My domain (modecideas.com) is under attack!

Only an hour or two ago I started getting reports that people accessing my website were getting different pages from usual. My domain is http://modecideas.com (hoping it stays mine). The result demonstrates that someone has altered my domain registration records. It looks like a deliberate and well planned attack to hijack my site visitors to their pages. There was even a mock-up of a different design using my domain name. This goes well beyond annoying! It's as if someone stole my car!

New kind of graffiti

This morning I visited the site where my novel (Return by John Durham) is displayed for sale Return by John Durham, to see the site visit/sales tracking information. I had to log in. To my dismay in the comments area I found the kind of thing you usually get in unsolicited emails. How did it get there?

Only one way- A professional spammer with membership access must have visited the area to leave a whole lot of meaningless characters behind. The author quietly tears hair out while the helpful people at lulu.com investigate.

Postscript:This morning I checked the site. It appears that lulu.com have repaired a problem with the site. Things look normal once more (good job, lulu!)

Light relief:Famous quotes by Winston Churchill

I hope you find these as entertaining and enlightening as I did...

Famous Quotes of Sir Winston Churchill
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in any opportunity; the optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty"

"Eating words has never given me indigestion"
Sir Winston Churchill

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.
Sir Winston Churchill

Bessie Braddock to Churchill "Winston, you're drunk!"
Churchill: "Bessie, you're ugly, and tomorrow morning I shall be sober"

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it
Sir Winston Churchill

We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.
Sir Winston Churchill

I cannot pretend to feel impartial about colours. I rejoice with the brilliant ones and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns.
Sir Winston Churchill

Lady Astor to Churchill "Winston, if you were my husband I would flavour your coffee with poison"
Churchill: "Madam, if I were your husband, I should drink it"

Spam dunk (for email and SMS)

Software is beginning to appear that will seriously restrict the amount of junk mail you receive by email. It is a move against the type of messages that promote pharmaceutical and health care products that may be unregistered and untested. More information here:SpamDunk
Banned ads do the business

Fickle customers

When a customer phones for help what do you expect? One such person called me yesterday saying "come over and help me".
I went to help her. By the time I got there she had left for some unspecified reason. How would you react to that?

Note: The primary source of the problem was ignorance of the operating system on her part. By leaving she prevented the matter from being resolved. Got any suggestions?

Renewing my domain

It's that time of year again. I'm going to be tied up trying to re-register my domain name today. It's a bit last minute, so excuse the rush please!

Sorry it is becoming a real problem. Registration at enom failed due to login problems, so I have chosen to register with http://www.domainz.net.nz to reduce the hassle. They don't work on weekends. This is anything but fun! Anyone else run into problems like these?

PS:Finally got that resolved (enom responded with a support email). Still can't log in there but the domain is renewed at least.

Is your hard drive running out of space?

It is literally the final frontier for your hard drive. The drive has a fixed finite size at manufacturing time. Once it is filled to that point, the data may literally have nowhere to go. The usual symptoms are when the operating system slows down or refuses to carry out any more work. The possible solutions to this are to install a larger one and transfer the data to it or delete/move files to other media such as a spare drive, USB device, writable CD/DVD Zip drive or floppy. You may need to re-install the operating system and set up your internet connection again. A skilled technician with the right equipment may be able to copy your partition to a bigger drive and then increase its size. Whether that happens or not, there is no more your original drive can do until space is freed up. Despite the speed and efficiency of modern hard drives, their finite size is their Achilles heel. For this reason, it is wise to see the 'end coming' when the drive slows down or refuses to do the jobs you need because of data congestion. One other alternative would be to add a second hard drive and transfer as much portable data (pictures, documents etc) to the newer, emptier drive. The more free space the drive has, the better it will work. It doesn't have to be the end of the line for your hard drive, but you do need to take action to deal with the data congestion before the system refuses to function any more.

Virus on D: drive

Yesterday I discovered an intractable infection on drive D: of my system. It resists all attempts at removal, so remedial treatment is under way. All vital files on the drive are being saved on other media. After that the drive will need to be formatted and everything recovered from backups. Please excuse any delays in making contact.

Novel (Return by John Durham) now readable on weread.com

Earlier today I was invited to join weread.com so that online readers could read my book there. Several chapters were uploaded (not all). Now members can get a feel for the story before ordering the book. Note:Lots of the good stuff is still found only in the book, so viewers need to get a genuine copy to find out the ending.
Return by John Durham

How often do you update your email records?

Anyone with a PC (especially windows based) usually has some kind of email facility. If not, you are not doing much on the internet. For those who have been using it for a long time (over a year), you have probably made a number of friends and contacts round about.

One of the most common things to affect your system (apart from infectious nasties) is that over time many of your friends change their email addresses (but sometimes they don't tell you). This only shows up after a period when you try to contact them, only to find them gone. Their mail is returned to you with some sort of "gone" message.

There are several ways to find out who has (since many change their phone numbers less often than their email addresses). What about phoning them (if possible)? If that doesn't work, what about posting a note to their street address? Ask around on line to see if anyone you know has a current address.

If these efforts work, fine. If not, you may just have to remove them from your list until they contact you again. So keep up to date, and let others know when you are changing your address!

Card drops

A few days ago a business card was left in my letterbox. It was clearly a local person trying to make contacts, so I logged his details and contacted him. He seemed a nice guy, just trying to make a go of life (much like me). In a way he encouraged me to keep trying.

It's really a matter of finding those who would benefit from your talents. This area is full of talented people who have limited outlet for their work (maybe the population is too small).

Nevertheless, I am going to have a try today.
One day there might be enough work to keep going with.
Do you know the feeling?

Site update complete!

Seemed like it would never come, but it has. All the html pages have been checked and corrected for broken links and poor code. They have been given new feedback forms with Captcha security devices. Unless someone resorts to junk mail by hand or the support systems fail, the pages are now more secure. Forms are on the majority of pages, but if you spot one that needs it, please let me know. PS:If you want to do this kind of thing to your site, please chime in. I will help in whatever way I can.
PC helpers support list

Fax machine died today

When you rely on a machine to answer calls, receive fax messages and generally look after things it's a setback when it dies. That is what happened today. So I bought a replacement, a Brother MFC-290C multifunction centre. If it works out it should do all the things the other machines did and more. It's one more step towards the automatic office. Sorry if I missed you while all this was going on! Looking forward to your call...