Hacked: the first draft

It was a night like any other dark and stormy night. The house was quiet. Eerily quiet. So quiet you could hear a mouse (OR SIX). In this house, there lived me an eccentric old woman, who suffered from depression, anxiety, OCD insomnia. Her only cure was to sit on the couch with her laptop blogging while watching shows like The Bachelorette and Make It or Break it write.

After a long week of battling six an army of mice and crossing battle lines, the mice launched their surprise attack. A hacker. They sent spies across enemy lines to destroy years of writing and memories. They must have had a mole on the inside. Kris perhaps? Maybe it wasn't intentional on his part. Perhaps he was just taken in by their cute little eyes and petite figures. Perhaps one night while I sat blogging, he felt lonely and just needed someone to confide in. And perhaps the deranged rodent mastermind, who has apparently been stalking Kris for weeks, decided to take matters into her own hands.

So she hired a hit man of sorts. A hacker. Someone who could destroy my entire life, my identity. Someone who could take from me what matters most. My blog! husband. This past week has been an absolute nightmare.

Did anyone out there notice that I have been rather quiet for a week? Like uncharacteristically quiet? Want to know why?

Someone hacked my Gmail account. And then sent out a link to some of my contacts. It got flagged and Google shut my ENTIRE account down, with no warning and no explanation. My email. My blog. My calendar. My Google Reader. My life essentially. The first few days were filled with anger, bitterness, frustration and utter despair (only slightly exaggerated). For days, I had nowhere to go. No way of knowing what had happened or why. I felt lost in a world of bloggers, flaunting their un-hacked accounts, writing away. OK...now I'm REALLY exaggerating, because in reality after a day without my blog I just started a new one. I couldn't just sit idly by and wait and HOPE that Google would figure it all out for me. I took matters into my own hands. And I'm pleased with the outcome.

So where does this leave us dear readers? Here is where I am going to make my plea. Little Bishop Chronicles has officially been re-established HERE. Please take just a moment to follow me there, as this will be my last blog post here. PLEASE! PRETTY PLEASE!! I'm obviously not afraid to beg. Because I love all of you stalkers! I truly do! I was devastated when I thought I had lost all of my posts (MY MEMORIES), not to mention this great group of followers that has been looking to me and me alone 50 other bloggers to bring joy and laughter to your otherwise boring days. Man I'm arrogant aren't I?

So if you are still reading this now, check out the new layout and give me a chance over there. I'd love you forever! I'm SO thankful that Google was able to give me everything back, but I am going to be moving my blog officially, so if you loved me here, please consider loving me there! See how easy I have made it for you?!? There are only 13 a couple of new posts there. Recipes included in some of those new posts-doesn't that entice some of you?

Now, with that out of the way, who wants to tell me how to import this blog into my new one?

And one more thing. I had almost 800 UNREAD items in my Google Reader, so please forgive me if I missed some of your posts. I just had to mark them all as read and will start afresh with your new posts! It was just too overwhelming but I sure am glad to have my reader back!!

I wasn't splogged after all...

I got an email from my husband this morning (because we ONLY communicate via email) saying that our friend Adam got an email from me that was spam.  So it looks like I wasn't a victim of splogging after all.  It appears that someone hacked my Gmail account, enough people reported it as spam, and so they shut everything down.  Today I stumbled upon a form I could fill out saying that my Gmail account had been compromised. I had to enter a bunch of information a hacker wouldn't know.  Shoot some of it I didn't even know.  But then it said that I would get an email at my alternate address I had to give them after they finished their investigation.  This time frame was "usually within 24 hours".  I wish I had known all of this 3 days ago and filled out the form then.  So maybe by tomorrow I'll have access to everything again.  I can hope right?

My husband was pretty confused and upset that they disabled my entire account and just couldn't understand it, if it was just because someone cloned my blog.  He at least feels better about Google knowing that this was all done because someone hacked my account.  I'll admit, I feel better about this too.  My trust in Google has been restored.  It will increase if they manage to give me a way to change my password and access my account again.  Google, PROVE ME RIGHT!  PLEASE!!

