card, so I just pulled it. (They do break in my house so it is possible.) Wi-Fi and LANs create networks usually in the same building or within 1,000 feet. I believe it is the threesome upstairs from me who moved in about the same time the hacking began, four months ago. But I cannot yet prove it so I am still living in the prison of my apartment unable to blog at 3:00 a.m. or drink Diet Coke and smoke cigarettes while I send some e-mails. I rarely e-mail anyone. I wrote in here about how addicted I was to the internet. Now I’m just addicted to reading about security, hacking, anti-hacking tools, and ways to finger the host. Yes, they are the remote host and I am the remote “assisted” client. Microsoft, that remote assist desktop thing was a very, very bad idea among so many of your awful ideas.
Well, I have to run up here to get online before they close when I get out of work. Now it’s time to say goodbye. If I don’t fall into the doldrums, I’ll get back to you with some really interesting websites about hacking, cracking, defending yourself and getting regular great security tips in your e-mail.
I’m off to trick or treat. I’ll be wearing a pin that says, “This IS my costume.”
MY NEW ADDICTION
Yes folks, I am now addicted to being hacked. I mean it sounds ugly but it must be true. As you may have noticed by my recent, infrequent, posts the only thing I have time for anymore is reading about computer security–ironic when you know that my computer is still hacked–and playing mind games with the hacker.
In fact, today I played a few rounds of “You’ll never open that floppy/yes I will, yes I will.” When I gave up trying to open my debugging tools, I opened one of his files which contained a little cartoon slide show. The slide show was all about how wonderful computers can be when you just learn to share them on a network. Once you learn that you must share, you can go online, put your photos online, watch dvd’s, make slide shows, etc. The theme (and accompanying picture) was “You have the keys.” So fine, I wrote him a letter (with my Word Perfect which, surprisingly, is still installed), and lied and said, I surrender. I will be a good girl. What do they want me to do? Just let me use my computer again. In response I got the picture of the keys again. But the computer is still closed off from me and nothing works right.
In desperation and anger, and with some terrible craziness, I called Dell tech again today. Maybe I just wanted to yell at someone, but maybe I wanted someone else to think about fixing the situation for a while. I demanded that they come out to the house and stop talking to me like I’m a crazy person. I told them eight or ten times was enough to realize that re-formating and re-installing wasn’t going to lose the hacker. I demanded to speak to a supervisor. Next thing I know I’m putting on the Dell Resource CD waiting for the debugging stuff to load which it never did. I told the tech the hacker prevented the CD from booting right. The tech wanted to get off the phone. He said he’s sending me another CD which will solve all my problems. But before he got off he had to ask, “You have McAfee, right? Why don’t we run a virus scan right now.” I told him viruses don’t create slide shows, and that I deeply resented another Dell person talking to me like I’m crazy. What is so crazy about the idea of the worthless piece of crap Windows is being hacked? I ask you?
So yesterday I spent six hours at the library reading and making photocopies of everything from how to write automated scripts to install windows, how to clear the CMOS, how to remove the network card, 17 pages of info on the remote access desktop, client and VPN, more tool kits, more network stuff, and boy am I excited: a new book came for me: Hack Attacks Revealed A Complete Reference With Custom Security Hacking Toolkit by John Chirillo. It’s 944 pages long. That should keep me from doing laundry for another month.
Oh yeah, I’m obsessed. I don’t do much that I’m supposed to. I live on Diet Coke and Dean’s Fudge Bars. I forget to take showers. I buy plastic picnic silverware and don’t wash dishes. I can’t remember if I fed the cat or not some days. I make long lists of advisories, bulletins, and articles I must get when I get to the library. I am in trouble at work for doing my photocopy filing sitting down on the job when I’m supposed to be standing up working. One of my best friends who has known me forever told me she can hear it in my voice that I am on my way back to the hospital soon if I don’t let go. I can’t let go. I don’t want him to win.
My mother got angry at me last night. I tried to explain why I can’t just hire someone to fix the problem. When I call these so-called computer repairmen and tell them I haven’t been connected to the internet for months, they just don’t get it. They apparently have never heard of VPN’s, remote access, or wireless technology. They insist I’m nuts and that kind of puts me off hiring them. The last group I called, The Geek Squad, bragged about the big time stars whose computers they fixed when I asked if they were A+ certified. They hadn’t heard of wireless technology either.
So my mother was practically screaming at me over the phone to take the computer up to Best Buy and tell them to fix it and just not tell them what was wrong with it. If you knew what all was wrong with it you’d know how ridiculous this is. Like for example, it’s on a network and I don’t want to be on a network for starters. I want to be just me and my printer again. How do you fix that? How do you fix it that he has my IP address, open back door, open ports, is now sharing my most recent firewall, has loaded my computer full of script, code and trojans guaranteed to help him always get back in. Oh, and he has a sense of humor, I forget to tell you, if you like hacker’s humor. He let me actually read the properties of the events viewer one day. It was going on and on with the information, errors and warnings and suddenly pop up ads were showing up in the event viewer–not as pop up ads typically look but as event viewer errors look except that the text would be like “Joan has a full time mimi cam in her dorm room. Want to see?” There were a bunch like that.
I’m depressed. I’m going home to watch t.v. Maybe tomorrow he’ll move out. He had a file of guest user pictures. I selected one of a suitcase and zoomed in on it until it was huge and left it for him. I don’t know thouugh if hints mean much to him.