**Update on the mouse front**

We caught #5 before bed and I heard #6 running around in the kitchen last night while I tried to go to sleep.  AHHHH!!!!

Breathe...

How many times must I lose 15 minutes of text I've written before I learn to click the 'save draft' button? Seriously. It sure would save me some outbursts of anger!

I have been trying out some new features with Google. I used to use the iGoogle home page because you had the ability to see all your favorite sites all in one place. I don't remember why I stopped using it. Probably because I didn't have anything useful on my home page. Today, however, I decided to go back to it. And one of the things I found that I could add to my home page is Blogger. And when you add it, it places a small box on your home page where you can add a post. It's really very convenient and will probably make it easier for me to update this blog. That may not seem like a GOOD thing to you, but it is to ME!

What motivated me to utilize iGoogle as my home page again was the Google Calendar. I'm forgetful. I don't remember things if I don't put it in my phone, or write it down. And if I write it down, I have an 80% chance of losing the paper I wrote it down on! With school approaching, and physical therapy and dentist appointments, there is a lot to try to remember. When I had my Treo 700wx, the calendar feature was pretty good but it always annoyed me to enter things in to my phone and then set reminders. When I got my Samsung Instinct, the calendar there was much worse than that on the Treo 700wx. So, when a friend was telling us a couple weeks ago about the Google Calendar, I started contemplating whether or not I wanted to take the time to check it out.

Let's say (HYOPTHETICALLY OF COURSE!) that you are by nature a forgetful person. You are by nature not good with dates and times. Let's say you have children in school and we'll also say (HYPOTHETICALLY) that these children fortunately have a key (FINALLY) and are able to let themselves into their own house when they get home from school, if hypothetically necessary. It isn't an ideal situation, especially when your oldest hypothetical child is only 8 years old. However, in case of emergencies, it's a must. Being the scatter-brained, not-100%-responsible hypothetical parent, you can't keep track of when the kids have half days and when they don't. And let's face it, these hypothetical kids have hypothetical half days more than they have full days of school! So, prior to using an actual calendar, you accidentally forget (or hypothetically you have NO CLUE) that there is a half day of school. And your child has to hypothetically call you at work and tell you that he (or SHE) is home from school and forgot to tell you there was a half day, at which point you have to get in the car and make the 30 minute drive home praying that nothing bad happens to them during that time. See how a calendar would come in handy? I DO!

And if I don't SEE it in front of me, chances are I am not going to remember it! A reminder on my phone is too easy to dismiss if I am in the middle of something when the reminder goes off. iGoogle allows you to add different boxes to customize your homepage. And adding Google Calendar is one of the options. So now, when I open up Google Chrome in the morning (which happens every morning without FAIL), I will SEE right in front of me what is on the calendar for that day. In addition, because of the ability to add more than one calendar, I can see what each member of my family has going on that day. Everyone gets their own calendar, with their own entries, and you can see right away if something overlaps, or if there is a conflict. If you use different social networking sites, most of them you can add to your iGoogle home page. So, I've got Twitter (though I RARELY use this), Facebook, Gmail, and Blogger all on my home page. And I can do anything I normally do right from my iGoogle home page. Want to update my Twitter status or 'tweet'? Done on the home page. Want to update my Facebook status without being drawn into all the crazy addicting Facebook apps during work? Done on the home page. Want to use my 15 minute break to post a blog in the middle of the day? Again, done on the home page. Although, with Blogger, I would suggest saving the draft before you leave the page or you will wind up annoyed because your post has disappeared and you didn't save it!!

This is what my iGoogle home page looks like. I put the calendar in the top left so I see it first thing.

Here is what my calendar for this week looks like (see below). The colors on the left hand side are my individual calendars. And the tasks or dates on the calendar are color coded to match the person tied to that particular 'event'. I've got PT, then Kaleb and I both have dentist appointments, and then Kris and I (HOPEFULLY) are playing Bridge Thursday night. I have even added the St. Louis Regional Bridge Tournament (taking place next week) on my calendar, though I am unlikely to forget about that! Now if only I could magically have a FREE babysitter whenever necessary for any event on my calendar that warranted a babysitter (like the Bridge Tournament)!